Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to add judicial discretion to the Higher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty. Since 1998 the law prevents any student convicted of possession of a controlled substance from receiving Federal financial aid.

Since the penalty was enacted, approximately 200,000 low to middle income students seeking a college education have been disqualified from receiving Federal financial assistance. In many cases, these are committed young people who simply want to make better lives for themselves. In order to be eligible for financial aid in the first place, these students have proven they can perform academically. Unfortunately, they have made the mistake many young people have made experimenting with drugs.

Just like every Senator in this chamber, I want to help keep America's young people from making this mistake and jeopardizing their health and their futures. We should all work to enact policies that effectively deter dangerous drug use. But this is a sophisticated and complicated issue and it cannot be solved by blunt measures such as the Aid Elimination Penalty.

Any drug abuse expert will tell you that helping someone get off of drugs or stay away from trying them requires a variety of approaches. In some cases the fear of consequences, such as the Aid Elimination Penalty, may be enough. But in many other cases, counseling, rehabilitation, and positive reinforcement may offer more effective ways to achieve this goal.

Our laws should reflect the need for varied approaches. Unfortunately, the Aid Elimination Penalty does not. It is a blunt tool that sweeps all cases into the same one size fits all solution. There is little distinction under this law as to whether the drug possession is a major or minor violation and to what degree the infraction affects the community at large; Teenagers bowing to peer-pressure for the first time are treated the same as serious drug users disrupting their communities. This means that while in some cases we are penalizing chronic drug abusers, we are also penalizing good students who will mature and have a better chance of rectifying their mistakes by continuing their education.

What is most disturbing is how the consequences of the penalty can negatively impact the course of a student's life. Many students affected by the Aid Elimination Penalty are forced to leave school since it is no longer affordable without financial assistance. Data from the National Center of Education Statistics demonstrates that many of these students will not continue their education: 36 percent of students who leave 4-year institutions do not return within 5 years and 50 percent of students who leave 2-year institutions do not return within 5 years. For these students, denial of Federal college assistance will only force them from school, and may set them on an even more self destructive course of increased drug use and abuse. In these cases, the Aid Elimination Penalty actually backfires and serves to undermine our efforts to prevent the use and abuse of drugs.

That is why I am introducing this legislation to insert judicial discretion into the current law. My bill would make the penalty dependent on the ruling of a judge, allowing them to weigh the value of implementing the penalty as part of other sanctions and punishments on a case by case basis. This will enable the judge to deny student financial aid if the situation merits it, and if he or she believes it is the most effective or even the only way to help a student get control of his or her life. This legislation would also grant judges the ability, based on the circumstances, to determine that continuation of a college education, in conjunction with rehabilitation and possibly other sanctions, offers both the student and the community the best possible outcome. This is the way the rest of the criminal justice system works and it is the way the Aid Elimination Penalty should be implemented. With this change we can fine tune our approach to this problem and minimize the negative unintended consequences of current law. I urge my colleagues to see the wisdom of this approach and help me to refine the law to be more effective in protecting our communities and ensuring deserving students the opportunity to advance their education.

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

Mr. President, I wish to talk about a couple amendments I will be offering, but let me inquire, if I may, of the chairman of the Budget Committee, if it would be appropriate for us to submit our amendments this evening. I understand the sequence will be left to the committee, but I am not sure whether I should be submitting an amendment or whether we can do that tomorrow.

I understand that. That is the point.

Well, Mr. President, what I will do, then, is I would like to file two amendments, and I send them to the desk and ask they be filed.

Mr. President, let me discuss these two amendments, and I will reserve about 5 or 6 minutes at the end to talk about the present housing issue that is critical to all of us. I wish to take a few minutes, which is far more than I will probably get tomorrow with the 1 minute allocated to talk about these amendments that are important in a number of aspects.

I wish to thank Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, Senator Schumer, the Presiding Officer, and Senator Durbin for joining me in the first amendment I will be offering to increase funding for the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant. This amendment that I will be calling up is supported by a large coalition of organizations, and I ask unanimous consent that the list of organizations and letter from the organizations be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. President, among the associations and organizations that are supporting this amendment is the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the March of Dimes, and many others.

In a minute, I will speak to the second amendment I am offering relating to autism funding.

Under the President's budget, the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant will be funded at $666 million for the second consecutive year. This amount represents a cut of $65 million from 5 years ago, when funding peaked at $731 million. These persistent cuts and flat funding have a real impact on the services States are able to offer to nearly 35 million women, children, and youth affected by maternal and child health programs.

The Maternal and Child Health programs include direct health care for children with special needs, preventive and primary care for children and youth, integration of health care with other child and family services, newborn screening for genetic disorders, lead poisoning prevention, injury prevention, and public education.

We must ensure that the States are able to continue to offer these services to those in need. That is why I am offering this amendment, which will increase the funding of this block grant by $184 million to the authorized level of $850 million.

Again, I wish to thank Senators Hatch, Schumer, and Durbin for supporting this effort in a bipartisan way. The Maternal and Child Health Block Grant services act as a critical source of care for many of our Nation's uninsured children. Of the more than 23 million children receiving services in 2006, 6.8 percent, or nearly 1.8 million children, had no known source of health insurance at all.

More than a third of MCH funds are used to provide primary and preventive health care services to children--including immunization clinics, outreach to enroll eligible children in Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, and funding and technical assistance to school based health centers, that serve adolescents.

In other words, MCH funds are used to ensure that mothers and children in traditionally underserved populations receive absolutely necessary care.

Yet, despite this important mission, we continue to ask State MCH programs to do more with less. According to the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, the purchasing power of the MCH block grant has decreased close to 24 percent since 2003.

Consider this: at present, low birth weight and preterm births are increasing, the U.S. ranks 32nd out of 33rd of the world's industrialized nations in the rate of infant deaths with African American infants in the United States more than twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday, and childhood obesity rates for some age groups representing a three-fold increase in rates over the past two decades. We can do much better. This program has proven it works. Thus you have the support of Senator Hatch and others who know that this program has made a difference in the lives of millions.

Nearly one-half of all preterm births have no known cause but what we do know is that by reducing certain risk factors in the mother such as cigarette smoking and obesity, we can help reduce rates of prematurity.

I chair the Children and Families Subcommittee of the HELP Committee and authored the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act with Senator Hatch-- passed the Senate unanimously last December--and the Preventing Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers who deliver Infants Early Act, better known as the PREEMIE Act with Senator Alexander, enacted into law. These initiatives have made important steps toward giving children a healthy start at life. But now it's time for us to ensure that the money will be there to continue the success of these vital programs.

The MCH block grant is a proven success for helping ensure a healthy future for our Nation's children. States are required to match $3 for every $4 of Federal funds provided by the block grant. The MCH block grant has performance measures and evaluations that document the effective impact of this modest investment. To quote the Bush administration:

The program is well designed. The [MCH Block Grant] serves

as a safety net to help improve the health of mothers and

children and has a positive impact on their health.

The MCH program is critical to the health and well-being of millions of families across this country, including some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Years of funding cuts and level funding have stretched maternal and child health programs to their limits. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to increase MCH block grant funding to $850 million in this year's budget resolution. On behalf of Senators Hatch, Schumer, Durbin and others, we hope that members will be in favor of something that has enjoyed broad support.

Mr. President, I would now like to speak on an amendment I will be offering with Senators Collins and Kennedy. I thank Senator Collins and Senator Kennedy, the distinguished Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for their support for this amendment. I would also like to thank Autism Speaks for their support for this amendment.

The amendment increases funding for autism in the fiscal year 2009 budget by $197 million in a budget-neutral manner, bringing autism funding up to its authorized level and then doubling our commitment to funding research into the causes of and treatments for autism.

In 2006, the Congress unanimously passed the Combating Autism Act, which my colleague from Pennsylvania former Senator Rick Santorum and I authored along with the strong support of Senators Kennedy and Enzi. This initiative was the largest Federal expansion of funding and programs for children and families with autism spectrum disorder. It authorizes $800 million to find the causes and decide how to treat the myriad of problems faced by families of children with autism.

At the time the bill passed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, estimated that 1 in 166 children were diagnosed with autism. Today the CDC estimates that number to be 1 in 150. In fact, 67 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder per day. A new case is diagnosed almost every 20 minutes.

It continues to be a challenge to determine how much Federal funding is actually going to study the causes of and treatments for autism. In fact, some estimates are that actual NIH funding for research specific to autism is less than half of what is being reported.

That is why this amendment is so critical. It will redouble our Federal commitment to funding autism, the fastest-growing developmental disability in the U.S.

At a time when the number of children and families living with autism has grown exponentially, the President's budget proposes to freeze Federal spending on autism at levels that are insufficient to make the kind of discoveries in autism that are needed.

Many of my colleagues no doubt have been visited by children and their families with autism. Autism is a complex neurological disorder, which manifests itself differently in each individual but occurs in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. It is a lifelong condition that affects not only the individual with the disability, but impacts the entire family, often requiring intensive levels of support and intervention.

There are so many unanswered questions about autism. And it will require a major scale-up in funding to bring us closer to answering them. We should close no doors on promising avenues of research into the causes of autism and my amendment allows all biomedical research opportunities on autism to be pursued.

The amendment I am offering would enable us to redouble our efforts on autism research and treatment services by increasing funding for research, treatments, education and interventions by $197 million in fiscal year 2009 and I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Again, I emphasize it is the fastest growing developmental disability in our country. The number of children who will be born with autism is increasing every day in this country. Again, on behalf of Senator Collins and myself, Senator Kennedy and others, we urge you to be supportive of this amendment when it comes up. It is deficit neutral, which ought to make it easier for Members to support this amendment.

Lastly, I want to take a couple of minutes, to commend the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad and Senator Judd Gregg, the ranking member as well, and the other members of the Budget Committee. I served on that committee for many years and have nothing but admiration and respect for those going through this process. This budget is a positive step to address the serious challenges our economy is facing today. Having just spoken on the specific issues regarding the resolution, on autism and maternal and child health, I want to take a moment to again address some of the problems that are plaguing our economy.

I have been coming to the floor with some regularity in recent weeks to speak on economic issues. I do not wish to test the patience of our colleagues. But I believe that these issues are of such paramount importance at this point in our national life that they merit the consideration of our colleagues.

Just yesterday the Federal Reserve announced a significant new action that attempts to address the liquidity lock-down that has spread through our credit markets and crippled the ability of lenders to lend and borrowers to borrow. The announcement by the Fed is a significant measure that is intended to address this very serious situation. The markets' strong positive reaction to the Fed's action demonstrates that policymakers can undertake actions which have the potential to improve our situation. However, I do not believe that the Fed's action alone will be enough to right our Nation's economic ship. Additional steps should also be considered to address the root cause of the present market turmoil--namely, the housing market and specifically the foreclosure crisis.

New data was released last week regarding the condition of America's homeowners. It is stark, even alarming in certain respects. Foreclosures have hit a new all-time record, according to the Mortgage Banker's Association, MBA. This data shows that more than 1 in every 50 homes with a mortgage in the country is in foreclosure, as of the end of last year. Foreclosure rates have been growing at record levels for some time. Foreclosures are increasing because people are continuing to struggle to make their payments, and because those payments are increasing for millions of Americans. The report tells us

that 1 in every 13 homeowners with a mortgage has fallen behind on their mortgage.

The Federal Reserve also released new data, which shows that Americans' equity in their homes is at a record low. Home equity has fallen for three straight quarters and now, for the first time in recorded history, which dates back to the end of the Second World War, Americans own less than 50 percent of the value of their home. By virtually all estimates, the housing problem is getting worse, not better.

Congress can and in my opinion, must, address the situation. There are several pieces of legislation that I, along with others, am working to do just that. I am working with my ranking member, Senator Shelby and our colleagues in the House on legislation to reform the Federal Housing Administration. I remain committed to creating a world-class regulator for the GSEs. I also believe that we need to expand the community development block grant program to enable cities and localities with the tools and funding they will need to address the foreclosure crisis which is upon us. I have worked with Senators Schumer, the Presiding Officer Bond and others to make sure that high- quality counseling is available to homeowners who are facing the brunt of the storm, and I remain committed to this important program.

Congress should consider creating a home ownership preservation entity that can help restore stability and liquidity to the mortgage market and credit markets generally. Fed Chairman Bernanke called for such an entity in an important address last week.

In addition to addressing the problems in the housing market, which are at the epicenter of our current economic crisis, we also need to make sure that our economy is fundamentally strong for the future. One of the most effective ways to do that is to invest in our Nation's infrastructure. Just yesterday, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee on the condition of our Nation's infrastructure and on ideas as to how to improve it. The hearing generated some good ideas that I believe we need to act on. One such idea is contained in legislation written by Senator Hagel and myself to establish a national infrastructure bank.

I commend Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator John Thune for their efforts as well, on a similar idea which we intend to incorporate with our idea that can help us in this effort as well.

The budget resolution before allows for such action. It establishes a reserve fund for the specific purpose of meeting our infrastructure needs. The fund could encompass the legislation Senator Hagel and I have introduced. I appreciate the willingness of the Budget Committee to work with us on this issue. I commend Chairman Conrad and Senator Gregg for establishing this fund. It is evidence of a growing consensus in Congress and the country that complacency can no longer substitute for action.

From the days of the Roman aqueducts to the present, a nation's ability to grow and prosper rests upon its success at effectively moving people, goods, and information. Ask any American today how we are doing in achieving this objective, and chances are the response would be the same: we can do better. When the average American spends 51.5 hours a year in traffic congestion, we can do better. When 33 percent of all urban and rural roads are in poor, mediocre, or fair condition, we can do better. When the United States invests less than 2 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure while countries like China and India invest between 7 and 12 percent, we can do better.

Economist Stephen Roach, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, suggests that investing in infrastructure would be an effective strategy for dealing with the current economic slowdown. Specifically, he recommends that:

Fiscal initiatives should be directed at laying the

groundwork for future growth, especially by upgrading the

nation's antiquated highways, bridges, and ports.

I have been working closely with Senator Shelby on these issues and remain hopeful that when the Senate returns after the Easter recess, we can get back to working on cost-effective approaches to allow people to keep their homes and bring liquidity to the housing market.

Lastly, the budget resolution was a good step to address the problems before us by allocating funds to existing programs, such as the Community Development Block Grant Program, as well as, of course, I mentioned the reserve account here to deal with infrastructure needs.

I commend the authors of this resolution. I urge my colleagues to consider the two amendments I will be offering dealing with maternal and general health offered by myself, Senators Hatch, Schumer, Durbin, and others.

Dealing with autism, Senator Collins and I will be offering two critical issues. We are accounting for them here in the budget resolution, so they are budget neutral but also making a difference in the lives of people in the kinds of proper investments we may have.

I thank the chair for the time. I thank my colleague from Nevada.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Disability Savings Act of 2008. This important legislation is designed to help individuals with disabilities live full and productive lives for all their years.

As we all know, disability is a part of human experience. The U.S. Census Bureau reports nearly 20 percent of Americans have some level of disability while 12.5 percent reported a severe disability. We should do what we can to make it possible for these Americans to live independently, exert control and choice over their lives, and fully participate in their communities. One of the key ways we can accomplish this goal is to help individuals with disabilities and their families save money for disability related expenses, especially those expected over the course of full life.

Over the years, Congress has provided incentives to American families to save for various long term goals: college education, home ownership, and retirement. These incentives have given families the tools to help their children, well after they have left the home.

But for families who have a child with a disability, particularly a cognitive disability, these goals may not match their needs. Many of these children will depend on Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance, and Supplemental Security Income. They cannot risk losing these benefits. And they may never get to the point where they can consider college or home ownership.

These individuals will frequently incur significant additional costs related to services and supports necessary to maintain health and independence. Parents also have to worry about what will happen to their children after they are gone.

The World Institute on Disability reports that over 1/3 of adults with disabilities live in households with income of $15,000 or less. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, median earnings for individuals with disabilities were a little more than half of the median income of those without disabilities.

It is common for families to provide for individuals with significant disabilities who cannot support themselves. These families often do this at great cost to themselves both financially and emotionally. They do it out of love, and they do not ask to be relieved of their burdens. But they are hoping that we can provide the tools to help them ensure their loved ones can lead full lives for many years.

That is why I am introducing the Disability Savings Act of 2008. This bill

will encourage individuals with disabilities and their families to save money for their unique disability-related needs in Disability Savings Accounts. These accounts will provide a tax-advantaged mechanism for individuals with disabilities to save money.

The interest on these accounts, with a balance of up to $250,000, will be tax free. Expenditures from the accounts for specific qualified services such as education, medical services, employment training and support, and transportation, will not be subject to income tax. The accounts will be easier to manage, and use than other existing savings mechanisms for individuals with disabilities. To be sure these accounts are available to low and moderate income earners, there will be a refundable matching tax credit of up to $1000 for contributions. Account holders can even roll funds from college savings plans and special needs trusts for the same beneficiary into the Disability Savings Account without penalty. These accounts will supplement, not supplant, benefits provided by other, sources such as Medicaid, private insurance, and Supplemental Security Income, SSI, and the assets held within them will not be counted against eligibility for those programs.

In order to be eligible to have a Disability Savings Account, beneficiaries must be determined to be blind or disabled by the Social Security Administration or the Disability Determination Service of a state, and be under the age of 65. The accounts can be held and managed through a financial institution by the beneficiary, their spouse or family member, or a legal guardian.

I hope that my colleagues will see the benefit of this approach and join me in this effort. I urge them to cosponsor this legislation and work with me to give individuals with disabilities and their families the tools they need to live healthy independent lives.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Disability Savings Act of 2008. This important legislation is designed to help individuals with disabilities live full and productive lives for all their years.

As we all know, disability is a part of human experience. The U.S. Census Bureau reports nearly 20 percent of Americans have some level of disability while 12.5 percent reported a severe disability. We should do what we can to make it possible for these Americans to live independently, exert control and choice over their lives, and fully participate in their communities. One of the key ways we can accomplish this goal is to help individuals with disabilities and their families save money for disability related expenses, especially those expected over the course of full life.

Over the years, Congress has provided incentives to American families to save for various long term goals: college education, home ownership, and retirement. These incentives have given families the tools to help their children, well after they have left the home.

But for families who have a child with a disability, particularly a cognitive disability, these goals may not match their needs. Many of these children will depend on Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance, and Supplemental Security Income. They cannot risk losing these benefits. And they may never get to the point where they can consider college or home ownership.

These individuals will frequently incur significant additional costs related to services and supports necessary to maintain health and independence. Parents also have to worry about what will happen to their children after they are gone.

The World Institute on Disability reports that over 1/3 of adults with disabilities live in households with income of $15,000 or less. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, median earnings for individuals with disabilities were a little more than half of the median income of those without disabilities.

It is common for families to provide for individuals with significant disabilities who cannot support themselves. These families often do this at great cost to themselves both financially and emotionally. They do it out of love, and they do not ask to be relieved of their burdens. But they are hoping that we can provide the tools to help them ensure their loved ones can lead full lives for many years.

That is why I am introducing the Disability Savings Act of 2008. This bill

will encourage individuals with disabilities and their families to save money for their unique disability-related needs in Disability Savings Accounts. These accounts will provide a tax-advantaged mechanism for individuals with disabilities to save money.

The interest on these accounts, with a balance of up to $250,000, will be tax free. Expenditures from the accounts for specific qualified services such as education, medical services, employment training and support, and transportation, will not be subject to income tax. The accounts will be easier to manage, and use than other existing savings mechanisms for individuals with disabilities. To be sure these accounts are available to low and moderate income earners, there will be a refundable matching tax credit of up to $1000 for contributions. Account holders can even roll funds from college savings plans and special needs trusts for the same beneficiary into the Disability Savings Account without penalty. These accounts will supplement, not supplant, benefits provided by other, sources such as Medicaid, private insurance, and Supplemental Security Income, SSI, and the assets held within them will not be counted against eligibility for those programs.

In order to be eligible to have a Disability Savings Account, beneficiaries must be determined to be blind or disabled by the Social Security Administration or the Disability Determination Service of a state, and be under the age of 65. The accounts can be held and managed through a financial institution by the beneficiary, their spouse or family member, or a legal guardian.

I hope that my colleagues will see the benefit of this approach and join me in this effort. I urge them to cosponsor this legislation and work with me to give individuals with disabilities and their families the tools they need to live healthy independent lives.

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

Mr. President, next week, members of the afterschool community will be gathering for the 20th anniversary of the National AfterSchool Association Conference. The initial conference held two decades ago marked the first formal meeting of afterschool professionals under their own organization to discuss and develop solutions to address the needs of school-age children during their hours out of school.

Of course, back then we didn't call it afterschool. Instead, we talked about ``latchkey'' programs for ``latchkey kids.'' At the outset, these programs replaced the need for latchkeys around the neck with welcoming, safe, and nurturing environments; they were a prime factor in the creation of the Act for Better Child Care.

As pioneers in the school-age movement, this passionate, dedicated group of leaders recognized that the needs of these students were distinct from those of early childhood. Their movement helped school- age providers network and share resources, culminating in the creation of the National School-Age Care Alliance, which later became the National Afterschool Association, NAA. Over time, 36 State affiliates were established.

In the past two decades, the field has evolved and NAA with it. Parents wanted more opportunities for their children, and the need for assuring quality programming became evident. In collaboration with the School Age Child Project at Wellesley College, NAA developed national quality standards and a national accreditation process for afterschool programs. These standards became the foundation for other groups' guidelines for programs for school-age children.

The NAA continues to be a leading voice in the afterschool community with almost 10,000 members nationally and internationally. The professionals who make up NAA's membership supply a critical component of quality programs, providing children with high-quality programming and positive relationships with adult mentors. The NAA has worked on behalf of the afterschool workforce to improve its quality and ensure that the profession's voice is heard. Today, their annual conference remains a key way for the afterschool community to share and network.

Afterschool has grown by leaps and bounds and now includes a diversity of programs providing a wide array of opportunities for young people. These programs tackle a variety of issues including bolstering academic performance, preventing childhood obesity, and exposing children to the arts and music. Through time, the NAA has always maintained its commitment to supporting quality programs with well- trained staff dedicated to helping children grow to the best of their abilities. Because of the NAA, parents can more successfully balance their work and home life and millions of American children have safe places to grow and develop when the school day ends.

I am proud to join with those in attendance at this milestone NAA conference celebrating the journey of the past 20 years. I congratulate the members of the afterschool community on this special anniversary and thank them for their hard work creating safe and engaging environments for our children.

Mr. President, I wish to speak on the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Bill, which the Senate passed earlier today. I was pleased to cast my vote in support of this important bipartisan bill, and I thank Senators Pryor and Stevens for their hard work in bringing this measure to the floor.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, is one of our Nation's most important Federal agencies. The Commission's principal responsibility entails protecting Americans from risks associated with products sold in the United States. Each year, it develops and enforces safety standards for thousands of goods. These goods range from toys to house-wares.

We live in an age of increasing global trade. Consequently, the activities of the CPSC here become more important, as Americans purchase and consume a greater number of products manufactured in foreign nations. In order to meet these expanded responsibilities, the CPSC requires enhanced resources and authorities. I am pleased that the bill passed today provides these enhanced resources and authorities.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission reform bill includes new safety standards for a variety of products, including cigarette lighters, furniture, swimming pools, equestrian helmets, portable gasoline containers, strollers, and cribs. It strengthens the certification of safety-standard compliance, establishes more stringent standards on lead in paint, reforms third-party testing for product safety and compliance, and increases civil and/or criminal penalties for noncompliance. The bill also increases CPSC personnel in major ports-of-entry, prohibits CPSC personnel from taking industry-sponsored travel, prohibits the sale of products that are the subject of a recall, expands jurisdiction of the CPSC to cover amusement park rides at a fixed site, and fosters greater coordination among the various agencies involved in consumer safety issues.

Further, the legislation doubles the current CPSC authorization level for fiscal year 2009 to $88,500,000, and increases the level to $155,900,000 by fiscal year 2015. This bill also authorizes $40 million for fiscal year 2009 for the improvement of the Commission's research, development, and testing facilities, and also provides $1 million for fiscal year 2009 for research into safety issues related to the use of nanotechnology in consumer products.

I am particularly pleased that the bill contains two provisions that

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

Mr. President, I rose to address the Senate less than a week ago about this present economic set of circumstances in the country. Obviously, the foreclosure issue is a major question that is causing serious problems all over the country. In fact, it is now becoming more of a global issue than just a domestic issue. I know there have been serious efforts, and I commend the majority leader and others who have tried to put together--along with those of us on the Banking Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Judiciary Committee-- a proposal that would offer some hope and some confidence-building measures to grapple and deal with the foreclosure issue, which is the epicenter, obviously, of this economic crisis we are all seeking answers to.

I thought it might be worthwhile to take a couple of minutes this afternoon to again urge the minority--I have worked closely with Senator Shelby, and let me just report on a favorable note that I think we are fairly close to having an FHA reform bill that we will be able to adopt very quickly. While that is not going to solve all of the problems, it is yet another piece in this economic puzzle that deserves our attention. I am hopeful and confident we will be able to do that in relatively short order.

I commend the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Congressman Frank, Barney Frank of the other body, for his work--the work they put together on a bipartisan basis in the House--and his willingness to compromise on this issue so that we can achieve a proposal that would enjoy broad-based support both here and in the other body.

This issue we are facing today is a very serious one. I hope all of my colleagues appreciate that statement. That is not hyperbole; the realities are there. One cannot pick up a morning newspaper--it is no longer just in the business section; these issues are now front-page stories with fears of growing economic dislocation, a slowdown in our economy that we have not seen in years, with housing values falling nationally at rates that one has to go back literally to the Great Depression to find similar national statistics. We have rising unemployment rates and rising inflation rates. The cost of a barrel of oil once again is exceeding $100 a barrel. Food prices--my colleague from Rhode Island, the Presiding Officer, pointed out the other day, just in terms of bakeries in the country, the rising cost of wheat. The price of wheat has risen dramatically in the country. These are examples of what is occurring that contributes, obviously, to a worsening economic situation in our country.

All we are hoping for here--or I had hoped for before the Easter Passover break--is that we would be able to adopt a series of measures that would attract broad-based support that could offer some relief, some confidence, some optimism to people across the country. I am less optimistic that it is going to happen in a broad sense, but I am still hopeful that FHA reform might be adopted before we leave.

We are facing a very serious situation, and we are doing so in a much weaker position than we were just 7 years ago, the last time that our nation was on the brink of a recession. This is not a partisan or an ideological statement. When the Federal Reserve Chairman, Governor Bernanke, was before the Banking Committee last week, I asked him whether he thought we were in a worse position today to respond to the problems we are facing than we were when we last faced a recession in 2001. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve agreed that we are indeed in a worse position today than we

were 7 years ago. He specifically said that the standard monetary and fiscal policy tools we have to confront economic downturns are far more constrained today than they were 7 years ago. He also said the American consumer is facing the brunt of this economic downturn.

The incoming economic data show how serious the problem is. The Nation's economy has slowed to a near standstill in the fourth quarter, with overall GDP growing by less than 1 percent and private sector GDP growing by only one-tenth of 1 percent.

The country had a net loss of jobs in January. That is the first time we have lost jobs in over 4 years. Incoming data on retail sales has been very weak, and most projections, by the way, by private economists and by the Federal Reserve for economic growth this year have been revised down sharply.

The Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testifying before the Banking Committee yesterday, indicated that the next several quarters do not offer much hope at all that this economy is going to strengthen. Credit card delinquencies are on the rise as consumers find themselves increasingly unable to tap the equity in their homes to help pay down credit card debt and other financial obligations.

Lastly, as I mentioned a minute ago, inflation has increased by 4.1 percent this year. That is the largest increase in 17 years, driven mainly by the rising cost of energy, food, and health care. Oil prices are above $100 a barrel, and the U.S. dollar is at the lowest point in modern history since we began freely floating our currency in 1973.

This economic decline has been reflected in the falling stock prices, the falling currency, and the increased volatility in the securities markets.

Our economy is in trouble, which is to state the obvious, and the data clearly confirms that, but we don't necessarily help the situation by just acknowledging that. What are we doing? What steps are we taking in this body and in the other body? What steps is the administration taking? What steps is the Federal Reserve taking, and others, to reverse these trends and to offer some hope?

I don't want to engage in a self-fulfilling prophecy by reciting the data that is going on here without suggesting that we might not be able to do some things that could help.

As I said previously, the catalyst of the current economic crisis is the housing crisis. Overall, 2007 was the first year since data has been kept that the United States had an annual decline in nationwide housing prices. A recent Moody's report forecasts that home values will drop in 2008 by 10 to 15 percent, and others are predicting a similar decline in 2009. This would be the first time since the Great Depression that national home prices have dropped in consecutive years.

If the catalyst of the current economic crisis is the housing crisis, then the catalyst of the housing crisis clearly is the foreclosure crisis. I have said that over and over again over the last number of weeks.

What steps have we taken?

Last week, it was reported that foreclosures in the month of January were up 57 percent compared to a year ago and continue to hit record levels. When all is said and done, over 2 million Americans will lose their homes, it is predicted. There are already 1.4 million homes in foreclosure nationally, including over 14,000 in my home State of Connecticut, according to RealtyTrac, which publishes these figures, as a result of what Secretary Paulson himself has called ``bad lending practices.'' These are lending practices that no sensible banker, no responsible banker would have engaged in. Yet they did. Reckless and careless, sometimes unscrupulous actors in the mortgage industry allowed loans to be made that they knew many people would not be able to afford, particularly when they reached the fully indexed value and price. They engaged in practices that the Federal Reserve, under its prior leadership, did absolutely nothing, in my view, to effectively stop.

This crisis affects more families who will lose their homes. Property values for each home located within one-eighth of a square mile will drop by $5,000. That is another specific decline. Another statistic which is not often quoted is that when you have neighborhoods that end up with foreclosed properties, the crime rates go up about 2 percent automatically. So you get declining value with increased crime rates, and, of course, declining values and foreclosed properties mean less property taxes coming in to local counties or communities, which, of course, affects services, including fire, police, and emergency services, not to mention social services. So you get a contagion effect.

We now know it has spilled over into student loans. The State of Pennsylvania and the State of Michigan have indicated there may be no student loans available this year. For hard-working, middle-income families who may be current in their mortgage obligations and who are managing their finances well, to find out that their students, their children may not qualify or find student loans available will be yet another added hardship in this country.

So this matter is spilling out of control. I know from time to time people say that is excessive language. It is not excessive at all. What disturbs me deeply is that while I don't claim there is any one silver bullet answer to this, and I would be the last to suggest there was a simple package of four or five items that might help cure all of the housing problems.

I am not saying anything that is not known by others. The troubling data on the housing market and the economic situation is readily available. It is being reported on a daily basis in the national media. The question is, what are we doing, if anything, to try to reverse these serious trends; to offer some optimism and confidence from this body, the Senate, the Congress of the U.S., the administration, and the regulatory bodies? What can we do to act in a responsible and constructive manner to get the country back on the right track?

Yesterday, I chaired a hearing in the Banking Committee with representatives of the Federal bank, thrift, and credit union regulators. The evidence strongly suggests that they were asleep at the switch as this crisis built and when the alarm went off, they merely hit the snooze button. The Federal Reserve, in particular, candidly acknowledged--and I appreciate Don Kohn's testimony--that they failed to properly assess and address excessive risks that were being taken.

The regulators abandoned proven standards of applying good judgment and strong supervisory oversight. Instead, they relied on models and estimates that were being used to justify that there was no housing bubble. These models and estimates were wrong.

What is so troubling is that questions were raised about them some years ago, before the bubble burst, by regulators people such as Ned Gramlich who, when he sat as a Governor of the Federal Reserve, warned that this problem was growing. The staff at these agencies knew this as well. Yet nothing was done. The warning flare shot into the sky by him and others went largely ignored.

Now that this bubble has burst, the regulators are telling us they are ``studying'' what went wrong. While studying the problem has its place, and I appreciate that, I must say that conducting studies of the crisis in the economy and financial markets is, of course, like firefighters responding to a fire by picking up a book and studying how to put out a fire rather than going and doing the job.

I think we all know we need action today, not complacency by the frontline bank regulators. That is why Senator Shelby and I will continue to press the regulators for the actions they are taking to address the serious problems that our country is facing. I commend Senator Shelby, who I thought yesterday had good and strong questions for the regulators. The answer we got was that people were too complacent. Many speeches were given and informal conversations took place, but the job of a regulator, the cop on the beat, is not just to give speeches and have informal conversations. If the staff at these agencies knew this bubble could burst, that there were serious problems, that Governors at the Federal Reserve Bank were warning about this problem we are facing, giving speeches and having informal conversations was hardly the kind of action we should have been expecting from very important agencies charged with the

responsibility of seeing to it these kinds of problems would be handled before they became as significant as they are today.

Congress, too, I think should act. Again, I am not suggesting any one specific action, but the idea that we have no role to play while we are watching this wave grow of people who are going to lose their homes--by the way, the estimates are we could be looking at as many as 2 million to 2.5 million families who could lose their homes, and the effect will be as many as 44 million to 50 million homes as a result of the value of homes exceeding, of course, the financial obligations on the residences. If that is the case, and if it goes on too long, and if unemployment rates continue to rise and energy costs continue to rise and student loans become less available, and the cost of education goes up, and health care continues to go up, families who would have been able to manage owning a home under normal circumstances will have serious trouble surviving these economic circumstances. If these problems increase, for families that have a mortgage in excess of the value of the property, and the home value continues to decline, obviously, those families are going to face additional troubles. Therefore, the problem spreads beyond just--not as if it were just 2, but 2.5 million who are losing their homes to a much larger constituency in this country.

So this problem is serious. We are now in another week. I have great respect for what is going on here and dealing with the legislation at hand. But as the majority leader said over and over again, this housing matter is the most serious one in the country. I think the failure to get some agreement and understanding on a package of proposals that we could go forward in a bipartisan fashion is tragic. We will be in here next week on the budget and then we are gone for 2 weeks. While this may seem like academic issues to some people here, if you are that American homeowner out there who lost your job and is watching energy costs go up, with kids you were planning on getting a college education, and student loans may not be available, then this is not an academic issue to you at all.

The question is, Where are the people here doing their job? The majority leader offered and said this is the problem we ought to be addressing. Yet because of whatever reasons, we are unwilling or unable to come together to offer some ideas that could offer relief and optimism. I think it is terribly wrong and I worry about the consequences of inaction.

I know there have been disagreements about what steps to take. That is legitimate. Candidly, this issue ought to be addressed in a far more urgent fashion than is the norm. If there are different ideas on bankruptcy or tax policy or even on the community development block grant idea or the counseling ideas that are all part of a package we had suggested, then let there be a debate about it; let alternatives be offered. But if we cannot spend a few hours or days talking about an economic crisis that has as its center a foreclosure crisis and a housing crisis, then what are we doing here?

This problem is mounting, growing, getting more serious every single day. The failure of this institution to respond in a more responsible way I, again, deeply regret. One point I hope we can all agree on is that doing nothing is not an option. Yet that is what is happening at this very hour.

We need to work out these differences and provide solutions that will work. To that end, I will continue to work with my colleague from the Banking Committee, Senator Shelby, on several key issues. I thank him again for his willingness to move forward. We are working together with our counterparts in the House on a final version of the FHA legislation that I mentioned. That bill passed 93 to 1 just weeks ago. My hope is that the House and Senate can resolve those differences and present a final product before we leave next week.

Modernizing the Federal Housing Administration is a critical step in responding to the housing crisis. Another important step is comprehensive Government-sponsored enterprise reforms, GSE reforms. I am committed to that issue. We have another hearing I will be holding on that tomorrow, in fact, at the Banking Committee level. So we can hear views from all sides before drafting what I hope will be a bipartisan bill, that we can bring to the Chamber rather quickly for its adoption.

As Chairman Bernanke said several days ago in the Banking Committee, our country is in a worse economic situation today to face a recession than we were 7 years ago. Traditional monetary and fiscal tools might not be adequate to face the unprecedented challenges our economy is facing, with national home prices falling, as I mentioned earlier, for the first time since the Great Depression. We must hear new ideas and proposals to address these problems. The strength of our economy 7 years ago is not there today. We don't have the strength of the dollar, we don't have low inflation, and we don't have low unemployment. Our fiscal situation is a far cry from where it was 7 years ago. So we are in a very different situation to rely on traditional market forces to act as a cushion against a likely recession. We need to think creatively about ways to avoid what is growing and, quite obviously, going to come if additional steps are not taken.

Unfortunately, the administration has so far been reluctant to hear new ideas and take action on proposals to address these problems. At every single turn of this housing crisis, the administration has been one step behind, unfortunately: one step behind the 2.2 million homeowners facing foreclosure last year; one step behind the financial markets which started tightening credit for student loans and other consumer needs last summer; one step behind those of us in Congress who have called for solutions to the foreclosure crisis for more than a year now; one step behind the regulators at the FDIC who have urged broad-based modifications for homeowners since last spring.

Sheila Bair, former legal counsel to Senator Bob Dole, deserves great credit. Almost a year ago, the FDIC, under her leadership, was calling for actions to be taken. Had we acted then, I think the problem would have been a lot less severe than it is today.

Now the administration is again one step behind this time, behind the Federal Reserve who is now calling for more action before the housing crisis gets worse. I commend Chairman Bernanke again for his candor and for the speech he gave yesterday in Florida, calling for more creative action before the problem grows worse, as it does almost hourly.

It took some time for the Federal Reserve to acknowledge the severity of the housing problem, but they have come around. Days after I convened the first hearing of the 110th Congress on foreclosures, Federal Reserve Board Governor Susan Bies said she didn't ``think there will be a large impact on the prime mortgage industry.'' Last March, Treasury Secretary Paulson reinforced that benign and incorrect view, saying that the economic fallout from the housing market would be ``painful to some lenders, but . . . largely contained.''

By the time I held a second hearing on the subprime abuses on March 22 of last year, the Federal Reserve finally acknowledged that the Fed had acted too slowly to address mortgage lending abuses. The Fed pledged then to do more to protect homeowners. Unfortunately, the administration continued to deny the severity of the problem.

Throughout last spring and summer, the Treasury Secretary commented that ``we are at or near the bottom'' of the housing correction and there was no risk to the economy overall. When the Treasury sends such rose-colored messages to the public, it is no surprise that the administration and the industry were slow to assist homeowners with broad-based loan modifications.

I organized the first Homeownership Preservation Summit in April of last year, to bring together the Nation's leading mortgage loan servicing companies, regulators, and community organizations to discuss a timetable and a tangible solution to reduce foreclosures. But the private sector, acting alone, yielded minimal results. Moody's found that just 1 percent of loans had been modified in the spring and summer of last year. Instead of taking action throughout these months to help homeowners, the administration continued its happy talk about the

housing market and the economy. The Treasury stated in July that troubles in the housing market were ``largely'' over and ``contained.'' It wasn't until November, just a few months ago, that the administration convened its own homeownership preservation summit. Unfortunately, during those 7 months that passed, tens of thousands of new homeowners became delinquent on their mortgages.

Instead of working with us in the Congress to develop solutions for homeowners over the summer, the Treasury Secretary said on August 1 that he did not see anything that caused him to reconsider his views, that the economic damage from the housing correction was ``largely contained.'' Echoing Secretary Paulson's benign assessment of the housing market, just days later, President Bush said, ``It looks like we are headed for a soft landing.''

Later that month, in August, I met with Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, urging them to use all of the tools at their disposal to address the mortgage market turmoil. I wrote a letter to the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development urging them to move expeditiously to make administrative changes to the Federal Housing Administration single family insurance program to help borrowers escape abusive mortgages by refinancing into more affordable FHA loans.

Throughout the fall, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair and I advocated for systemic loan modifications to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Instead of using his authority and influence to promote such solutions, the Treasury Secretary said, ``The idea of across-the-board modifications is not something that this group [of large subprime servicers] is looking to do . . . and it's not something we in this administration are advocating.'' Weeks later, however, the Treasury Secretary changed his view, saying they saw an ``immediate need to see more loan modifications and refinancing and other flexibility'' and a standardization of loss-mitigation metrics to evaluate servicers' performance goals.

If I have learned one lesson from this housing crisis, a lesson all of us should have learned, it is that delayed action will cost families, neighborhoods, the economy of our Nation, and, of course, the taxpayers more and more money than timely action would have avoided. Instead of turning a tin ear, we must listen to the growing chorus of homeowners, lenders, servicers, housing counselors, economic experts, and regulators who are calling for bold action to prevent this housing crisis from becoming worse than it is today. I believe bold action must include financing options for homeowners through FHA, the GSEs, and a new fund at FHA that I propose to use to preserve home ownership.

We must also do more to slow the tide of foreclosures that are overwhelming many of our communities. And we need to give our local officials the tools and resources to cope with these increases in foreclosed properties. In doing so, we will help break, I believe, the downward cycle that is pushing our economy toward a recession, if we are not already in the middle of one.

By acting, we can bring some certainty where today only uncertainty exists. We can help restore the confidence of consumers and investors that is indispensable to economic progress for our Nation.

There are some steps we have taken in the housing sphere already. Working closely, again, with Senator Shelby, ranking member of the Banking Committee, we have been able to pass FHA reform legislation. As I mentioned, we have been working with the House to resolve our differences on that legislation.

I am committed to working with my colleague from Alabama and the administration to pass a GSE regulatory reform bill so Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks can expand their efforts to help people keep their homes.

The committee also held extensive oversight hearings on the problems that plague the housing market, including a hearing on January 31 to look at the foreclosure issue. We held a hearing on the state of the economy and financial markets with Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. We held a hearing with Chairman Bernanke last week to receive the semiannual monetary policy report, and we held a hearing yesterday on the state of the banking industry with all the Federal bank regulators. We are holding a second hearing on GSE reform tomorrow, and there will be more hearings to come.

I also believe that S. 2636 would help address the problems we are facing in the housing and mortgage markets in a number of ways by providing counseling services, dealing with bankruptcy reform, improving disclosures, increasing availability of mortgage revenue bonds, and appropriating emergency funds for local communities struggling with these empty properties. Again, I commend Majority Leader Reid for his leadership on this issue. I emphasize those ideas I mentioned are, by and large, noncontroversial, but I know there are those who disagree with them, as one might expect. That is not a reason not to try to move forward and allow a debate to occur, amendments to be offered to modify any of these ideas or additional ones people might bring to the table.

But, doing nothing at all is inexcusable. The fact that days go by, despite the growing alarm bells going off about the seriousness of this problem, as I said a week ago, will be indictable by history if we do not to step up and offer some ideas to get this right.

At the end of the day, this legislation by itself is not going to stop foreclosures or restore our communities to economic health. In my view, we need to do more to bring liquidity to the mortgage markets, to help establish value for the subprime securities that are clogging up the system and a way of clearing them out of the markets so capital can once again flow freely. I continue to work on the details of a home ownership preservation entity that makes use of existing platforms, such as FHA or GSEs, to help achieve this result. There are other ideas that I welcome, maybe not this idea, but something similar to it will work. Whatever it is, we ought to bring our practical talents to bear on all this and do something rather than sitting around doing nothing about this issue.

The home ownership preservation entity will facilitate the refinancing of distressed mortgages. This idea was originally proposed by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for American Progress, two organizations that do not normally come together on economic ideas, but they did on this one; two organizations that approach economic issues from very different philosophical perspectives but that agree more action is needed to stem the housing crisis.

In its general outline, the home ownership preservation entity would capture the discount for which delinquent and near-delinquent loans are trading in the marketplace through a transparent, market-based process and transfer the discounts to the homeowners so more families can stay in their homes.

I would hope such an entity could purchase and restructure these loans in bulk so we could help as many people as possible, but a case- by-case approach is possible as well. I would not rule that out. It would require lenders and investors to recognize losses so there would be no bailout. In my view, this entity should make use of existing institutions, such as FHA and the GSEs, to expedite the process and maximize the process. Every day that goes by without action means more families are going to lose their homes. Obviously, many details need to be fleshed out, I know that, but I am currently drafting legislation for such an idea and plan to introduce it in the coming weeks. The legislation closely mirrors the approach recommended by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a speech before community lenders he gave yesterday morning in Florida.

Again, I encourage all my colleagues to work with us. I see the Senator from Iowa on the floor, the former chairman of the Finance Committee, the ranking member today. I commend the Finance Committee. They have offered some very sound ideas out of their committee to deal with revenue mortgage bonds and other ideas. Again, those ideas will not solve everything, but I commend their committee for stepping up and saying: Here are a couple things that may restore confidence, increase

optimism, and may save some families from falling into the worst of all situations.

Remember, only 10 percent of these subprime mortgages went to first- time home buyers. Most of them went to people who are making a second mortgage to take care of financial obligations, people who have been in their homes for years building up that equity to take care of future economic difficulties, student loans, health care problems or retirement, and to watch the wealth that accumulated for years disintegrate before their very eyes. Many end up losing the only wealth creator they have had, the long-term financial security for retirement goes out the window, and we are sitting around doing absolutely nothing about it. It is reprehensible. Again, not everyone is in that category.

The Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley, to his credit, and Senator Baucus and their committee have stepped up, and I commend them for it. We are doing our part. What I regret is we cannot find the time for a couple of days to let some of these ideas at least be raised for debate, discussion, and possibly action before we leave.

As we take off for our 2-week break and enjoy our families, travel, and do whatever else we do, in that time there will be people losing their homes in the country, and maybe, just maybe, if we stepped up to the plate, we might have avoided that from happening.

I think it is sad, indeed, that we cannot find the time to do it, unwilling to sit down and engage in what this body was created for--for healthy, responsible debate about actions we ought to be taking to avoid this problem that grows worse by the hour.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to mark the loss of an outstanding American intellect--and, what's more, a decent and a well-loved man. William F. Buckley, Jr., died last week at the age of 82. He was found at work at his desk, pen in hand--and I don't think he could have imagined a more fitting exit.

Few thinkers were more prolific than Bill Buckley--his total catalogue amounts to more than 50 books and thousands and thousands of columns, not to mention his three decades on the pioneering debate program ``Firing Line.'' Few writers wielded more influence--the entire modern conservative movement honors him as its founder. And few figures in our national life earned such admiration-- all the way from Ronald Reagan, who told Buckley, ``You didn't just part the Red Sea--you rolled it back, dried it up and

left it exposed, for all the world to see,'' to the many writers, activists, and leaders who counted him as a mentor and inspiration.

He was a good friend of my parents, Thomas and Grace Dodd, and one of Connecticut's best-known native sons. I was especially proud to see him in attendance at the dedication of the Thomas J. Dodd Library in Storrs; like my father, Bill Buckley was a dedicated foe of totalitarianism in all its forms.

In the wake of his death, tributes have risen from left and right and from every point in between. Even those who stood against Bill's staunch conservatism respected his intellectual rigor and integrity. In the inaugural issue of National Review, which Bill launched in 1955 at the age of 30, he wrote this: ``Our political economy and our high- energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas--not by day- to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word.'' It was that commitment to ideas, to reasoned and courteous debate, that we appreciated most in Bill and that we will miss most.

His intellectual honesty spared neither himself nor his friends. When he changed his mind--as he did on civil rights, on Vietnam, and on Iraq--he did it publicly and forthrightly. And long after the movement he founded took on a life of its own, Bill continued to hold it to his high standards and to call it to account. In his last years, he wrote: ``Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.''

Bill resisted dogma, not because it was often wrong but because it was always lazy. He was too energetic for that. And while he pioneered new thinking, worked to rid the conservative movement of xenophobia, and even staged a quixotic run for mayor of New York City--asked what he would do if elected, he replied: ``Demand a recount!''--he developed a one-of-a-kind prose style and public persona. ``I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words,'' he said. Those are my thoughts exactly.

Bill Buckley lived a full life, devoted to words, to ideas, and to his deeply-held principles. We didn't agree on much. But given his grace, his wit, and his deep erudition, I can think of few people with whom disagreement was so agreeable.

I request unanimous consent that the attached article, ``May We Not Lose His Kind,'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce with my colleagues Senators Schumer, Reed, Menendez and Brown, the Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2008, a bill to improve our Nation's largest initiative to assist low-income families afford housing. Section 8 housing vouchers help 2 million American families--including many children, seniors and people with disabilities--afford safe, decent and stable housing.

The current crisis in the U.S. housing market is having ripple effects throughout our Nation. Families are losing their homes--both homeowners and renters whose properties are being foreclosed upon. Those who can hold onto their homes have seen significant losses in equity, and many owe more on their mortgage than the value of their home. This crisis in the housing sector is causing a significant slowdown in our economy, and housing assistance will need to be strengthened so families have access to safe, affordable housing.

Without housing assistance, many families would lack the stability to find and retain employment, and many children would be unable to adequately perform in school because of multiple moves or health problems resulting from inadequate housing.

Though millions of families are assisted through housing programs, the need for additional housing opportunities is acute. The Joint Center for Housing Studies found that last year the number of severely cost-burdened households, those that pay more than half of their income towards rent, jumped by 1.2 million to a total of 17 million. This is one in seven U.S. households that struggle to afford housing without foregoing other basic needs.

Housing vouchers are a successful way to provide stability for millions of Americans. Through this public-private partnership, vouchers allow low- income, working Americans to live closer to employment and educational opportunities, and nearer to social and familial networks and support.

While housing vouchers are a critical tool, the program needs to be updated

so that additional families can benefit, and so that taxpayer dollars are spent more efficiently.

The voucher reform bill that I am introducing today will help attract additional private landlords, reduce administrative burdens, and help more families achieve self-sufficiency.

This bill creates a stable and efficient formula for allocating voucher funds so that families do not lose their housing. Under this formula, housing agencies are encouraged to lower the costs per voucher, helping to create efficiencies in the program and allowing more people to access needed housing opportunities.

The bill encourages employment by allowing voucher holders to keep more of their earnings, while ensuring that they pay fair rents. Systematic funding is provided for Family Self-Sufficiency coordinators so that more families can access this successful program aimed at increasing earnings and saving for homeownership.

The bill authorizes 20,000 additional incremental housing vouchers to help meet the great and growing demand for assistance from low-income working families, seniors, and people with disabilities.

Under this bill, administrative burdens are eased, so that housing agencies spend less time and funding on paperwork, and more time and funding on assisting families in need. To more effectively use program resources, the bill requires unit inspections every 2 years instead of annually. While the bill retains the requirement that tenants pay 30 percent of their income towards rent, it streamlines and standardizes the calculation of income so that housing agencies can rely on standard, as opposed to individualized, income deductions.

This bill will greatly improve the voucher program, and I am pleased to be sponsoring this legislation. It has support from more than 80 local and national groups, including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

This is a strong and needed bill, and I urge my colleagues to support our efforts to provide additional affordable housing opportunities to low-income families all across our Nation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill, a list of supporters, and a section-by-section analysis be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce with my colleagues Senators Schumer, Reed, Menendez and Brown, the Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2008, a bill to improve our Nation's largest initiative to assist low-income families afford housing. Section 8 housing vouchers help 2 million American families--including many children, seniors and people with disabilities--afford safe, decent and stable housing.

The current crisis in the U.S. housing market is having ripple effects throughout our Nation. Families are losing their homes--both homeowners and renters whose properties are being foreclosed upon. Those who can hold onto their homes have seen significant losses in equity, and many owe more on their mortgage than the value of their home. This crisis in the housing sector is causing a significant slowdown in our economy, and housing assistance will need to be strengthened so families have access to safe, affordable housing.

Without housing assistance, many families would lack the stability to find and retain employment, and many children would be unable to adequately perform in school because of multiple moves or health problems resulting from inadequate housing.

Though millions of families are assisted through housing programs, the need for additional housing opportunities is acute. The Joint Center for Housing Studies found that last year the number of severely cost-burdened households, those that pay more than half of their income towards rent, jumped by 1.2 million to a total of 17 million. This is one in seven U.S. households that struggle to afford housing without foregoing other basic needs.

Housing vouchers are a successful way to provide stability for millions of Americans. Through this public-private partnership, vouchers allow low- income, working Americans to live closer to employment and educational opportunities, and nearer to social and familial networks and support.

While housing vouchers are a critical tool, the program needs to be updated

so that additional families can benefit, and so that taxpayer dollars are spent more efficiently.

The voucher reform bill that I am introducing today will help attract additional private landlords, reduce administrative burdens, and help more families achieve self-sufficiency.

This bill creates a stable and efficient formula for allocating voucher funds so that families do not lose their housing. Under this formula, housing agencies are encouraged to lower the costs per voucher, helping to create efficiencies in the program and allowing more people to access needed housing opportunities.

The bill encourages employment by allowing voucher holders to keep more of their earnings, while ensuring that they pay fair rents. Systematic funding is provided for Family Self-Sufficiency coordinators so that more families can access this successful program aimed at increasing earnings and saving for homeownership.

The bill authorizes 20,000 additional incremental housing vouchers to help meet the great and growing demand for assistance from low-income working families, seniors, and people with disabilities.

Under this bill, administrative burdens are eased, so that housing agencies spend less time and funding on paperwork, and more time and funding on assisting families in need. To more effectively use program resources, the bill requires unit inspections every 2 years instead of annually. While the bill retains the requirement that tenants pay 30 percent of their income towards rent, it streamlines and standardizes the calculation of income so that housing agencies can rely on standard, as opposed to individualized, income deductions.

This bill will greatly improve the voucher program, and I am pleased to be sponsoring this legislation. It has support from more than 80 local and national groups, including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

This is a strong and needed bill, and I urge my colleagues to support our efforts to provide additional affordable housing opportunities to low-income families all across our Nation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill, a list of supporters, and a section-by-section analysis be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 15 minutes after the Senator from Washington.

Mr. President, before the majority leader leaves and others leave, the majority whip, let me point out that just as these presentations were made, we had a long discussion, we had two caucuses, the Senate Democratic caucuses--not unlike when the Republicans have their conference every week--to talk about the various provisions. In fact, I made the presentation briefly before the caucus 2 weeks ago involving these various ideas. There were a lot of other ideas. There was an exclusive list in terms of what we could do in order to generate a new level of optimism in our economy mostly related to the housing crisis which is the epicenter of this problem.

So I want the record to reflect that as the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, I know the chairman of the Finance Committee and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, were all involved in those discussions, as were others who had various other ideas as to whether to include them in a package, other amendments. This obviously was work in progress, but it is important that the record reflect that there was an ongoing conversation about this.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, I thank the leader very much for that, and he is absolutely correct. In fact, he raised an issue, and I said I haven't talked with Senator Shelby and that is the reason he graciously acquiesced to my desire to keep a certain matter out of the committee proposal until we had an understanding. That is the way this body functions well, so you have to have that kind of relationship. You can make two choices. You can propose things and throw them out there in the hopes that something may happen, but usually they don't because you haven't bothered to consult, or you can do it the other way, which is slower, more deliberate, more frustrating in some ways, but ultimately you produce products people can support.

I wish to point out that in the last year, the Banking Committee marked up some 17 pieces of legislation and had 35 hearings. Of those 17 pieces of legislation, 7 of them have become law. There were only two negative votes cast against all those provisions because Richard Shelby, the Senator from Alabama, the former chairman of the committee, and I worked those matters out in a way so our colleagues, almost unanimously in every case, were able to support us.

I intended to actually speak before the cloture vote and was unable to do so with the time constraints.

I want to express, if I can, over the next few minutes, my concerns about where we are economically in this country, as chairman of the Banking Committee. Today we had, once again, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in front of the Banking Committee. Chairman Bernanke was before the committee reporting, as the law requires, on monetary policy. The conversation was not limited to that, as you might imagine. It covered the housing issues, foreclosure issues, as well as other questions under the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve Board, as well as matters of concern to both Democrats and Republicans. Several weeks ago, we had Chairman Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, as well as Christopher Cox, Chairman of the SEC, before the Committee to discuss with us a wide range of issues covering the economy of our Nation.

We have had hearings on a number of issues affecting the very question before us. A lot of this data has already been laid out by others, but it is worth repeating to give a sense of the magnitude of the problem. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole to suggest that we are in perilous times economically. This is not a normal downturn or sort of a problem that might go away in the next 6 or 8 months in the absence of us taking action.

Let me say, I am a great believer in market forces. Almost a year ago,

when this problem first emerged, as the new chairman of the Banking Committee, I convened the members of the committee along with the stakeholders involved in the housing crisis in the committee room of the Banking Committee. Senator Richard Shelby, to his credit, was there as we listened to the stakeholders talking about what could be done absent legislation being passed, absent new regulations being formulated, in order to keep people in their homes who are facing foreclosure, and to minimize the problem of a growing number of economic dislocations as a result of this housing crisis.

We were urged back in May, absent any legislation, to let the marketplace work to develop a solution. For this Member, this is the ideal solution, when it can work. I don't believe you have to jump in with bills or regulations if the market can, in fact, provide answers. So we sat back and said, ``let the market work.''

To some extent, the market did work--it flushed out many of the bad operators. Unfortunately, what has not happened is that the stakeholders have not really done what I thought they were going to do, which is aggressively endeavor to help those people who are in trouble and facing delinquencies or are on the brink of foreclosure to keep people in their homes. This was not about helping investors. It was the owner-occupied homes we were concerned about.

Regrettably, I am here to tell you that a year later the number of people helped out by that request has been minimal. I will share the statistics of how small a number we are talking about. While the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, whom I respect, still pursues and persists as he did again today, that this Hope Now Alliance effort may work, this Member is less than optimistic about that having watched the process fail to work for the past year, as the problem got larger. Today, the situation continues to deteriorate, and it is not limited to housing. That is the point I want to make at the outset.

There is a contagion effect that is spreading to other parts of the economy. So while I am disappointed that cloture was not invoked within the last hour, my hope is that the leaders would give us another opportunity in the coming days, before we go into that March recess, the Easter/Passover recess, to actually be able to put something together to present to our colleagues that might enjoy the bipartisan support that this issue deserves. So I appeal to them this evening, in addition to talking about the problem, to give Senators Shelby, Baucus, Leahy, Specter, and Grassley, the ranking Republicans on the respective committees, a chance to pull some things together in the next several days and present that to our colleagues to see if we cannot do something about this issue. I make that plea this evening, and I am prepared to do whatever I can to try to accommodate many various ideas. That is not to suggest that everything will be adopted, but it is worthy of this body's time to address itself to this issue.

The statistics I am about to share with you, I think, make the case more eloquently than anything I could say this evening about the perilous circumstances in which we are operating today. The economy slowed to a crawl at the end of last year. Economic growth was six- tenths of 1 percent. The data that we have received so far this year indicates the problem is going to get worse in 2008. The country lost jobs in January. That is the first time in 4 years that happened. Credit card delinquencies are on the rise as consumers find themselves increasingly unable to tap into the equity of their homes to help pay down their credit cards and other bills.

To put that into perspective, the median income of Americans is around $48,000 a year, I believe. Consumer debt, revolving debt, on average, is $9,300 and growing. Savings rates are negative. So in addition to the Federal deficit, we should talk about consumer debt in this country, which is growing. People's ability to resolve that growing debt problem has been significantly affected as a result of the loss of value in homes.

Lastly, inflation increased by 4.1 percent last year, the largest increase in 17 years, driven mainly by the rising cost of energy, food, and health care as well. Industrial production is flat, and we have been hemorrhaging jobs in the manufacturing sector. Our national economy is clearly in deep trouble. I don't enjoy saying that. That worries me.

One of the things I admire about Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, is that he has been very clear about the problem. While we may not like to hear it, I am sure others would like him to paint a rosy picture about all of this. I think he is doing a good job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in laying out clearly to the administration and Members of Congress the seriousness of this problem. He is judicious in his choice of words. He doesn't engage in alarmist language. If you listen carefully to what he is saying, it is not substantially different than what I am saying.

We are in perilous times economically, and we need to spend time on these issues in this body. We are charged with that by the American people. This issue demands our attention. I hope we can come back to it in the coming days.

The epicenter of this economic trouble is the housing crisis. In fact, the current housing market is the worst since the Great Depression. That is not hyperbole, Mr. President.

For example, this first chart is titled ``Annual Change in Home Value.'' It indicates what home values have done over the last 8 years, from 2000 to 2008. In 2000, home values increased by almost 5 percent; in 2001, another 7 or 8 percent; and then another 8 percent; and in 2005 in excess of 10 percent; and then the price increases slowed in 2006. Then, for the first time nationally--not regionally--in 2007 we see declining values. In 2008, we expect to see an even deeper decline--in excess of 10 percent.

Mr. President, this is the first time since the Great Depression that home values have declined nationally. All of us are familiar with regional declines. We saw that in the late 1980s. But this is the first time that we have seen an annual drop in home values on a national basis. It is worthwhile to note that. It is a major concern. While many of us have experienced home price drops in our regions or local markets, 2007 was the first year since data has been kept that the U.S. had an annual decline nationwide on housing prices.

Case-Shiller data, released earlier this week, showed a 20-percent decline in home prices from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007, the steepest decline ever recorded.

Mr. President, these words I am using ought to put this in perspective and give some indication of how serious this is. These are the steepest declines ever recorded by this data.

A recent Moody's report forecasts that home values will drop in 2008 by 10 to 15 percent.

In 2007, as a whole, single-family home sales fell 13 percent. New home sales fell in excess of 40 percent--actually, 40.7 percent year over year in December, the weakest performance in 27 years. In January, home sales fell to their lowest levels in 9 years.

The inventory for existing homes for sale jumped by 5.5 percent in January alone and stands at over 4 million units, almost double the number in January of 2005. This is equal to over 10 months of supply. The ongoing glut of unsold homes means that home prices will continue to fall into the future. These are record numbers, in the last number of years.

We have not seen the worst of it, unfortunately. There are over 1 million borrowers with subprime and other exotic mortgages who are over 60 days delinquent. With about 1.8 million subprime ARMs, valued at about $500 billion resetting to higher rates in the next 18 months, there is no doubt that this problem is going to deepen.

As a result, I will put up the second chart of official data. This says ``New Homes Entering into Foreclosure.'' These are important numbers. Already, when I gave you the title of this, you began to see, obviously, what is happening in the fourth quarter of 2007. These numbers begin in the second quarter of 2005. I know it is hard to see. The first number is the second quarter of 2005. The numbers run from then to the fourth quarter of 2007, just ending a few months ago. You can get some idea of the homes entering foreclosure in this country. Again, it is in record numbers.

We are experiencing historic highs in both the rate of new foreclosures and the percentage of all loans in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mark Zandi, an economist at Moodys.com, estimates that 3 million loans will default between 2007 and mid-2009, of which 2 million will end in foreclosure sale. Over 23 percent of subprime loans are now 60 days or more delinquent in foreclosure. Those are huge numbers.

In January alone, Mr. President, foreclosures were up 57 percent, and bank repossessions were up 90 percent from January 2007, according to RealtyTrac data. There are currently 1.4 million families in foreclosure.

The third chart I want to show you gives you some idea of the magnitude of this in terms of dollars and cents. It is called ``Foreclosures: Impacts on Families.'' At least 2.2 million families are losing their homes. That is a staggering number. We always see every year that there are some foreclosures. Now we are talking about numbers that are unprecedented. The loss in home equity in the neighborhoods is over $165 billion. There will be a net loss of home ownership and wealth especially for African-American and Latinos families. This is a significant problem.

The fourth chart says ``Adjustable Rate Mortgages Currently Scheduled to Have Interest Rate Reset.'' I think everybody knows what I am talking about here the reset under what is called an ARM is an adjustable rate mortgage.

As an aside, ARMs can be a very attractive and valuable product for certain consumers. Frankly, these mortgages were marketed to too many people who, could not handle ARMs. I don't want ARMs to become a bad word, because they can be valuable for certain consumers in certain economic categories. But for many people they are dangerous.

Certainly.

Another 10 minutes.

Mr. President, what happens under ARMs is that there is a teaser rate, which is very low. You lure people in with the teaser rate--and I am now talking about people who should not be in ARMs.

Then, after the teaser period ends, the rate rises to the much higher fully indexed rate. What happens, of course, at a teaser rate, many people may be more than capable of meeting that obligation. Many mortgage brokers are marketing these products without being honest and forthright about what the fully indexed rate will be, and what the borrower's financial responsibility will be.

It is also important to state that borrowers have a responsibility as well as lenders. But in too many cases, those borrowers were being lured into situations that the brokers fully well knew that the borrowers were never going to be able to meet.

What are we looking at in this chart is the number of loans facing an interest rate reset, which means, when these higher rates kick in. We talk about resets occurring along the way. This chart is specifically designed to describe the reset problem.

Adjustable rate mortgages are currently scheduled to have interest rate resets, and the dollar value of mortgages that will reset is in the billions of dollars, to give some sense of the magnitude of the problem. This problem will last far beyond 2008. As this chart shows, even after the current subprime wave washes over us, we will face serious problems with interest-only and option-ARM resets for the next 4 years. In short, the problem is growing; not going away, but growing.

The crisis affects more than the families who will lose their homes. There will be an increased demand for social services, police, fire, and other services that ameliorate the impact of increases in foreclosed and abandoned property. You don't have to have a Ph.D. in housing to know the negative ripple effects on the community of abandoned and foreclosed properties that are sitting on the market. The value of neighboring homes, even if the neighbor is currently doing everything right, you don't have to be an expert in real estate to know that if your next-door neighbor or people on your street have an abandoned property, that it causes the home that you have taken care of, that you have done everything right by, to decrease in value.

Beyond the obvious impact of the foreclosure problem, there is a domino effect that is growing. Yet State and local governments have fewer resources, as we know, because as we have property foreclosed and not paying taxes, we find again the property taxes which most communities rely on for social services, police, fire, and the like also decline. That is what I want to show on this chart, the foreclosure impact on neighborhoods beyond the individual home.

Property values for each home within one-eighth mile of a foreclosed house dropped by an average of $5,000. This was a study done in Chicago. I see my friend from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander. I was talking with him about this a day or so ago. If you take a square block, which is roughly one-eighth of a square mile, when one foreclosure occurs in that area, then the property value of every other home on that city block, even though every other home is current in its mortgage obligations, taxes and the rest, the home values decline almost immediately by $5,000. That is the study.

Again, it is bad enough to lose the one property, but what is happening to everyone else in that neighborhood is they are also suffering. That is what this number is designed to show.

The result of that is that somewhere between 44 and 50 million homes adjacent to subprime foreclosed property will lose value if the problem persists, and localities are going to lose--the estimates are somewhere from $4.5 billion and $5 billion in property taxes and other tax revenues as a result of foreclosed properties. The effects go far beyond the individual who is adversely affected by these issues.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the contagion spread beyond the mortgage markets to the capital markets as a whole, both in the United States and globally. Yet as the Federal Reserve chairman acknowledged at a Banking Committee hearing this morning, our country is in a worse position to deal with the fallout of the housing and financial market crisis we are experiencing than we were after the tech bubble burst that put us into the recession of 2001.

Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder puts it like this:

. . . the mortgage foreclosure problem grows and new

strains in the financial system keep popping up like a not-

very-funny version of whack-a-mole.

That is from a New York Times story of last week.

Many economists call this a negative feedback loop. It works like this: Homeowners, saddled with abusive mortgages that never should have been made and which they cannot afford, are forced into foreclosure at historic rates, forcing new homes to be sold into a marketplace already glutted with unsold homes. The rising supply pushes down home prices further, putting more borrowers under water and at risk, even borrowers with prime mortgages. Homeowners who can afford to pay their mortgages are seeing the equity they have built over the years evaporate before their eyes. According to Martin Feldstein, the chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, every 10-percent fall in home prices cuts household wealth by $2 trillion and household spending by $100 billion.

Let me repeat that. According to Martin Feldstein, every 10-percent fall in home prices--and we are watching that this year already and the estimates are for next year maybe as high as 15 percent--every 10- percent decline cuts household wealth by $2 trillion and household spending by $100 billion.

So if Moody's current estimate is correct that home prices will drop by 10 to 15 percent this year, household spending will fall by $100 billion to $150 billion, and household wealth will fall by $2 trillion to $3 trillion this year alone.

These losses do not stop with families who have lost their home equity. The securities backed by these loans, both subprime and increasingly by other higher quality mortgages, get downgraded, as we know, forcing banks and securities firms who own these securities to set aside billions of dollars against real or potential losses.

These write-downs, as they are called, and increased loss reserves reduce the ability of these institutions to lend any money, whether for mortgages or commercial loans, even to hire quality borrowers. Worse, the uncertainty about what the future might bring and what the subprime mortgage-backed securities might be worth are forcing these banks to hoard their capital against potential future disaster.

As a result, as Paul Ashworth, an economist with Capital Economics, in London said:

Rather ominously, borrowing costs for even most

creditworthy of firms have started to rise.

As we know, homeowners who can still get mortgages have seen these rates rise. Banks are tightening their standards for both credit cards and commercial real estate loans, and home equity loans are being pulled as home prices declined, forcing families to find alternative means of financing their children's education, home repairs, and other activities.

Let me point out, we saw in this morning's newspapers that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania--I see my good friend Bob Casey from Pennsylvania--it was pointing out the difficulty that could occur this year with student loans. The State of Michigan last week reported a very similar situation.

So, once again, while we are talking about a housing crisis, we are already getting stories that student loans may not be as available for this year as they have been. This is now going beyond the issue of what happens with someone who gets their property foreclosed. It now could very well reach into the critical issue of student loans which are absolutely essential for middle-income working families so their children have an opportunity for higher education. That is how serious this problem is.

Businesses, universities, and public entities are finding it harder and harder and far more expensive to roll over their existing debt or to get credit at all. For example, we saw recently how the major Wall Street houses, from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, have refused to commit capital to the auction rate market, a market that was supposed to allow investors to sell their debt each week via auction that sets interest rates. As a result, many auctions are failing, saddling high-quality entities with absurdly high interest rates.

Two weeks ago, for instance, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was forced to pay 20-percent interest on its debt because their auction failed. Student loan programs, I mentioned a moment ago, in Michigan and Pennsylvania have also shut down--shut down, Mr. President.

Since last August, we have seen this negative feedback loop continue its downward spiral despite repeated rate cuts and other actions taken by the Federal Reserve and international central bankers intended to stem this tide. The result is a crisis of confidence that has serious implications for our country. Again, let me quote Professor Feldstein, who served as President Reagan's top economic adviser:

The principal cause for concern today is the paralysis of

the credit markets. The collapse of confidence in credit

markets is now preventing that necessary extension of credit.

The decline of credit creation includes not only the banks

but also the bond markets, hedge funds, insurance companies

and mutual funds. Securitization, leveraged buyouts and

credit insurance have also atrophied.

The catalyst of this downward economic spiral is the housing crisis, and the face of this housing crisis is the historic increase in foreclosures. Therefore, in my view, any serious effort to address our economic woes must include an effort to take on the foreclosure crisis. We have to begin there. If we do not deal with that issue, then we are flirting around with disaster, in my view, and avoiding the central question. So we must do something to slow the tide of foreclosures overcoming many of our citizens, and we need to give our local officials the tools and resources to cope with the increases in foreclosed properties.

In doing so, we will help break the downward cycle that is pushing our economy toward a recession if we are not already in the middle of one.

By acting, we can bring some certainty where today only uncertainty exists. We can help restore the confidence of consumers and investors that is absolutely indispensable to economic progress in our Nation.

There are some steps we have taken in the housing sphere already. Working closely with my friend, Senator Richard Shelby, the ranking member of the Banking Committee, and the administration, we were able to pass the FHA reform legislation. We have started working with the House to resolve our differences. My hope is that within a few days, Senator Shelby and I will be able to present to you a package that has been passed by both Houses.

I am committed to work with Senator Shelby and the administration to pass a government-sponsored enterprise regulatory reform bill so that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks can expand their efforts to help people stay in their homes.

The committee has held extensive oversight hearings on the problems that plague the housing markets, including a hearing on January 31 to look at the foreclosure issue. And there will be more hearings to come.

I do not contend that S. 2636 will solve all the problems. The bill, unfortunately, did not receive the necessary cloture votes. But it is a start, and it will help in a number of ways that were talked about.

I see my colleagues are anxious to speak as well. We heard about the provision on bankruptcy reform, which I support, about some tax provisions that would have made some difference, and I will leave the record to describe what other proposals are included, including the counseling provision that Senator Schumer, myself, and others have championed for a long time to help consumers, as well as community development block grants for cities to acquire and rehabilitate foreclosed properties.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may proceed for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. President, obviously we are not going to get to this bill tonight. My hope would have been that, at this hour, we would have been debating amendments and ideas included in that package. That did not happen. That is no reason for this not to go forward in the future, however.

As I said at the outset of these remarks, I know all of my colleagues care about this issue. This is one of those moments when we have nothing less than the highest obligations to deal with this crisis. We ought to have enough ability to deal with this crisis, with the talent that exists in this Chamber, putting aside the ideological debates that go on here all the time. We will be indicted in the public's mind if we do not step up and address this issue. Ultimately if we do create the opportunity and ability to step in and do what needs to be done to address this situation, the blame will fall right here and the burden will fall on the taxpayers of America. We will be indicted, and should be, if we do not have the wisdom, the ability, the courage, the intestinal fortitude to step up to craft ideas that can make a difference.

My final plea this evening is to the leaders--and I know the majority leader feels as passionately about this as I do--and that is to set aside whatever else we are dealing with for a number of days to give those of us, as he has, and the responsibility of the committees involved to bring together a collection of these ideas to this Chamber and then set aside the necessary time over several days to debate them thoroughly as to how we ought to proceed and to present the American public with a series of notions and proposals that I think could make a difference on this issue.

I do not claim clairvoyance. I do not claim the result would be perfect. But I think the very act of acting has its benefits, putting aside whether we do all the things the American people would like us to do. The idea that the Senate, the Congress of the United States is stepping up to do something for the people who, at this very hour, are hanging by their collective fingernails wondering whether everything they saved and put aside for their lives is going to be lost in the coming days. There are millions and millions of people adversely affected.

It is not just the foreclosures. We are talking about 44 million to 50 million homes being adversely affected because we did not have the intestinal fortitude, wisdom, and desire to step up and make a difference, then we ought to be indicted.

So, Mr. President, I stand ready and prepared, as I know many others do, to sit down and work out a series of proposals to bring up before we depart here in 2 weeks for the Easter and Passover break to get this job done. And that is my offer this evening. I know I speak for Senator Shelby and for the members of my committee, who care deeply about this issue as well, that we will do anything and everything we have to do to assist in this effort.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a minute, I don't want to interrupt, because I know others want to be heard, but I listened very carefully to what the majority leader said earlier, and he did an eloquent job of explaining this himself, but I want the record to reflect this as well.

I think the only concern the majority leader had, and I say this respectfully to my friend from Tennessee, was that he asked what these other amendments might be, which is a very legitimate request--not to suggest he has the right to decide the outcome of them but merely what they would be. That is the job of the majority leader, obviously. To say we have five amendments and you have to wait until we get to them to tell you what they are obviously makes his job very difficult, if not impossible.

Just as the leader laid out what the bill was and what we would be offering, I think, in fairness, in order to move this along--and I don't want to get bogged down in this because this is how we can get lost in the weeds of all of this, but I think, in fairness to the majority leader, he felt as though it was not right to be denied the right to know what the various amendments would be. Not to say he would agree with them--as he said, he doesn't agree with the amendment being offered by Senator Specter--but he has the right to offer it, and he would respect that.

So if we are going to do this, it is important for the leaders--and I am not a leader here, but the leaders need to sit down and see how the place operates and how it is going to function.

Of course not.

We hope so. And let me just say for the record, as someone who is familiar with the Isakson proposal, I think it has very meritorious qualities to it, and I think that might enjoy some very strong support.

Mr. President, I again yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, for his cosponsorship of this amendment, along with a number of other Members of this body who have joined us in this effort.

I thank the chairman and ranking member. My colleagues should know, initially the administration sought to grant immunity to all participants in this telecommunications surveillance program. The chairman and ranking member disagreed with that. However, they have provided retroactive immunity to some 16 phone companies. One of the phone companies refused, of course, to comply with this 5-year surveillance program that was granted without a warrant, without a court order.

I believe it is dangerous in setting a precedent for us today to grant that retroactive immunity without insisting the courts--as they are designed to do--should determine the legality or illegality of this program.

There are four committees of the U.S. Congress that have considered this issue. Three of the committees have rejected retroactive immunity. Only the Intelligence Committee of this body has decided to include it. I believe we ought to strike that provision and allow the court to do its job. That is what this amendment does, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, it is clear now that this body is going to approve retroactive immunity for the telecom industry, which may have helped the President to illegally spy on millions of Americans.

I have spoken on this issue now for I think in excess of 20 hours, going back 2\1/2\ months ago when this issue first came to the floor in December. Just to recall the history of the last couple of months briefly, if I may: Two committees of the Senate, appropriately, had jurisdiction over this matter--the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. In fact, the House of Representatives similarly had two committees with jurisdiction over this matter, the matter being the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

I have talked at length about the history of that act and commended our previous colleagues who served in this body for having crafted a rather ingenious piece of legislation that architecturally created the balance between security and liberty in the wake of the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s. Democrats and Republicans came together and said: How can we guarantee that we can gather information to keep our Nation safe and secure from those who would do us harm and simultaneously protect the more than two centuries of liberties and rights that Americans have come to associate with our Constitution--the rule of law?

This was not an easy matter, striking that balance, that tension which has existed for more than 220 years in our country, and I would be the first to admit that. So I have great admiration for those who struggled with it.

In 1978, the FISA--the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--Court was established, a secret court, the members of which are appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The members of that court are sitting Federal judges across the land. No one can ever know who these judges are. They are anonymous in that sense, and they are called upon at a moment's

notice to determine whether probable cause exists for a warrant to be issued to allow our Government to require institutions, public or private, to provide information that could affect the safety and security of our country. That has been the history.

Since 1978, time and again the Congress of the United States has amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Usually, it was amended in order to keep pace with the ability of those who would do us harm to utilize new technologies, new sources of information that could prove to be dangerous for our country; but simultaneously, legislation was upgraded so that the new means of gathering information, of determining who would do us harm, were also improving. In almost every instance, the amendments and the changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were adopted unanimously by members of both political parties.

That brings us, of course, to this year, with the amendments being offered to this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Events occurred either prior to 9/11 or shortly thereafter which have caused the most significant debate yet on FISA. There are those who have argued that, in fact, the surveillance activity that is the subject of the retroactive immunity actually began prior to the attacks of 9/11. The bulk of the evidence seems to point to the fact that this surveillance began shortly thereafter.

I would not be standing here, as I have said before, had this been a momentary lapse of judgment, considering the emotions of the attacks here on our country. I could understand why a President, why a telecom industry, in the wake of 9/11, would have responded to a request to gather information quickly to determine not only who did us harm but what additional dangers they posed to us. I would not be standing here if this had been an administration that had not engaged in a pattern of behavior over the years that suggested they had less than a high regard for the rule of law. But as we have now learned, this was not a matter of a week or a month or a year. This warrantless invasion of our privacy went on for 5 long years, without any rule of law behind it except the word of an American President and apparently the sanction of the Attorney General of the United States.

FISA specifically said in 1978 that you must have a warrant to do this. We even changed the law, as you know, Mr. President, to say that you could even get the warrant after the fact if the emergency was such that you didn't have the opportunity to get the warrant but went after the fact, immediately thereafter.

I would point out, Mr. President, as I did in some detail last evening for almost 3 hours on this floor, that the President's warrantless wiretapping program was not a selective or focused surveillance merely on those who were outside the country or those who were suspected or might be involved in threatening activities. This decision to gather information included literally every phone call, every fax, every e-mail, every image that went through 16 phone companies of our country, using what they call splitters to literally vacuum up everything that came in. If the allegations are true, it was one of the single largest invasions of privacy in the history of our country, all done without a warrant and without a court order.

We discovered this because of a whistleblower and a report in the media that revealed the program. Otherwise, I suspect it would be going on as I speak, without any interruption whatsoever. In fact, the only interruption that occurred, I might point out--because the argument has been made that these companies were acting out of patriotism--came, according to some reports when the Federal Government stopped paying the phone companies for collecting it.

I would also point out that not every phone company complied. I know the argument has been made: Look, everyone did it. It is a common argument, one we made to our parents, usually: Everyone was doing it. We all remember the answer we received from our parents. Well, the argument here is: Almost everyone was doing it. Quest decided not to. When the request was made of them to gather information without a warrant, they said: Give us a court order, and we will comply. A court order was never forthcoming, of course, and they never participated.

So this December, we arrived at this debate about whether to grant the telecoms retroactive immunity. Three other committees had examined this issue, and all three of the committees, in the House and in this body, had determined that retroactive immunity was not warranted. Only one committee decided it was, but that committee has prevailed in the last several days, weeks, and months in this debate, and as such we are now confronted with cloture being invoked, cutting off debate here about the subject matter. And given the votes today, in all likelihood this body is not going to change its mind on this issue. Our only hope, those of us who feel strongly about this, is that the other body, the House of Representatives, which has taken a very different point of view, will be able to prevail in the conference between these two bills, and deny retroactive immunity.

Let me point out quickly that denying retroactive immunity does not mean the phone companies will necessarily be found guilty of doing something wrong. All it means is that the coequal branch of Government, the judicial branch, will get a chance to look at whether what they did was legal. I have my own opinions about this, but my opinions should not prevail, nor should the opinions of 51 Members of this body. We are not the judicial branch, we are the legislative branch.

The Founders of this great Republic of ours created three coequal branches of Government, and the judicial branch was designed and created to check the actions of the executive and legislative branches and determine whether things we did were constitutional--legal--or not. That is why they exist. So the debate about whether what the companies did or did not do is legal is not a matter for this body to determine, any more than it is for the executive branch. It is the judicial branch that should make that determination. Yet, by the action we took earlier today, we are now going to close the door on determining whether the action taken by the phone companies was legal.

Sweep it under the carpet, close the door, and we will set the precedent for some future Congress, which will point to this debate and its conclusion and decide that the Congress of the United States found that the FISA Court was not needed or, that in fact the President could collect whatever data and information he wanted--maybe medical records, maybe financial records, maybe personal histories of families.

I feel passionately about this issue. This is the first time in my quarter of a century service here that I have engaged in what might be called some ``extended debate''--that is how deeply I care about this issue.

Nothing is more important, in my view, than the rule of law and the Constitution. No threat is so urgent that we should be willing to abandon the rule of law. But that is exactly what we have done. And it is a false and phony argument to claim that failing to do so would jeopardize our security. There is a long history of the judicial branch of Government in this country dealing with sensitive national security matters in camera, without revealing state secrets. The suggestion that we cannot possibly let the courts look at the use of warrantless wiretapping is so false on its face it is hardly worthy of an argument to the contrary.

In fact, Judge Walker, a Republican appointee to the Federal bench, I might point out, has ridiculed the argument that these matters could not go before the judicial branch for review. There is no longer a debate about whether the wiretapping program is in the public--it is. And the means and technology used to do it have publicly been discussed and debated.

This decision deprives us of the opportunity to determine exactly what happened. I would further point out that but for the insistence of the chairman of this committee and the ranking member, and I suspect others, the administration would have succeeded in immunizing everyone involved with this, everyone within the executive branch, the White House, the Justice Department.

The chairman and the ranking member said that was going too far. But that request is instructive. What do we

learn from it? Why did the administration demand of the Intelligence Committee that everyone associated with this matter be immunized against any further legal action? What was the motive behind it? Doesn't that suggest that something else must be going on?

That is where we are in all of this. Again, I apologize to my colleagues and others for taking so much time to talk about this. But as I mentioned last evening, I grew up in a family with a father who was deeply involved in the rule of law. He was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946, a rather unique moment in American history, where because of an American President, because of a Secretary of War, because of a Supreme Court Justice and a handful of others, America did not yield to the vengeance, even for those enemies we hated the most: Nazis who had incinerated 6 million Jews and 5 million others targeted for their politics, religion, and otherwise. Why would you possibly give that crowd a trial? A handful of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, got together and said: America is different. We believe in the rule of law in the United States. And we believe the rule of law is something that does not necessarily belong to one Nation or sovereignty; it belongs to all people, reaching back to our own founding documents that tell us that the rule of law, not the rule of man, ought to prevail.

So the United States, along with our very reluctant allies, created the Nuremberg trials, which established the moral high ground for the United States in so many ways. As a result, 21 defendants in the first trial got a lawyer and got to present evidence and defend themselves-- because we followed the rule of law.

It was the moral high ground and the basis for so much else that was created in the post World War II period: The international courts, the U.N. system, the NATO system, the Marshall Plan. All these institutions sprang from that what we helped create in the wake of World War II and the Nuremberg trials.

So I grew up around a dining room table where the rule of law was talked about all the time. I was taught that our Constitution did not belong to a political party, it did not belong to politicians or candidates.

And I remember that great scene in the movie ``A Man For All Seasons,'' where Thomas More is asked if he would not be willing to cut down all the laws in England to get his hands on the devil.

And More responds, and I am paraphrasing his quote: When I have cut down every law in England to get to the devil and the devil comes after me, what laws will stand there to protect me?

So while some may feel comfort that they are being protected by this decision we have made, they should remind themselves the worm does turn, and someday they may find themselves on the opposite side of this question.

So this debate should not be framed as the issue of the hour; rather, it is about the principle behind it, and that is the rule of law. The power of courts to decide the legality and illegality of actions is so deeply imbedded in our Constitution, so deeply imbedded in the fabric of how we conduct ourselves, that it ought not to be the subject of a partisan discussion and debate.

That is why I have fought to keep this day from coming with everything I had in me. I have not fought alone. Many average Americans have given me strength for this fight, strength that comes from the passion and eloquence of citizens who do not have to be involved, but choose to be involved. I thank them for it.

But today when I speak in this body against this immunity and for the rule of law, I am speaking for a minority. And respecting the rule of law anywhere means respecting it everywhere, even when it means we do not win. The rule of law says we, the minority, cannot stand forever; and having made our case with all the fire in us, we stand down and wait for a different day and a different set of circumstances.

I will say this, though. I have seen some dark days in this Chamber; in my mind, one of the worst was September 28, 2007. That was the day the Senate voted to strip habeas corpus and tolerate torture.

Today, February 12, 2008, is nearly as dark: the day the Senate voted to ensure secrecy and to exempt corporations from the rule of law. Frankly, I have seen a lot of darkness in recent years, as one by one our dearest traditions of constitutional governance have been attacked.

At each new attack, millions of Americans have stood up in outrage; but millions more have answered with patience. One might fault them for that, but I do not. More than two centuries of democratic tradition have nurtured that patience; it speaks well of our Democratic faith that so many take the rule of law in America as a given.

If millions have not yet noticed the rule of law falling, that is because it has so far to fall. But fall it will, if we remove our support for it. The law in America is not a gift or an inheritance; it is the active work of every generation to preserve and protect it.

As America's patience wears thinner and thinner, and as more and more citizens take up that active work, our minority will--I have faith that it will--make itself a majority.

But today was not that day. And so the Senate has signed its name to this immunity, this silencing of our courts, this officially sanctioned secrecy, without a majority of us evening laying eyes on the secret papers that are supposed to prove the President's case.

Retroactive immunity is a disgrace in itself. And in the last months I believe we have proved that beyond a reasonable doubt. But it is even more disgraceful in all it represents. It is the mindset that the Church Committee summed up so eloquently three decades ago.

The view that the traditional American principles of

justice and fair play have no place in our struggle against

the enemies of freedom.

That view created the Nixonian secrecy of the 1970s, and the Church Committee wrote those words, in part, as a rebuke to our predecessors in this Chamber who for years let secrecy and executive abuses slide. But today those words take on a new meaning. Today they rebuke us. They shame us for our lack of faith that we can, at the same time, keep our country safe and our Constitution whole.

When the 21st century version of the Church Committee convenes to investigate the abuse of the past years, how will it judge us? What will it say about us when they look back on our actions? When it reads through the records of our debate--not if, but when--what will it find?

When the President asked us to repudiate the Geneva Conventions and strip away the right of habeas corpus, how did we respond?

When images of American troops tormenting detainees were broadcasted around the world, how did we protest?

When stories of secret prisons and outsourced torture became impossible to deny, how did we resist?

And on February 12, 2008, when we were asked to put corporations explicitly outside the law and accept at face value the argument that some are literally too rich to be sued, how did we vote?

All of those questions are coming for us. All of them and more. And in the quiet of his or her own conscience, each Senator knows what the answers are.

I fought so long against retroactive immunity because, in this huge fabric of lawlessness, it was the closest thread to grab. I believed if we grabbed hold and pulled, it would begin to unravel. That has not happened.

But if we believe that each assault against the rule of law was an accident, that each was isolated, we are deluding ourselves. If the past is any guide, there will be another one. And hope, as they say, springs eternal. I hope we will stand up then.

And perhaps we will have the chance to do so very soon. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the House of Representatives has passed a version of this bill without retroactive immunity. It will be the job of the conference between the House of Representatives and the Senate to reconcile the two versions of this bill.

And before I stand down, I wish to implore the members of that committee, in the strongest terms I can find, to strip retroactive immunity from this bill once and for all. Remember, this is about more than a few telephone calls, a few companies, a few lawsuits. If the supporters of retroactive immunity keep this small, they win. In truth, the issue we have debated for the last few months, the issue

that will finally come to a head in this conference committee, is so much more. At stake is our latest answer to the defining question: The rule of law or the rule of men?

That question never goes away. As long as there are free societies, generations of leaders will struggle mightily to answer it. Each generation must answer for itself; and just because our Founders answered it correctly does not mean they are bound by their choice. In that, as in all decisions, we are entirely free; the whole burden falls on us.

But we can take counsel. We can listen to those who came before us, who made the right choice, even when our Nation's very survival was at risk. They knew that the rule of law was far more rooted in our character than any one man's lawlessness.

I do not think that has changed at all. Secure in that faith, I will sit down now and end my part in this conversation. But when the question of the rule of law or the rule of men comes again, which it surely will, I will be proud to stand up once more. And if this bill comes back with retroactive immunity, I will speak against that travesty--the denial of the rule of law in favor of the rule of men.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, before our colleague from Wisconsin leaves the floor, let me thank him for his leadership on this issue, along with many others associated with this piece of legislation: the reverse targeting and the bulk collection issues which he has raised, which seem so obvious and so clear that you wonder why they even have to be a subject of debate. The clear reaction, in fact, from leading authorities, including those of the intelligence agencies, has been to state categorically that the very actions he wants to exclude from this legislation are prohibited under law. Reverse targeting is unconstitutional, and bulk collection is unattainable. But some in the administration have said: Were bulk collection possible, we believe we have the right to do it. The idea of bulk collection without following the rule of law should violate the sensibilities of every single Member of this body.

This debate and this discussion are very important. This has gone on now since back in December--actually, before then. The Senator from Wisconsin sits on both the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, and so he has been deeply involved in these issues for a long time.

What I wish to state at the outset is that these amendments we are offering should not be the subject of some sort of political divide between Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, moderates, or whatever definitions one wants to apply to the people who serve here. This is about the rule of law. It is about the Constitution of the United States, and the idea that this issue and debate should somehow be divided along those lines ought to be offensive to every single Member of this body. Every single one of us, on the day we raise our right hand and take the oath of office, swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That is nothing less than what we are engaged in with this debate.

We have been asked to subscribe to the false dichotomy that in order for us to be more secure as a nation, we must give up some of our rights. The Senator from Wisconsin and the Senator from Connecticut believe very firmly that quite the opposite is true: that if you begin to give up rights, you become less secure, as a people and as a nation. Our deep concern is that that is exactly the path we seem to be following these days with the refusal to adopt the Feingold amendments in dealing with reverse targeting and bulk collections. It is what I am fearful may be the case when we try to strike title II of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and prohibit the retroactive immunity being sought by the administration and by a handful of telephone companies.

Let me remind our colleagues that when this proposal was first made to the Intelligence Committee, the proposal was to grant immunity to anyone involved in the collection of this information, including those who allegedly authorized it at the executive branch. So while I am critical of what is in the Intelligence Committee bill that has been brought to us by my friend from West Virginia and my friend from Missouri, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Bond, I wish to begin by thanking them for having rejected the administration's earlier request that there be broad-based immunity granted to everyone involved in warrantless wiretapping. But it is instructive to know what the administration wanted at the outset: complete immunity for everyone associated with this vacuum-cleaning operation, who eavesdropped on millions of phone conversations, e-mails, and faxes over the last 5 years.

Why were they seeking immunity for everyone involved in this? I think the answer becomes abundantly clear. There is a great concern that the courts may conclude that, in fact, what was done was illegal and that those who participated in it might be held liable.

Again, I thank the Intelligence Committee for narrowing this request. However, title II of this bill would still provide telecommunications corporations retroactive immunity for their warrantless and possibly-- possibly--illegal spying on their very customers.

Much more than a few companies and a few lawsuits are at stake. Equal justice is at stake--justice that does not place some corporations outside of the rule of law.

Openness is at stake--an open debate on security and liberty, and an end to warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

Senator Feingold laid out the history of FISA in eloquent terms this afternoon, going back to the 1970s and describing the genesis of this law that has been amended, I might add, many, many times over the last 30 years. It has been amended periodically to conform to the emerging technologies, the emerging abilities of those who would do us harm, and the emerging strategies that would allow us to collect the information that would minimize their ability to do just that.

So over the years, this body has been asked to modify that law. Almost without exception, I think it is important to point out, this body has amended that law almost unanimously, because all of us recognize that it is critically important that we have the ability to determine who would do us harm, how they would do that harm, and to stop it before it happens. There is not a single Member of this body who is not deeply committed to that goal. We all understand and are deeply committed to the idea that we ought to do everything we can to protect ourselves. But we also understand, and have since the 1970s, the importance not only of gathering the information from those who would do us injury but simultaneously doing that which is also critical for our survival as a nation; that is, protecting the liberties and rights of this country.

They are what makes us unique as a nation. We were really the first Nation that insisted that we were a nation of laws and not men. It was a unique idea in the annals of recorded history; but at the founding of this great Republic, we declared that we were going to do things differently. In fact, many have argued over the years that if we were looking for pure efficiency, this is the last form of government we would have designed. But the Framers of our Constitution were interested in other things than just efficiency. Had efficiency been the goal, they certainly would have thought of a more streamlined system. But they set up a system that not only determined what we did but how we did things: establishing coequal branches of Government--an executive, legislative, and judicial branch--coequal branches of Government, and insisting that there be checks and balances, because the Framers had been through a system in which a king and a handful of people decided the fate of not only their own nation but the colonies they controlled. So they set up this cumbersome, less efficient system because they were deeply determined to protect the rule of law that never allowed one individual or a handful of individuals decide the fate of a nation.

So it is important to understand the genesis of this tension which has existed in our country for more than 200 years: protecting our security and protecting our liberties. I am not suggesting that it is always easy to strike the perfect balance, but over the years we have tried as a nation, from one generation to the next, to try to keep that balance, that tension, in place so that not one side or the other would dominate. In our time, the challenge is to balance our need to gather information with the protection of privacy and the rights that all Americans seek, regardless of geography or ideology.

That has been the tension that confronts us and that is what brings me to this debate, calling upon my colleagues to support the amendment Senator Feingold is offering to strike title II of this legislation.

Retroactive immunity stands against the very principles Senator Feingold has outlined, which I have tried to describe. Under retroactive immunity, the law will forbid some of our fellow citizens from having their day in court.

On what basis are we asked to pass retroactive immunity? On trust. There are classified documents, we are told, that prove the case beyond the shadow of a doubt; but, of course, we are in the allowed to see them. I have served in

this body for 27 years. Yet I am not allowed to see these documents. Retroactive immunity allows the President to stand up and say: Trust me, I know what I am talking about, and you don't.

There is only one way to settle the issue at stake today. Not simply on trust, not the opinion of a handful of individuals--as much as we may admire or like them--but in our courts. We are not judges. We are members of a legislative body.

Real judges and juries--whose courts ought to be our pride, not our embarrassment--deserve to do their jobs and decide these cases. By striking this title of the bill, we would allow them to.

That is all we are asking. Let's have the courts decide. We are not here to assign guilt or innocence. That is not our job as legislators. We are here to hold open the courthouse door, to ensure a fair hearing to American citizens seeking redress. I, for one, will accept whatever verdict results.

This is not a Democratic or Republican issue; this is a rule-of-law issue. It is about striking the right balance between liberty and security. I have absolutely rejected, as I said a few moments ago, the false dichotomy that tells us to choose one over the other. And If a Democratic President were seeking to grant retroactive immunity, I would object as stridently and passionately as I am this afternoon. This should not be a partisan issue. We should all be in favor of allowing our courts to perform their constitutional responsibility to determine whether these companies should be held accountable.

I believe that when surveillance is fully under the rule of law, Americans will only be more secure. To claim otherwise is an insult to our intelligence, our common sense, and our proud tradition of law.

I don't know how many colleagues have seen the movie called ``A Man For All Seasons.'' It is the story of St. Thomas More, who was the only individual in history that I know of who achieved the trifecta of being a lawyer, a politician, and a saint--a rare combination in any generation. In the movie, St. Thomas More was asked if he would be willing to cut down every law in England to get his hands on the devil. More answered: Absolutely not. He said:

When the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on

you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This

country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast--

Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down . . . do you

really think you could stand upright in the winds that would

blow then?

Those laws know no secrecy, Madam President, they know no distinctions for power or wealth. They live, that is, in openness. And when that openness has been defended, when the facts are in light, where they belong, I welcome all my colleagues' ideas in the great and ongoing debate on security and liberty in this century--a debate in the open, and open to us all.

It can begin by adopting this amendment striking retroactive immunity. We can allow the courts to do their jobs to determine whether what happened was legal.

There are those who would argue the telecoms' actions were legal--but none of us know that for sure. If we don't adopt this amendment, we will never know. Whatever happened will be buried for all of history. We will have set the precedent that on the mere word or request of the administration--or any future administration--that telecommunications companies, or others who can collect millions of volumes of data about us, will be allowed to turn it over to the federal government. Maybe the next time it will be medical records or financial records that all of us would like to think are held private--maybe those records, under some argument, will be handed over.

When does this stop? When do we say there is a legal means by which we do this? That has been what FISA has tried to establish for the last three decades--to strike that balance between liberty and security. If we set a precedent with the rejection of this amendment, we open the door, regretfully, for not only this administration but future ones to engage in the very practice that would deprive us of that balance between liberty and security.

So when the vote occurs tomorrow on this amendment that Senator Feingold and I have offered, I urge my colleagues to step out of their partisan roles and consider the example we are setting.

I am also deeply disappointed that the President suggested he would veto the FISA legislation if this amendment passes. The idea that an American President would suggest that we ought to put aside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act merely to protect a handful of companies who seek immunity, and to deny us the opportunity to determine whether what they did was legal, seems to go far beyond what we need to be doing at this hour, where our security is at risk, as we all know.

The best way to handle this, in my view, is to accept and adopt this amendment and send the FISA bill to the President for signature. I believe that despite his warnings to the contrary, he will sign this into law. I don't want to believe an American President would put us at risk and deny these courts the ability to grant warrants and court orders to gather the information we need to keep us secure, all to protect a few corporations from lawsuits.

I have said this repeatedly over the past several months, but it deserves repeating. Not all the telephone companies complied with that request. If they all had, it might strengthen their arguments. But in the end, this is a Republic: the President cannot order us to break the law. And the argument that orders from on high excuse illegal behavior has been thoroughly debunked.

Remember, when one telecom, Qwest, asked for a court order to justify cooperation with the President's surveillance program, it never received one. That ought to be instructive. Why wasn't the court order forthcoming? Why didn't the Administration go to the FISA Courts, which were created exactly for that purpose? Why did some companies say no when others said yes?

For all of these reasons, and the ones eloquently posed by Senator Feingold, we urge our colleagues to accept this amendment. Let the courts do their work and determine the legality or illegality of these actions.

If we are able to do that, I think we will strengthen our country and come closer to maintaining that balance between security and the rule of law that generations throughout our Nation's history have struggled with, doing their utmost to maintain that healthy balance.

To reject this amendment, I think, destroys that balance, does great damage to it. I think we will regret that in the years to come.

With that, I yield the floor to others who may want to be heard on this amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.