Floor Statements

Mr. President, if there is no further business today, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 407, as a further mark of respect on the passing of Julia Carson, late Representative from Indiana.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the 2007 U.S. farm bill, a tremendously important piece of legislation that will set the course of our Nation's agricultural policy for the next 5 years. My colleagues and their staffs have spent months preparing it, hammering out its details, and weighing its implications for America's farmers. It is an immense piece of legislation; and obviously, in any bill of this size, any Senator will find provisions with which he or she will disagree. I am no different. Certainly there are pieces I would like to see crafted differently. But on the whole, I think it is a strong bill and a good compromise between countless different interests, and I am deeply grateful to my many colleagues who have worked so hard on it. I am pleased that it has gained such strong bipartisan approval because I believe it successfully meets the needs both of our farmers and of our country as a whole.

First, it maintains a strong safety net for all American farmers. With the safety net extended through the 2012 crop-year, and target prices and insurance rates adjusted accordingly, this farm bill protects struggling farmers whose livelihoods can be threatened by abrupt shifts in the agricultural market. These farmers provide, in many ways, the backbone of our economy; and this bill gives them the security they deserve. This legislation also encourages those farmers by expanding programs that will help get them off

the ground; and it opens up opportunity with aid to historically disadvantaged farmers. The bill provides a strengthened safety net for dairy farmers, and for the first time ever, specialty crop producers are included within its protections.

While I applaud my colleagues, Senators Lugar and Lautenberg, for their efforts to reform title I and boost funding for critically important nutrition and conservation programs, I do not believe that eliminating all direct payments is the best way to advance this goal. This would represent a drastic turn away from decades of farm policy that has given our Nation an abundant and stable domestic food supply. With so many of our Nation's farmers operating on razor-thin margins, I worry that eliminating direct payments could seriously undermine the farm safety net. I do, however, fully support the amendment offered yesterday by Senators Dorgan and Grassley to place a cap on subsidy payments. This would have helped to ensure that payments are targeted at those farmers who truly need them, and I am disappointed that the amendment failed to gain the 60 votes required for its adoption.

I am, however, very pleased that this bill provides more than $1 billion in new money for important conservation programs that help farmers act as responsible stewards of the land they work. It enrolls millions of new acres in the Conservation Stewardship Program; supports programs that protect wildlife, game, and wetlands; and creates incentives for farmers to preserve their soil and conserve their water. Provisions like these reflect a growing awareness of the vital importance of environmental stewardship and give farmers the resources to live out this laudable mission.

Lastly, the bill supports consumers along with producers, especially those American families struggling on the verge of hunger or food insecurity. When all is said and done, this bill will direct nearly $5 billion in new money to nutrition programs such as food stamps. Mr. President, half of America's food stamp recipients are children--and I am gratified that the Senate has done a good deal to provide for them in this legislation by increasing both eligibility and benefits. Finally, the bill allocates $1 billion to extend to all 50 States a program that provides fresh fruits and vegetables to underprivileged schools. I have seen the success of the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program firsthand, in its Connecticut pilot test. I know how vital fresh produce is to the health of all Americans; in the case of underprivileged schoolchildren, those who need it the most have often gotten it the least--and I am glad this bill goes a long way toward correcting that disparity.

In sum, Mr. President, I am satisfied that the farm bill embodies a great deal of social responsibility. It takes steps to protect our struggling farmers, our threatened environment, and our undernourished families and children. With those worthy goals in mind, I am deeply gratified the Senate has passed this important bill.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today with my colleague Senator Gordon Smith to introduce the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act. Millions across the world recently observed the 20th World AIDS Day on December 1, a day of mourning, solidarity, and hope: mourning for the more than 25 million killed already in the AIDS pandemic; solidarity with the 33.2 million living with HIV today; and hope that this plague will be conquered in our time--with an achievable goal of realizing the birth of an HIV-free generation.

In the U.S., we have reached a point where a child living with HIV/ AIDS no longer faces certain death. Thanks to anti-retroviral, ARV, therapy, many children born infected with HIV/AIDS now have the opportunity to grow up healthy. However, long-term survival is a dream that eludes most of the 2.5 million HIV-infected children around the world.

Of the more than 2.5 million new HIV infections in 2007, more than 420,000 were in children. But while children account for almost 16 percent of all new HIV infections, they make up only 9 percent of those on treatment under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. Without proper care and treatment, half of these newly-infected children will die before their second birthday and 75 percent will die before their fifth.

Every day, approximately 1,100 children across the globe are infected with HIV, the vast majority through mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, labor or delivery or soon after through breastfeeding. Approximately 90 percent of these infections occur in Africa. With no medical intervention, HIV-positive mothers have a 25 to 30 percent chance of passing the virus to their babies during pregnancy and childbirth. Yet, a single dose of an ARV drug given once to the mother at the onset of labor and once to the baby during the first three days of life reduces transmission of HIV by approximately 50 percent. Providing the full range of interventions, as is the standard of care in the U.S., can further reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to as little as 2 percent. However, according to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, less than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in resource-poor countries have access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission, PMTCT, services.

Significant barriers to PMTCT and the equal care and treatment of HIV-infected children continue to exist. Among the barriers to PMTCT services is their poor integration into the healthcare system, the lack of infrastructure and poor quality health facilities, low utilization of pre-natal services, and a high percentage of unattended at-home births. Because children are not just small adults, providing care and treatment presents special challenges such as limited access to reliable HIV testing for the youngest children, a shortage of providers trained in delivering pediatric care, weak linkages between services to prevent mother-to-child transmission and care and treatment programs, and the need for additional, low-cost formulations of HIV/AIDS medications.

The unfortunate reality of current HIV/AIDS treatment programs is that they will become unsustainable in the long-term unless the number of new HIV infections is reduced globally. The importance of PMTCT for the prevention of the spread of HIV cannot be overstated. According to UNAIDS, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission requires a comprehensive package of services that includes preventing primary HIV infection in

women, preventing unintended pregnancies in women with HIV infection, preventing transmission from HIV-infected pregnant women to their infants, and providing care, treatment and support for HIV-infected women and their families. A 2003 study found that by adding family planning through PMTCT services in 14 high prevalence countries, more than 150,000 unintended pregnancies were averted, child infections averted nearly doubled, and child deaths averted nearly quadrupled. Studies also show that current levels of contraceptive use in sub- Saharan Africa are already preventing an estimated 22 percent of HIV- positive births.

For many pregnant mothers, PMTCT services may be the only entry point for health care services for themselves and their families. That is why it is essential that PMTCT services be integrated with prevention, care and treatment services. With adequate integration of those services and strategies to ensure successful follow-up and continuity of care, we can significantly improve the outcomes for HIV-affected women and families.

The legislation I am introducing today, the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act, will help prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections in the years to come and improve the treatment of children living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world. The legislation will bring our international HIV/AIDS efforts in line with the infection rate of children, by establishing a target that, within 5 years, 15 percent of those receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR should be children.

The legislation establishes another 5-year target to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. In those countries most affected, 80 percent of pregnant women should receive HIV counseling and testing, with all those testing positive receiving anti-retroviral medication for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Under the legislation, the U.S. comprehensive, 5-year global strategy to combat global HIV/AIDS must also integrate prevention, care and treatment with prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs, as soon as feasible and consistent with the national government policies of the foreign countries of PEPFAR countries in order to improve outcomes for HIV-affected women and families and to promote follow-up and continuity of care.

Lastly, the legislation authorizes the creation of a Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Expert Panel to provide an objective review of PMTCT activities funded under PEPFAR and to provide recommendations to the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator for scale- up of mother-to-child transmission prevention services under PEPFAR in order to reach the newly-established target for PTMCT. The Panel consists of no more than 15 members, to be appointed by the coordinator, and will terminate once it submits its report containing recommendations, findings and conclusions to the coordinator, Congress, and is made public.

To be clear, this legislation does not establish any earmarks within PEPFAR. It does not dictate how much money should be spent on specific activities. I, for one, oppose the current policy under PEPFAR which dictates that one-third of all prevention funds be reserved for abstinence-until-marriage programs, to the detriment of other more effective programs that are producing better results. Certainly abstinence programs have a role to play in PEPFAR, but they should not draw funding away from other, more effective programs. Therefore, it is my hope that Congress does away with that earmark when it reauthorizes PEPFAR, and instead allows for flexibility within PEPFAR.

Instead, the legislation sets 5-year targets that are focused on those receiving services without specifying how much money any given country should spend on specific services to reach the target. I believe this approach is consistent with the April 2007 Institute of Medicine report on PEPFAR which called on Congress to replace arbitrary budget directives with specific targets accounting for the unique epidemics in specific countries, as well as existing available resources. Removal of budget restrictions and the implementation of program targets, such as those authorized under this legislation, would allow local providers to invest in the services and activities most needed to achieve national goals for prevention, care, and treatment.

The struggle against this disease continues on all fronts. Just recently, a report showed that right here in Washington, D.C., the city is in the grip of a ``modern epidemic,'' with one in 20 residents HIV- infected, a rate ten times the national average. In my own State of Connecticut, the need for care and treatment services is at an all time high, while the funding to meet this increased need has declined.

As we take stock of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and our progress against it, we must bear in mind the special vulnerability of the world's children. With this legislation we can increase the number of children receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR and expand access to PMTCT services in order to prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today with my colleague Senator Gordon Smith to introduce the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act. Millions across the world recently observed the 20th World AIDS Day on December 1, a day of mourning, solidarity, and hope: mourning for the more than 25 million killed already in the AIDS pandemic; solidarity with the 33.2 million living with HIV today; and hope that this plague will be conquered in our time--with an achievable goal of realizing the birth of an HIV-free generation.

In the U.S., we have reached a point where a child living with HIV/ AIDS no longer faces certain death. Thanks to anti-retroviral, ARV, therapy, many children born infected with HIV/AIDS now have the opportunity to grow up healthy. However, long-term survival is a dream that eludes most of the 2.5 million HIV-infected children around the world.

Of the more than 2.5 million new HIV infections in 2007, more than 420,000 were in children. But while children account for almost 16 percent of all new HIV infections, they make up only 9 percent of those on treatment under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. Without proper care and treatment, half of these newly-infected children will die before their second birthday and 75 percent will die before their fifth.

Every day, approximately 1,100 children across the globe are infected with HIV, the vast majority through mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, labor or delivery or soon after through breastfeeding. Approximately 90 percent of these infections occur in Africa. With no medical intervention, HIV-positive mothers have a 25 to 30 percent chance of passing the virus to their babies during pregnancy and childbirth. Yet, a single dose of an ARV drug given once to the mother at the onset of labor and once to the baby during the first three days of life reduces transmission of HIV by approximately 50 percent. Providing the full range of interventions, as is the standard of care in the U.S., can further reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to as little as 2 percent. However, according to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, less than 10 percent of pregnant women with HIV in resource-poor countries have access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission, PMTCT, services.

Significant barriers to PMTCT and the equal care and treatment of HIV-infected children continue to exist. Among the barriers to PMTCT services is their poor integration into the healthcare system, the lack of infrastructure and poor quality health facilities, low utilization of pre-natal services, and a high percentage of unattended at-home births. Because children are not just small adults, providing care and treatment presents special challenges such as limited access to reliable HIV testing for the youngest children, a shortage of providers trained in delivering pediatric care, weak linkages between services to prevent mother-to-child transmission and care and treatment programs, and the need for additional, low-cost formulations of HIV/AIDS medications.

The unfortunate reality of current HIV/AIDS treatment programs is that they will become unsustainable in the long-term unless the number of new HIV infections is reduced globally. The importance of PMTCT for the prevention of the spread of HIV cannot be overstated. According to UNAIDS, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission requires a comprehensive package of services that includes preventing primary HIV infection in

women, preventing unintended pregnancies in women with HIV infection, preventing transmission from HIV-infected pregnant women to their infants, and providing care, treatment and support for HIV-infected women and their families. A 2003 study found that by adding family planning through PMTCT services in 14 high prevalence countries, more than 150,000 unintended pregnancies were averted, child infections averted nearly doubled, and child deaths averted nearly quadrupled. Studies also show that current levels of contraceptive use in sub- Saharan Africa are already preventing an estimated 22 percent of HIV- positive births.

For many pregnant mothers, PMTCT services may be the only entry point for health care services for themselves and their families. That is why it is essential that PMTCT services be integrated with prevention, care and treatment services. With adequate integration of those services and strategies to ensure successful follow-up and continuity of care, we can significantly improve the outcomes for HIV-affected women and families.

The legislation I am introducing today, the Global Pediatric HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Act, will help prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections in the years to come and improve the treatment of children living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world. The legislation will bring our international HIV/AIDS efforts in line with the infection rate of children, by establishing a target that, within 5 years, 15 percent of those receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR should be children.

The legislation establishes another 5-year target to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. In those countries most affected, 80 percent of pregnant women should receive HIV counseling and testing, with all those testing positive receiving anti-retroviral medication for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Under the legislation, the U.S. comprehensive, 5-year global strategy to combat global HIV/AIDS must also integrate prevention, care and treatment with prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs, as soon as feasible and consistent with the national government policies of the foreign countries of PEPFAR countries in order to improve outcomes for HIV-affected women and families and to promote follow-up and continuity of care.

Lastly, the legislation authorizes the creation of a Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Expert Panel to provide an objective review of PMTCT activities funded under PEPFAR and to provide recommendations to the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator for scale- up of mother-to-child transmission prevention services under PEPFAR in order to reach the newly-established target for PTMCT. The Panel consists of no more than 15 members, to be appointed by the coordinator, and will terminate once it submits its report containing recommendations, findings and conclusions to the coordinator, Congress, and is made public.

To be clear, this legislation does not establish any earmarks within PEPFAR. It does not dictate how much money should be spent on specific activities. I, for one, oppose the current policy under PEPFAR which dictates that one-third of all prevention funds be reserved for abstinence-until-marriage programs, to the detriment of other more effective programs that are producing better results. Certainly abstinence programs have a role to play in PEPFAR, but they should not draw funding away from other, more effective programs. Therefore, it is my hope that Congress does away with that earmark when it reauthorizes PEPFAR, and instead allows for flexibility within PEPFAR.

Instead, the legislation sets 5-year targets that are focused on those receiving services without specifying how much money any given country should spend on specific services to reach the target. I believe this approach is consistent with the April 2007 Institute of Medicine report on PEPFAR which called on Congress to replace arbitrary budget directives with specific targets accounting for the unique epidemics in specific countries, as well as existing available resources. Removal of budget restrictions and the implementation of program targets, such as those authorized under this legislation, would allow local providers to invest in the services and activities most needed to achieve national goals for prevention, care, and treatment.

The struggle against this disease continues on all fronts. Just recently, a report showed that right here in Washington, D.C., the city is in the grip of a ``modern epidemic,'' with one in 20 residents HIV- infected, a rate ten times the national average. In my own State of Connecticut, the need for care and treatment services is at an all time high, while the funding to meet this increased need has declined.

As we take stock of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and our progress against it, we must bear in mind the special vulnerability of the world's children. With this legislation we can increase the number of children receiving care and treatment under PEPFAR and expand access to PMTCT services in order to prevent thousands of new pediatric HIV infections.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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

Mr. President, today we are facing a crisis in the mortgage markets on a scale that has not been seen since the Great Depression: over 2 million homeowners face foreclosure at a loss of over $160 billion in hard-earned home equity; the Conference of Mayors recently reported, November 26, 2007, that they expect a decline of $1.2 trillion in property values in 2008 because of the crisis; over one out of every 5 subprime loans is currently delinquent according to First American Loan Performance, an industry research firm. These high default rates have frozen the subprime and jumbo mortgage markets and infected the capital markets to the point where central banks around the world have had to inject liquidity into the system to avoid the crisis from spreading to other segments of the market.

One of the fundamental causes of this serious crisis is abusive and predatory subprime mortgage lending. The Homeownership Preservation and Protection Act of 2007, which I am introducing today with a number of my colleagues, is designed to protect American homeowners from these practices, and prevent this disaster from happening again. The legislation will: realign the interests of the mortgage industry with borrowers to insure the availability of mortgage capital on fair terms both for the creation and sustainability of homeownership; establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair, and provide for adequate remedies to make sure the standards are met; and create

a transparent set of rules for the mortgage industry so that capital can safely return to the market without bad lending practices driving out the good.

The fundamental problem in the subprime market today is that the mortgage system has become extremely fragmented, with different entities responsible for selling, underwriting, originating, funding, and securitizing the loans. Too few of these entities have a stake in the long-term success of the mortgage. A recent article in The Economist, February 17, 2007, described the process succinctly:

Banks are traditionally supposed to know a bit about the

borrowers on their books. But, in many cases, their loans did

not stay on their books long enough for them to care.

Mortgages were written for a fee, sold to investment banks

for a fee, then packaged and floated for another fee. At each

link in the chain, the fees mattered more than the quality of

the loans. . . .

As the GAO concluded, ``Originators [mortgage brokers and lenders] had financial incentives to increase loan volume, partially at the expense of loan quality,'' October 10, 2007. For example, mortgage originators have an incentive to get a borrower to take out a larger loan than he or she needs, and at a higher interest rate than that for which the borrower would qualify, because the originator gets a higher commission for such loans.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan recently described the corrosive impact of this system on underwriting standards. In a speech to the American Bankers Association October 9, 2007, Mr. Dugan said:

When a bank makes a loan that it plans to hold, the

fundamental standard it uses to underwrite the loan is that

most basic of credit standards that . . . the underwriting

must be strong enough to create a reasonable expectation that

the loan will be repaid. But when a bank makes a loan that it

plans to sell, then the credit evaluation shifts in an

important way: the underwriting must be strong enough to

create a reasonable expectation that the loan can be sold or

put another way, the bank will underwrite to whatever

standard the market will bear.

The vast majority of subprime loans were made to be sold, and, hence, their underwriting standards simply were not sufficient to ensure a reasonable prospect of repayment for too many Americans.

While the focus of much of the news coverage has been on the impact of the crisis on financial institutions and markets, I ask my colleagues to keep in mind the affect this is having on individuals who are losing their homes, and on their neighbors, who are seeing their home equity erode as foreclosures in their neighborhoods increase.

It is important to keep in mind that only about 10 percent of subprime mortgages in the past several years have been made to first time home buyers. This market has not been primarily about creating a new set of homeowners; a majority of subprime loans have been refinances. While maintaining access to subprime credit on fair terms is important, too much of the subprime market in the past several years has actually put the homes and home equity of American families at risk.

The legislation seeks to set high standards for brokers, lenders, appraisers, servicers, and Wall Street and provide for strong remedies to restore accountability to the system. Specifically, the legislation will establish new protections for all borrowers including a prohibition on steering prime borrowers to subprime loans, which the Wall Street Journal recently found was widespread in the market. The bill establishes a fiduciary duty for mortgage brokers towards borrowers. It provides for a duty of good faith and fair dealing toward borrowers for all lenders.

The bill will establish new protections for subprime borrowers and borrowers who get exotic mortgages. First and foremost, brokers and lenders will have to establish the borrowers' ability to repay the loan, including for interest-only and option ARMs. In addition, the bill prohibits prepayment penalties and YSPs on these loans, and requires that these loans provide a net tangible benefit to the borrower.

The bill will tighten the definition of high cost loans and provide increased protections for these borrowers, including a prohibition of balloon payments, financing of points and fees, prepayment penalties and yield spread premiums, YSPs.

The bill will provide strong remedies to make sure these standards are met. The bill puts more ``cops on the beat'' by allowing state attorneys general to enforce the provisions of the law, and it does not preempt State law. States should be allowed the flexibility to address new abuses as they arise.

The bill will provide for limited liability for holders of a mortgage made in violation of law, whether it is the original lender or a subsequent investment trust. Unlike current law, which puts the burden on the borrower to find the party responsible for causing the harm, the legislation allows the borrower to go directly to the current mortgage holder for a cure.

The bill will also prohibit lenders from influencing appraisers, limit the ``junk'' fees mortgage servicers can charge, and require them to credit payments promptly, require foreclosure prevention counseling or loss mitigation before a foreclosure can take place, and uuthorize the hiring of additional FBI agents to fight mortgage fraud.

In the coming months, the housing crisis is going to get worse. We will need to continue to press lenders and servicers to provide real relief for homeowners threatened with foreclosure. FHA and the GSEs will have to play an expanded role. But as we deal with the cleaning up the current crisis, let us keep in mind the need to address the underlying problems that have created the crisis, and move to address those underlying causes by passing the ``Homeownership Protection and Preservation Act.''

Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of a number of my colleagues on this issue. Senators Schumer, Brown, and Casey introduced a bill on this topic earlier this year, S. 1299, from which I took some important provisions. In addition, Senators Reed and Menendez both made important contributions to the deliberations leading up to the introduction of this legislation.

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

Mr. President, today we are facing a crisis in the mortgage markets on a scale that has not been seen since the Great Depression: over 2 million homeowners face foreclosure at a loss of over $160 billion in hard-earned home equity; the Conference of Mayors recently reported, November 26, 2007, that they expect a decline of $1.2 trillion in property values in 2008 because of the crisis; over one out of every 5 subprime loans is currently delinquent according to First American Loan Performance, an industry research firm. These high default rates have frozen the subprime and jumbo mortgage markets and infected the capital markets to the point where central banks around the world have had to inject liquidity into the system to avoid the crisis from spreading to other segments of the market.

One of the fundamental causes of this serious crisis is abusive and predatory subprime mortgage lending. The Homeownership Preservation and Protection Act of 2007, which I am introducing today with a number of my colleagues, is designed to protect American homeowners from these practices, and prevent this disaster from happening again. The legislation will: realign the interests of the mortgage industry with borrowers to insure the availability of mortgage capital on fair terms both for the creation and sustainability of homeownership; establish new lending standards to ensure that loans are affordable and fair, and provide for adequate remedies to make sure the standards are met; and create

a transparent set of rules for the mortgage industry so that capital can safely return to the market without bad lending practices driving out the good.

The fundamental problem in the subprime market today is that the mortgage system has become extremely fragmented, with different entities responsible for selling, underwriting, originating, funding, and securitizing the loans. Too few of these entities have a stake in the long-term success of the mortgage. A recent article in The Economist, February 17, 2007, described the process succinctly:

Banks are traditionally supposed to know a bit about the

borrowers on their books. But, in many cases, their loans did

not stay on their books long enough for them to care.

Mortgages were written for a fee, sold to investment banks

for a fee, then packaged and floated for another fee. At each

link in the chain, the fees mattered more than the quality of

the loans. . . .

As the GAO concluded, ``Originators [mortgage brokers and lenders] had financial incentives to increase loan volume, partially at the expense of loan quality,'' October 10, 2007. For example, mortgage originators have an incentive to get a borrower to take out a larger loan than he or she needs, and at a higher interest rate than that for which the borrower would qualify, because the originator gets a higher commission for such loans.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan recently described the corrosive impact of this system on underwriting standards. In a speech to the American Bankers Association October 9, 2007, Mr. Dugan said:

When a bank makes a loan that it plans to hold, the

fundamental standard it uses to underwrite the loan is that

most basic of credit standards that . . . the underwriting

must be strong enough to create a reasonable expectation that

the loan will be repaid. But when a bank makes a loan that it

plans to sell, then the credit evaluation shifts in an

important way: the underwriting must be strong enough to

create a reasonable expectation that the loan can be sold or

put another way, the bank will underwrite to whatever

standard the market will bear.

The vast majority of subprime loans were made to be sold, and, hence, their underwriting standards simply were not sufficient to ensure a reasonable prospect of repayment for too many Americans.

While the focus of much of the news coverage has been on the impact of the crisis on financial institutions and markets, I ask my colleagues to keep in mind the affect this is having on individuals who are losing their homes, and on their neighbors, who are seeing their home equity erode as foreclosures in their neighborhoods increase.

It is important to keep in mind that only about 10 percent of subprime mortgages in the past several years have been made to first time home buyers. This market has not been primarily about creating a new set of homeowners; a majority of subprime loans have been refinances. While maintaining access to subprime credit on fair terms is important, too much of the subprime market in the past several years has actually put the homes and home equity of American families at risk.

The legislation seeks to set high standards for brokers, lenders, appraisers, servicers, and Wall Street and provide for strong remedies to restore accountability to the system. Specifically, the legislation will establish new protections for all borrowers including a prohibition on steering prime borrowers to subprime loans, which the Wall Street Journal recently found was widespread in the market. The bill establishes a fiduciary duty for mortgage brokers towards borrowers. It provides for a duty of good faith and fair dealing toward borrowers for all lenders.

The bill will establish new protections for subprime borrowers and borrowers who get exotic mortgages. First and foremost, brokers and lenders will have to establish the borrowers' ability to repay the loan, including for interest-only and option ARMs. In addition, the bill prohibits prepayment penalties and YSPs on these loans, and requires that these loans provide a net tangible benefit to the borrower.

The bill will tighten the definition of high cost loans and provide increased protections for these borrowers, including a prohibition of balloon payments, financing of points and fees, prepayment penalties and yield spread premiums, YSPs.

The bill will provide strong remedies to make sure these standards are met. The bill puts more ``cops on the beat'' by allowing state attorneys general to enforce the provisions of the law, and it does not preempt State law. States should be allowed the flexibility to address new abuses as they arise.

The bill will provide for limited liability for holders of a mortgage made in violation of law, whether it is the original lender or a subsequent investment trust. Unlike current law, which puts the burden on the borrower to find the party responsible for causing the harm, the legislation allows the borrower to go directly to the current mortgage holder for a cure.

The bill will also prohibit lenders from influencing appraisers, limit the ``junk'' fees mortgage servicers can charge, and require them to credit payments promptly, require foreclosure prevention counseling or loss mitigation before a foreclosure can take place, and uuthorize the hiring of additional FBI agents to fight mortgage fraud.

In the coming months, the housing crisis is going to get worse. We will need to continue to press lenders and servicers to provide real relief for homeowners threatened with foreclosure. FHA and the GSEs will have to play an expanded role. But as we deal with the cleaning up the current crisis, let us keep in mind the need to address the underlying problems that have created the crisis, and move to address those underlying causes by passing the ``Homeownership Protection and Preservation Act.''

Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of a number of my colleagues on this issue. Senators Schumer, Brown, and Casey introduced a bill on this topic earlier this year, S. 1299, from which I took some important provisions. In addition, Senators Reed and Menendez both made important contributions to the deliberations leading up to the introduction of this legislation.

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

Mr. President, I want to speak about the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007. This bill was approved unanimously by the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and I am pleased to report that, in the same bipartisan spirit, it will soon be approved by the full Senate. I am indebted to Ranking Member Shelby for his tremendous collaboration on this important measure. And I want to recognize Senator Durbin, as well--few have been stronger leaders of the divestment effort, or fiercer advocates for the people of Darfur.

This bill is aimed at ending the Darfur genocide. I strongly believe that it is our responsibility to help bring that end about--not simply because genocide, everywhere and always, imposes a grave moral obligation on those with the power to stop it, but because many of us share responsibility for this genocide in a much more concrete way.

Consider this hypothetical: One of our 50 States invests its employees' pension funds in a wide range of stocks. Some of those dollars end up supplying capital to a multinational corporation, one of whose subsidiaries operates in Sudan--mining, say, for copper or gold. That firm pays the Sudanese government for mining rights, and in the fullness of time, money that began in America finds its way into the blood-stained coffers of Omar al-Bashir. What could those dollars become at last? A plane dropping fire on a Darfuri village; a knife held to a woman's throat; weapons of murder and rape.

It is a chain of cause and effect in which American money may finally objectively fund genocide--in which Americans may come to pay, through no fault or intention of their own, for crimes they abhor. If responsibility means anything, it exists at every step of that chain. To be sure, it grows heavier at each step; but just as it is certain at the last step, it is present at the first.

That is why those who have recognized their place in that chain and who have resolved to break it deserve our blessing and our support. Twenty-one states have begun to divest from Sudan, and similar work is underway in about 20 more. At least 55 colleges and universities have divested, and efforts are underway at about 50 more. Many large cities, non-profits, and pension and mutual funds have joined this campaign--a campaign that recognizes that our responsibility for Darfur can go beyond speaking out, to actively depriving the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia of some of their means of murder. Along with sanctions, Security Council resolutions, and a combined UN/African Union force, divestment is part of a global movement to cut off funding and end, at long last, the Darfur genocide. Even if it succeeds, it will have come more than 450,000 lives too late; but lost time and lost lives should only fire our urgency.

The Accountability and Divestment Act is Congress's latest step to aid this global movement. It helps Americans

to divest from firms whose business props up the Sudanese regime, it gives them the tools to make socially responsible investment decisions, and it ensures that investors who choose to divest will be held harmless for those decisions. The bill has five key provisions.

First, it explicitly authorizes states and localities to divest from companies involved in those economic sectors that, by its own admission, are Khartoum's main sources of foreign investment-- petroleum, mining, and power production--along with military production. Investment in these sectors, more than any others, is propping up the Bashir regime and enabling its intransigence.

The divestment standards set by this bill are universal. It allows divestment to take place in a unitary, federally sanctioned manner. That alone should contradict the claim that this bill somehow violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause by establishing ``50 different foreign policies.'' Moreover, state divestment could hardly be considered unconstitutional when it is explicitly authorized on the federal level. Paul H. Schwartz, legal counsel to the Sudan Divestment Task Force, and former clerk to two Supreme Court Justices, made the case convincingly:

It is only logical that when a bill authorizing state

measures touching on foreign affairs becomes federal law, the

federal government has expressed a judgment that the measures

do not ``intrude'' into or ``interfere'' with federal foreign

policy, but rather complement that policy.

That is exactly what this legislation does. It outlines a targeted, federal divestment policy and authorizes states and investors to act consistently with that policy if they so choose. In doing so, the bill protects the investors' right to be guided by conscience; it also allows investors to protect themselves from the financial and reputational risks posed by an affiliation with Khartoum.

Second, this bill allows mutual fund and corporate pension fund managers to cut ties, at their discretion, with companies involved in the 4 key sectors. It also offers limited protection from lawsuits for those choosing to divest, while preserving their normal fiduciary duties.

Third, it establishes the sense of Congress that private pension managers are already authorized to divest their public pension funds from businesses in the 4 sectors, in accordance with existing Department of Labor regulations.

Fourth, it requires federal contractors to certify that they do not do business with firms involved in the 4 sectors, and it provides several punitive options, including debarment, if those contractors are found to be lying. The bill does, however, authorize the President to grant contractors a waiver if their operations in Sudan are found to be in the national interest; and it adds an extra level of accountability by mandating that the President report these exceptions to Congress on a case-by-case basis.

I am aware that some have argued for an additional waiver on the basis of ``substantial humanitarian work'' in Sudan, but I believe that that criterion would fit within any conception of the national interest, properly understood. In the end, the exposure mandated by the president's case-by-case reports to Congress will be the best deterrent to firms that seek waivers on spurious grounds: They will be exposed to the whole nation and forced to justify their actions to a highly skeptical public.

Fifth, the bill's authorities terminate when the government of Sudan ends its murderous policies and returns to the community of law-abiding nations. The divestment campaign will end when, and only when, Sudan fully accepts the presence of the joint UN/AU peacekeeping force, ceases attacks on civilians, demilitarizes the Janjaweed militia, allows the unfettered delivery of humanitarian relief, and grants the right of return to refugees. Anything short of those targets, divestment must and will continue.

The international divestment campaign exists precisely to pressure Khartoum to meet those goals. It is stunning, Mr. President, that pressure should even be needed to force a sovereign nation to end targeted attacks on civilians. Yet that is the case; that is the radical evil we face.

Even still, some in this administration are urging us to treat Khartoum with kid gloves at this delicate time for peace negotiations, as the Justice Department put it in a letter 2 months ago. That would be the same administration whose Special Envoy to Sudan declared American action on the genocide imminent 11 months ago. That would be the same administration whose president declared the crimes in Darfur ``genocide'' more than two years ago, and has done next to nothing of substance since.

Ironically, one of those few substantive actions has been to endorse a bill that originated in the Senate, the International Emergency Economic Powers Enhancement Act, which strengthened penalties on companies violating U.S. sanctions. That bill was approved unanimously by the Senate Banking Committee and adopted unanimously by this Congress. That bill, like this one, targets the Khartoum regime's financial supports; that bill, like this one, comes at a ``delicate time'' for negotiations. As my colleague Senator Menendez asked an official of the State Department at a recent hearing of the Senate Banking Committee:

What is the difference? You have a sanctions regime that

you are all enthusiastically pursuing before the peace

conference in Tripoli, and yet you are back-pedaling on this

effort.

Honestly, I can't see my way through the contradiction. If the administration endorsed tough measures then, it should do the same now, and if it wants to shirk our responsibility altogether, it should tell us why.

Of course, as the Administration has stalled and insisted that we refrain from approving this critical legislation, talks have broken down. The Tripoli conference that the State Department had been heralding as a great breakthrough at the Banking Committee's October 3rd hearing ended up being canceled.

The truth is that economic pressure has seemed to be the only tool that's proven successful in bringing Khartoum back to the table in the first place. That truth is in keeping with everything the regime has shown us in its 18 years of existence. As John Prendergast, Co-Chair of the ENOUGH Project and former National Security Council and State Department Official, told the Banking Committee during our hearing.

Four times in 18 years, we have been able to change the

policies of the Government of Sudan.

In the mid-1990s, Khartoum renounced its support for international terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. Why? International pressure and multilateral sanctions from the United States, its allies, and the Security Council.

In the same decade, Sudan ended its support of the slave trade. Why? Again, multilateral sanctions led by the Security Council.

In 2005, the government signed a peace deal with rebels, ending a civil war that had taken 2 million lives. Why? In large part, because of a coordinated divestment campaign and Congress's passage of the Sudan Peace Act, which condemned the government's human rights record.

Just this year, the government acquiesced in the UN/AU peacekeeping force. Why? Largely because of economic pressure from China.

Four times, the international community has brought some measure of control to Khartoum's criminal behavior, and there is one common thread: sustained pressure. As Prendergast put it, the only way to end the genocide is if ``multilateral, targeted pressures are increased.'' Conversely, ``the deadly mistake that has been made for Darfur repeatedly during the last 4\1/2\ years is to do precisely as the administration proposes now to reduce pressure, to let up.''

After all, it makes perfect sense. What do we expect from those capable of presiding over all this blood? What do we expect from killers who, in the words of one survivor, ``are happy when they rape they sing when they rape''?

Do we expect them to listen politely to our objections? Do we expect to change their minds?

No. All of our prayers, no matter how fervent, and all of our words, no matter how eloquent, are only noise to them. They do not speak the language of should or ought. They speak the language of must. To the genocidal killers and their sponsors, this bill is one more word in the only language they know.

And given everything we have learned from history and from simple common sense, all the talk of kid gloves would be hysterical--if it weren't infuriating.

Even if some in this administration haven't learned the lesson, I have learned it in my bones. In 1945, my father, Tom Dodd, was called to Nuremberg, Germany, to help lead the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. He wrote my mother that few things were more painful than being away from his family. I learned to walk and talk in his absence. But he also wrote home: ``I will never do anything as worthwhile.''

What, today, could be more worthwhile? What could be clearer than the duty we owe to the 2.5 million displaced, the orphaned, the raped, the dead themselves? Even if they cannot fathom the chain linking us to the fire falling on their villages, or the knives against their throats, we can; we can see it and choose to break it. Even if we bear only the smallest fraction of responsibility, we can choose to act as if we bore all of it. Measure by measure and step by step and inch by inch, we can choose to push with all our strength against death's machinery until it cracks at last.

Here is another step. I ask my colleagues to take it with me.

Mr. President, I will oppose the motion to proceed to both the Senate and House bills to provide bridge funding to Iraq because they do not contain firm and enforceable dates to get our troops out of Iraq.

Once again, Congress is being asked to pour tens of billions of dollars more into an unending war, for uncertain goals, carried forward by little more than a mixture of blind faith and inertia.

Once again, the American people are being asked to shut their eyes tight against the facts and trudge blindly on--this time at the cost of some $50 or $70 billion, depending on which bill we are talking about, and who knows how many more lives. And once again, those who question this war--a majority of Americans--are being asked: You support the troops, don't you?

How could we not? How could we not be awed by the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in Iraq? How could we not be inspired by their choice to volunteer in the first place? How could we not be impressed by the discipline, competence, intelligence, and resourcefulness with which General Petraeus and the soldiers under his command have fought in Iraq? They deserve our respect and much more.

But contrary to what the President's supporters would have you believe, the

debate does not end there. It begins there. And I have come to the floor today to suggest that the President's supporters would do well to heed key military virtues: recognizing the difference between tactics and strategy--between short term and long term.

All the tactical brilliance in the world will win you nothing if it doesn't find its place within a larger plan for victory. And in Iraq, that plan is exactly where we found it in the spring of 2003-- nonexistent.

No one in this Chamber would doubt that recent months in Iraq have seen significant tactical success. The number of IED explosions has dropped significantly.

The total number of enemy attacks, and the number of coalition soldiers killed in action, have been in decline--even though 2007 recently became the deadliest year on record for U.S. troops in Iraq. Iraqi civilian casualties have been cut from a high of 3,000 in the month of December 2006--even though they still hover around an appalling 1,000 per month.

But overall, the security picture in Iraq is, for the time being, improved.

The question is: Why? What made that happen? If anything comes out of this debate, it should be an honest answer to that question--not so we can assign praise and blame but so we can piece together a coherent strategy.

I don't doubt that our troops' dedication did its part to reduce the violence. But if American agency was the sole factor, why was violence in Iraq on the decline before the surge began--even before it was announced? It is clear to me that there have been three deeper causes.

First, Moqtada al-Sadr, a prime mover of sectarian violence, has sat out the surge, patiently waiting for its inevitable end. As The New Yorker recently put it: ``Analysts credit much of the recent drop in Iraqi civilian deaths not to the surge but to Sadr's decision, in August, to order the Mahdi Army, which is believed to have been responsible for much of the Shiite-on-Sunni sectarian killing in and around Baghdad, to `freeze' its activities for six months.'' Sadr and his fellow sectarian leaders may be brutal--but they are also calculating and self-interested.

They know that the surge, whatever is decided here today, cannot be physically sustained indefinitely.

Second, the drop in violence can also be attributed to the so-called Sunni awakening: the decision by tribal leaders in Anbar Province to turn against al-Qaida and foreign jihadists. That choice was laudable and--as shown by Abu Risha, the charismatic tribal leader who allied with America and was murdered for it--truly courageous.

But it was also unforeseen by the surge and began independently of the surge. But as valuable and necessary as the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq has been, it does little to stem the deeper civil war between Sunnis and Shiites--the overwhelming source of Iraq's chaos.

The fight against al-Qaida must go on--but there's no reason why it compels us to police a civil war.

Third and finally, many analysts have argued that violence has bottomed out because Iraq's ethnic cleansing is reaching a conclusion-- because Iraq has, de facto, partitioned itself. With almost a million Baghdadis fleeing their homes in the conflict, the city has become ever more ethnically homogenous, reducing Sunni-Shiite flashpoints.

Each of these causes has contributed its part to what some are intemperately hailing as our long-awaited victory. It would be wonderful to believe that America made it happen, after all this time, through sheer force of will. Every one of my colleagues, I am sure, wants to believe that.

But this is the clear line running through this Chamber: between those who want it to be true so desperately that they blind themselves and those who understand that that kind of belief--the kind that calls a proposition true because we want it to be true--is the kind that saw an alliance between Saddam and al-Qaida, the kind that saw an Iraq full of WMDs, the kind that saw a mission accomplished 4 years ago.

But still, even if you grant that belief, even if you say that the surge, and nothing else, brought down the violence--is that our victory?

No. The surge was always a military means to a political end. Comptroller General David Walker put it well: ``The primary point of the surge was to improve security . . . in order to provide political breathing room'' for the Iraqi Government. President Bush has said much the same. The surge was always meant to open a window for political reconciliation. Nearly 800 Americans sacrificed their lives to keep that window open; thousands and thousands of Americans took wounds to keep that window open. What has the Iraqi Government done with it?

Failed to meet its own political benchmarks. Failed to enact oil legislation. Sustained a mass resignation of Sunni politicians, leaving more than half of its Cabinet seats vacant. Enjoyed a month-long vacation.

This September, 60 percent of Iraqis--and 93 percent of Sunnis-- thought it was justified to kill American troops.

And during America's long sacrifice to keep civil war at bay, the Maliki Government has grown more sectarian than ever, more and more openly an arm of the Shiites, more and more actively prejudiced against Sunnis. Hundreds of Americans died to give breathing space to Iraqi politicians and they act as if Iraq doesn't exist.

Many of the Iraqi forces we have relied on to stabilize that country are little more than retooled sectarian gangs. What is stopping them from accepting our training, accepting our weapons, and then, as soon as the surge dies down, jumping once again down each other's throats?

In the name of unity and reconciliation, our policies have divided Iraq deeper and deeper, until, as George Washington University Middle East expert Marc Lynch has argued, Iraq becomes ``a warlord state . . . with power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power- brokers, with a purely nominal central state.''

That is Iraq with the surge in place. But President Bush has conceded that it can't continue past July; and soon, we will be confronted by Iraq without the surge. So I have a simple question for my colleagues this morning:

What then?

And as President Bush tries to find an answer, as he tries to cobble together a plan more than 4 years too late, our billions will continue to be poured into a desert sinkhole; our Nation will earn the enmity of more and more Muslims for our endless occupation; our military will be ground into the dirt, unit by unit, machine by machine, soldier by soldier; and young Americans will continue to die. And we will be not an inch safer.

That is why I have come to the floor this morning: not to pass judgment; not to score points; not to assign blame. But because as we hurtle on with all tactics and no strategy, the costs are becoming too heavy for us to bear.

There is only one realistic strategy, only one honest answer to: What then? Redeploy our combat forces from Iraq, starting immediately. Refocus the fight on al-Qaida, training those Iraqi forces we can trust, and protecting U.S. personnel and infrastructure. Rebuild our worn-down, battered military.

Our troops will have my respect for what they have done in Iraq for as long as I live. And I join President Bush in his fervent hope that their sacrifice would be enough to heal a shattered country. But my eyes are open. I know that the best hope for Iraq, and the best hope for America, lies in redeployment--not in another $50 or $70 billion poured down this hole. I have faith that time will open the eyes of every one of my colleagues; I hope they will begin by seeing the deep error of these bills.

I move to table that, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider vote No. 411.

Mr. President, at the request of the distinguished majority

leader, and as the only Democrat who voted against cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 4156, the Orderly and Responsible Iraq redeployment Appropriations Bill, I have entered this motion to reconsider so that the Senate may have another opportunity to vote on this matter. Only Senators who voted no on this matter are able under Senate rules to ask for another vote.

I am undertaking this procedural matter at the Leader's request and out of my respect for him. I am happy to do so.

However, I want to make clear that should there be another cloture vote on H.R. 4156 or similar legislation, my position will remain the same--I will vote no. I am opposed to providing any additional funding for the war in Iraq unless there is a firm and enforceable deadline for the redeployment of our forces from Iraq.

My views on the ongoing failed policy in Iraq are included in the Record earlier in the day at the time of the original vote and I urge my colleagues to take the opportunity to review my concerns about our continued involvement in a civil war which has no military solutions.

Mr. President, I am extremely pleased that the Senate has unanimously passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007. It is critically important for our Nation's workers and businesses that we enact this backstop legislation. The legislation passed today provides for an extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, known as ``TRIA,'' which expires on December 31 of this year. TRIA was originally passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and was extended for 2 years in 2005. The bill passed by the Senate today extends TRIA for an additional 7 years.

In anticipation of TRIA's expiration, the Banking Committee held a hearing earlier this year in which the committee heard from a variety of experts about the critical need to extend this program, which is vital to the economic security and prosperity of our Nation. As my colleagues will recall, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the market for terrorism insurance in this country virtually disappeared. Businesses could not obtain credit, borrowers could not obtain loans, jobs were at risk, and the economy faced serious instability and dislocation. We repeatedly heard from businesses, both large and small, from labor unions, from universities and hospitals, from manufacturers, builders, and lenders, and from insurers about the need for the Federal Government to help stabilize the market and ensure the availability of affordable insurance against the risk of future terrorist attacks. Congress responded by creating TRIA, a public-private partnership in which the Federal Government would share the risk of future terrorist attacks with insurers by becoming the backstop against truly catastrophic losses.

And the overwhelming evidence shows that TRIA has worked, very very well. According to several recent studies, terrorism insurance is more widely available and more affordable today than in the aftermath of 9/ 11, providing certainty and stability to the sectors of our economy that we depend on for our national well-being. And it is important to note, TRIA has cost taxpayers virtually nothing. When terrorism insurance is available at reasonable rates, and when business owners and property owners can insure themselves against terrorism, there is a private-sector mechanism in place to cover a significant amount of the losses stemming from any future terrorist attack. In fact, a recent study by the RAND Corporation found that in the case of a terrorist attack, TRIA would actually save taxpayers money, as property owners could rebuild using the payments from their insurance policies instead of federal disaster assistance. Let me quote from RAND's findings: ``Taxpayer cost is lower with TRIA than without TRIA across a broad range of scenarios when post-attack assistance is factored in as well.''

The need to extend this program is clear. The private insurance industry has not reemerged with respect to the provision of terrorism insurance. Nearly all of the data and the experts say that there is no reason to think that the private insurance industry alone can insure against this unique risk. As long as the threat of terrorism remains, we must act to ensure that terrorism insurance remains available and affordable.

I want to note that this bill contains two important studies to address serious issues that were raised in the context of the TRIA extension debate. First, there is a mandate for the GAO to study the question of insurance for nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological terrorist events. Insurance coverage in this area is very limited and in this legislation we require the GAO to make recommendations for expanding such coverage. Second, the GAO is required to study and to report back to the committee within 6 months on whether there are areas of this country, such as Lower Manhattan, that may have unique capacity constraints when it comes to terrorism insurance, and to make recommendations for addressing those capacity constraints.

This legislation is supported by the insurance industry and policyholders, and I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters of support for the legislation. I also want to particularly thank Senator Shelby for his work on this program, as well as Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, and Senators Reed, Bennett, and Schumer, for their work both on this bill and on the original TRIA bill and its extension in 2005. By extending the TRIA program for an additional 7 years, this bill will address the long-term security needs of our people and our economy, and I thank all the Members of the Senate for their unanimous support for this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise to celebrate the passage of the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act to reauthorize the Head Start program yesterday. This legislation is a great accomplishment for the Congress and improves opportunities for nearly a million young children and their families. Head Start represents our understanding that our children must be a top priority. While as children represent one quarter of our population, they represent 100 percent of our future.

I would like to thank Senators Kennedy, Enzi and Alexander for their

leadership on this bill and their strong bipartisan work to complete this conference report. I also commend Chairman Miller and Ranking Member McKeon in the House of Representatives and Congressmen Kildee and Castle for their work on this reauthorization. Since 2003, the Senate HELP Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee have worked to reauthorize this legislation. As a result of more than four years of bipartisan efforts, the conference report we adopted yesterday improves and strengthens the already successful Head Start program. I am happy with the unanimous passage of the bill and look forward to its enactment into law.

Since 1965, Head Start has provided comprehensive early childhood development services to low-income children. The evidence is clear: Head Start works for the more than 900,000 children enrolled in its centers throughout the country.

This conference report bolsters the comprehensive nature of Head Start that aids in the social, emotional, physical and cognitive development of low-income preschool children. The program is successful because each center works to address the needs of its local community. Head Start is more than just a school readiness program; it addresses the comprehensive needs of children and their families by providing health and other services to enrolled children.

The role of parents as essential partners and decisionmakers in Head Start is also strengthened in this legislation. Families play the most important role in ensuring the success of their children, and our bill maintains an integral role for parents in the decision-making and day- to-day operations of the program. Parent involvement is a centerpiece of Head Start and I believe this bill strengthens their critical role.

Expanded eligibility, improved accountability, strengthened school readiness for children and enhanced teacher quality are some of the essential elements of this legislation. In addition, collaboration and coordination with other early childhood development programs and outreach to underserved populations is greatly improved. The legislation before us significantly increases resources for Indian Head Start and Migrant and Seasonal Head Start. In addition, Early Head Start is prioritized, so that thousands of additional infants and toddlers will be served. We know that major brain development occurs in the first 3 years of life and I am thrilled that we are putting research into practice by expanding Early Head Start.

The conference report will enable more low-income children to get a head start by allowing programs to serve families with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty level, while ensuring that the most vulnerable families below the poverty level are served first. This is important for Connecticut and other States where the cost of living is especially high and many working poor families aren't able to access services because they earn just above the poverty level.

Although we do not go as far as I would personally like to see in funding for Head Start, we do authorize additional resources in this bill. Despite the tight budget situation, we authorize an increase of six percent from $6.9 billion to $7.35 billion in fiscal year 2008, to $7.65 billion in fiscal year 2009 and to $7.995 billion in fiscal year 2009. I continue to be gravely concerned about the lack of resources for Head Start--funding levels have been essentially flat since 2002. Currently, only half of eligible children are served in Head Start and fewer than 5 percent are served in Early Head Start. The increased funding authorized by this bill will help us to begin to close this gap.

Across the country, Head Start providers are reporting rising costs in transportation health care premiums, facilities maintenance and training for staff. Rising operating costs are coinciding with decreasing state, local and private contributions to Head Start programs. We address these needs by ensuring that all Head Start programs receive a cost of living increase, tied to inflation, each year that funds are available.

Research shows that child outcomes are directly related to the quality of the teachers and professionals who work with them on a daily basis. I am pleased that in the bill we establish strong educational standards for Head Start teachers, curriculum specialists and teacher assistants. In 6 years, all Head Start teachers will be required to have an associate's degree and 50 percent of teachers will be required to have a bachelor's degree. I will continue to work toward increased funding to assist teachers in pursuing additional educational goals.

When Head Start began more than 40 years ago, it was the only preschool program available for low-income children; now there are many approaches. Collaboration and coordination with other early childhood programs is also an essential piece of this Head Start bill, reducing duplication and encouraging opportunities for shared information and resources.

This legislation represents an important step forward and I welcome our continued focus on the needs of our Nation's children.

Mr. President, November 9, 2007, was a very special day for me and my whole family. On that day, my mother, Grace Dodd, would have turned 100 years old. She has been gone for many, many years now; but not a day goes by without her memory. I would like to take this chance to call back those memories and speak about what made her so special.

I have never known a more infectious optimist. More than anything, that is what comes back: her unshakeable confidence that no matter how bad the problem, she could fix it; her lifelong dedication to the bright side; a smile that could turn even the grumpiest person pleasant.

Some kinds of optimism are bought cheaply: they come from sheltering yourself from the world. But the much more valuable, much more lasting kind of optimism comes from embracing the world--and that was my mother's kind. She was a dedicated Latin student, a bundle of energy, a basketball star in high school and at Trinity College in Washington, DC. Her nickname--``the adhesive guard''--testifies, I think, to her persistence on the court and everywhere else.

Born Mary Grace Murphy, she married my father Tom Dodd in 1934, loved him deeply, and gave him six children, of which I was the second-to- last. When my father left home to serve as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, he wrote home to his ``dearest Grace'' every day--sometimes twice a day. His letters are filled with descriptions of the Nazi war criminals, ravaged, postwar Germany, growing conflict between the Americans and the Russians; but above all, they are filled with how much he missed his Grace. Being away from her, he wrote, was the hardest thing he had to do.

I can't help thinking that my mother had an even harder job--raising all of us! But as full as her hands were, raising four boys and two girls, she found time to give herself fully to her community, as well. She served on the local school board, was an early advocate for public kindergarten, and wrote a column in the Hartford newspaper. And with all that, she still had time left over to read avidly, travel widely, and study Spanish.

But my sister Martha said that her greatest talent was something much simpler, something that I think was at the root of everything else in her full life: the ability to take a walk. Not a modern, calorie- burning power-walk; but simply the skill for consciously forgetting the turmoil and bustle of life and taking time to reflect. My mother loved walks--and I think that they are what kept her smile bright and her optimism undimmed for so many years.

I know a great story about that optimism. When I moved back to Connecticut after graduating law school, the driver of the moving van had a hard time finding my new house. My mother was on hand to make sure everything was going smoothly, and as the driver got angrier and angrier, she finally climbed into the cab and said, ``I'll show you exactly where it is.'' As they drove into the dark, she kept insisting, ``I can just see it! I can just see it!''--for 4 miles. But she knew exactly where they were going, she calmed the driver's nerves, and she got him there, just as she promised.

Grace Dodd did the same for all of us. Whenever times were tough and the road ahead of us seemed dark, there she was by our side, saying, ``I can just see it!'' What we are, we owe to her; and on her 100th birthday, the best words we say in response are, ``Thank you.''

Mr. President, I speak in memory of the life of Donald J. Mulvihill, a distinguished lawyer, a proud public servant, and an honored friend of the Dodd family. He recently died at the age of 76.

Donald gave nearly a half century--more than half of his life--to his law firm, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and the length of his service testifies to his dedication and consummate skill as an attorney. For more than four decades, he managed his firm's Washington office, where he gained a reputation as one of America's leading authorities on federal business regulations.

Donald would tell you, though, that his most successful day at the office came when he was fresh out of law school and assigned to the same office as Grace Conroy, one of Cahill's first female lawyers. ``He thought he was getting demoted because they put a woman in his office,'' Grace would later joke. But Donald's attitude soon changed-- he and Grace were married 3 years later, and they spent 45 years together.

Donald's skill in the law led President Johnson to tap him in 1968 to direct a task force on individual acts of violence for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, a council convened in the wake of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Along with Princeton sociologist Mel Tumin, Donald wrote three volumes of the committee's final report, clearly detailing the link between deteriorating urban conditions and a swell in violent crime.

In 1970, he wrote with great insight and penetration on what it means to feel the seductive draw of crime in the inner city, ``to be young, poor, male and Negro, to want what the open society claims is available, but mostly to others; to see illegitimate and often violent methods of obtaining material success, and to observe others using these means successfully.''

For Donald, that was no mere academic conclusion; with the Eisenhower Foundation, he spent years working to put his recommendations into practice, giving as much energy to the revitalization of urban America as he did to his work in the law.

His example still reminds us: An open society is justly measured by the gap between what it claims is available, and what it provides-- between what it promises, and what it delivers.

For his services, Donald Mulvihill will be remembered as a public- spirited leader who combined, in equal proportion, private success and civic duty. But I confess that all of those accomplishments mean comparatively little to me, next to what he did during a few months in 1967.

I was 23, but I can still recall as if it were yesterday the Senate's censure hearings of my father, Senator Tom Dodd. What a painful time that was for my family--but it gave me strength to know that sitting at my father's side, through the whole ordeal, was a talented young lawyer named Donald Mulvihill. I know how thankful my father was for Donald's good counsel.

It was the rare case that Donald didn't win; but still, he won my father's sincere and lasting gratitude. And though Tom Dodd is long gone, my family and I have kept his gratitude alive.

Now Donald is beyond our thanks. But I pledge to remember him, to keep alive his good name, and to hold up his example of a life well lived.

Mr. President, I wish to mark the passing of a true Connecticut leader and a great benefactor of his people: Ralph Sturges, chief of the Mohegan Indian tribe. Chief Sturges was 88.

At various times in his long life, Ralph was a deliveryman, a public relations director, a Civilian Conservation Corps worker, a noted marble sculptor, and a World War II Bronze Star winner--but he found his greatest purpose late in life, leading and reviving Connecticut's Mohegan tribe.

Ralph's work on behalf of the Mohegans--who have called New England home for more than four centuries--was unflagging and successful at long last. When he first sought Federal recognition for the tribe, the Government replied that the Mohegans had ceased to exist in the 1940s. That rang clearly false to Ralph, who knew firsthand that the Mohegan identity was still alive; and under his leadership, the tribe pushed until it was finally recognized in 1994.

The Mohegans were only the ninth tribe ever to be recognized on the basis of documentary evidence--evidence which Ralph and other Mohegan leaders were tireless in collecting. The chairman of the neighboring Mashantucket Pequot tribe called his efforts ``an inspiration to native peoples everywhere.'' The Mohegans honored Ralph by naming him chief for life.

But Ralph was more than a cultural guardian; he was also a shrewd businessman. He understood that a prosperous tribe was more likely to survive into his children's and grandchildren's generations, and beyond; and so he negotiated to build the Mohegan Sun casino on tribal land.

Its popularity testifies to Ralph's economic leadership, and its profits pay for health care and college tuition for all Mohegans. Ralph was proud of the casino's success and spoke plainly

about the incentive it created for Mohegans to maintain their cultural identity: ``Because Indians are making money, now it's a privilege to be one.''

The casino offered the means; but the end was always clear, and it was the end to which Ralph dedicated decades of his life: bringing back a people that had seemed on the verge of fading away. Ralph dealt cannily with Wall Street investors--but took more pleasure in spending afternoons raking the leaves from his tribe's ancient burial ground.

He was a proud product of two cultures, Indian and Western, comfortable in either, taking the best from both. ``What probably happened is my father's people were rowing ashore on the Mayflower and my mother's people were probably on the shore throwing stones,'' Ralph once joked.

He will be remembered as an artist, a businessman, and a wise chief, presiding over his tribe with a feathered talking-stick in one hand and a gavel in the other. The cultures he represented in either hand--and our whole State of Connecticut--are united in honoring Chief Ralph Sturges.

Mr. President, today I come to the floor to report the FHA Modernization Act of 2007. This is vitally important legislation, and I want to take a moment to express my thanks to Senator Martinez for his very close collaboration and support in putting this legislation together. This is an original bill produced by the Senate Banking Committee, and as such, the rules prohibit us from obtaining cosponsors. However, I would like to recognize Senators Reed, Schumer, Bayh, Menendez, Brown, Kerry, Murray, Whitehouse, Martinez, Voinovich, Cornyn, and Coleman for their support of this bill and for their offers of cosponsorship.

The mortgage markets--particularly the subprime market--are in the midst of a meltdown. Historically high default and foreclosure rates generated, in significant part, by abusive and predatory lending practices, are threatening millions of American families with the loss of their most significant financial asset--their homes--at a cost of over $160 billion in home equity, according to testimony presented before the Banking Committee.

While these problems are addressed, we need to make sure that credit is available, including for subprime borrowers, on fair terms so that the people of this country have an opportunity to build wealth for the future.

A revitalized, strengthened, and modernized FHA can be and, under this legislation, will be a source of this constructive, wealth- building credit, both

for new homeowners and for people who are seeking a way out of the abusive loans in which they are currently trapped.

In short, by providing low-cost credit, without prepayment penalties, without teaser rates, and without other deceptive terms, FHA is a part of the solution to the predatory lending crisis we are experiencing.

Moreover, FHA has traditionally been an important tool for creating new minority homeowners, and for lower-, moderate-, and middle-income families to become homeowners. By modernizing FHA, we will help millions of families achieve their American Dream. FHA is in a strong position to play this role: an independent audit report indicates that FHA has a record $22 billion in capital, and a capital ratio, 6.82 percent, that is more than three times higher the mandated level of 2 percent.

The bill passed by the Committee, and which is being filed today does a number of important things: it raises FHA loan limits so that the program can reach many more people; it lowers downpayment requirements, while still ensuring that people will have a real stake in their new homes; it expands the reverse mortgage program for elderly homeowners by both raising the loan limit and removing the current cap on the number of these mortgages FHA can insure. I know Senators Reed, Crapo, and Allard strongly support this program; it reduces the origination fee that elderly homeowners can be charged for these mortgages by one- quarter, from 2 percent to 1.5 percent making it more affordable for seniors to take out these loans; and, it includes a major overhaul of FHA's manufactured housing program, authored by our colleagues Senators Bayh and Allard.

Taken together, these changes will help make FHA a more relevant and effective program. This legislation is supported by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of Realtors, AARP, the Manufactured Housing Association, the Manufactured Housing Institute, and others. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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