Floor Statements

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator yielding me some time. This is a unique bill in many ways. It is unique because there is a different set of rules when it comes to the water projects bill and the water resources development in this country for the Army Corps of Engineers. I believe as a former auditor we should be allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to direct funding based on a cost-benefit analysis. A cost-benefit analysis would allow the prioritization of projects based on the best value for our dollar.

The law requires, unlike any other place in our Government--it was explained to me when I got here the law requires that Congress direct this spending. I am uncomfortable with that. This is the only place this year that my name is listed on a specific funding request for Missouri, and I am not comfortable with that. I understand it is a reality this law requires, that if Congress is not directing this funding, there is no funding. I believe very much we should reform the way we fund the Army Corps of Engineers projects. I believe it should be driven by a cost-benefit analysis.

It is hard to understand why in this area, unlike any other area, not only are we in a position to decide level of funding, we are going to decide every single project. Now, since this is so unique, it is even more important that we have complete transparency. Even though I was uncomfortable with requesting specific funding, I understood the unique nature of this particular bill, but I was comforted by the fact that I believed all the projects were going to have a public airing, that they were going to be included in either the House bill or the Senate bill, and that there were not going to be any projects that were put into the authorization bill through the conference process. Unfortunately, that happened. That would bring me to the point of having to vote no on this bill because I believe very strongly in the principle that whatever we include must be included in either the deliberations of the House or the Senate.

This isn't about the projects and the merit of the projects. I am sure they are all very meritorious. In fact, painfully for me, one of them is in Missouri. This isn't about the projects; this is about the process. This isn't about Democrats and this isn't about Republicans. This is about a bad habit. This is about getting into the habit of directing authorization or spending in a conference report instead of under the bright lights of the Senate floor, the House Floor or committee work. We need to stop putting projects in conference reports that were not in the bill. Some people will say it doesn't matter; we have a backlog of all these projects. Well, if it doesn't matter, why do we need to do it? If it does matter, it ought to be important enough to be in one bill or the other.

I believe we need to reform not only the way we fund the Corps of Engineers, to give more deference to their discretion based on cost- benefit analysis, and I believe we need to stop the bad habit of always putting projects in a conference report without the full affirmation and public airing that the House and Senate deliberations provide.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, earlier today I voted on a motion to table an amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma to remove three earmarks from the Transportation Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. Those projects totaled $1.35 million and were for economic development efforts in North Dakota, Montana, and Louisiana.

This was a difficult decision for me. I believe that the earmarking process in the past decade has ballooned out of control at a cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers. I don't believe that all earmarks, per se, are bad, but that as a general policy, we need more transparency in this process, and I believe that competitive and formula grants are a better way to assure that taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately.

However, I am uncomfortable with cherry-picking which earmarks are worthy and which ones are wasteful. There were dozens and dozens of earmarks totaling tens of millions of dollars in this bill. Why pick on just three?

I, however, did support an amendment to take money designated for all of the earmarked transportation projects in this bill and transfer it to fund national urgent priorities such as emergency bridge repairs.

This will be a long process to cut down, and even eliminate, many congressional earmarks and other kinds of Government waste. Frankly, earmarks are just the easiest and most obvious target. Billions of dollars are spent every year by the Federal Government on no-bid contracts, for example. And we are nowhere near preventing this wasteful pattern of spending.

But progress is being made on the earmark front. Congress passed a comprehensive ethics bill that provides more transparency in the earmark process. Due to pressure from the American public demanding change, we have seen fewer earmarks in this year's appropriations bill. According to the administration's Office of Management and Budget, this very Transportation-HUD bill contains half the amount of earmarks compared to its last version from 2006.

However, there is still much work to be done, and as a fiscal conservative and former auditor, I will continue my efforts to fight to change the way the Federal Government does business with taxpayers' dollars--whether it is Congress or the administration.

Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me today in congratulating Wanda A. Brown of Harrisonville, MO. Wanda has devoted her life to community journalism and community service. The Missouri Associated Press will induct Wanda into the Missouri Press Hall of Fame on September 7, 2007.

Wanda began her career in journalism in 1946 as copublisher of the Willow Springs News with her late husband J.W. Brown, Jr. With their purchase of the Harrisonville Democrat-Missourian in 1955, they were able to form the Cass County Publishing Company. Under Wanda's guidance as business manager, Cass County Publishing Company operated many of western Missouri's important publications including the Cass County Democrat-Missourian, Lee's Summit Journal, Belton Star Herald, Bates County Democrat and the Lawrence County Record. Wanda retired from publishing in 1985 after working in community journalism for 30 years.

The State of Missouri has benefited not only from Wanda's prolific career in journalism but also from her dedication to public service and philanthropy. Two generations of Cass County residents have known Wanda as the author of ``Wanda's Favorite Recipes'' which is a weekly column in the Democrat-Missourian. Wanda then turned these columns into two cookbooks. Proceeds from the first cookbook were donated to a local theater group, the Way Off Broadway Players, and from the second book to the Cass Medical Center Foundation.

The town of Harrisonville and the State of Missouri have been lucky to have Wanda as one of its prominent citizens, awarding her with honors such as the Harrisonville Area Chamber of Commerce President's Award and the Missouri Merit Mother of the Year Award.

Mr. President, I ask that the Senate join me in honoring Wanda A. Brown for her decades of dedicated service to the citizens of Missouri. We congratulate Wanda on her induction into the Missouri Press Hall of Fame.

Mr. President, I rise today to say I am proud, very proud. I came to Washington hoping that we could make a difference in terms of the way business is done here. And I will be honest, I had some moments of doubt over the last 6 months. There were times that I wandered around the floor of the Senate, and even among my own party and the other party, and I heard kind of a murmuring of discontent over the ethics reform that we passed back in January. I got nervous that we weren't serious about it, that we really weren't going to push the kind of cleansing of things that we have done in the legislation before us on which we are about to vote.

This isn't hard, what we are doing. We are trying to live like everybody else in America. Most Americans don't have a corporation they can call for a ride on a jet plane. Most Americans don't have somebody who wants to pay for a fancy trip. Most Americans really don't have the ability to decide that one group in their State gets money when others don't. But we did here. That was wrong.

That is why I am so proud of this legislation. Is it perfect? No. I will wait--probably in vain--for that piece of legislation that we pass that is perfect. But because of our process, because of the glorious nature of a democracy, it is always a matter of give and take, always a matter of finding compromise to find that piece of legislation that can get enough votes so that we can send it to the President's desk. That is what this process was.

Now, I have some friends--and, frankly, some people I agree with--on the other side of the aisle who are unhappy with some of the provisions in this bill. They are willing to look at the bundling provisions, the ban on travel and gifts, and the ban on corporate jets. They are willing to overlook the revolving door reforms--reforms in terms of sneaking provisions into conference bills without them ever being in either piece of legislation in the House and Senate, and focus in on just the inadequacies of the earmark reform.

Well, would I have liked it to be a 67-vote point of order rather than a 60-vote point of order? Yes, I would have. Would I have wished for a system maybe that was even more transparent? Yes. But this is major reform. I will tell you that there are a few Senators who do not participate in the earmarking process, and I am not here to pat them or myself on the back for the fact that we do not do that.

I will say I think it is interesting that the phrase ``the fox in the henhouse'' was used as to the provisions in this bill. You know, there is a saying, ``all hat and no cattle.'' Well, I think that maybe this is the time to use the phrase ``all foxes and no hens,'' because if you step back from this issue of earmark reform, it is not complicated. It is pretty easy. As one of the cartoons said, ``We have met the enemy and it is us.''

All we have to do to achieve the transparency that we need is for every Senator to put every earmark request that they are making on their Web site. I will say it again. All we have to do is have every Senator put every earmark request they are making on their own Web site. And then it won't be hard to make sure that the chairman of the committee or the majority floor leader have, in fact, certified all of the earmarks. I am a little offended that there is some assumption that these chairmen and the majority leader would go out of their way to not tell the public there is a congressionally directed expenditure in the bill and will try to hide it. They are going to be caught if they do that. It is going to become public.

Then you will have the kind of accountability that really works around here. So I was disappointed when I heard that one of the Members of the other Chamber said he thought he could put earmarks in this conference report because we needed to vet it. It is not our job to vet them. It is not the Parliamentarian's job. They don't have the staff to do this. That is the job of the people of the United States because, guess what. It is their money.

This is a strong ethics bill. Even though I was a cosponsor along with the Senators who spoke against this on the earmark reform, I want to say this goes a long way in the right direction. It is a great effort. I am proud of Senator Reid, Senator Feinstein, Senator Feingold, Senator Obama, and all of the other Senators who worked on this bill, and many on the Republican side have as well. I think we are going to pass it by a big number today. It is a moment we should all be proud of, an accomplishment we should herald, and we should remember that if we are worried about foxes, we ought to check in our own closet for that fox outfit before we start pointing the finger at anybody.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

I also was in the Homeland Security markup where we were informed that the vote would be held open so we could finish the markup. Had I been in the Chamber, I would have voted no.

Mr. President, I don't know that anybody could argue that the Children's Health Insurance Program hasn't been a success. Of course it has been a success. Frankly, successes have not come easily in the area of health care availability in this country over the last decade. So we have to protect it, we have to make sure it continues, and we need to make sure we expand it to as many children as possible.

I think this strong piece of bipartisanship we are debating today, in fact, does those things. The interesting thing is, I think back to a debate in this Chamber that occurred in November of 2003. In November of 2003, there was a piece of legislation concerning prescription drugs. Now, children's health insurance and prescription drugs are both noble and good causes to the Senate--to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, to try to provide more insurance for children. What are the differences between the two debates? It is really interesting to look, because that is when that ugly head of politics begins to rear and people begin to see that sometimes, unfortunately, in this building it is about politics instead of public policy. Both goals of public policy, prescription drugs with lower costs and children's health insurance--everybody has to be for those goals. But how you get there and what complaints you have on the way is where politics come in.

Medicare Part D was a $400 billion program. Interestingly enough, it was passed in November of 2003 as we were approaching a Presidential election and a cycle of election. Interestingly enough, the President was running for reelection. Not a whisper of a veto threat was heard even though it was $400 billion that had no way to be paid for. There was no cigarette tax in Medicare Part D. It was guaranteeing a profit to the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, it went so far as to make sure you could not negotiate for lower prices--a bold thing, for a country where the free market is supposed to be something we relish. Negotiating for lower prices? That is pretty all-American. But, oh, no, we made sure there was no negotiation for lower prices on the part of the Government in Medicare Part D. There was no mechanism to pay for it.

Yet I hear Senators today speaking against this bill with righteous indignation, saying: Well, the tobacco tax in here is not going to be enough. The vast majority of the Republican party voted for Medicare Part D. I will note that the Senator who will follow me on the floor was one of the brave souls who voted no, and I am willing to bet it was because he was trying to be responsible relating to the budget. Most of his colleagues didn't agree with him, and certainly the President of the United States didn't agree. Not only did he sign the bill, he signed it with relish and he campaigned on it, even though the way the program is going to be implemented was not going to hit home for seniors for years in advance.

I think we can all be proud that there are some savings with Medicare Part D. We have to be honest that the Government is paying a price for it, just like we are going to pay a price for enhancing and protecting the Children's Health Insurance Program in this country. Other than Medicare Part D, we have not lifted a pinky finger in the area of health care during this administration.

Most Americans are now scared. They are scared about getting care for their children, getting care for their parents, and they are scared about whether they are going to be able to afford health care, knowing that any minute their employer may drop their coverage. The expansion of this program has more to do with the unavailability of health care from an employer than it has to do with some effort on the part of the Government to insure every person.

This is a public-private effort that has been a success. It is a block grant, not an entitlement. It allows the States flexibility. It is everything a Government program should be. It is getting to a very important need. There are so many reasons to be for this bill. I will not take the time tonight to go into them all because my colleagues will and they have today. I listened for a couple of hours when I was sitting in the chair. I am sure this will go on tomorrow with many people talking about important things.

I want to mention one part of the bill that I think is very important, which has not been talked about--mental health parity. We have spent a lot of time talking about our children being at risk for drugs and alcohol. We have talked a lot about how we have to teach them the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Truth be known, one of the biggest failures in our health care system

in this country is the complete unavailability of mental health services for children.

Right now, in America, if you have health insurance and you know people and you are educated, it is difficult to find a mental health professional that specializes in children. If you are a poor working family and your child has gotten involved with drugs or alcohol and you want to get them mental health assistance, a treatment program, forget about it. It is literally almost impossible to access programs that can help adolescents and teens get off drugs and alcohol if they turn down that path at a young age.

This will allow those programs to get the parity they need in the States. Speaking from experience, in terms of watching the expensive price tag on what happens to these young people if they get addicted to drugs or alcohol at a young age, the costs to the Government are huge because of what it means down the line in terms of wasted productivity, criminal conduct, the prison systems, and other health care costs down the line.

There are very few kids who are addicted to drugs and alcohol who can get help when they are young, and a vast majority of them who do not end up charging us a heftier pricetag down the line, in terms of Government programs and assistance.

This is a very wise investment of the public dollar, to get not only the physical health care but the mental health care to the children of this country who desperately need it. We have talked about dental care and emergency rooms and broken arms, but I think it is time we realized we are abandoning our children when it comes to important mental health care services. This bill will go a long way toward fixing it.

I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle will not be situationally worried about the budget. When this was a program that was passed in 2003, $400 billion with no offsets, no way to pay for it, they lined up to vote for it, and the President signed it gleefully. It will be a bitter pill for America's children to swallow if, in a responsible way, we move forward to protect this program and this President decides to veto it. But if he does, he should know there are many of us here who will stand and fight with all the might we can muster on behalf of the kids of this country who deserve a chance at health care, deserve a chance for peace of mind for their parents.

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

Mr. President, while I am not offering any amendments now on Homeland Security appropriations, I do wish to speak about a couple of amendments I will be offering.

First, we all understand that the inspector generals are the eyes and ears for not only the public and the executive branch but also for Congress within Federal agencies.

As part of a piece of broader legislation I have previously filed, I wanted to include in this bill the provisions that would relate to the Department of Homeland Security. Keep in mind, the Department of Homeland Security has been on the high-risk list as long as it has been in existence. The high-risk list is put out, in terms of management issues, by the Government Accountability Office.

There are so many areas I could go into of mismanagement and problems within FEMA and other parts of Homeland Security, but suffice it to say that my amendment is going to help the public get access to the inspector general's information. It would require that the Department of Homeland Security put on the home page of their Web site a direct link to the inspector general's report and, furthermore, provide information on the home page of how people can, in fact, turn in the Department of Homeland Security for issues of fraud, waste, and abuse.

We need to enlist the public's help. In order for them to do that, they have to know what is going on. It is my goal eventually to make sure the IG Web site is on the home page of every Federal agency, and this is a good start in the Department of Homeland Security.

The other amendment I have is troubling. In fact, it is scary. After the hurricanes in 2005, there were a number of trailers that were distributed to the victims of Katrina and Rita. Less than a year later, there was a complaint regarding the condition of these trailers, and it related to the health of the people in the trailers. There was testing done, one test, by FEMA. It found dangerously toxic levels of formaldehyde. What happened after those test results, and test results also done by independent organizations? Nothing. Toxic levels of formaldehyde in trailers the Government provided to victims of a hurricane.

Here is the scary part. The scary part is the General Counsel's Office within FEMA was advising the department: Let's keep this quiet. We don't want to own this issue.

I am quoting now from things written by the lawyers in FEMA. A man actually died in a trailer. There was a conference call. As a result of the call, the General Counsel's Office put out a directive: We are in litigation on this issue. We must be on every conference call. Nothing should be done on this without going through us. We don't want to own this issue.

All of these kinds of messages were sent throughout FEMA. Now we have a problem; we have a safety issue for American citizens living in trailers that we have given them.

FEMA finally goes out and does some testing. They open all the windows and turn on the exhaust fans and then say: We don't think the problem is that serious. We better notify people. We want to notify people, but don't put our phone number on it. Tell them there might be a problem. In other words, let's see if we can't avoid being held responsible by giving out information. But for gosh sakes don't let them ask a question about what they do to get out of the trailer, how they get a new trailer, how they can find out how the problem is being addressed.

We can take two attitudes in Government. We can take the attitude that we want to try to ``CYA'' and look good or we can take the attitude we are here to serve the public. Those people in FEMA were using Federal tax dollars, and their goal was to help people in times of need and make sure they stayed safe.

This Congress has a solemn obligation to make sure we get to the bottom of this. My amendment will require the inspector general to do an immediate and thorough report as to everything that happened in this incident and, within 15 days of enactment of this law, FEMA must report to Congress what action they have taken in response to this issue.

When, finally, this all came to light in a very well run House hearing in July of 2007, they promised swift action. We need to know what is ``swift action.'' We have to have the indoor quality testing and the root cause determination. We must make available alternative safe housing, and we obviously have to make sure the Office of General Counsel is held accountable for an attitude that is all about covering our risk instead of protecting American citizens.

Senator Obama and Senator Pryor are working with me on this amendment. I anticipate it will have bipartisan support and many other Senators will join us.

There is a lot of talk around right now about whether Congress is doing its job, whether we are asserting ourselves in terms of a branch of Government that is supposed to provide oversight and accountability. I am confused as to why this did not reach the public's attention prior to January of this year. I am proud that it has now. I am proud that these kinds of hearings are going on and that we are providing the kind of oversight and accountability of the executive branch that protects the American people.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment so we can make sure our job is to protect the people we serve and not to protect Government officials.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of talk about what has gone on in the Chamber in the last 24 hours and of name calling. I am proud to have worked extra hard the last 24 hours. It seems to me the symbolism of working extra hard and losing some sleep is an important symbolism.

Yes, yes, we all know we didn't have the votes to overturn the stubborn denial of this President as to the failure of his policy, but we showed the American people we are willing to work harder and try harder and stand up to the face of power for the right strategy to secure our Nation from terrorists and to support our military.

I am following to this microphone decades of experience in the Senate. I sat this morning and listened--and this afternoon--to Senator Byrd, Senator Specter, and Senator Biden. I was reflecting on the years of experience they represent in the Senate. I don't have those years of experience. I have mere months. But I am confused with the insistence of 60 votes on anything of substance we are facing in the Senate. I am confused at attempts to block ethics reform; to block taking Federal tax dollars away from big oil. I am confused at the effort to block reimportation of prescription drugs and to block negotiation for lower drug prices in Medicare Part D. I am confused about delays and stalling tactics to embrace the 9/11 recommendations on homeland security.

The majority should rule, and I am hopeful what we did over the last 24 hours will have an impact on the way we work together to move forward on the problems that face America.

I also wish to briefly say that over the last 24 hours I have felt history, as I have reflected on other all-night filibusters throughout the history of this great body. I pinch myself when I open my drawer and I see the name of Harry Truman. When I sit at my desk and glance down and I see his name scrawled in the drawer of my desk on the Senate floor, it is amazing to me that I have the opportunity to sit in his Senate seat and to advocate for accountability in this war effort.

Senator Webb and I had worked on an amendment we were going to offer to the Defense authorization bill that I think Senator Truman would be proud of, because he got in his vehicle and drove miles and miles across this country during World War II, in a Democratic administration--as a Democratic freshman Senator under a Democratic President in a time of war--and he said we have to do better about how we are spending taxpayer money. We cannot allow war profiteers to tarnish the image of the men and women who are fighting for us in World War II. That was his view, and so the Truman Committee was born. Out of that committee, billions of dollars were saved, and America felt better about our ability to clean up our act, to oversee the efforts of our military in a way that is fiscally responsible and honors the service of our military.

Senator Webb and I, along with the other seven freshmen Democrats in the Senate, have fashioned a new, independent commission on war contracting, and we will now introduce this amendment as a stand-alone bill. I implore my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle to not play partisan games with this effort. This is an independent commission, fashioned in many ways not only after the Truman Committee but after the 9/11 Commission. It will look at war contracting in a thorough way.

Let us be honest. We are not going to turn back from contracting in a time of war. We will continue to contract. People need to understand now that we have more contractors on the ground in Iraq than we have military, with 180,000 contractors. I have had the opportunity over the last 6 months to see firsthand how we have failed in the stewardship of public money, with billions of dollars wasted, billions of dollars in unfair profits to private companies because we have not written the contracts well, we have not overseen the contracts, and we have not held them accountable.

This commission will allow us to take a thorough look at war contracting, and it will also expand the authority of the Special Inspector General on Gulf Reconstruction so we can look at not only reconstruction contracts but those support contracts for our troops. It is important we get this done because we can't go back, but we must go forward and make sure that in the spirit of Harry Truman, we never allow war profiteering to affect our ability to stand strong, as the strongest and most powerful Nation on the planet.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Chairman Levin and Senator McCain for making this amendment a priority. I also thank Chairman Akaka, Senator Murray, and many others who worked on this issue for a long time.

I was honored to have the opportunity to be one of the first in the Senate to file a bill on the subject of wounded warriors after the Walter Reed scandal broke. It was an interesting process for me because I spent time at Walter Reed and, of course, I got the official tour. Then I sat down and talked to the soldiers there. It was in those conversations that I learned about some of the problems we are trying to address in this important amendment. Many of the things Senator Obama and I included in our legislation have, in fact, been included in this amendment. Overall, it is going to make a real difference in these warriors' lives and their families' lives--how they are treated within our health care system as they return from battle, as they return from their service, while they are still in the Active military.

I won't go into the details of the amendment. Many others have spoken about it. Suffice it to say that, overall, it is going to make a huge improvement in the physical disability system and being able to maneuver through the system in a way that is not punitive, making that transition from the Active military to the veterans system much smoother and easier to navigate. It is going to support the families of these men and women. That was what struck me. Some of these family members who are going to Walter Reed to care for these men and women who have given so much for us--they were not being treated with consistency, not getting some of the benefits they deserved because, frankly, they were doing us a favor by being there and caring for their loved ones. We also address that.

Certainly, we have more assistance and advocacy for outpatients. That was the meat of the problem at Walter Reed. It wasn't the quality of the medical care they were receiving; it was the way the outpatients were being treated, the facilities they were in, the priority they were being given, and were their needs being met, particularly in the area of substance abuse, and were they being met in the area of mental health care. I think this amendment will go a long way toward correcting the underlying problems in the system that allowed the scandal at Walter Reed to become the focus of the American public for so many weeks early in the year.

I also, with some regret, repeat some words I have said before. The reason I regret having to repeat these words is because when I gave this speech 14 months ago, I believed at the time I gave this speech that there would be change after the election. I believed in my heart that the people in Washington would listen like they had not listened before. But because they have not, I think it is important to repeat part of the speech I gave on Harry Truman's birthday, in May of last year, as I talked about the war in Iraq and the reasons I thought it was important to make a change in the Senate.

I grew up in rural Missouri, in the heart of a Nation that I was raised to love and revere. I grew up surrounded by strong men and women who had won a great world war, a war fought against tyranny. My father was a decorated veteran of that war whom I rarely recall ever hearing speak about combat. As I grew older, his silence spoke volumes to me, not only about the modesty of his generation but about what Dwight Eisenhower later called the ``agony of the battlefield.''

I grew up in a family of Missouri Democrats, Roosevelt people, Truman people, but one of the first political speeches my father asked me to read was President Eisenhower's farewell address that he gave in 1961. Reading his speech again later in my life, I found myself deeply moved by his words. I respect his eloquence as he spoke of this country's fundamental decency and greatness. He called upon America to live up to its ideals by always using our greatest strength wisely in the service of peace and liberty. He warned us to be aware of arrogance, yet maintain our readiness to sacrifice.

I was raised to believe that sacrifice in the defense of our freedom is an American ideal and that from our earliest days, Americans have willingly given of themselves in our defense and in the defense of others. I have always known and felt and believed that, through generation after generation, that willingness has made us safe.

So as I grew up in Missouri, our country seemed on the verge of its greatest period, a time of joy and growth and undeniable strength; a time when all would finally share in our Nation's great bounty, when our military would be used wisely to benefit ourselves and the world; a time, too, when long-closed doors would finally open and we would live up to the ideal of America that lit all the continents with hope and promise and made us admired and respected across so much of the globe. I did not think then that an American leader would ever squander the trust of our people or the admiration of the world that had been won with such courage and at such a cost. But that is what has happened.

In the days after 9/11, this Nation was united, as it was after Pearl Harbor. The world bled for us and stood at our side. Our historic allies offered all possible aid. New allies in Asia and the Middle East emerged, all agreeing to support us in a war on terror.

But that has changed. America was misled into a different war, not against al-Qaida. Instead, we went to war with Iraq. Fearful of weapons of mass destruction, we believed they were a threat to the world. We had a plan to destroy the terrorists. We were strong. But there were no weapons of mass destruction. We did not have a plan to destroy the terrorists. We did not even have a plan to take care of Iraq.

Now our strength has been compromised. The President and his administration have led us into a quagmire, alienated our allies, diminished our national morale, cost us billions of dollars, thousands of precious lives, and maimed many thousands more. Even our Nation's top military authorities have cited enormous mistakes, while this administration refuses to listen to them.

Those were words of a speech I gave 14 months ago, and this administration still refuses to listen. I have listened. I have listened to Missourians. I have listened to General Petraeus. I have listened to the President. I have listened to the experts who have come in front of our Committee on Armed Services, including former generals, generals who have served in Iraq, and maybe most importantly, I have listened to brave soldiers in Iraq.

I sat across a breakfast table and looked at a young man and said: But are you worried if we begin pulling out of Iraq that it will be chaos?

And this young man from Missouri, from a State that I love and he loves, and a country that we want to protect

more than anything, looked at me and said: Ma'am, we are in chaos. We need to get out of here.

I implore the Commander in Chief to listen to America, to listen to the people of this country who figured this out months ago. We are stuck in a situation that is squandering the lives of our bravest, and it is also squandering the future of our Nation because of the financial toll it is taking on our budget.

It is time that we change course in Iraq. We have an opportunity to speak louder than any American voice can speak. We have an opportunity to say to the President of the United States: You must change course. It is time to bring our combat troops home from Iraq.

We need to begin that process quickly, and we need to begin to refocus our efforts on fighting terrorism around the world, going after al-Qaida, making our military strong, restoring our prominence in the world with allies that matter, understanding that the strength of our Nation rests with a strong military that we must protect and not wear thin, and, finally, realize that America is speaking with a strong voice. This is a democracy. If we cannot listen to those who sent us here, we have failed our duty in this great Chamber.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, let me pay homage to the senior Senator from West Virginia who, in a typically eloquent way, spoke to the Senate about his long service to his State. Let me tell the people of West Virginia, they don't need to worry; they have a very strong Senator in this body. Any comments about his age are misplaced, because his passion and his intellectual heft and his knowledge of history and the Constitution far outweigh any considerations one would have about his age.

(The remarks of Mrs. McCaskill pertaining to the introduction of S. 1723 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, there are times since I have been here that I have been surprised and shocked. This week was one of them, when I saw the leader of my party rise to ask the body to send S. 1 to conference. Keep in mind what S. 1 is. S. 1 was the first piece of legislation we passed in the Senate this year. That is why it is called S. 1. Keep in mind what the vote was. It was 96 to 2. There are not going to be very many times that we do anything 96 to 2. That was months ago.

Now, all this time we have been waiting to send this bill to conference so we can move ahead and make it law. This is ethics reform. This is the essence of what we should be about. We are here to do the people's business, not big money's business. We are here to protect average people in these United States, not the lobbyists in the hallway.

Ethics reform should be at the top of our list. What happened when our leader asked for this bill to go to conference? The Republican leader objected. What in the world is going on that we would pass a bill 96 to 2 and then the Republican leader would say, ``I object to it going to conference''?

The American people have been very engaged on the immigration issue for weeks. That bill has come to its conclusion. I urge every American out there to use those same fingers and those same phones, to use those same e-mails and those same letters, to immediately begin calling their Senator and say to them: Why in the world would you be blocking ethics reform in the Senate? There is no good excuse--except politics. If we cannot get beyond politics to reform ethics, then I think the people have a right to give us an approval rating in the cellar.

So I call on the Republican leader, I call on our Republican colleagues: Stop playing games with ethics reform. Let's move forward. Let's make this happen on behalf of the people we came here to represent. If we cannot do this, we ought to put our tail between our legs, be ashamed, and go home.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about something great Congress did 30 years ago. They passed the Inspector General Act. That act has provided a layer of accountability in our Government that is very important. Unfortunately, there are still times that the inspector generals in our Government are not given the respect and deference they deserve. That is why today I am introducing the Improving Government Accountability Act.

If one thinks about the inspector generals, what they are is a first line of defense on behalf of taxpayers and against Government waste and inefficiency. They are the first line of defense because they are inside Federal agencies. Let's be honest, inspector generals inside Federal agencies are facing mountains of waste and inefficiency. If they are to do their jobs the way Congress intended, they must be independent, and their work must be immediately accessible to the public.

We have had some troubling incidents over the last several years as it relates to the independence, the qualifications and, frankly, the integrity of our inspector generals. That is why this legislation is necessary. That is why this legislation is so important.

The legislation will do several things. First, all inspector generals will be appointed for terms of 7 years. That will make sure they cannot arbitrarily be removed from their position by a department head who is getting nervous about information they are providing to the public in terms of accountability.

Second, Congress must be notified of the removal of any inspector general and, very importantly, the reasons for the removal before they can be removed from office.

Third, all inspector generals will have their own legal counsel to avoid using the agency counsel. This is important because if they are going to have independence, they must have independent legal advice about their ability to do their job.

Fourth, no inspector general can accept a bonus. The bonuses are given by the heads of the agencies. That is an inherent conflict. If you know that you please the head of your agency and you get more money, what kind of shortcuts are you going to take? What are you going to be willing to gloss over in order not to embarrass the head of that agency with information you have discovered about waste and inefficiency?

Fifth, in the event of a vacancy, the Council on Integrity and Efficiency will recommend to the appointing authority three possible replacements. They will not have the ability to dictate the replacement for the IG, but it will provide the appointing authority with three qualified people to take

over the important function of inspector general.

Also key in this legislation is that instead of making their annual budget requests to the agencies they oversee, the IG budget requests will go straight to the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, that sends the President's budget request to Congress.

Next, all inspector general Web sites must be directly accessible from the home page of the agency. I asked my staff to take a tour through Government agency Web sites to see how easy it was to find out what the IGs had been up to in those agencies. It was remarkably difficult. In many instances we couldn't even find the inspector general's information on the home page of that agency. The public ought to be able to go on the page of any Federal agency and immediately click on the last inspector general report, find out what that inspector general found and, frankly, ought to be able to ask the question, what has been done about it. There will be a way for the public to anonymously send allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse directly to the IG offices.

Our office found that only three of 27 sampled Federal agencies have an obvious direct link from their home page to the IG's Web site. Clearly, we are not focused on making this information available to the public. Frankly, all the auditors in the world, all the inspector generals in the world do no good if the public can't learn the information. Because if the public doesn't know about it, it isn't going to have the cleansing effect it should. Only six of the 27 sampled IGs have an obvious direct link on their home page to report waste, fraud, and abuse. That is very important.

I give credit to Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee who has been working on this legislation in the House. I am excited to join him in this effort. Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman have some of these provisions in their Accountability in Government Contracting Act, of which I am also proud to be a cosponsor.

There have been specific examples that have occurred recently. I won't go into them other than to say, we had one Commerce IG who refused to resign after an investigation showed that he had committed malfeasance in office. However, after much pressure from Congress, he finally did step down. We have another inspector general who has been accused of trying to block the serving of a search warrant at NASA. Think about that, trying to block the serving of a search warrant that had been issued by a court of law. We have another IG who was not reappointed by President Bush and said publicly it was because at the Department of Homeland Security, he was seen as a traitor, and he was intimidated about not issuing reports that might reflect badly on the agency.

Bottom line, we should protect inspector generals. They are precious. They are important to what we do. We can talk all we want about oversight, but if we can't get the information from inside these agencies, frankly, we are not going to be effective in Congress with any kind of oversight. The information the inspector generals provide is crucial to Congress and crucial to the public. This legislation would make sure that they are qualified, protected, independent, and the public knows what they are up to.

I urge my colleagues to get excited about this legislation and maybe, uncharacteristically, move it quickly through the Senate.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about something great Congress did 30 years ago. They passed the Inspector General Act. That act has provided a layer of accountability in our Government that is very important. Unfortunately, there are still times that the inspector generals in our Government are not given the respect and deference they deserve. That is why today I am introducing the Improving Government Accountability Act.

If one thinks about the inspector generals, what they are is a first line of defense on behalf of taxpayers and against Government waste and inefficiency. They are the first line of defense because they are inside Federal agencies. Let's be honest, inspector generals inside Federal agencies are facing mountains of waste and inefficiency. If they are to do their jobs the way Congress intended, they must be independent, and their work must be immediately accessible to the public.

We have had some troubling incidents over the last several years as it relates to the independence, the qualifications and, frankly, the integrity of our inspector generals. That is why this legislation is necessary. That is why this legislation is so important.

The legislation will do several things. First, all inspector generals will be appointed for terms of 7 years. That will make sure they cannot arbitrarily be removed from their position by a department head who is getting nervous about information they are providing to the public in terms of accountability.

Second, Congress must be notified of the removal of any inspector general and, very importantly, the reasons for the removal before they can be removed from office.

Third, all inspector generals will have their own legal counsel to avoid using the agency counsel. This is important because if they are going to have independence, they must have independent legal advice about their ability to do their job.

Fourth, no inspector general can accept a bonus. The bonuses are given by the heads of the agencies. That is an inherent conflict. If you know that you please the head of your agency and you get more money, what kind of shortcuts are you going to take? What are you going to be willing to gloss over in order not to embarrass the head of that agency with information you have discovered about waste and inefficiency?

Fifth, in the event of a vacancy, the Council on Integrity and Efficiency will recommend to the appointing authority three possible replacements. They will not have the ability to dictate the replacement for the IG, but it will provide the appointing authority with three qualified people to take

over the important function of inspector general.

Also key in this legislation is that instead of making their annual budget requests to the agencies they oversee, the IG budget requests will go straight to the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, that sends the President's budget request to Congress.

Next, all inspector general Web sites must be directly accessible from the home page of the agency. I asked my staff to take a tour through Government agency Web sites to see how easy it was to find out what the IGs had been up to in those agencies. It was remarkably difficult. In many instances we couldn't even find the inspector general's information on the home page of that agency. The public ought to be able to go on the page of any Federal agency and immediately click on the last inspector general report, find out what that inspector general found and, frankly, ought to be able to ask the question, what has been done about it. There will be a way for the public to anonymously send allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse directly to the IG offices.

Our office found that only three of 27 sampled Federal agencies have an obvious direct link from their home page to the IG's Web site. Clearly, we are not focused on making this information available to the public. Frankly, all the auditors in the world, all the inspector generals in the world do no good if the public can't learn the information. Because if the public doesn't know about it, it isn't going to have the cleansing effect it should. Only six of the 27 sampled IGs have an obvious direct link on their home page to report waste, fraud, and abuse. That is very important.

I give credit to Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee who has been working on this legislation in the House. I am excited to join him in this effort. Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman have some of these provisions in their Accountability in Government Contracting Act, of which I am also proud to be a cosponsor.

There have been specific examples that have occurred recently. I won't go into them other than to say, we had one Commerce IG who refused to resign after an investigation showed that he had committed malfeasance in office. However, after much pressure from Congress, he finally did step down. We have another inspector general who has been accused of trying to block the serving of a search warrant at NASA. Think about that, trying to block the serving of a search warrant that had been issued by a court of law. We have another IG who was not reappointed by President Bush and said publicly it was because at the Department of Homeland Security, he was seen as a traitor, and he was intimidated about not issuing reports that might reflect badly on the agency.

Bottom line, we should protect inspector generals. They are precious. They are important to what we do. We can talk all we want about oversight, but if we can't get the information from inside these agencies, frankly, we are not going to be effective in Congress with any kind of oversight. The information the inspector generals provide is crucial to Congress and crucial to the public. This legislation would make sure that they are qualified, protected, independent, and the public knows what they are up to.

I urge my colleagues to get excited about this legislation and maybe, uncharacteristically, move it quickly through the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The hearing will examine the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's existing programs, proposed initiatives, and review the agency's fiscal year 2008 budget request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Examining Global Warming Issues in the Power Plant Sector.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing on discussion draft legislation regarding the regulation of Class III gaming.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet in order to conduct a markup on Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 10 a.m. in Dirksen room 226.

Agenda

I. Bills: S. 1145, Patent Reform Act of 2007 (Leahy, Hatch, Schumer, Cornyn,

Whitehouse) and S. 1060, Recidivism Reduction & Second Chance Act of 2007 (Biden, Leahy, Brownback, Specter, Kennedy, Schumer, Whitehouse, Durbin).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 28, 2007, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 3 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Financial Management Systems Modernization at the Department of Homeland Security: Are Missed Opportunities Costing Us Money?''