Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have never heard a speech that better charted the values of free peoples--not only of free peoples in our country but I think free peoples all over the world. I have never heard a speech that was as incredibly positive as this speech, that

called on everyone to rise to their best value, to stand to their best commitment, and to perform as free-loving peoples should everywhere.

On a scale of 1 to 10, Mr. President, that speech, in my book, was a 10. I have never heard better. And I have never seen a course charted that is sounder, truer, or can redound in better benefits for freedom- loving people.

I salute Tony Blair, the distinguished Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, as a member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, I would like to join my colleague and friend, Senator Boxer, in support of this request. It is important that we assist in these naval and diplomatic educational and training programs that have been continued through the work of Sail San Francisco.

Mr. President, I rise today with Senator Chafee to introduce a bill to give States the flexibility to provide family planning services to low-income women who do not qualify for Medicaid.

Under current law, in order to qualify for family planning services provided by the Medicaid program, a women would either have to have children and an income level below a threshold set by the State, ranging from 15-86 percent of the Federal poverty level, or be pregnant and have an income up to 133 percent of the poverty level; Federal law allows States to raise this income eligibility level to 185 percent, if they desire.

If a woman qualifies because of pregnancy, she is automatically eligible for family planning services for 60 days following delivery. After those 60 days, the woman's Medicaid eligibility expires.

If a State wants to provide Medicaid family planning services to additional populations of low-income women, they must apply to the Federal Government for a waiver. Currently, 18 States have waivers approved by the Federal Government. The waiver process is extremely cumbersome and time consuming, often taking up to three years to receive approval from the Federal Government.

This bill would once and for all allow States to provide crucial family planning to low-income women under the Medicaid program. It would eliminate the waiver process for these services and would give authority back to the States to determine what populations of low income women they want to provide family planning services to.

California currently receives $100 million annually, until 2004, as part of its five-year waiver to provide family planning services to low income women. with these funds, California provides services to more than 900,000 women each year.

The State estimates that because of these services, at least 50,000 unintended pregnancies are prevented each year.

In addition to contraceptives, the family planning funds are used for sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment, HIV screening and counseling, basic infertility services and pregnancy testing and counseling.

Officials involved in the program estimate that for every $1 invested in family planning, $3 are saved in pregnancy and health-care related costs.

In California, it is estimated that providing low-income women with access to family planning will save the State more then $900 million over the course of the five-year waiver.

I believe this legislation is more important now than ever.

Each year, approximately 3 million pregnacies, or about half of all pregnancies, are unintended. Increasing access to family planning services could help avert these 3 million unintended pregnancies and all the decisions and costs associated with either continuing or terminating a pregnancy.

Family planning services give women the necessary tools to space the births

of their children, which improves women's health and reduces rates of infant mortality.

Medicaid family planning is also cost effective. For every $1 invested in family planning, $3 are saved in pregnancy and health care- related costs.

Family planning and reproductive health services are much more than just accessing contraceptives. Services provided include screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, basic inferility services and pregnancy testing and counseling. Women can receive pap smears and breast exams, which are crucial to detecting cervical and breast cancer.

Low income women deserve access to family planning and reproductive health services. And States should not have to ask the Federal Government for permission to use Medicaid funds to provide these essential services.

We can afford to shut the door on those who cannot otherwise afford family planning and reproductive health services.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today with Senator Chafee to introduce a bill to give States the flexibility to provide family planning services to low-income women who do not qualify for Medicaid.

Under current law, in order to qualify for family planning services provided by the Medicaid program, a women would either have to have children and an income level below a threshold set by the State, ranging from 15-86 percent of the Federal poverty level, or be pregnant and have an income up to 133 percent of the poverty level; Federal law allows States to raise this income eligibility level to 185 percent, if they desire.

If a woman qualifies because of pregnancy, she is automatically eligible for family planning services for 60 days following delivery. After those 60 days, the woman's Medicaid eligibility expires.

If a State wants to provide Medicaid family planning services to additional populations of low-income women, they must apply to the Federal Government for a waiver. Currently, 18 States have waivers approved by the Federal Government. The waiver process is extremely cumbersome and time consuming, often taking up to three years to receive approval from the Federal Government.

This bill would once and for all allow States to provide crucial family planning to low-income women under the Medicaid program. It would eliminate the waiver process for these services and would give authority back to the States to determine what populations of low income women they want to provide family planning services to.

California currently receives $100 million annually, until 2004, as part of its five-year waiver to provide family planning services to low income women. with these funds, California provides services to more than 900,000 women each year.

The State estimates that because of these services, at least 50,000 unintended pregnancies are prevented each year.

In addition to contraceptives, the family planning funds are used for sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment, HIV screening and counseling, basic infertility services and pregnancy testing and counseling.

Officials involved in the program estimate that for every $1 invested in family planning, $3 are saved in pregnancy and health-care related costs.

In California, it is estimated that providing low-income women with access to family planning will save the State more then $900 million over the course of the five-year waiver.

I believe this legislation is more important now than ever.

Each year, approximately 3 million pregnacies, or about half of all pregnancies, are unintended. Increasing access to family planning services could help avert these 3 million unintended pregnancies and all the decisions and costs associated with either continuing or terminating a pregnancy.

Family planning services give women the necessary tools to space the births

of their children, which improves women's health and reduces rates of infant mortality.

Medicaid family planning is also cost effective. For every $1 invested in family planning, $3 are saved in pregnancy and health care- related costs.

Family planning and reproductive health services are much more than just accessing contraceptives. Services provided include screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, basic inferility services and pregnancy testing and counseling. Women can receive pap smears and breast exams, which are crucial to detecting cervical and breast cancer.

Low income women deserve access to family planning and reproductive health services. And States should not have to ask the Federal Government for permission to use Medicaid funds to provide these essential services.

We can afford to shut the door on those who cannot otherwise afford family planning and reproductive health services.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the House of Representatives for passing the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 and to urge the Senate to take swift action on the House bill to get it to the President's desk.

The 418-to-2 House vote to ban all imports from Burma is an important statement to support for human rights, the rule of law, and democracy in Burma.

Over 6 weeks have passed since Aung San Suu Kyi and several of her National League for Democracy colleagues came under attack by paramilitary thugs and were subsequently detained by the ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, SPDC.

Since then, with the exception of a brief visit by the U.N. Special Envoy to Burma, Razali Ismail, Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado reportedly in the notorious Insein Prison.

The events of May 30 clearly indicate that the military junta has no intention of adhering to its commitment to engage the NLD in a substantive dialogue on political reform and national reconciliation.

Prompt Senate action will put the U.S. Congress firmly on record in support of Suu Kyi's immediate release and the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Burmese people as expressed by the 1990 parliamentary elections, decisively won by the NLD.

The only difference in the House bill as opposed to the Senate bill passed last month--a 3-year sunset on the sanctions--is acceptable, if not ideal.

Now, I call on the international community, in particular ASEAN and the United Nations, to follow Congress's lead and take action to bring pressure to bear on the SPDC.

A united effort is critical for sanctions to be most effective. The regime must know that the world speaks with one voice and its days are numbered.

I urge my colleagues to support the House bill so that the President can sign it into law.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep concern that the fiscal year 2004 Department of Defense appropriations bill contains no additional funds for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is simply unacceptable and raises serious concerns about the administration's long-term intentions in both countries.

Given the commitments of the men and women of our Armed Forces all over the world and the risks they face in defense of our freedoms and national security, I am committed to providing the tools they need to perform their jobs at the highest level. It is surprising and troubling, then, that two of the most significant and critical deployment of U.S. troops in years--Afghanistan and Iraq--do not receive funding in the fiscal year 2004 Defense appropriations bill.

Clearly, these are not emergency situations that have only recently come to our attention. These are ongoing military operations that will most likely require a substantive American presence for years to come.

One hundred forty-five thousand U.S. troops are currently serving in Iraq facing almost daily attacks from guerilla forces. Eighty-one Americans have died since the President declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.

In Afghanistan, 8,500 U.S. troops are searching for remnants of al- Qaida and the Taliban and trying to stabilize the interim government of Hamid Karzai. Just yesterday, more than a year and a half after the fall of the Taliban, a U.S. Special forces convoy came under attack by unknown gunmen using small arms and explosive devices.

Americans are putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan and we cannot find any funds for them in this bill.

These operations are certainly not cheap.

During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the U.S. has spent nearly $4 billion a month in Iraq since January and is spending an additional $700 million a month in Afghanistan. He continued that he did not know if the figures for Iraq would go up or down in the next fiscal year or how much the administration intends to propose to Congress for military operations in Iraq.

Surely the Defense Department, in fact, has some idea about the funds it needs for Afghanistan and Iraq--and those commitments should be reflected in this bill.

Silence on this matter causes me great concern that our troops will serve far longer than we are being told and the cost will be far greater than we have been led to believe.

I urge the administration to level with the American people and this Congress about the costs of our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The fiscal year 2004 Department of Defense appropriations bill is exactly the appropriate mechanism to do just that.

Mr. President, I rise to address this year's Federal budget deficit, which is now expected to exceed $450 billion. This will be the largest Federal deficit on record.

This is a staggering $680 billion increase from the $236 billion budget surplus the Federal Government ran 3 years ago.

And who knows how much the true deficit may in fact be if, a few months from now, the projection increases again due to the ongoing costs of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. Reconstruction costs are now running $4.8 billion per month, or $58 billion annually, which is well above what we have budgeted.

According to the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates for balanced budgets, ``The first six months of the 108th Congress were the most fiscally irresponsible in recent memory.''

The members of this Chamber and the American public should know the simple truth: putting our economy back on track is even more difficult in the face of deficits of this magnitude.

And next year, the on-budget deficit will likely top $600 billion.

In my 10-year career in the Senate, there has never been a greater need for fiscal discipline than there is now. The then-record $290 billion deficit we faced in 1992 required some very tough choices to be made but the choices that lie ahead will be even harder.

It is incumbent on the President and the House and Senate leadership to prepare the country for those choices. Instead, the President and the Republican leadership in Congress have cut taxes with abandon while increasing spending at a rate faster than at any point during the past 10 years.

Discretionary spending increased by 13.1 percent between 2002 and 2001, and is expected to increase by 9.7 percent this year over 2002 levels. Much of that spending has been necessary to fight the war on terror, recover from the attacks of September 11, and improve our homeland security.

Nevertheless, such spending cannot be sustained if tax revenues plummet due to ill-timed tax cuts and a weakened economy. In fact, the Federal Government has now reached a point at which it could eliminate all nondefense discretionary spending and still not close the Federal budget deficit.

That would mean eliminating all Federal spending on roads, schools, law enforcement, disease research, and the environment, among thousands of other programs.

This structural imbalance between Federal revenues and outlays threatens to send us into a spiral of increasing debt and rapidly accelerating interest costs. As the Federal debt increases and public saving decreases, long-term interest rates will inevitably be pushed higher.

That not only increases the amount that the Federal Government must pay to finance its obligations but also raises the cost of putting a mortgage on your home or financing a new car purchase. A conservative estimate puts the increase in long-term interest rates due to the budget deficit at 0.4 percent.

An increase of that magnitude would add $800 per year to the cost of a $200,000 home mortgage, or more than the majority of American taxpayers will receive from the President's latest tax cut.

Yet what is perhaps more threatening is the negative economic impact of these growing deficits.

The hard truth is that even robust economic growth will not bring the budget back into balance. When preparing deficit projections, the CBO assumes average real GDP growth of 3.3 percent between now and 2008, which is well in excess of the 1.5 to 2 percent average growth of the past 3 years.

Such moderately strong growth would still leave us with more than $2 trillion in cumulative deficits over the next decade. And this does take into account the true cost of the tax cuts without the sunsets and other budgetary gimmicks, which is likely to add $1.8 trillion to those deficits if all existing tax cuts were extended.

These fiscal problems are not intractable, but they require bipartisan cooperation and real fiscal discipline, both of which have been in short supply of late.

One unfortunate consequence of the administration's approach to the recent tax cut has been a growing partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans on fiscal policy.

That stands in sharp contrast to the atmosphere when I entered the Senate in 1992. At that time a group of moderate Senators from both parties joined forces to rein in spending and hold the line on new tax cuts.

Those efforts came to fruition in 1998, when the first Federal budget surplus since the Johnson administration was recorded. Budget surpluses continued for an additional 2 years, coinciding with a period of robust economic growth.

During the 108th Congress, I have worked to rekindle that spirit of bipartisanship because I fear for the consequences of maintaining our current course.

This past January, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Chafee to freeze further cuts to the top income tax rates, a move which would save over $150 billion over 10 years if enacted today.

During debate on the fiscal year 2004 budget resolution, I cosponsored an alternate budget resolution with Senators Carper, Chafee, and Lincoln. That alternate resolution would have brought the budget back into balance 4 years earlier than the resolution which passed the Senate, and was revenue-neutral over the 10-year budget window.

And yesterday I introduced legislation to upgrade our country's transportation and water infrastructure. Credit for this bill is due to Congressman Oberstar in the House, and I am pleased to introduce the Senate companion bill. This bill would create more than 2 million new jobs, at less than a tenth the cost of the latest tax cut.

Moreover, the $34 billion cost of my bill is fully offset by closing Enron-related tax shelters, putting an end to corporate expatriation and extending customs user fees.

This type of targeted, revenue-neutral stimulus promises to create more jobs than the President's tax cut, without digging us deeper into debt, and is precisely the sort of fiscally responsible approach to jump-starting the economy that we need.

Just as the budget surpluses of the late 1990s had a positive ripple effect of increasing the feeling of economic certainty and security in this country, the current budget deficit is having a negative ripple effect and is contributing to the near-freeze on hiring and capital investment we are currently experiencing.

We must break this cycle with bipartisan leadership or we will face an even greater crisis in the years ahead. We cannot afford to burden future generations with the debt resulting from our

fiscal mismanagement, and we cannot afford to defer tough choices to future leaders.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the ``Rebuild

America Act of 2003,'' a bill to improve our national transportation

and water infrastructure and to stimulate economic growth.

This bill promises to do what the latest tax cut will not: provide an

immediate economic stimulus without increasing the Federal budget

deficit. Whereas the President's economic advisors have said that the

latest tax cut will create 1.4 million jobs by the end of 2004, at a

cost of $350 billion, this bill will create as many as 2 million jobs

at a tenth the cost.

These jobs could be created in as little as three months, as the bill

is specifically designed to fund transportation and water

infrastructure projects which are ready to go within 90 days.

Not only would those jobs bring some of the 9 million Americans who

are unemployed and seeking jobs back into the workforce, it would

generate long-term economic benefits from the increased productivity of

our transportation infrastructure.

This bill will do more to stimulate the economy at less cost than the

tax cut because it is directed squarely at our most urgent needs.

Unlike the recent tax cut, which largely benefits high income taxpayers

who are likely to save any windfall they receive, infrastructure

spending is necessarily injected into the economy.

According to the Department of Transportation, each $1 billion in new

infrastructure investment creates 47,500 new jobs: 26,500 direct jobs

for construction workers, engineers, contractors, and other on-site

employees, and 21,000 indirect jobs resulting from the spending

associated with the investment.

These are jobs our economy desperately needs, particularly in the

transportation and nonresidential construction sectors, which have been

hit hard by the recent downturn. While new home construction has

sustained the homebuilding trades, there are now 715,000 unemployed

private construction workers, most of whom were laid off due to a

downturn in nonresidential building. That represents an 80 percent

increase from three years ago.

As anyone who has taken a hard look at our transportation needs can

attest, federal funding for highways, transit, aviation, high-speed

rail, and ports, among other areas, remains inadequate.

Without those funds, we are on the verge of falling behind the rest

of the developed world in the quality of our infrastructure. I recently

visited the port of Hong Kong and was amazed by the automated

technology used to process thousands of containers each day with fewer

employees than would be required to move an equivalent amount of cargo

at even our most advanced ports.

And while many countries around the world, including France, China,

Germany, and Japan, now have operating MAGLEV train systems, the United

States does not have a single demonstration MAGLEV line operating

anywhere in the country.

Increasingly, global industry demands a level of efficiency and

reliability which requires substantial upgrades to existing

infrastructure. In California, where computer and electronic products

account for 51 percent of the State's manufacturing exports, the trend

is toward lighter, higher value shipments. Nationwide, shipments of

below 1,000 lbs accounted for 18 percent of total value in 1977, and 32

percent of value in 1997, a dramatic increase.

Those changes put a premium on speed and reliability, without which

``just-in-time'' manufacturing and lean inventory controls are

impossible. A company such as Hewlett Packard, which uses Intel

processors made in California in servers which it assembles in Texas,

must be able to ship processors without risk of even a 24-hour delay.

This bill takes a big step toward ensuring that level of speed and

reliability by dedicating $50 billion to infrastructure upgrades. And I

must stress the huge incremental value of that spending in the context

of reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st

Century, TEA-21, which is expected this year.

Reauthorization of TEA-21 will dedicate more than $250 billion toward

transportation projects over the next six years, but even that level of

funding will only allow us to tread water. Maintenance of existing

infrastructure will consume much of that spending.

To take one example, the Department of Transportation estimates that

$20.6 billion is needed annually to maintain and improve performance of

public transit systems alone.

The $50 billion provided by the ``Rebuild America Act'' will go

beyond current maintenance and actually improve overall productivity by

allowing substantial upgrades to go forward. Specifically, the bill

provides:

$5 billion in additional authority for Federal-aid highway

capital investments, drawn from the $19 billion surplus in

the Highway Trust Fund.

$3 billion in transit capital and operating grants, drawn

from the surplus in the Highway Trust Fund.

$3 billion in airport development projects, including $2

billion in airport improvement program grants to enhance

airport safety, efficiency, and capacity.

$14 billion of tax-credit high-speed rail bonds for

infrastructure construction and the acquisition of rolling

stock.

$7.5 billion for capital investment in passenger and

freight rail, including $2.5 billion for Amtrak.

$2.5 billion for port security grants to ports and marine

facility operators.

$11.5 billion for wastewater and drinking water

infrastructure, to be administered

through the existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund and

Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

$1.5 billion to fund investment in currently authorized

water resources infrastructure projects.

$1.5 billion in grants to economically distressed

communities for economic development.

$500 million for the repair and alteration of Federal

buildings.

In my home State of California, the infrastructure needs that could

be addressed by this bill are particularly great. Although the just-

completed BART link to San Francisco International Airport is a major

achievement, we still remain a long way off from the long-term goal of

ringing the Bay Area with BART stations.

And despite the recent economic downturn, California's economy

remains the engine of much of the country's economic growth, and

California's population continues to grow. That puts tremendous demands

on our roads, airports, and transit systems, and is one reason why Los

Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are consistently ranked as the

top two urban areas in the U.S. with the longest annual delays per

rush-hour driver.

This bill will provide a total of $1.8 billion in new funds for

California transportation and safe drinking water infrastructure, and

more than $1.5 billion more for high speed and passenger and freight

rail. All told, the bill will create well over 100,000 new jobs in

California.

That could bring us farther toward fulfilling one of California's

most urgent needs, a high speed rail link from the Bay Area all the way

south to San Diego. Without high speed rail there is little hope of

taking some of the pressure off of California's over-burdened highways

and airports.

In addition to the transportation improvements contemplated by the

bill, I would like to say a few words about the need for additional

funds for port security and clean drinking water.

Since the attacks of September 11 it has become clear that our ports

should be one of the first lines of defense against attempts to bring

weapons of mass destruction into this country. And yet the funds we

have dedicated to securing our ports have been woefully inadequate.

Last year I introduced comprehensive legislation to improve security

at our ports, and to inspect more of the 16 million containers which

come through those ports each year. Currently, only one to two percent

of those containers are inspected, and the possibility of a dirty bomb

or nuclear device being shipped in via container remains alarmingly

real.

This bill provides an additional $2.5 billion for port security,

which would go some of the way toward meeting the $6 billion in

expenses the Coast Guard anticipates over the next 10 years for ports

to comply with security standards imposed under the Maritime

Transportation Security Act.

With respect to clean drinking water, a very different, but equally

important, priority, this bill provides $11.5 billion for wastewater

and drinking water infrastructure investment. That funding is important

because the Administration continues to insist on funding cuts for the

Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Funds.

Even level funding will not allow us to upgrade existing water

treatment facilities, many of which were built in the 1970s, when the

federal government first began to take a major role in the construction

of drinking water infrastructure. Many of those facilities will require

substantial improvements and overhauls over the next two decades as

pipes and equipment fall into disrepair.

In the West, the magnitude of water supply contamination by

perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel, has only recently become

apparent. The costs of cleaning up perchlorate in California alone will

likely stretch into the billions of dollars, and some of those funds

must come from the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which

would receive $1.5 billion under this bill.

With the Federal budget deficit certain to top $400 billion this

year, and with the gross federal debt projected to increase by over $5

trillion by 2013, there is a real question as to where these funds will

come from.

I am glad to say, therefore, that this bill is fully offset and would

not add at all to our deficit. The bill uses three offsets to recoup

the $34 billion cost of the bill, two of which are designed to limit

corporate fraud, and the last of which extends customs user fees.

The bulk of the funds used to offset the bill are generated by

limiting the ability of large corporations to shelter income from

taxation. A recent report by the Joint Economic Committee on corporate

fraud at the Enron Corporation speaks to the magnitude of this problem.

For several years Enron reported huge profits to its shareholders,

while reporting little or no taxable income to the IRS. We now know

that Enron executives treated their tax division as a for-profit entity

within the company and set annual revenue targets for the division.

Between 1996 and 1999, Enron reported aggregate profits of $2.1

billion on its income statement, while claiming aggregate losses, for

tax purposes, of $3 billion. Some of that gap can be explained by the

massive tax deductions Enron took for employee stock deductions, and

the rest stemmed from the closely guarded tax-shelter transactions

designed for the company by banks, accountants, and legal firms.

This bill closes those Enron-specific loopholes, but also strengthens

a very simple provision which will have a big impact on shutting down

future loopholes.

The so-called ``Economic Substance Doctrine'' imposed by the bill

states that any transaction which has no material economic impact on

the business of the company, but which is purely designed for the

purpose of tax avoidance, shall be disallowed for tax purposes.

That will allow enhance the ability of tax courts to crack down on

companies that engage in off balance sheet transactions, artificial

income shifting, uneconomic financing transactions, and other tax

avoidance schemes which are not designed to provide any profit to the

company beyond a tax savings.

In the same vein, the bill puts an end to the practice of setting up

corporate headquarters offshore in order to avoid corporate taxes at

home. This practice is not only blatantly unpatriotic, but also creates

an imbalanced playing field for companies that abide by the spirit of

the law but are forced to compete with firms that don't.

This bill will require such corporate expatriates to continue to pay

U.S. taxes even if they move abroad. All told, these provisions fully

offset the cost of the infrastructure improvements included in the

bill.

Just about any American you talk to will tell you that our economy is

not in good shape. A quick look at the front page of newspapers shows

that our stock markets remain well below their 2000 high, that more

people face long-term unemployment than at any time in the past two

decades, and that businesses are not making new investments.

The tax cut which was recently signed into law is the wrong medicine

for our economy, and will do little to reverse our current course. In

fact, it may well increase uncertainty and act as a long-term drag on

the economy by increasing the federal debt and putting pressure on

long-term interest rates.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill as a much better means of

stimulating economic growth, and one which will pay long-term dividends

in terms of improved roads, railways, and water treatment facilities.

Rather than simply hand down a burden of debt to our children and

grand-children, this bill would create a lasting legacy of modern

infrastructure for their benefit.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce the ``Rebuild

America Act of 2003,'' a bill to improve our national transportation

and water infrastructure and to stimulate economic growth.

This bill promises to do what the latest tax cut will not: provide an

immediate economic stimulus without increasing the Federal budget

deficit. Whereas the President's economic advisors have said that the

latest tax cut will create 1.4 million jobs by the end of 2004, at a

cost of $350 billion, this bill will create as many as 2 million jobs

at a tenth the cost.

These jobs could be created in as little as three months, as the bill

is specifically designed to fund transportation and water

infrastructure projects which are ready to go within 90 days.

Not only would those jobs bring some of the 9 million Americans who

are unemployed and seeking jobs back into the workforce, it would

generate long-term economic benefits from the increased productivity of

our transportation infrastructure.

This bill will do more to stimulate the economy at less cost than the

tax cut because it is directed squarely at our most urgent needs.

Unlike the recent tax cut, which largely benefits high income taxpayers

who are likely to save any windfall they receive, infrastructure

spending is necessarily injected into the economy.

According to the Department of Transportation, each $1 billion in new

infrastructure investment creates 47,500 new jobs: 26,500 direct jobs

for construction workers, engineers, contractors, and other on-site

employees, and 21,000 indirect jobs resulting from the spending

associated with the investment.

These are jobs our economy desperately needs, particularly in the

transportation and nonresidential construction sectors, which have been

hit hard by the recent downturn. While new home construction has

sustained the homebuilding trades, there are now 715,000 unemployed

private construction workers, most of whom were laid off due to a

downturn in nonresidential building. That represents an 80 percent

increase from three years ago.

As anyone who has taken a hard look at our transportation needs can

attest, federal funding for highways, transit, aviation, high-speed

rail, and ports, among other areas, remains inadequate.

Without those funds, we are on the verge of falling behind the rest

of the developed world in the quality of our infrastructure. I recently

visited the port of Hong Kong and was amazed by the automated

technology used to process thousands of containers each day with fewer

employees than would be required to move an equivalent amount of cargo

at even our most advanced ports.

And while many countries around the world, including France, China,

Germany, and Japan, now have operating MAGLEV train systems, the United

States does not have a single demonstration MAGLEV line operating

anywhere in the country.

Increasingly, global industry demands a level of efficiency and

reliability which requires substantial upgrades to existing

infrastructure. In California, where computer and electronic products

account for 51 percent of the State's manufacturing exports, the trend

is toward lighter, higher value shipments. Nationwide, shipments of

below 1,000 lbs accounted for 18 percent of total value in 1977, and 32

percent of value in 1997, a dramatic increase.

Those changes put a premium on speed and reliability, without which

``just-in-time'' manufacturing and lean inventory controls are

impossible. A company such as Hewlett Packard, which uses Intel

processors made in California in servers which it assembles in Texas,

must be able to ship processors without risk of even a 24-hour delay.

This bill takes a big step toward ensuring that level of speed and

reliability by dedicating $50 billion to infrastructure upgrades. And I

must stress the huge incremental value of that spending in the context

of reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st

Century, TEA-21, which is expected this year.

Reauthorization of TEA-21 will dedicate more than $250 billion toward

transportation projects over the next six years, but even that level of

funding will only allow us to tread water. Maintenance of existing

infrastructure will consume much of that spending.

To take one example, the Department of Transportation estimates that

$20.6 billion is needed annually to maintain and improve performance of

public transit systems alone.

The $50 billion provided by the ``Rebuild America Act'' will go

beyond current maintenance and actually improve overall productivity by

allowing substantial upgrades to go forward. Specifically, the bill

provides:

$5 billion in additional authority for Federal-aid highway

capital investments, drawn from the $19 billion surplus in

the Highway Trust Fund.

$3 billion in transit capital and operating grants, drawn

from the surplus in the Highway Trust Fund.

$3 billion in airport development projects, including $2

billion in airport improvement program grants to enhance

airport safety, efficiency, and capacity.

$14 billion of tax-credit high-speed rail bonds for

infrastructure construction and the acquisition of rolling

stock.

$7.5 billion for capital investment in passenger and

freight rail, including $2.5 billion for Amtrak.

$2.5 billion for port security grants to ports and marine

facility operators.

$11.5 billion for wastewater and drinking water

infrastructure, to be administered

through the existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund and

Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

$1.5 billion to fund investment in currently authorized

water resources infrastructure projects.

$1.5 billion in grants to economically distressed

communities for economic development.

$500 million for the repair and alteration of Federal

buildings.

In my home State of California, the infrastructure needs that could

be addressed by this bill are particularly great. Although the just-

completed BART link to San Francisco International Airport is a major

achievement, we still remain a long way off from the long-term goal of

ringing the Bay Area with BART stations.

And despite the recent economic downturn, California's economy

remains the engine of much of the country's economic growth, and

California's population continues to grow. That puts tremendous demands

on our roads, airports, and transit systems, and is one reason why Los

Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are consistently ranked as the

top two urban areas in the U.S. with the longest annual delays per

rush-hour driver.

This bill will provide a total of $1.8 billion in new funds for

California transportation and safe drinking water infrastructure, and

more than $1.5 billion more for high speed and passenger and freight

rail. All told, the bill will create well over 100,000 new jobs in

California.

That could bring us farther toward fulfilling one of California's

most urgent needs, a high speed rail link from the Bay Area all the way

south to San Diego. Without high speed rail there is little hope of

taking some of the pressure off of California's over-burdened highways

and airports.

In addition to the transportation improvements contemplated by the

bill, I would like to say a few words about the need for additional

funds for port security and clean drinking water.

Since the attacks of September 11 it has become clear that our ports

should be one of the first lines of defense against attempts to bring

weapons of mass destruction into this country. And yet the funds we

have dedicated to securing our ports have been woefully inadequate.

Last year I introduced comprehensive legislation to improve security

at our ports, and to inspect more of the 16 million containers which

come through those ports each year. Currently, only one to two percent

of those containers are inspected, and the possibility of a dirty bomb

or nuclear device being shipped in via container remains alarmingly

real.

This bill provides an additional $2.5 billion for port security,

which would go some of the way toward meeting the $6 billion in

expenses the Coast Guard anticipates over the next 10 years for ports

to comply with security standards imposed under the Maritime

Transportation Security Act.

With respect to clean drinking water, a very different, but equally

important, priority, this bill provides $11.5 billion for wastewater

and drinking water infrastructure investment. That funding is important

because the Administration continues to insist on funding cuts for the

Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Funds.

Even level funding will not allow us to upgrade existing water

treatment facilities, many of which were built in the 1970s, when the

federal government first began to take a major role in the construction

of drinking water infrastructure. Many of those facilities will require

substantial improvements and overhauls over the next two decades as

pipes and equipment fall into disrepair.

In the West, the magnitude of water supply contamination by

perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel, has only recently become

apparent. The costs of cleaning up perchlorate in California alone will

likely stretch into the billions of dollars, and some of those funds

must come from the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which

would receive $1.5 billion under this bill.

With the Federal budget deficit certain to top $400 billion this

year, and with the gross federal debt projected to increase by over $5

trillion by 2013, there is a real question as to where these funds will

come from.

I am glad to say, therefore, that this bill is fully offset and would

not add at all to our deficit. The bill uses three offsets to recoup

the $34 billion cost of the bill, two of which are designed to limit

corporate fraud, and the last of which extends customs user fees.

The bulk of the funds used to offset the bill are generated by

limiting the ability of large corporations to shelter income from

taxation. A recent report by the Joint Economic Committee on corporate

fraud at the Enron Corporation speaks to the magnitude of this problem.

For several years Enron reported huge profits to its shareholders,

while reporting little or no taxable income to the IRS. We now know

that Enron executives treated their tax division as a for-profit entity

within the company and set annual revenue targets for the division.

Between 1996 and 1999, Enron reported aggregate profits of $2.1

billion on its income statement, while claiming aggregate losses, for

tax purposes, of $3 billion. Some of that gap can be explained by the

massive tax deductions Enron took for employee stock deductions, and

the rest stemmed from the closely guarded tax-shelter transactions

designed for the company by banks, accountants, and legal firms.

This bill closes those Enron-specific loopholes, but also strengthens

a very simple provision which will have a big impact on shutting down

future loopholes.

The so-called ``Economic Substance Doctrine'' imposed by the bill

states that any transaction which has no material economic impact on

the business of the company, but which is purely designed for the

purpose of tax avoidance, shall be disallowed for tax purposes.

That will allow enhance the ability of tax courts to crack down on

companies that engage in off balance sheet transactions, artificial

income shifting, uneconomic financing transactions, and other tax

avoidance schemes which are not designed to provide any profit to the

company beyond a tax savings.

In the same vein, the bill puts an end to the practice of setting up

corporate headquarters offshore in order to avoid corporate taxes at

home. This practice is not only blatantly unpatriotic, but also creates

an imbalanced playing field for companies that abide by the spirit of

the law but are forced to compete with firms that don't.

This bill will require such corporate expatriates to continue to pay

U.S. taxes even if they move abroad. All told, these provisions fully

offset the cost of the infrastructure improvements included in the

bill.

Just about any American you talk to will tell you that our economy is

not in good shape. A quick look at the front page of newspapers shows

that our stock markets remain well below their 2000 high, that more

people face long-term unemployment than at any time in the past two

decades, and that businesses are not making new investments.

The tax cut which was recently signed into law is the wrong medicine

for our economy, and will do little to reverse our current course. In

fact, it may well increase uncertainty and act as a long-term drag on

the economy by increasing the federal debt and putting pressure on

long-term interest rates.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill as a much better means of

stimulating economic growth, and one which will pay long-term dividends

in terms of improved roads, railways, and water treatment facilities.

Rather than simply hand down a burden of debt to our children and

grand-children, this bill would create a lasting legacy of modern

infrastructure for their benefit.

Mr. President, I rise today to address the Millennium Challenge Account and the importance of providing full funding for foreign assistance initiatives.

I had intended to offer an amendment to the State Department authorization bill to authorize an additional $300 million to the Millennium Challenge Account, MCA, to match the President's request of $1.3 billion for fiscal year 2004.

I believe it is critical for the United States to provide full funding for the MCA at its inception to demonstrate our commitment to those in the developing world who seek a better life and our fellow citizens at home who deserve a safe and secure future free from terror.

Nevertheless, I understand Senator Lugar has worked closely with Senator Biden on a bipartisan bill and that an amendment to increase funding for the MCA is not appropriate at this time. I will not offer an amendment, but I want to take this time to emphasize the need for the United States to take a leadership role in combating global poverty and provide the necessary resources to do so.

Let us not forget that 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day and nearly 3 billion live on less than $2 a day; 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, 2.9 billion have inadequate access to sanitation, and 1 billion people in developing nations are unemployed or underemployed.

In March, 2002, the President announced an initiative to increase foreign aid by $5 billion over the next 3 years through the creation of the Millennium Challenge Account.

These funds would be available on a competitive basis to a few countries based on their records in three areas; ruling justly, investing in people, and pursuing sound economic policies.

Over the past few years, I and several of my colleagues have worked hard to raise awareness about the importance of a robust international affairs budget as a central component of advancing the U.S. foreign policy agenda and protecting our national security interests.

We simply can not afford to rely on our military might alone to fight terror and provide safety and security for our citizens.

The fiscal year 2004 Defense authorization bill passed by the Senate authorized $400.5 billion for national defense.

Over the past 10 years, the Defense appropriations bill has risen from $261 billion in fiscal year 1994, to $355 billion in fiscal year 2003, to $400 billion this year.

Given the multitude of threats our country faces and the commitments of our troops all around the world, I fully support giving the men and women of our Armed Forces the tools they need to do their job at the highest level.

On the other hand, in fiscal year 1994, the foreign operations appropriations bill totaled $17.9 billion falling to $16.3 billion in fiscal year 2003. This authorization provides for $15.3 billion for foreign operations for fiscal year 2004 and $1 billion for the MCA. The United States spends less than 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid which is barely 0.1 percent of GDP.

Thus, I applauded President Bush's initiative to begin to restore the foreign aid budget to the high water mark of the cold war years and increase foreign assistance spending by $5 billion over the next 3 years.

The fiscal year 2004 budget resolution passed out of the Budget Committee, however, cut $1.1 billion--including $1 billion to the MCA-- from the President's request for the International Function 150 Account. So, Senator Lugar and I introduced, and the Senate passed, an amendment to restore those funds.

National security is not just about ensuring we have the most advanced weapons and the best trained personnel. We must make the same commitment to our international affairs budget and use all the tools at our disposal to prevent terror and avoid more costly military interventions in the future.

I, for one, believe that we should provide additional resources beyond the President's request; $5 billion over 3 years is a good start but, in my view, not near enough.

But I felt we should at least match what the President himself has requested for his own initiative in its first year of existence. Now is not the time to take steps backwards or shy away from larger commitment.

In addition, we should provide full funding for our existing foreign aid programs which have been proven to reduce poverty and increase economic

development. Many countries will fall outside the bounds of the MCA, and we can not afford to leave them behind.

I believe the MCA and our overall international affairs budget will help us attack the conditions that foster terrorism in the developing world: poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and illness.

Terrorists prey on the hopelessness, anger, fear, and alienation of the poor and provide an easy way out of the misery of the developing world. The MCA and the international affairs budget, by providing education, health care, shelter, and food, will help promote tolerance, understanding, and political stability.

We send the wrong message when we devote billions of dollars for national defense but fail to provide the resources for a new, significant foreign assistance initiative.

We must demonstrate to the world that the United States is serious about reducing global poverty through a robust and substantive foreign aid budget. I urge my colleagues to join with me in making full funding for all of our foreign assistance initiatives a priority.

Mr. President, there are now as many as 415,000 acres of dead and dying trees on the San Bernardino and Cleveland National Forests and surrounding private lands as the result of drought, decades of fire suppression, and a bark beetle infestation.

Jack Blackwell, the Regional Forester for California, has described this situation as an unprecedented threat to public safety.

There are large mountaintop communities with over 90,000 people total, communities that are completely surrounded by thousands and thousands of deed trees. In addition, the only escape routes are narrow winding mountain roads which are themselves surrounded by dead and dying trees.

The result is that thousands of lives are at risk.

There is some good news, in that San Bernardino National Forest and California Department of Forestry staff agree on the four highest priority tasks to reduce the threat to public safety.

First, they want to clear evacuation routes from the mountain communities. This involves clearing a corridor on either side of major escape roads so people can escape from their communities without being blocked by fallen trees, or the radiant heat of the fire.

Second, they want to clear trees around safety zones like elementary schools and camps. This gives people a place to go if they can't get out of the community.

Next they want to clear brush around communication sites in the forest to communicate with the public and emergency responders.

Finally, they want to clear buffer zones around populous communities, protecting thousands of lives.

Madam President, I am pleased to join my chairman, Senator Hutchison, in recommending the 2004 military construction bill to the Senate.

This has been a very challenging year. The President's budget request for military construction was $1.5 billion below last year's enacted level, a nearly 15 percent reduction in a program that is chronically underfunded. And this year, because of across-the-board constraints on appropriation allocations, we had little room to maneuver beyond the ceiling imposed by the President's budget submission.

The bill that we bring to the Senate provides $9.2 billion for military construction and family housing programs for fiscal year 2004. Within that allocation, we had to shoehorn funding for a large number of critical programs and projects that were not adequately funded in the President's budget request.

In addition to tight budget constraints, we were faced with another challenge this year in determining how to deal with overseas military construction programs at a time when the Defense Department is proposing what has been described as the most sweeping change in America's military presence overseas since World War II.

The President's budget request included more than $1 billion for overseas military construction. Less than 3 months after the budget was submitted, the Defense Department unveiled preliminary plans for a major restructuring of forces in Europe and Korea, and sent Congress a budget amendment to rescind or delete more than half a billion dollars in overseas military construction programs from fiscal year 2003 and the Fiscal Year 2004 request.

It became clear to Senator Hutchison and me that the Department was far from finalizing its global realignment plans, and indeed, we continue to read almost daily about different proposals for moving U.S. forces here and there overseas. For this reason, we are recommending a pause in funding a number of proposed construction projects in Europe and Korea until the Defense Department completes its overseas basing review and presents a comprehensive plan to Congress. The overseas basing commission that Senator Hutchison and I are proposing in this bill will provide another important layer of oversight to this process.

In Europe, central questions include how many troops will remain permanently stationed there, what basing structure will be needed to support them, and where and what type of forward operating bases and forward operating locations will be needed to support rotational and transitory forces.

In Korea, the issue of where the forces will be realigned has apparently been settled--the U.S. is planning to withdraw troops from Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone and move them to south central South Korea. However, the details of that realignment have yet to be presented to Congress, nor has the Korean government provided the land needed for the realignment.

I am aware that the administration would prefer to bank all of the proposed funding for the realignment of forces in Korea to keep pressure on the South Korean government to transfer the required land to the U.S. military. However, I believe that withholding this funding until the U.S. has actually secured the land is an equally effective incentive for the Korean government if, in fact, it is serious about wanting United States military forces to move out of Seoul.

Moreover, in a year when the administration has slashed the military construction budget by nearly 15 percent, it is unrealistic for the Defense Department to turn around and ask Congress to wager hundreds of millions of dollars that are urgently needed elsewhere on the Korean Government's uncertain timetable.

We have given this matter a great deal of consideration, and I commend Senator Hutchison for laying out the position of the subcommittee so clearly and completely in the report accompanying our bill. This explanation should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the Military Construction Subcommittee understands the importance of maintaining strong military ties to our allies overseas and supports the Defense Department's efforts to ensure that our overseas basing structure reflects the international realities of the post-cold-war environment. We look forward to helping implement the construction elements of the new overseas basing structure once the Defense Department completes its review.

There is another item in the Military Construction bill that is extremely important to me, and that is the environmental clean up of military installations. The fiscal year 2004 bill includes just $370 million for Base Realignment and Closure, BRAC, environmental cleanup. This is a significant drop from last year's funding, and it is a level of funding that I accept only reluctantly, and only because the Defense Department is embarking on a new and ambitious program to raise revenue for environmental cleanup at BRAC sites through land sales. The Navy's BRAC budget, for example, includes $68 million above the appropriated amount in anticipated revenue from land sales, and the Navy anticipates that additional land sales revenue could significantly increase the amount of money available in fiscal year 2004 for environmental cleanup.

I believe that the Defense Department has the responsibility to complete, to the maximum extent possible, the cleanup of military installations closed or realigned through previous BRAC rounds before embarking on a new BRAC round in 2005. I am hopeful that self-financing through land sales will be sufficient to supplement appropriated amounts, but I intend to keep a close watch on this program to ensure that we do not sacrifice momentum by relying too heavily on land sale revenue.

Madam President, I also want to comment on an issue that I have been fighting since this last winter. It is the problem of perchlorate contamination in our country's drinking water. This topic is relevant to the Department of Defense and Military Construction Appropriations as Defense, along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, uses 90 percent of the perchlorate produced in the United States.

Perchlorate, a chemical used in solid rocket propellant, explosives and munitions has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an unregulated toxin. No national standard exists for perchlorate. Perchlorate contamination has been found in drinking water supplies in 29 States, including Arizona, California, Texas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New Mexico. More than 300 groundwater wells in California alone are contaminated with perchlorate, as is the Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to more than 15 million people in the Southwest.

I am alarmed about the potential impact of perchlorate contamination at installations that have been closed through the BRAC process as well as at active and inactive Defense sites or where perchlorate has migrated off of current and former Defense or contractor properties to threaten public water supplies.

I am also very disappointed that the Department of Defense has been unresponsive to requests to take a positive leadership role in addressing the concerns of the public and the immediate needs of water agencies large and small as perchlorate is detected in more and more locations. It is also distressing that the Department is resisting the obvious need to test for the presence of perchlorate at BRAC properties or other Defense sites.

The Department of Defense has a moral obligation to the public to address the problem now as the water agencies that have to close wells, or treat their water supplies, are faced with a real problem today. This problem is a result of the activities of the Department or its contractors.

The language I worked to include in the Military Construction Subcommittee report moves the Department of Defense toward addressing the perchlorate problem. This language directs the Department to submit to the Congressional Defense Appropriation Committees the following:

A report on the activities of the Interagency Perchlorate Steering Committee and the activities of the Department on perchlorate as described in the Memo of January 24, 2001 from the Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security to the Secretaries of the military departments and the Defense Logistics Agency.

Identification of sources of perchlorate contamination at BRAC properties and to develop a plan to remediate perchlorate contamination on BRAC sites that can be implemented rapidly once state or Federal perchlorate standards are set.

Finally, I want to address an issue covered in the report where I believe the report language was not wholly accurate, and which I intend to attempt to clarify in conference.

The existing language says, ``The Committee recognizes that, absent a state or Federal standard for perchlorate, the Department of Defense is

under no obligation to remediate perchlorate contamination at defense sites.''

It is more accurate to say that absent a State or Federal standard for perchlorate, there is uncertainty as to the level of perchlorate cleanup that would be required at each site, but there still is a legal obligation to remediate perchlorate contamination under Federal and State statutes including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and California's Carpenter- Presley-Tanner Hazardous Substance Account Act. Remediation would then proceed on the basis of a site-specific risk assessment or other criteria such as an Applicable, Relevant and Appropriate Requirement.

Madam President, as I stated earlier, this has been a challenging year. Senator Hutchison and I were faced with a difficult set of circumstances and a series of hard choices. We were able to develop a military construction program that comes within the constraints of the budget resolution, but I hope that the administration understands the importance of infrastructure as a key element of readiness and quality of life, and will present Congress with a more realistic budget request next year.

I thank the members of my Appropriations Committee staff, Christina Evans, and B.G. Wright, and to Chris Thompson of my personal staff for their hard work on this bill. Also, I wish to express my appreciation to Dennis Ward, of Senator Hutchison's staff for his cooperative and bipartisan effort throughout this process.

Madam President, on Wednesday, June 25, Granite Bay Student Kevin Kiley visited my office as part of the U.S. Institute of Peace's 2003 National Peace Essay Contest, NPEC, Awards Week in Washington.

Mr. Kiley had been selected by the Institute as the California State winner as well as the national award winner for his essay, ``Kuwait and Kosovo: The Harm Principle and Humanitarian War.'' The U.S. Institute of Peace has sponsored the essay contest annually since 1986 in the belief that expanding the study of peace, justice, freedom, and security is vital to civic education.

I am proud of Mr. Kiley's exemplary essay, commend his dedication to this studies, and congratulate his teachers at Granite Bay High School. This young man, who is thoughtful and mature beyond his years, will be a leader in his future endeavors in peace studies.

I would like to bring to my colleaguess' attention a copy of Mr. Kiley's first place essay. I ask that it be printed in the Record.

The essay follows.

Kuwait and Kosovo: The Harm Principle and Humanitarian War

War causes harm; of this there is no doubt. In determining

the justification of war, the question hence becomes: when is

it justified to cause harm? The only morally acceptable

answer is that causing harm is justified if it prevents

further harm. Thus, in general terms, the only justifiable

reason to go to war is to minimize harm--if war is the lesser

of two evils.

Underlying the issue of just and unjust war is the concept

of sovereignty, for declaring war on a nation is a direct

violation of its right to self-government. This adds another

element to the harms calculation involved in justifying war.

Even the United Nations accepts the view that sovereignty has

inherent value, stating in a 1970 Declaration, ``Every state

has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic,

social, and cultural system, without interference in any form

by another state.'' Waging war against a sovereign nation

constitutes a direct violation of this ``inalienable right.''

In determining what circumstances justify violating a

nation's sovereignty, the laws governing the conduct of

individuals provide a useful analogy. In On Liberty, John

Stuart Mill establishes the Harm Principle, a criterion for

when it is justified to violate an individual's sovereignty.

Mill writes, ``the only purpose for which power can be

rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized

community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.''

Mill's aphorism can be taken a step further; it applies with

equal force to sovereign nations. Just as an individual's

freedom must be restricted if it harms other individuals, so

too must a nation's freedom be restricted if it harms other

nations. This principle, however, does not simply govern the

relationship between two warring nations, for today's complex

world is one of political interdependence. With the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, the Arab

League, and other alliances, even those wars that are

relatively limited in scope are becoming ``world wars.''

Therefore, in applying the Harm Principal to the realm of

nation states, any just war standard must specify what

circumstances justify intervention by an international

coalition. International intervention in Kuwait and Kosovo

illustrate the success and failure of meeting just war

criteria.

In 1990, Iraq sent shockwaves around the world by invading

Kuwait, its small but wealthy neighbor. Within twelve hours

of the invasion, ``all of Kuwait . . . was under Iraqi

control.'' Following Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's

overwhelming victory, the resolve of U.S. President George

Bush quickly became apparent; he immediately declared that

the invasion ``will not stand,'' that ``no nation should

rape, pillage, and brutalize its

neighbor.'' In the five months between Iraq's invasion of

Kuwait and the dropping of the first U.S. bomb, Bush tried to

convince the American people, along with the international

community, that intervention was a moral responsibility.

At the time of the invasion, the depth of Hussein's motives

was unclear. Was he a power-hungry despot--another Hitler--or

was he simply trying to claim the territory he felt was

rightfully his? Would he stop with Kuwait, or did he have his

sights set on hegemony in the Middle East? While Hussein's

territorial ambitions remained uncertain, there were more

tangible consequences of appeasing Iraq's territorial gains.

Western oil interests in the region--and the fate of these

interests if Hussein were to gain control of OPEC--were

undoubtedly a weight on the scale. Moreover, beyond these

utilitarian considerations, the fact remained that

Kuwait's sovereignty had been violated, and according to

the Harm Principal, a military response was justified on

this basis alone.

When the war was over, the stated objectives of the United

States and its allies had been achieved: ``Kuwait was

liberated, Saudi sovereignty assured, Persian Gulf oil

secure.'' Given these results, the ejection of Iraq from

Kuwait was a just end, but a just end is only half of the

just war equation. For a war to be justified, the benefits

must outweigh the costs--the harm of action must be less than

the harm of inaction. Whether this was possible in the

Persian Gulf was a matter of much speculation. As with any

war, the loss of American lives was a foremost concern. This

concern led some--including General Collin Powell--to suggest

that economic sanctions might be a viable alternative to war.

In late 1990, however, it became increasingly clear that

sanctions would do little more than starve the Iraqi people.

According to a PBS Frontline report, ``the CIA was telling

President Bush it could take years for sanctions to drive

Saddam from Kuwait.'' Furthermore, it also became clear that

U.S. technology could enable the U.S. to fight a relatively

painless war, one with few U.S. lives lost and minimal

civilian casualties. And this optimistic outlook became a

reality, as the U.S. and its allies waged one of the most

flawless military campaigns in history. Thus, the Gulf War

meets the criteria of a just war: It achieved a just end and

minimized harms.

While the involvement of the United States in the Gulf War

demonstrates the validity of Mill's Harm Principle as a

justification for war, a key distinction must be made between

the Principle's applicability on an individual level and on a

national level. The constituent parts of an individual have

no inherent worth; it is only the individual himself that is

of value. Nations, conversely, are comprised of individuals.

Thus, the constituent parts of the nation are themselves

valuable. While Mill holds that morality demands the

individual be completely sovereign in his sphere--that no

just law could prevent him from harming himself--this is not

the case with nation states. For if the actions of a

government cause harm to its citizens, the sovereignty of the

nation and the sovereignty of the individuals conflict. And

on this basis, a case can be made for humanitarian war--

military intervention that prevents a nation from harming its

citizens, its constituent parts.

In the last decade, the most vivid example of humanitarian

intervention was the crisis in Kosovo, a ``paradigmatic

instance of humanitarian intervention in the very name of

humanity itself.'' There was little doubt, in 1999, that

Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of Albanians

constituted a crime against humanity. While Milosevic's

actions did not directly harm another sovereign nation, they

so egregiously harmed his own people--so ``shocked the

conscience of mankind''--that international action was deemed

necessary. The end of saving Albanian lives was certainly

justified. In fact, the moral responsibility espoused by U.S.

President Bill Clinton was perhaps even greater than that

Bush spoke of in 1990. And aside from war, there existed no

viable option for fulfilling this responsibility. The means

employed by the Clinton Administration and NATO, however,

were inconsistent with just war principles.

The history of the Kosovo crisis is replete with

``collateral damage'' to civilians. According to Jean

Elshtain, ``once we had exhausted the obvious military

targets, we degraded the infrastructure on which civilian

life depends.'' Largely as a result of high altitude

bombing by NATO forces, 2,000 civilians were killed and

6,00 wounded, and countless others would suffer and die

because of infrastructure destruction. This ``collateral

damage'' can be directly attributed to the ``no-cost''

strategy employed by NATO troops, which refused to risk

American and European lives even as the welfare of the

Serbian people hung in the balance. In the end, this

overemphasis on some lives and devaluation of others

undermined the moral authority of NATO's crusade. In ``War

and Sacrifice in Kosovo,'' Paul W. Kahn sums up this

contradiction well when he writes of the ``incompatibility

between the morality of the ends, which are universal, and

the morality of the means, which seem to privilege a

particular community.''

The incompatibility Kahn speaks of not only caused

unnecessary civilian causalties, but also expedited the very

atrocities NATO forces had entered Kosovo to prevent.

According to Elshtain, NATO attacked Milosevic to halt ethnic

cleansing, but ``our means speeded up the process, as the

opening sorties in the bombing campaign gave Milosveic the

excuse he needed to declare marital law and move rapidly in

order to complete what he had already begun.'' As a tragic

consequence, an estimated 20,000 Kosovo Albanians were

murdered by Serbs in the first eleven weeks of bombing,

compared with some 2,500 people that had died before the

bombing campaign. Thus, the just end NATO entered Kosovo to

achieve was not merely tainted, but completely undercut by

unjust means.

The United States' crusade to liberate Kuwait, along with

NATO's effort to free the Albanians from the torturous grip

of Milosevic, demonstrate two separate, but equally

justifiable criteria for waging war. In the case of Kuwait,

the Harm Principal criterion was met, as one sovereign nation

had harmed another, and a successful war minimized costs. But

in the case of Kosovo, a righteous cause was rendered unjust

by immoral means. The conflicts in Kuwait and Kosovo

demonstrate two situations in which sovereignty can be

justifiably violated and illustrate the necessity of just

means in waging war.

Mr. President, I rise today to support Senator Boxer's amendment to the State Department authorization bill to eliminate the so-called global gag rule to lift the restrictions for U.S. assistance to international family planning providers included in this legislation.

There have been few issues in recent years that have been more debated. I have come to the floor on several occasions in years past to express my deep concern for the global gag rule. Year after year, we have come to the floor to try to overturn the rule.

Under the leadership of both Democratic and Republican Presidents, and under Congresses controlled by Democrats and Republicans alike, the United States has established a long and distinguished record of world leadership in the area of international family planning and reproductive health issues.

But the global gag rule places very limiting restrictions on U.S. assistance to international family planning organizations. Overseas family planning providers would be barred from using their own money to even provide information to patients about the availability of a legal abortion if these providers receive any funding or even access to contraceptives from the U.S. Government.

International family planning providers are being faced with a very difficult choice; either give up desperately needed U.S. funding or edit the information about reproductive health that providers share with the women they are trying to help. Either choice will hurt some of the poorest women in the world.

Family planning providers don't just lose funds under the global gag rule. They also lose donated contraceptives. The United States is the most important donor of contraceptives to the developing world, providing about 37 percent of all donations at a value of $45 to $55 million annually.

I was disappointed that one of President Bush's first major policy actions, on his first business day in office, January 22, 2001, was to reinstate the global gag rule.

I think it is important to point out that Senator Boxer's amendment does not change any laws about abortion. In fact, this amendment only allows for funding to organizations that provide services that are legal in their own country and also legal in the United States.

Beginning with the reinstatement of the gag policy in January 2001, several organizations working in the developing world that have lost access to much needed funding or contraceptives, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, IPPF. IPPF is made up of more than 150 agencies working in 180 countries and is the largest provider of reproductive health services in the world.

Between 2001 and 2003, this organization has lost more than $8 million in U.S. Government funds--mostly for contraceptive supplies.

Some country-specific examples to demonstrate the impact of the global gag rue include: Ethiopia where the Family Planning Association lost $56,000 in contraceptive supplies; Zambia were the Planned Parenthood Association lost $137,092 in contraceptive supplies; Cote d'Ivoire where the Family Planning Association lost $186,000 in contraceptive supplies which eliminated contraceptive services from nearly 50 percent of their 92 distribution points; Congo where the Family Planning Association lost $17,000 in U.S. assistance and, as a result, they had to eliminate programs that served 15,739 clients; and Kenya where the Family Planning Association had received an average of $580,000 per year to fund its clinics. Three urban clinics serving 56,000 poor and underserved clients closed.

The amount of funding lost may not sound like much to you. But in the developing world, every dollar, literally, counts.

And every woman deprived of access to education or contraceptive supplies risk an unwanted pregnancy.

Access to contraceptives is not only about family planning. It is about reproductive health. And it is also about protecting people from

Mr. President, I wanted to use 12 minutes of the Senate's time to discuss my reaction to this bill and my general thinking about the subject of medical malpractice insurance premiums.

I think it is pretty clear that medicine is at a crossroads. I think it is pretty clear that something has to be done. My own State of California was at the crossroads 28 years ago. A bill was passed through the legislature called the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, known as MICRA. MICRA had a rough road initially. It had a number of court challenges. Finally, it was sustained by the California Supreme Court.

What we saw--I will go into this in more detail later on--was that premium costs began to settle down. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the California medical profession is very pleased with the MICRA bill as it stands today.

The problem I have--and I am probably one of the few on my side of the aisle who is not opposed to the issue of caps because I think in this situation they are helpful, but my problem is with the bill that is before us today because that bill is nearly identical to the bill passed out of the House and, frankly speaking, it is not one that I can support.

This bill before us sets a $250,000 cap for noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits. Now, this can be applied not only to suits against doctors but to suits against HMOs, nursing homes, and medical product manufacturers. It is a very broad provision. This cap would even apply for extraordinary cases. I will give you one: A youngster, Jessica Santillan, a 17-year-old who died after doctors mistakenly transplanted the wrong kidneys into her body.

So under this bill, suits against drug and device manufacturers also, such as the makers of the weight loss drug Phen-Fen, the Dalkon shield contraceptive device, faulty heart valves, and other products that have caused innocent deaths, would be limited to $250,000 in noneconomic damages. I find that unacceptable.

Secondly, this legislation would severely limit the availability of punitive damages not only for doctors but

also for manufacturers. In general, punitive damages are capped at the greater of $250,000 or twice economic damages in this bill. But the bill also wipes out any punitive damages in several different types of lawsuits against medical product manufacturers. It would immunize the manufacturer or seller of drugs from punitive damages for any packaging or labeling defect on their product. So, presumably, if a drug package label had mistakenly directed a patient to take 10 pills a day instead of 1 pill a day, a patient could not sue for punitive damages, regardless of the harm caused or the basis of the mistaken direction.

It would also limit the availability of punitive damages against any manufacturer or distributor of medical products if the product complied with FDA regulations. Let me give you an example: a product such as the Bjork-Shiley artificial heart valve. It originally received FDA approval, but these valves broke in an estimated 619 patients and led to hundreds of deaths. Under this bill, they would be immune from any punitive damage case. I think that is wrong.

This FDA exemption, in a sense, sets a downward and unacceptable course. If a company has an FDA-approved product on the market and then learns of a dangerous complication presented by that product or a failure of that product, it should have the incentive to remove that product from the marketplace as soon as possible. I think to provide an exemption if the product has FDA approval creates a disincentive to the rapid removal of that product from the shelf.

So while I cannot support this proposal, there are, however, proposals which I could support because I do believe that rising premiums are creating a crisis all across this country in terms of access to care. Others have placed before this body a number of situations. Let me just repeat a few.

Obstetricians and gynecologists in Florida pay over $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance as opposed to $57,000 a year in California. And there is no more high-cost State than California. So OB/GYN premiums in Florida, $200,000; in California, because of MICRA, $57,000; surgeons in Michigan pay $110,000 for malpractice insurance. Twenty percent of the OBs and GYNs in West Virginia and Georgia have been forced out of their practice due to rising premiums.

Nine hundred doctors in Pennsylvania have left the State since 2001 to avoid annual premiums as high as $200,000. The Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia discontinued its prenatal program for low-income women because of high premium costs.

The neurosurgeons of Wheeling, WV, have left the area, and local trauma patients requiring neurosurgery need to be airlifted out of the State.

Not only are insurance premiums skyrocketing in some States, but insurers are leaving the market, and that is a very dangerous signal. There were 14 companies underwriting liability in Mississippi; today, there is but one willing to write new policies. Texas had 17 insurance carriers; today it has 4.

In California, we have nonprofits handling the insurance for California's doctors, and that is one reason the system works.

I have spent a number of months taking a good look at the California law to see what could be transferred to the national level. And I want to say, here and now, this Senator would support reasonable caps on noneconomic damages because I deeply believe they can lead to more stable premium rates.

At the time MICRA was enacted in 1975, the cost of health insurance in California was higher than any other market except New York City. In the 6 years before 1975, the number of malpractice suits filed per 100 physicians in California more than doubled.

MICRA has kept costs down. In 1975, California's doctors paid 20 percent of the gross costs of all malpractice insurance premiums in the country. Today, they pay 11 percent of the Nation's total malpractice insurance premiums. Clearly, costs have dropped in comparison with other States.

All over the United States, premiums have grown 505 percent in the past 25 years. California's premiums have grown 167 percent. In other words, premiums have grown three times slower in California than in other States. That alone shows that MICRA is working, regardless of what anyone might say.

Also, because of MICRA, patients get their money 23 percent faster than in States without caps on noneconomic damages. Bottom line: California's malpractice premiums today are one-third to one-half lower, on average, than those in Florida or New York.

Because the California law has proven successful at keeping premiums down--and I know there are those who do not want to believe it; they will say it is some other reason; but I believe it has--I used the law as a departure point for crafting a proposal which I believe is both just and fair and which I believe should stabilize and, over time, reduce premium costs.

I very much appreciate the efforts of Senator Frist and Senator McConnell in working with me to explore this option. I am not going to offer it on the floor today for one reason: Unfortunately, it would not have the necessary votes.

Specifically, my proposal would do the following: It would create a schedule for attorney's fees. It would create a strict statute of limitations, requiring that medical negligence claims be brought within 1 year from the discovery of an injury or within 3 years of the injury's occurrence. It would require a claimant to give a defendant 90 days' notice of his or her intent to file a lawsuit before a claim could actually be filed. It would allow defendants to pay damage awards in periodic installments. It would allow defendants to introduce evidence at trial to show that claimants have already been compensated for their injuries through workers compensation benefits, disability benefits, health insurance, or other payments--that is only fair--and it would permit the recovery of unlimited economic damages.

My proposal would differ from California's law in two key areas: One, noneconomic damages and, two, punitive damages. The California MICRA law has a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages. In contrast, I would propose a $500,000 general cap on noneconomic damages. Today 15 States have caps of $500,000 or less for noneconomic damages. Twelve States have a cap of $500,000 or less on noneconomic damages, and that includes Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Three States have caps of $250,000-or-less and they include Montana, New Hampshire, and California. Thus, 15 States already have caps of $500,000 or lower.

In catastrophic cases, where a victim of malpractice was subject to severe disfigurement, severe disability, or death--in other words, a catastrophic exemption--the cap would be the greater of $2 million or 50,000 times the number of years of the life expectancy of the victim. This really takes into consideration terrible morbidity done to a young child whose life span might be 50 or 60 years more. Clearly, a cap of $250,000 or $500,000 is really not fair to that youngster. Therefore, the catastrophic exemption we would propose would provide the greater of $2 million or 50,000 times the number of years of life expectancy of the victim.

In addition, we would propose a less onerous punitive damages standard than California law. California law is very strict today with respect to a plaintiff's ability to prove punitives under the very high standard of fraud, oppression, or malice. In other words, if you can't prove fraud, oppression, or malice, you can't prove punitive damages. If a doctor is in the middle of surgery and walks out to go to his bank to make a deposit while the patient is under a general anesthetic, in my view, that doctor should have punitive damages brought against him because that clearly is not accepted medical procedure.

California's law is much stricter. You have to prove fraud, oppression, or malice. Under this law, I am not aware of a single case where a plaintiff has obtained punitive damages in California over the past 10 years. So at least in my view, for situations such as the one I just indicated, the California law is too strict in this regard.

Instead we would offer a four-part test where a plaintiff would have to show by clear and convincing evidence--and this was put together based on measures that have passed this Senate in the not too distant past--that

the defendant, one, intended to injure the claimant unrelated to the provision of health care; or two, understood that the claimant was substantially certain to suffer unnecessary injury and, in providing or failing to provide health care services, the defendant deliberately failed to avoid such injury; three, the defendant acted with a conscious flagrant disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of unnecessary injury which the defendant failed to avoid; or four, the defendant acted with a conscious flagrant disregard of acceptable medical practice in such circumstances.

Clearly, the doctor who walked out of a surgery and left a patient under a general anesthetic would fall under this fourth plank. It certainly is a flagrant disregard of acceptable medical practice which would be, you don't go to your bank in the middle of an operation to make a deposit when the patient is under a general anesthetic.

I firmly believe a variant of this type could lead to a compromise in the proposal in the Senate. Why didn't I go ahead with it? Much to my chagrin and, I think, surprise, both the American Medical Association and the California Medical Association rejected this proposal. The AMA contends that despite the fact 15 States have caps of $500,000 or less, they believe that a $500,000 cap is too high and it would not stabilize premiums.

The California Medical Association is opposed to it for a different reason. Although we leave State law in place, whether that State law is retroactively passed or prospectively passed, the CMA felt the State legislature might--I say ``might''--change the $250,000 cap to $500,000. So both of these associations have rejected that proposal which meant I wouldn't have a chance to get the necessary votes on either my side of the aisle or pick up a few votes on the other side of the aisle.

They refused to move from a cap of $250,000 for noneconomic damages in even catastrophic cases. To me this is wrong because a $250,000 cap in 1975, when the California law set this cap, adjusted for inflation was worth $839,000 in 2002. So last year a $250,000 cap, passed in 1975, would be worth $839,000, if passed today. If a figure of $250,000 was adequate in 1975, why couldn't a figure of $500,000, which is lower than the 1975 cap adjusted for inflation, be acceptable this year?

Now if a victim receives $250,000 today, this is equal to $40,000 in 1975. So when California led the Nation by passing the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act and setting a cap for noneconomic damages of $250,000 in 1975, everybody should know that that is worth $40,000 today. In my book, that is unacceptable.

There are many specific instances of why it is unacceptable. Let me share one case. That is Linda McDougal. She is 46. She is a Navy veteran. She is an accountant, a mother. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. Two days later she was told that a mistake was made. She didn't have cancer and the amputation of both her breasts was not necessary.

A pathologist had mistakenly switched her test results with another woman who had cancer. Is this Congress willing to say there should be a cap of $250,000 on noneconomic damages for this kind of mistake? I think not.

A cap on noneconomic damages must take into account severe morbidity produced by a physician's mistake, such as amputating the wrong limb or transfusing a patient with the wrong type of blood.

Unfortunately, because of the opposition of both the American Medical Association and the California Medical Association, I am not proposing an amendment at this time. My purpose was to help physicians and patients, and I deeply believe that a $500,000 noneconomic damage cap, coupled with the catastrophic exception I outlined, would accomplish this, would accomplish it fairly, and would stabilize premiums over the long term.

I also suggest that State laws, where they exist, should prevail. So the California MICRA law, or any other State law, would prevail regardless of whether that State law was already enacted or retroactive.

So, bottom line, I could not get 60 votes for this proposal with the opposition of physicians. So the result may well be an alternative because I don't believe the House bill can pass in the Senate in its present form.

Let me say this. I have given this bill a great deal of thought. I really mean what I say--that I am prepared to support a reform bill. I am prepared to support a cap on noneconomic damages. But it has to be a cap that is realistic in view of today's time. It cannot be a cap that was passed 28 years ago that has an actual value of $40,000 today. So I am hopeful there will be another time and another place when a bill such as the one I have tried to outline might be found to be acceptable. In the interim, I will vote against S. 11. But, again, I stand ready to participate in a solution along the lines I have mentioned.

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