Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to talk about a trip I took last week to the Middle East. I was privileged to travel with a group of colleagues to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. I will discuss it in two parts.

One part is what we saw happening in Iraq and the apprehension, the concerns we all had with the confusion, the chaos that exists there, the continued loss of life among our troops, and the inability to cope with a relatively new form or a new mode of warfare where remote bombs are set off by people who are some distance away from the place of the explosion, seeing a target they particularly want to get to, and the prospect that will continue to be an ever-increasing part of the mechanism of war. It is so tough to fight against that kind of weaponry, that kind of a remote attack.

The people are courageous. They are dedicated. I had a chance to meet with some of our troops. I particularly met with a group from New Jersey. I got the same impression from all with whom I met. These are people who really want to do the right thing. They are not mercenaries. They are there because of the obligation they feel toward resurrecting or helping the revitalizing of Iraq and turning over to them their own responsibilities for governing.

Our people are young. Frankly, even though I served in World War II and was myself young--I was 18 when I enlisted--our military personnel today look different. They seem to be more educated. They seem to be more thoughtful. Their bravery is unquestioned. They are out there doing their duty even though there are risks all over the place which we saw in abundance.

We left Iraq about an hour before the explosion took place at the hotel. We were not at the hotel, but we were nearby. We were in the air when the bomb went off. It was simply, if I can say that, a replay of what happens every day there, whether it is Iraqis being killed or Americans being killed or coalition troops being killed. The death and the violence is ever present.

I believe we are on a path to try to make it right, but what we have to recognize is that we are not free to leave, even though there is a proposal that goes into place on July 1 for a governing council made up of Iraqis that will purportedly take over. I say ``purportedly'' not because I am disdainful of the effort--I am not at all--but for the lack of readiness for governing.

They need 73,000 policemen, for instance, and they have in the low twenties in uniform now. It is very hard to control the chaos, the turbulence, and the confrontations that

occur with such a small police force. It is going to take a long time, maybe a couple of years, to get the police force to the size they need. They also need an army.

What is the conclusion? The conclusion is we cannot leave there, and we have to face up to it. There are 130,000 troops coming in to replace existing personnel on the ground who have been there long enough to be rotated. Nobody believes we are going to be able to pack our bags on July 2 and start to go home. We are going to be there a long time, and I hope we will have the courage to face up to the funding necessary and put it in the budget and say what it is we are doing there.

We are adding to the total indebtedness of the country, but yet we hide it. We appropriated $166 billion thus far, and it looks as if we are going to have a supplemental request for $50 billion to $75 billion in the not too distant future, and it is on the side.

We have to support our people. You have no idea how disappointing it is when I talk to young people who are serving. I said: If you can be totally candid with me, tell me what your complaint is. Is it the accommodations? Is it where you live? Is it how you live? Is it the food you get? No, no, no.

One young man, a captain, said to me: Mr. Senator, I will tell you what bothers me. I see some of our coalition friends, people who are helping us in this quest of ours, who have the latest in bulletproof vests. The ones we have are not as good and they do not protect us as well as they should.

We have seen that in the papers, but here when you come face to face, you see the faces of people who are wearing those vests, who are trying to protect themselves while they do their duty, I can tell you this: Five Senators--all of us--were wearing the latest in flak gear. It was a sad commentary on where things are to hear them say they do not have it.

They point to their weapons. I think they were M-16s. I carried a Carbine when I was in the Army, so that is not a familiar weapon to me. They said the coalition people had better, newer rifles, lighter, more efficient. Why should that happen? They needed trucks and armored vehicles, and they did not have them. Why should that happen? When we look in the paper, just yesterday, and see the problem is in the transportation of the materials to Iraq, that the manufacture of these products has taken place but we can't get the materials there, it is very disappointing. I hope we will be able to do something to accelerate the pace of providing the protective gear and the equipment they need.

Today I want to discuss another part of the trip. The volatile situation in Israel--the Middle East altogether--was difficult to witness. We went to Israel and the other places I mentioned--the Palestinian territories, et cetera.

The other visit was taking place with the Prime Minister of Israel and a few people from his staff. Suddenly activity took place and people were running out and coming back with notes. The Prime Minister of Israel reported to us: We have just had a suicide bombing in Ashdod, which is a port community in Israel, and 10 people were killed and many more wounded.

I watched this man, who I have known over the years, deflate and age in years in just a few minutes, whipped by the knowledge that more of his citizens, innocent civilians, had been killed.

I volunteered the notion that he may want to adjourn the meeting and take care of the business he had to take care of, the duties he had to deal with. He said, no, as Prime Minister of the Jewish state, unfortunately, we learn to live with adversity and we must carry on, so we will carry on the meeting.

It was a painful thing to witness. It happens so frequently. We are in a state of shock when we hear it and see it, and I know the pain that must go through their community because it affects so many people. It is the dead, the injured, their friends, their families, their fellow workers, and those with whom they serve in the military. The pain is an excruciating whirlpool, it touches so many people. When we look at that, we say, what is it that permits this kind of slaughter of innocent people to take place?

Now we hear the shrieking about the assassination, we will call it that directly, of Sheikh Yassin, the man who invented Hamas and all the horrible deeds they carried out. This is after the third suicide bombing attack in Israel in the year 2004. The death toll now stands at 941 Israelis killed by terrorism since the start of the intifada in September of 2000.

Israel is a tiny country with a small population of 6.3 million people. To put the terrorist toll in perspective, if the United States were to suffer such a wave of terror attacks, over 50,000 Americans would be dead, almost the same number we lost over 10 years in Vietnam, 58,000. In Britain, it would have translated into approximately 9,000 fatalities. Imagine the impact that has in this single day when 10 people are killed from that attack. It is the equivalent of 500 people. If we had a killing in 1 day of 500 people by terrorists, we would be, as we were in Vietnam, in national mourning. These relative numbers underscore the impact of terrorism on the Israelis.

Israel has seen 130 attempted suicide bombings since September 2000. In the latest incident, 10 Israelis lost their lives, leaving behind dozens of children, grandchildren, spouses, parents and, as I said, friends and workers and those with whom they served in the military.

As I looked at the pictures in the papers of the 10 victims, most of whom were under 40, with families to support, I asked myself: What could it take for 2 young Palestinian kids, 17 years old, to be capable of perpetrating such atrocities against innocents?

One of the main reasons that takes place, in my view, is the Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has not only failed to rein in the terrorists but he is actively supporting a culture that incites young people to commit such acts. Arafat's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack, along with Hamas. They take pleasure in this. Large crowds of Palestinians in the West Bank celebrated the attacks by honking their car horns, firing guns into the air and distributing candy to passersby for the killing of innocent people. The Palestinian Authority did nothing to stop these celebrations.

By the way, I have never heard of a celebration taking place, with all the violence that has been visited upon Israel, when they killed some Palestinians, never. As a matter of fact, there are times when soldiers in the Israeli army have refused to serve, saying their conscience disturbed them such they did not want to serve in those territories.

There have been many times when Israeli civilians or soldiers have been punished for attacks on Palestinians within their community. That is the difference in the cultures. One culture celebrates death and destruction, and the other mourns the victims on both sides of the boundary.

The reality is Yasser Arafat has instituted a deliberate policy of preaching and encouraging hate. Books they have in the school system teach them to hate the Israelis, to hate the Jews. For example, on March 13, 2004, Palestinian Authority-controlled television carried a speech by a sheikh in Gaza in which he said the Jews are the sons of apes and pigs and the extremists and terrorists who deserve death while we deserve life since we have a just cause.

I was on a TV program one day with a representative of the Arab organization here, and I said this violence has to stop; you have to come to some peaceful arrangement, some detente. He said: Not as long as the occupation continues.

He was an American of Palestinian heritage. So I said, well, would you say Native Americans living in America, people who had their country wrested from them in the late 1600s, early 1700s, would have the justification to strap bombs on their backs and go into the Federal Reserve Bank or the Supreme Court or places such as that and blow them up and say this is an occupation?

The Presiding Officer is a man of learning and experience, and I would ask: How many times have borders moved as a result of combat, as a result of war? It has happened many times. Those adjustments remain in many instances.

When we look at the reason for this killing, instead of saying stop it, once and for all, Arafat should speak out and say, stop the killing. We should

not lend him a hand of help, not a nickel's worth of assistance or anything else until he gives up that post and turns it over to people.

We met with the finance minister from the Palestinian Authority. He was a reasonable individual, wanting to make peace, wanting to stop the violence. The Palestinians cry as much as the Israelis cry when they lose a son or a daughter. The false belief they are going to some kind of martyrdom does not relieve them of the sadness of the loss of a family member.

We learned something else. There was an emergency meeting in Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah following the suicide bombing at the Ashdod port. Arafat refused his cabinet's call to use Palestinian security forces against terror organizations.

Palestinian cabinet ministers, such as the interior minister and the commander of the national security forces, pleaded with him to act against Hamas and Fatah's military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. He refused to intervene. He is an accomplice in these killings no matter how they try to deny it. He provides no useful service to his ``leadership in the Palestinian community.'' He incites them to violence.

We went to Syria, and all President Assad wanted to talk about was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are borders, 600-mile borders. He couldn't stop the people from crossing the border. We know who is crossing the border. He didn't know. He said there were people in innocent travel, business, recreation, family, et cetera. Meanwhile, terrorists are flooding into Iraq, many of them coming across the Syrian border.

That is what happens there. It is the corrupt leadership that has people believing the way out is to kill themselves and to kill Israelis and other innocent people. We don't know what the reach is. To the train bombing in Spain or other acts of violence in other parts of the world? But this notion that violence is an acceptable form of behavior is outrageous, and Arafat is allowing Palestinian society to be undermined and destroyed by a reign of terror. He has chosen to allow terrorism to flourish. Because of Arafat's lack of action, not only are Israeli children being orphaned and Israeli society terrorized, but also the Palestinian people's dream of living in a secure, free, and vibrant state is being destroyed.

I still believe all roads and roadmaps lead to a two-state solution. When I was in the region last week, I urged the Israeli leadership to try to meet and resume direct contacts with Palestinian officials in order to try to make progress toward a settlement. I told Prime Minister Sharon that his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip was a good start. Such a withdrawal, however, must be done in coordination with Palestinian and international officials to ensure there is a viable infrastructure to govern the people and to prevent Hamas and the Islamic Jihad from overrunning the Gaza Strip.

I also encouraged the Israeli Prime Minister to work with the international community to resume progress on the roadmap and to begin looking at how to withdraw remote Jewish settlements from the West Bank as well as from the Gaza Strip. Yet any real progress on the roadmap depends on the speedy emergence of new Palestinian leaders who realize that a healthy Palestinian state cannot be built on a foundation of terror and violence. On this point, there should be no concessions, no flexibility, no turning a blind eye.

Today we see pictures of angry mobs in the Arab world protesting the death of Sheik Yassin, the head of Hamas. The Israeli military's strategy of targeted assassinations is questionable and controversial. But I have to ask my colleagues, if someone is standing in your kid's schoolyard with a gun in his hand, what would you do? Would you meet with him and confer about what he ought to do or would you take advantage of the opportunity of the moment and abolish the threat? Do you eliminate the threat immediately or abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules when dealing with terrorists? These are difficult questions, but given the lack of real leadership on the Palestinian side, the Israelis are trying to find the best way to protect their population from terror.

Peace in the Middle East begins with the removal of Arafat from power. It is a step the Palestinians must take if they want to move their nation forward. Peace will not be obtained through terror but only through peaceful negotiation. It is something Yasser Arafat clearly does not understand, but we have to help him understand. We can't give him any other help of any kind. As a matter of fact, whatever sanctions we can put on him and his corrupt government, we ought to do it.

It is very painful to witness, I understand, for those who are engaged in the innocent pursuit of life, to suddenly come face to face with someone who has been encouraged to give up his life. What kind of false notion is this, that somehow or other you get rewarded for losing a son or daughter and get a financial reward? I think what we ought to do is try to trace those financial rewards to the countries that offer them. Maybe friends like Saudi Arabia ought to step up and do their share to not permit this to happen, to not permit these militant groups to exist in their society.

I can tell you one thing. After our visit there, I am more convinced than ever that we must protect Israel no matter what we have to do to see that she survives. It is not because we just love those people. It is because we love the American people. It is because we want to protect America's interests. It is because we don't want to have American troops in the middle of that mad world, with corrupt governments who siphon off the wealth of their countries while their people in those communities starve and have no opportunity for themselves.

That is the interest I see we have in a strong Israel. It is not just the informational exchange. That is important. But it is the fact of Israel sitting there as a reminder to those corrupt countries, and it is an extension of democracy. It is not an extension of the United States. It is not the 51st State. It is an extension of democracy, and it shows what people can do when they can take a malaria-ridden nation and change it into a thriving agricultural and scientific nation. That is the example that has to be set and that is the one that has to be understood and we ought not to equivocate and say there is violence on both sides. That is the wrong message. You can't say that because that only encourages terrorism. It says violence on one side begets violence on the other side.

I said it before. I have never heard an Israeli, and I know many, nor have I ever seen the country, celebrate the death of children on the other side of the boundary. I have never seen them celebrate when men, women, and children who are innocent are killed--never.

But in the Palestinian community they celebrate by shooting off guns and handing out candy to kids and parading, happy that they have taken someone out of the family, a child, a sister or brother, mother, father--outrageous. Outrageous.

We have to stand steadfast in our support of Israel. We have to insist that Arafat step aside and provide them the right leadership, and there is leadership there but they don't have a chance to operate because he robs them of that opportunity.

It was a wonderful opportunity we had to see what was taking place there and be able to report back and shape our thinking based on the need.

Support our troops. Commend them for what it is that they do in accordance with the tenets of democracy and ultimately decency. We can argue whether we should be there or we should not be there, but we are there and we have to support those people as fully as we can, everyone who wears a uniform. We have to be proud of them. They do their duty splendidly.

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

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma. We would like to have 20 minutes on each side.

I thank the Chair.

I want to offer an amendment for myself, Senator Boxer, Senator Jeffords, and Senator Corzine.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from North Dakota for the generous offer he has made to let me have time to describe this very important amendment.

As I said, I will offer this amendment for myself and Senators Boxer, Jeffords, and Corzine. Other cosponsors include Senators Lieberman, Biden, Durbin, Clinton, Leahy, Cantwell, Feingold, and Kennedy.

My amendment would readjust the budget resolution so we can reauthorize the Superfund corporate fee. There are many reasons why this is an urgent matter and the right thing to do.

When Congress created Superfund, the operating principle was the polluter should pay.

I ask that the Chair remind me when 10 minutes of my time have been used, please.

The Superfund program was created because of a number of blighted toxic sites that were located in cities and towns across the country, places in Montana and Nebraska and Maine and New Jersey. New Jersey had over 100 sites listed on the Superfund list. Today 900 sites have been cleaned up, turned over to practical use in these communities where often land is precious. To be able to get space that was occupied by nothing but toxic materials can create quite a difference in the health and the well-being of a community.

We started off by saying the people who polluted the area should pay for its cleanup. It was reviewed in the courts and it was challenged and debated all over the place. The fact is, it worked. In 1980, Superfund was authorized. In 1986, we reauthorized the collection of corporate fees paid by polluters that would be placed in the Superfund trust fund to pay for the cleanup of these so-called orphan or abandoned sites. These are the sites for which an actual polluter can be found. That way, all the taxpayers would not be stuck with the bill for a mess caused by corporate polluters.

Editorials and polls nationwide repeatedly showed that Americans want the polluting corporations, not the taxpayers, to pay for the cleanup of properties contaminated with dangerous chemicals. In a March 9 editorial, this week, the Philadelphia Inquirer said:

The Senate should put the burden back where it belongs: on

polluters.

Unfortunately, now the trust fund is flat broke and our citizens are feeling the impact. They are discouraged by the fact these toxic sites are going to continue to be in the middle of their communities and unusable for any productive purpose. Some sites, which should be cleaned up in 3 or 4 years, are instead now taking 9 or 10 years because the funding isn't there. That means youngsters living next to a toxic wastesite could be graduated from high school by the time the site is decontaminated. There are children and families in America living around the corner from toxic dump sites all over the place. It is inexcusable.

As my colleagues know, such exposure to toxic chemicals cannot be undone. EPA scientists report that small children are 10 times more likely than adults to develop cancer when exposed to chemicals. Our children are the most vulnerable among us. They are especially susceptible to dioxin, arsenic, DDT, and brain-damaging heavy metals such as lead and mercury, which are often found in the soil and ground water at these Superfund sites. Across the country, each site we clean up--and so far, we successfully cleaned up more than 900 sites--reduces the health risks to our children and families. Parents don't want to raise their kids under the shadow of a toxic waste site, only to worry about the high risk for cancer, birth defects, and other diseases.

The Superfund Program needs additional revenues now. Just as our mounting debt is slowing the economy, our failure to adequately fund Superfund is slowing toxic cleanups to a crawl. The administration claims that it supports the ``polluter-pays'' principle and ``aggressively'' cleans up Superfund sites, but the facts speak otherwise.

This year taxpayers will be asked to bear virtually the entire cost of cleaning up abandoned Superfund sites. In the President's fiscal year 2005 budget, the Superfund trust fund column shows a zero--the tank is empty. As we look at the timeframe, we can see from 1996, when we had over $3 billion available in the Superfund treasury, almost $4 billion, now, because we have not replenished it, we have used it, slowed the process of cleanups, finally in 2003 the fund is down to zero.

If the people in the communities want those sites cleaned up, they are going to have to pay for it. All the taxpayers will have to pay. Superfund is not even a fund anymore. There is nothing in it.

It is shameful what the President and this Congress have done to the Superfund. They have emptied it and told polluters: Don't worry, we will make everyone else pay for the mess our friendly contributors and political allies created. In 1986, taxpayers paid only a small portion, 8 percent, of orphan site cleanups. In 1995, only 17 percent of these costs came from general revenues. Today, the number is almost 100 percent. All taxpayers have taken on the burden of paying for what polluters should be paying.

The GAO recently reported that funding for the Superfund Program has fallen by 35 percent in the last decade. It was underfunded by at least $175 million in 2003. What does that say? It says that whatever work is not going on, because it is underfunded, the taxpayers are going to pay for it.

It is outrageous to suggest that the taxpayers ought to pay for the misdeeds of the corporations that polluted the area. If they pollute it, they ought to clean it up and pay for it. What we are talking about is a fee that spreads across business lines, where chemicals are manufactured, and oil and gasoline products are handled.

Yet one of four Americans, and 10 million children, still live within 4 miles of a Superfund site. That statistic does not include the 40,000 hazardous waste sites which have not made it onto the Nation's priority list. The National Priorities List has something like 1,300 listings. These are the especially toxic and dangerous sites--large sites typically.

Fewer sites are being listed, and many of those listed are not receiving sufficient funding. One Superfund manager in my State of New Jersey said this: EPA is strangling the program.

Here are the facts: The rate of site cleanup has fallen by 50 percent under this administration. In other words, they allowed, deliberately, these sites to rot where they are and that threatens the people who live in the nearby vicinities.

The listing of new sites on the National Priorities List has fallen by 23 percent. There is no action there. We cannot pay our bills. A lot of the people who are with the EPA doing that kind of work have seen the end of their jobs in sight and they don't want to stay there. They want to look to see what else is a prospect for them and their family.

I thank the Chair. I say to my colleague, since I am on the floor, I will allot myself another

3 or 4 minutes before I turn the microphone over to the Senator from Vermont.

Even when a site finally makes it onto the NPL, it will take 11 years, on average, to actually decontaminate this site.

My State, unfortunately, has the second highest number of Superfund sites, second only to California. We have 113 Superfund sites, and more sites are waiting to be listed. My amendment would be the first step toward a solution. It would also reduce the budget deficit by $8.3 billion over 5 years. If you spread the cost around, it becomes infinitesimally small. It has been calculated that two-tenths of a cent on a gallon of gas would be the cost to taxpayers generally. It is a small, but appropriate, step for us to take for fiscal sanity. Reinstating the polluter-pays principle is fair. It has a proven track record.

I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from Vermont.

How much time remains of the time that was given to me?

Mr. President, what we are looking at is a way to relieve the taxpayers of having to come up with $8.3 billion, relieving pressure on the budget to the extent of the $8.3 billion.

We have so many sites in so many places, as I earlier discussed, in States such as Montana, Nebraska, and Maine. Some of these sites are huge. We see the same situation in Utah. I cannot believe that in this body at this time we would not say the communities across the country are being burdened by all kinds of discontinued programs, by all kinds of reductions in grants that went to the communities. A lot of the programs have been absorbed into grants, single grants, and let the communities use whatever they can for whatever they choose to but always at a diminished rate. This is a chance to set the record straight and let the public know this administration does not really care about what happens in these communities; that this administration would rather say to their friends, the polluters, many of which are listed on the contributors list for the campaign: Listen, we excuse you big companies from the dirt and the mess you made in these communities; we forgive you, but we will not pay it any other way except through the taxpayers' pockets.

This is a chance to set the record straight. I submit that every Senator who casts a vote against this amendment is saying to the people in his or her State: It is too bad you have those polluted sites. So what. Our friends, the companies that created this pollution, are closer to us than you, the citizens, the constituents in our States and in our country.

It is time we face up to the reality. We had a program that was excellent. It began in 1980. I came to the Senate in 1982. I followed it very closely and worked very hard on its reauthorization, which took place a couple of times. The program was going well. Cleanups were being done faster. People felt more secure about their jobs, those who worked to effect these cleanups, because they could see something ahead of them in terms of their own family security and their own needs.

When these people leave, it will be very hard to find the skills and the specialities that are required to continue this work. They will go, and I do not blame them for going. I am sure if it came to my own family and I had to support them through my job in my profession, I would say that is my first obligation. It is not to take care of the cleanup of the polluted sites. The President does not care about it. Our friends on the other side of the aisle do not care about it. One wonders how cynical people have become about voting, about putting their trust in politicians, their trust diminishes considerably, except now when people are beginning to feel the pressure of job scarcity, of termination of health plans, and retirement plans at risk. It is a whole different world.

I submit that when the vote finally comes on this amendment, the people who are going to vote against it have to examine their conscience very closely to make sure they are doing the right thing for their communities and for their States.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call my amendment up, which was debated earlier. It is amendment No. 2703.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be sequenced following the Dorgan amendment No. 2793, and that there be 2 minutes remaining for debate at that time with respect to the amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have an amendment to reinstate the Superfund tax that was in place for so many years and produced a very successful program.

It has been said that I want to tax people. Don't believe that this is a tax-free exchange, as we heard from the Senator from Oklahoma before when he accused me of loving taxes. He loves taxes, but he wants to put it on the average citizen. He does not want the polluters to pay. He said that very directly.

He raised a question rhetorically, I guess, that asked: Who among those who are accused of polluting did not pay their fair share? I will tell you one. Halliburton. Halliburton never pays their fair share where they can get it and owes the Defense Department $61 million in overcharges; Halliburton which manages to put their business offshore so they escape taxes.

Is that the example we want to look at, not whether the people who have been paying the taxes, the average working person, will pay two- tenths of a cent more per gallon?

I am.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment is designed to make clear to the American people what it is we do here tonight. It is far from certain all the Members of the Senate are totally familiar with everything that is enmeshed in the arcane language and complicated processes in this budget resolution.

Our amendment says as we see deficits hemorrhaging and the debt limit stretched to $7.4 trillion, we want to be certain it is known this budget bill carries hidden in its mystical language an increase of $664 billion with instruction to the Senate and the House to go up to a total of $8 trillion on the debt limit; therefore, virtually automatically permitting more borrowing to take place without review and direct approval.

Can my colleagues imagine how the American people will feel if tonight we add $2,400 worth of debt to each and every one of them and give them in exchange an average of $200 in tax relief? Imagine, $2,400 worth of debt and $200 worth of cash. It makes Shylock look like an amateur.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment so we can defer any attempt to increase our debt limit unless it is clear to all what we are going to do by taking our debt limit through the roof. I hope we can get support for this so we can have an intelligent debate specifically on the debt limit at a later time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, my good friend from South Carolina, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, has been a tireless and influential advocate for passenger rail, and his leadership is unparalleled on this issue. Although my friend Senator Conrad, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, has pointed out that this budget does not explicitly provide for adequate funding for Amtrak, I am hopeful that Senator Hollings' efforts will lead to a long-term funding source for the railroad so that it may finally take advantage of efficient, multi-year planning and realize additional efficiencies on its system. The attacks on 9/11 taught us a valuable lesson concerning transportation options, and we need to heed that lesson so we do not find ourselves in a situation again where options for travelers are severely limited and our economy suffers because of it.

Last year, the Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for Amtrak--the highest amount ever. Also last year, Amtrak carried over 24 million passengers--their highest amount ever. I am quite certain this is no coincidence. It is also no coincidence that this record was achieved during the first full year under the leadership of Mr. Gunn. He is doing a remarkable job of improving the reliability of the railroad, and his success is a success shared by our Nation as a whole.

In the meantime, given the funding levels we are finally providing to Amtrak, I am pleased that my colleagues are seeing that we can no longer nickel-and-dime our national passenger railroad. I hope that we can do the right thing to continue to ensure that

Amtrak is given the resources it needs to continue on its path to a state-of-good-repair.

yucca mountain

Mr. President, I rise today to submit a resolution expressing the Sense of the Senate that the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Commission should issue a postage stamp honoring Diwali.

Diwali, known colloquially as the ``festival of light,'' is celebrated annually in Indian communities worldwide. Diwali marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year and signifies the renewal of life for all. Traditionally lasting five days, it is common practice for celebrants to light small oil lamps, called diyas, and place them around the home and pray for health, knowledge, and peace. Light represents the triumph of good over evil, and signifies optimism for the future.

Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Eid have already been recognized on United States postage stamps. It would be appropriate to add Diwali to this distinguished list. It is a holiday about community, family, and hope for the future--qualities the Senate should highlight and embrace.

S. Res. 318

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) a postage stamp should be issued by the United States

Postal Service in commemoration of Diwali, a festival

celebrated by people of Indian origin; and

(2) the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee should recommend

to the Postmaster General that such a stamp be issued.

I would like about 20 minutes, if I may.

Mr. President, I have listened to this debate with interest. Frankly, if this were a theater, which it often is, I would still be looking for the direction that this play is going to take.

When we look at the budget resolution before us, I think what we are seeing is downright deception. I think it is fair to say that those who look at this budget resolution with favor and try to make the case for it are doing it, but I think it has a hollow ring to it.

There are a number of games being played, as our friends on the other side present their picture of this new budget. By way of example, there is 1 year of relief from the AMT, the alternative minimum tax, included in their calculation. This AMT will cost something over $650 billion to fix for a 10-year-period.

There is only $23 billion included for this year. There is only 1 year of funding for continued military operations in the war against terrorism.

All Members know we speculate about where we will be going with our needs in Iraq. It hardly seems reasonable to put out a $30 billion figure that represents a single year when over a 10-year-period it is believed it will cost $280 billion.

The question is, What kind of accounting are we seeing in this budgeting? Is the Bush administration following the practices we are seeing in the corporate world? The practices getting so much criticism, the audit reports on Enron and Tyco and

WorldCom, are we following their example? Or perhaps they learned their accounting from the actions of our Government, which is making promises that are so outrageous they will never be kept--cannot be met? If we had a stock issued, I would say they were trying to push the stock price; perhaps they are, but it is called electioneering.

It cannot be done. The people on their way to prosecution, the leadership in Tyco, Enron, or WorldCom, who are now being punished for their deception, have learned you can say all you want but when it comes time to evaluating, it has to be in practical terms.

What happened? I served as the ranking member of the Budget Committee during the period we moved from deficits to surpluses. I and so many others were proud of our accomplishments. That is why it is so disturbing for me to see all of our hard work undone. I tip my hat to our colleague from North Dakota who is now the ranking member of the Budget Committee for his hard work. It is never an easy assignment. It is fair to say that we feel compelled on our side to tell it like it is. What is going on is shameful.

Consideration of this budget resolution also provides a much needed opportunity to review the economic record of this administration. Unfortunately, the report card does not show a passing grade. We see it in the confidence that is lost by the public across this country. Why has the confidence been lost? Because over 2 million jobs have been lost and people feel that.

Last Thursday or Friday we had a hearing at the Democratic Policy Committee where we had unemployed workers talk about what life is like after losing a job. They talked about a small company in Michigan where some 2,700 people were employed in a town of about 9,000. The company, Electrolux, is packing their bags and going to Mexico.

The man who worked there for 23 years described the personal impact it had on him. He said: I have a daughter in college. I have two kids following. I had health care taken care of. I paid my mortgage. I did everything I could for my family, held my head high, walked with dignity. Now my life has retreated into a shameful morass. He could barely talk at one point because he was choking with tears.

He asked: What has happened? He said if a cyclone hit, the damage would not be any less than closing this factory. Everything, the infrastructure, the storekeepers, the gasoline station, everyone is going to feel this impact.

That does not affect what is happening in this administration. President Bush will be the first President to preside over a net job loss since Herbert Hoover was in office during the Depression. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am one of those people who lived through Herbert Hoover's presidency. You have to live a long time because Herbert Hoover was President at the end of the 1920s. He brought panic and havoc to our society, our country.

It is astonishing, but there are fewer people at work today than when George W. Bush was sworn in. Yet the country has grown substantially; the population has increased.

To make matters worse, President Bush was given a 10-year surplus estimate of $5.6 trillion. Now CBO is projecting--and we do not hear anyone challenging it--CBO is projecting a $3.5 trillion Bush deficit for the same period. That is a reversal of fortune of almost $9 trillion. That change in direction is so gigantic, it cannot be happenstance. It cannot be attributed to carelessness. It can only be due to recklessness or by plan.

The plan is a grand scheme to shift the size of Government--this has been pledged by this administration--and the functioning of our Government while effecting a transfer of wealth hardly seen in contemporary times, in a way often seen in the days of monarchies or revolution, the transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the wealthy.

I saw a statistic the other day in the newspaper that said in 1977, the top 1 percent of the wage earners of this country earned as much as the 49 percent at the lower end of the wage scale. In reverse terms, if you took accumulated earnings of 49 percent of our people and put it in a pot, it would have to be a giant pot, it would equal the 1 percent of the people on the top end, people who had all of the means they needed. Worse, after 22 years, in 1999, that ratio shifted to 1 percent earning what 55 percent of the people earn; 55 percent all lumping their wages all together equals what 1 percent of our population is earning.

Substantial reductions in programs will directly affect people's incomes. If they cannot afford to get the babysitters, if they cannot afford to educate their children, if they cannot afford to take care of their wellness, if they cannot afford to see their health care needs are taken care of, that is a cut in income. It is deliberate. Otherwise, we would not have had a debate on whether overtime ought to be stripped away from people who work hard and who depend on overtime as part of their ordinary compensation. But, no, we lost that debate here because the Republicans in the House did not want to go along with it.

When we look at the budget, we cannot look at this budget out of the context of where we are as a society. Jobs are necessary. It is important we stop outsourcing our opportunity to create more jobs and more income. It is not a happy picture.

Republican irresponsibility with regard to the Federal budget is threatening the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare, right as the first cohort of baby boomers gets close to retirement age.

Everybody knows if your expenses are higher than your income, there is only one way to meet your obligations, and that is, to borrow it. That is what we have done. What we are saying to people across the country is: Don't watch your spending. Just go ahead and borrow it. Does that sound like good advice to kids who are growing up and learning? I do not think so. Borrow it. Borrow it from Social Security. Borrow it from Medicare. That is what you do.

The fact that it could totally obliterate the ability of these programs to carry on in future years does not seem to strike home, not as long as we can give tax cuts to ``fat cats.'' I speak as someone who has had the good fortune of having been in business and having had a success. I am going to get a tax break, I am told, of substantial proportion.

I do not want to be a showoff. I do not want that tax cut because that is hardly a legacy that means anything to my children. I have 10 grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 10. So their lives are way out in front of them. What would I want to do, more than anything, for those grandchildren of mine? It is to have a country that is stable, that is harmonious, where people are getting along, where everybody has a chance, where jobs are available, where when they get to retirement age they know Social Security will be there for them, where they know their health care and their children's health care can be taken care of. That, to me, is the legacy I would best and all of us would best leave our children.

For me to take a tax cut, for others here who have been financially successful to take a tax cut, while the country is bleeding financially, while we steal it from Social Security and Medicare and other programs, while only half the 1.6 million kids who are eligible for Head Start are enrolled--I took a minute today to learn a little more about Head Start.

Head Start is for little kids who do not have the chance to understand what learning is about, maybe because they come from poverty-stricken homes, or perhaps they have a single parent, or maybe there is not even a parent in the house, maybe they live with grandparents. It is a program that teaches them there is more ahead in life than they see in their own homes. It teaches them it is good to learn. It teaches them when they get to school--and these are kids who are 3, 4, 5 years old--learning is a good objective. It teaches them something else, that there is a place where they can get some nutrition, get a meal or two, while they are in the care of those who are running the Head Start Program.

It also says something else to them: If you feel sick, you can see a nurse or a doctor. But even as you grow, what else can happen is you can get care for your wellness. We can see things that might attack you physically, diseases that are threatening. You can get injections or inoculations, and you can get a medication that will help the child grow and develop.

Mr. President, hundreds of thousands of those kids are going to lose their programs because ``fat cats,'' people who earn, on average, $1,000,000 a year, or the top asset holders in this country of ours, will get a $100,000 tax cut. And it does not mean anything. When you are worth $10 million, $100,000 is not a difference in your life. So to do that and take away care for hundreds of thousands of children in Head Start is outrageous.

We have other silly things going on. We decided in the budget we would get rid of 2,000 meat inspectors, when we have mad cow running around and chickens dying of disease. Yes, cut down on the number of people who are doing meat inspections. Take 25,000 cops off the street who are now in the COPS Program.

I was in communities in New Jersey talking about what it means for a community with a small police department to lose two, three, five, six cops who are there on the Federal program, to lose them and their law enforcement efforts as we try to fight crime and be on the alert for terrorism.

It says over 20,000 veterans, as a result of that tax cut for that ``fat cat''--it almost has a rhyme, but there is no reason to it--it means 20,000-plus veterans will lose their health care.

I had the good fortune to serve in the Army in World War II a long time ago in the European theater, and I know this: The people who count the most on the Government's promises are those who serve us so gallantly in the military.

We had a visit the other night to Walter Reed Hospital and talked to people who have been severely wounded, some with the loss of a limb, or even the loss of two limbs. One young man I spoke to was 23 years old. What is the prospect for his life? He will get a prosthesis that will help him get along, but we have to make sure the Medicare we give him is the best we can possibly do. But in this budget, there are cuts in VA health programs.

The administration will not take responsibility for the problems I have just outlined. They do not even acknowledge these problems exist. The Republican solution is to hide the direction and the cuts in vital programs and hope no one is going to notice or deceive people with sleight-of-hand tricks, like starting a purportedly good----

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, can I have 10 more minutes?

I thank my colleague from North Dakota.

We take a program such as the Medicare program that belted its way through this House, that made empty promises to people--but they are going to pay more. Everybody knows it. It is going to cost more, and they are going to get less.

There is a battle about whether the administration can send out circulars that purport to describe the benefits of this health care program. It is an election campaign distribution. We understand 36 million copies of a pretty circular, showing someone healthy and praising Medicare, are going out across the country. But they do not start the program until 2006. Why is 2006 a magic number? Because in 2004, as we all know, there is a big-time election, and we do not want to have an election after the new Medicare program has started because when people see it in action, they are going to be angry, they are going to be sore. They will not want to vote for anybody who is responsible for that program being put in place.

We keep hearing that jobs are coming back. But the cold, hard facts contradict this claim. The President trumpets the fact that 364,000 jobs have been created since August. He says it is great news. But the economy would have had to create over 1 million jobs just to keep pace with new entrants into the labor force.

The President says this trickle of new jobs, which includes just 21,000 in February--by the way, 20,000 of those are Government jobs--is proof that his tax cuts are working. They are not working. In May of 2003, the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the CEA, said the economy would create more than 2 million jobs in the first 7 months after the tax cut was enacted. We happen to be short, just missed a little. We are only 1.7 million jobs short. The tax cuts are not creating jobs. They are creating record budget deficits.

What is the solution? Some of my Republican colleagues wish to recreate reality. They now say we have been using the wrong employment statistics. They want to use the so-called household survey, not the payroll survey, which most economists, including Alan Greenspan, agree is the proper measure. He said:

Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data . . . which you have to follow.

As our friend and former colleague, Pat Moynihan, used to say: Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not entitled to their own facts.

We all would be better off if this administration and its allies in Congress would stop playing games to make the employment situation seem better than it really is. The bottom line is, 8 million Americans want to work but can't find a job.

Another example of the Republicans' utter inability to look at the facts squarely: Budget deficits. Putting President Bush and fiscal responsibility into the same sentence, frankly, is a challenge. President Bush has broken his father's dubious record by racking up the biggest deficits in our country's history.

Initially he told us in 2001:

We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget

deficits.

What a statement that is. Then he said in 2002:

Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-

term.

Now the President boldly says: Well, we will halve the budget deficit in the next 5 years.

There are not a lot of believers about to support that.

In 2003, he had the audacity to say:

We will not pass our problems on to future generations.

Boy, if that was coming from a company with listed stock, I wouldn't buy that stock, I will tell you. If we were depending on those kinds of statements to make our way, we would be sitting with Martha Stewart someplace, suffering the same consequence. Not a single forecaster sees a surplus anywhere in our future. In fact, as baby boomers begin to retire, the Bush budget deficit is set to skyrocket to 10 percent of gross domestic product and more over the next few decades. This deficit is huge by any standard, and it is growing by more than $2 billion each and every day, which explains why our outstanding public debt has soared above $7 trillion for the first time in our Nation's history.

Some are saying deficits are due to the war on terror. The only problem with that argument is we could eliminate the entire Defense Department and the entire Homeland Security Department and we still wouldn't get rid of the deficit. Other Republicans are saying the deficit is due to rising discretionary spending. That is wrong. Even if we eliminated every penny of domestic discretionary spending--that is virtually the entire Government--we still would not get rid of the budget deficit.

For the most part, the deficits have been caused by massive tax breaks skewed to the wealthiest Americans, pure and simple.

The most cynical tactic this administration has used is their repeated attempt to blame the economic mess they have created on the previous administration. Again and again and again, we hear them say: President Bush inherited the recession. They say this knowing full well the recession began in March of 2001. That is according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end. As the saying goes: Facts are stubborn things.

The Republicans also argue that 9/11 caused the recession. Of course, claiming that the recession began under President Clinton and that 9/11 caused it are mutually contradictory and flat out wrong. These are some of the strategies of the present President, administration officials, and Republicans in

Congress to mislead the American people, to disguise the facts, to distort reality, to pretend they are not responsible for the worst economy in years.

The American people are smarter than to believe the administration's propaganda machine. They know they can't find jobs. They know deficits will hurt the economy. They know their Social Security is in jeopardy.

Here is some truth: America simply cannot afford these ruinous economic and fiscal policies any longer. We need a drastic change of course, and we need it soon. This budget resolution would be a good place to start.

I urge adoption of the amendment offered by my friend from North Dakota. I think we ought to have a 60-vote requirement for any more deficit-increasing tax cuts that are to be made.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator from Oklahoma yield for a question?

Is the Senator aware of the fact that when President Roosevelt took over, we had a 22-percent unemployment problem in 1933? He succeeded in bringing unemployment down through Government programs, through all kinds of programs. But the fact is, he wanted to get people back to work.

I happen to remember my father was one of those people who had to resort shamefully to a Government program. He was embarrassed by it, but he had to feed his family. That was more important. The fact is, I believe, the Senator would agree, that while the portrayal may not be to the Senator's liking, this is the administration that has lost more jobs since the term of Herbert Hoover. Does the Senator dispute that point?

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues on both sides who support this gun show loophole amendment.

We have just heard Senator McCain make a case to close this loophole. There doesn't seem to be any reason on Earth that this loophole should exist. We are talking about allowing felons, criminals generally, and terrorists to buy guns without any identification. It is hard to understand why something such as this can occur.

Back in 1999, I authored the original gun show loophole closure to require that sales at gun shows require the same background checks that licensed gun dealers are required to perform under the Brady law. The bill passed in 1999 after Vice President Gore cast the deciding vote to break a 50-50 vote on the measure. Unfortunately, those who want to buy guns--who might be criminals, and again terrorists--decided to kill this bill in conference. This loophole has continued to exist.

I am sure the American people will not be able to understand in general what this loophole is about. Why do we want to protect the rights of those who would evade the law to get guns? As long as this loophole is around, our other gun laws mean virtually nothing. Does it matter if there are background checks by licensed gun dealers if the convicted felon can walk into a gun show and get a weapon with no questions asked? Right now, gun shows are cash and carry for firearms. Terrorists, criminals, and the mentally unstable can get anything they want at a gun show from one of these unlicensed dealers. It has to stop. For the life of me, I cannot understand why those who want to see guns generally available under their interpretation of what the second amendment means would resist this. It is not understandable by any measure.

We know the people who got the guns for the Columbine massacre got a weapon which was a measure of an assault weapon illegally from a nonlicensed dealer.

When firearms are available to terrorists with instructions from their headquarters in Afghanistan to go to the United States; you can buy guns at a gun show; never tell who you are and never identify yourself, doesn't make any sense at all.

I hope my colleagues will take a second look at this and say: OK, this one we have got to patch up. But we do not hear that from those who would defend this arcane and ridiculous process.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nevada.

This bill, which has been in place since 1994, held back on the availability of assault weapons, those holding more than 10 rounds in their cartridge holder.

The assault weapons ban amendment would simply extend the current ban on these deadly weapons for another 10 years, with no other changes in current law. It is hard to understand why we would not go ahead and simply extend this. The President of the United States said at one point that this ban should continue to exist. Assault weapons are intended for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time.

We should never forget that ill-fated day of April 20, 1999, in Littleton, CO, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on teachers and fellow students at Columbine High School. They were armed with a TEC-DC9 assault weapon. When the shooting was over, 15 people, including the gunmen, were dead and 23 wounded. We can never forget the picture of those youngsters hanging out the window, pleading for help, pleading for safety, trying to protect themselves.

These assault weapons have no place in a civilized society. According to FBI data, one in five law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty between 1998 and 2001 were killed with assault weapons.

Even terrorists have identified our gun laws as a point of vulnerability. Found among the rubble at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan was a manual called ``How I Can Train Myself for Jihad.'' The manual stipulates that terrorists living in the United States should ``obtain an assault weapon legally, preferably AK-47 or variations.''

It also advises would-be terrorists on how they should conduct themselves in order to avoid arousing suspicion as they amass and transport firearms. It defies logic to understand why it is that we have to protect those who want to have assault weapons.

I was in the Army during the war. I carried a carbine. Assault weapons were available for those in the infantry--sometimes--so they could kill as many of the enemy as possible. Who is the enemy here?

Mr. President, who would be the enemy in this case? More law enforcement officers? More kids in a school? More people in an office where a disgruntled employee took out his rage by pointing a rapid-fire weapon at fellow workers?

No, this amendment makes all the sense in the world. Ban these weapons. Don't let them continue to be available in our society-- assault weapons, weapons of war.

Why is it necessary to ensure that the rights of those who would carry that lethal a weapon be protected? I see no sense in it, and I hope my colleagues will take a second look. I hope those who support the gun immunity bill will take a second look and say: You know what, this is not a fight worth having. We don't need these weapons in our society, and we ought to continue this ban as it is.

I would have preferred something stronger, and I think people here know that, but let's at least continue the ban as it exists, as the Senator from California presented it.

I thank my colleague from Nevada and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I don't know what we are talking about when I listen to the speeches. I hear it said that these aren't necessarily the guns of criminals.

By the way, I asked the question whether the two kids who killed their classmates and others in Columbine High School, were they criminals before they started to shoot that gun? I don't think so. The question is, how does the gun get into their hands? It was an assault weapon, and we ought to ban these weapons. The President of the United States even said so.

I heard reference to the fact there were organizations that said this ban should be removed. I want to talk about those who want to support the ban. For instance, the Fraternal Order of Police, the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers; the International Brotherhood of Police Officers; the Major Cities Chiefs of Police; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association--and the list goes on.

Let us listen to what the people are saying. Who are we protecting? Are we protecting the average citizen? Are we protecting the worker who has a disgruntled fellow employee pull the trigger? I don't think so.

We ought to continue this ban.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment would override what I see as a misguided Department of Justice policy that adds to the threats to our homeland security and leaves our country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. This amendment is identical to bipartisan legislation I previously introduced. It was called the Terrorist Apprehension Act, and it was cosponsored by Senator DeWine with me.

This amendment will direct the administration to do all it can to apprehend potential terrorists within our borders.

We found out if someone on the terrorist watch list, someone who is a potential threat to communities across the country, purchases a weapon, and that information is logged into the gun background check system, the Department of Justice has an order that prevents that background check information not to be put on an alert. They do not even share the critical information with law enforcement concerning the whereabouts of the terrorists.

It sounds kind of backwards to me. I find it very disturbing that we could have a nationwide lookout for known terrorists within our borders, and if he obtained a weapon the Justice Department's policy is to conceal that information from the FBI or other interested law enforcement personnel.

I know there are differences on gun policy that we may have within the Government, but I cannot believe there is anyone in this body who would not want to see us do whatever we can to alert the FBI or the appropriate parties to the fact that there is a terrorist lurking around trying to purchase a gun or who has purchased a gun.

I know many pro-gun groups have said terrorists are not likely to or would not buy a firearm on the legal market anyway, but the evidence we have discovered points otherwise.

An investigation by my staff revealed that a small sample of gun purchases reviewed by the Department of Justice showed that over a few months 13 people on the terrorist watch list successfully purchased a firearm at gunshops. The access that terrorists in our country have to guns is chilling, such as the .50 caliber assault weapon which could take down a helicopter, according to the Congressional Research Service. We learned also that that weapon can penetrate 6 inches of steel plating and has the range of a mile; that a target can be hit from a mile away, and it can also carry an incendiary bullet that would immediately cause the surroundings to burst into flames.

I know the Justice Department's position is at odds with the Department of Homeland Security, but again I cannot believe that either one of those Departments are not anxious to get as much information as they can about terrorist activity relating to guns.

During his confirmation earlier this year, Tom Ridge acknowledged to me the dangers of terrorist access to guns, and under oath at another hearing the General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security told me it was his belief that someone on the terrorist watch list should not be at all permitted to purchase guns.

Unlike the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice apparently sees things very differently. DOJ is not willing to give critical information to law enforcement sectors when someone on the terrorist watch list purchases a firearm. In fact, the Department of Justice requires the FBI to prove--believe this--that the terrorist should not be able to legally buy a gun and DOJ gives the FBI 3 days to come up with a reason. But if no reason is given in 3 days, then the gun is handed over to the terrorist.

It is quite an anomaly, that the Department of Justice requires the FBI to prove a terrorist should not be able to legally buy a gun. That doesn't make sense to me.

To make matters worse, the policy of the Department of Justice is not to tell law enforcement the details of the transaction, including where it took place and when it took place. So we could have a nationwide lookout for a terrorist and the Department of Justice, knowing that the terrorist just obtained a gun, will not tell the appropriate law enforcement people where the terrorist is.

This is a misguided policy of the Department of Justice. It has to change. My amendment would make that change. My amendment is simple and to the point. It says if a terrorist buys a gun, law enforcement must be notified promptly that this transaction has taken place. The FBI, local police, and the regional terrorist task force must be told the time and place of the purchase, without excuses. Every minute we allow the current Department of Justice policy to stand, we put our constituents at unnecessary risk.

I ask my colleagues to support this commonsense, bipartisan amendment. It is my hope that amendment will carry. We are all interested in reducing the threat of terrorism as much as we possibly can.

Mr. President, of course, we have to lay the first amendment aside before we can proceed to the second.

Mr. President, I neglected to use the graph I have to demonstrate what happens. The subject of a terrorist watch list purchases weapons, the NICS gun background check system is in place, it is entered in the NCIC crime database, and here there is a silent alarm. It doesn't really tell anything to the FBI terrorist task force. That is almost totally incomprehensible.

Amendment No. 2633

Mr. President, pursuant to the request I made that the other amendment be laid aside, I now send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment is designed to protect

the rights of our most vulnerable and most precious resource, our children. If this bill is enacted without this amendment to the pending bill, we will be passing legislation that protects the interests of the National Rifle Association and negligent gun dealers and manufacturers, errant manufacturers, at the expense of our kids.

It is really coldhearted, as we see if we examine this legislation. How distant do we want to make ourselves from a condition that is so tragic that even just hearing about it, if it is in your own household, sends chills up and down the spine? We have already rejected in this debate the rights of sniper victims and police officers. But are we now willing to go ahead and victimize our children? Children who are injured by a gun, the families of children killed by guns, do we want to shut down their rights? I am a proud grandfather of 10 wonderful grandchildren. It pains me to think that the Senate in which I serve is willing to expose them to greater danger. That process is pretty easy, if there is no punishment severe enough to curb either negligent or reckless behavior on the part of manufacturers, dealers, or distributors.

I think the biggest rogue of all that we all talk about is the shop that permitted Lee Malvo to get the gun he had, the Bull's Eye shop. They had guns all over the place on display and couldn't detect that 237 or so guns were unaccounted for. That suggests even greater danger. What I really hope we can do is not take away a tool that helped make this society safer for our kids.

How can we leave out the children, the children's families, when it comes to seeking redress if this kind of tragedy strikes that family? Every day we hear more about another child falling victim to gun violence. It is a national epidemic. In 2002 alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there were 13,000 kids injured by a firearm. From 1996 to 2001, more than 1,500 children were killed in firearm accidents. The CDC also found the overall firearm-related death rate among United States children below the age of 15 was nearly 12 times higher than it is in 25 other industrialized countries combined. This horrible trend in our Nation must be stopped. We should be working to enhance the safety of our children and not reduce it.

Tennille Jefferson, the mother of a child victim, understands only too well what dangers can result from negligent gun dealers. On April 19, 1999, her son Nathan was shot and killed by a young boy who found the gun on the street, a gun belonging to a gun trafficker named Perry Bruce, who bought the gun from a disreputable gun dealer. The gun dealer sold Perry Bruce guns, despite many obvious signs that he was trafficking in guns. Bruce had shown a welfare card as his only form of identification. Yet somehow he was never questioned about how he managed to scrape up the thousands of dollars necessary to purchase 10 guns.

The gun trafficker, Mr. Bruce, admitted the gun dealer ``had to know what I was doing,'' and that he was high on marijuana each time he bought guns from this company. But the dealer acted recklessly. He had the information. Yet he sold the guns to Bruce. The result was the death of Nathan Jefferson. If this bill passes, families like the Jeffersons will not be able to hold the negligent, careless, irresponsible dealers and manufacturers who sell them to be liable for the murder of innocent children. This bill chooses special interests over the innocents. It is a sad commentary on this Senate. To be blunt, this immunity bill is a form of child abuse. We still have a chance to reverse the course and I hope we are going to do it. Meanwhile, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and preserve the rights of America's children.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for the past month, we have been celebrating Black History Month.

I believe that Black History Month is not only a time to recognize the contributions and achievements of African Americans to this Nation, but it is also a time to acknowledge both progress African Americans have made and the continued racial disparities in this Nation.

We usually celebrate African-American athletes, musicians, and actors. While their successes have been significant, I feel it is important that we acknowledge some of the great thinkers, inventors, and discoverers who were African American.

Some of the great pioneers include Dr. Charles Drew, who discovered the process for storing blood plasma; Garrett Morgan, who was the first to patent the traffic light and the gas mask; Granville T. Woods, who invented a train-to-station communication system; Astronaut Mae Jamison, the first African-American woman to enter space; Dr. Benjamin Carson, who successfully separated Siamese twins joined at the head; and Otis Boykin who invented the electronic control devise for guided missiles, IBM computers, and the pacemaker.

These great innovators and pioneers not only blazed the trail for other young African Americans to follow, but they also inspired and contributed to American development and progress. Therefore, these pioneers were not only great African Americans, they were quintessentially American.

During this time when our Nation's military is engaged in conflicts throughout the world, I would like to acknowledge the contributions that African Americans have made to every war in American history. Today, African Americans serve a vital part of the troops deployed throughout the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost 22 percent of the members of our enlisted armed services are African-American.

Despite all of these important accomplishments, African Americans have yet to enjoy true racial equality in this Nation. And, in the absence of real equality, African Americans are being denied the essence of what it means to be a first-class American.

Statistics are the clearest barometer for determining and measuring the quality of life in American society and far too many of them reveal that African Americans continue to lag behind whites in important ways.

In January 2004, the national unemployment rate was 5.6

percent overall but just 4.9 percent for white Americans

while it was 10.5 percent--more than twice as high--for

African Americans.

The national poverty rate rose, for the second straight

year, to 12.1 percent in 2002, from 11.7 percent the year

before. In 2002, the national poverty rate for African

Americans was 22.7 percent.

In 1999, median income for African Americans was $31,778,

compared to $51,244, for the median income of white families.

According to one report, in 1995, average white households

had $18,000 in financial wealth, while African-American

households possessed a total of only $200.

These statistics show the depth of racial inequality in America. In addition to economic disparities, the incarceration rate of African Americans, especially African-American males, is deeply disturbing.

Today, black men make up 41 percent of the inmates in

Federal, State, and local prisons, but black men are only 4

percent of all students in American institutions of higher

education, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher

Education, autumn 2003.

According to a recent study, while African Americans are 13

percent of the population of my home State of New Jersey,

they represent a staggering 63 percent of New Jersey's 27,891

State prisoners in 2002.

About 10 percent of all black men between 25 and 29 were

incarcerated in 2002, compared with 1.2 percent of white men

and 2.4 percent of Hispanic men

Not only are African Americans imprisoned in disproportionately high numbers, they are disproportionately the victims of crimes, as well. In New Jersey, out of 341 total homicides by guns in 2002, 138 of those victims were African American. In 2000, more than 6,200 African Americans were killed by guns. In the 15 to 24 age group, firearm homicides were responsible for more than 86 percent of homicides suffered by African Americans. In the next age group up, 25 to 34, firearm homicides were more than 81 percent of homicides. In both cases firearm homicides were the number one cause of death for African Americans. The homicide victim rate for African Americans, 20.5 per 100,000 persons, is over six times that of whites, 3.3 per 100,000 persons.

I highlight these statistics about our Nation and my home State because the problems confronting the African-American community are in New Jersey, and they are in every State. We all bear responsibility to acknowledge them, to confront them, to help remedy them.

There are no easy answers to the problems African Americans face, but as Theodore Roosevelt put it a century ago, ``This country will not be a really good place for any of us to live in if it is not a really good place for all of us to live in.'' So while we take this opportunity to celebrate the wonderful accomplishments of African Americans through the ages, we should also rededicate ourselves to making America a really good place for all of us to live in.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to reauthorize the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail Route on behalf of myself and Senator Corzine. This bill makes a number of important changes to legislation that was enacted in 1988 and reauthorized in 1994 and 1999.

The original legislation, which I co-sponsored, called for a route that links nationally significant natural and cultural sites associated with the coastal area of New Jersey. The New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail runs south for nearly 300 miles from Perth Amboy along the Atlantic Ocean to Cape May, then west along the Delaware Bay to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Along the way are sites like the Barnegat Bay Decoy and Baymen's Museum, the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, and the Sandy Hook Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Five theme trails, of which three are open, are planned to showcase different aspects of New Jersey coastal life: maritime history, coastal habitats, wildlife migration, historic settlements, and relaxation/ inspiration. The Trail is operated by a partnership that includes the National Park Service, the State of New Jersey, local communities, and private non-profit organizations. Fifty percent of the funding for the Trail is provided from non-federal funds.

My legislation raises the funding authorization for the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail to $8 million, doubling the current authorization of $4 million. The legislation also: extends the deadline for project completion by 5 years to May 4, 2009; allows funds to be used for grants in addition to technical assistance; and requires the National Park Service to prepare a strategic plan for the long-term maintenance of this coastal route. A companion bill, H.R. 3070, has been introduced in the House by Congressman LoBiondo, with cosponsorship by the entire New Jersey delegation.

New Jersey has a long shoreline of which we are extremely proud. This bill will provide the necessary resources and strategic planning to ensure that the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail fulfills its promise to the people of my home State and to visitors from around the world. The additional funding authorized in this bill will support: 1. Creation of a long-term strategic plan on the roles of the National Park Service and other Trail partners; 2. Development of two remaining theme trails (historic settlements and relaxation/inspiration); 3. Development of interpretive media such as videos, brochures and exhibits; 4. Technical assistance for the State park system, wildlife management, and historic and cultural sites; 5. Construction of a New Jersey State Park Service facility on the trail at Double Trouble State Park in the Barnegat Bay Region; 6. Continuing work on a welcome center at Sandy Hook; and 7. Construction of a welcome center in the Absecon region.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, which is needed to assure that funding for this valuable undertaking will continue to be authorized after May 2004.

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

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to reauthorize the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail Route on behalf of myself and Senator Corzine. This bill makes a number of important changes to legislation that was enacted in 1988 and reauthorized in 1994 and 1999.

The original legislation, which I co-sponsored, called for a route that links nationally significant natural and cultural sites associated with the coastal area of New Jersey. The New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail runs south for nearly 300 miles from Perth Amboy along the Atlantic Ocean to Cape May, then west along the Delaware Bay to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Along the way are sites like the Barnegat Bay Decoy and Baymen's Museum, the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, and the Sandy Hook Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Five theme trails, of which three are open, are planned to showcase different aspects of New Jersey coastal life: maritime history, coastal habitats, wildlife migration, historic settlements, and relaxation/ inspiration. The Trail is operated by a partnership that includes the National Park Service, the State of New Jersey, local communities, and private non-profit organizations. Fifty percent of the funding for the Trail is provided from non-federal funds.

My legislation raises the funding authorization for the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail to $8 million, doubling the current authorization of $4 million. The legislation also: extends the deadline for project completion by 5 years to May 4, 2009; allows funds to be used for grants in addition to technical assistance; and requires the National Park Service to prepare a strategic plan for the long-term maintenance of this coastal route. A companion bill, H.R. 3070, has been introduced in the House by Congressman LoBiondo, with cosponsorship by the entire New Jersey delegation.

New Jersey has a long shoreline of which we are extremely proud. This bill will provide the necessary resources and strategic planning to ensure that the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail fulfills its promise to the people of my home State and to visitors from around the world. The additional funding authorized in this bill will support: 1. Creation of a long-term strategic plan on the roles of the National Park Service and other Trail partners; 2. Development of two remaining theme trails (historic settlements and relaxation/inspiration); 3. Development of interpretive media such as videos, brochures and exhibits; 4. Technical assistance for the State park system, wildlife management, and historic and cultural sites; 5. Construction of a New Jersey State Park Service facility on the trail at Double Trouble State Park in the Barnegat Bay Region; 6. Continuing work on a welcome center at Sandy Hook; and 7. Construction of a welcome center in the Absecon region.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, which is needed to assure that funding for this valuable undertaking will continue to be authorized after May 2004.

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

I thank the Senator for yielding the time to me. I associate myself with the amendment that was initially introduced by my colleague from Maryland, Senator Mikulski. I rise to raise questions about that which is currently now being offered by the Senator from Idaho.

There is no doubt about the appropriateness of the amendment, as it was presented by the Senator from Maryland, because it was her constituents, seven of them, who were shot by the sniper, six of whom died.

For over a month in the fall of 2001, John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo terrorized the Washington metropolitan area through a series of vicious sniper attacks on innocent men, women, and children. In the area, Americans were afraid to walk outside, afraid to pump gas outside, school activities were moved to enclosed areas. Everyone was a target.

As it turned out, there was ample reason to be frightened. From the trunk of Muhammad's car, the snipers used a Bushmaster assault weapon to shoot 13 people in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Ten of the 13 died. We have heard the names of those such as Linda Franklin, 47-year-old FBI analyst, standing with her husband in the Home Depot parking lot in Virginia. She was killed. Another was Pascal Charlot, a 72-year-old retired carpenter standing on a street corner, shot and killed. Another victim was Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy who had just been dropped off at school.

My fellow Senators now prepare to tell mothers and victims throughout the United States that they don't have a right to file a civil lawsuit against individuals and businesses that helped cause this tragic event.

We had a debate on the floor yesterday. There was a question, a semantic question, about whether or not the Bull's Eye store was really closed. One of my staff people called the number and they said: Yes, we are open until 7 o'clock. Do you want anything--this is my edition: if you want anything shipped out, we will get you guns.

So we argued about whether or not they were really closed or who had the license or what. Those are extraneous things having no significance in the debate.

We see the same thing replicated here. If you meet certain conditions, you are still able to bring suit. But if one of the several conditions is present, then you can't bring suit.

Why don't we tell it like it is? And that is, by whatever stretch of the imagination you want to bring, these people, the victims of the sniper attacks, are unable to bring a suit. There is no doubt about it. We can discuss language all you want, but it is the intent.

Throw another obstacle in the way for these victims to get some justice, some sense of what it is that took place that was wrong and how we can help prevent it in the future.

To hear these discussions immersed in language changes--I suppose if you study it closely enough, you will find punctuation changes. Bull's Eye claimed they didn't have any record of sale. They cannot explain how the snipers obtained the assault weapon. I have not heard any condemnation of their poor practices; that 237 weapons were lost. What a shame. If any normal store lost items that cost this much, they would be in a state of panic. Apparently, these guys did not care that much, but we still want to prevent those who have been victimized by their poor behavior from getting compensation that is justly theirs under normal circumstances.

Why we have to take away people's rights is something, frankly, I do not understand. I hope the public at large begins to raise questions: What is this? Do you mean if I am injured in an automobile accident and the automobile manufacturer has been negligent, that they did not protect the gas tank properly, so it exploded when it was hit in the back, I shouldn't be able to get compensation for that small error? It may have burned you alive. Or if there was such a casual structure of behavior with a pharmaceutical company, and they put the wrong tablets in a bottle, or if someone there, in a moment of madness, put the wrong tablets in a bottle and a person becomes ill or dies, they shouldn't be able to bring an action? This strikes me as something that the citizenry, who is expecting us to take care of them, is unable to comprehend.

This debate goes on and there is always another trick, another maneuver to try and interrupt the flow of what we would consider normal justice. I hope we will defeat the amendment because it adds nothing to the compromise that we have to arrive at to get the kind of voting pattern--the record that says, yes, we made sure the people who suffer these terrible damages have a right to compensation or to a review by the court to decide that issue.

I hope we will defeat the Frist-Craig amendment and get on to the Mikulski amendment, which approaches the problem directly. These people have been severely injured by the actions of the snipers who got the gun illegally, inappropriately, improperly--call it what you will.

I yield back the remaining time.

Is the question being referred to me directly?

I would like to ask the Senator from Maryland a question.

I ask the Senator from Maryland, is there anything that is in the Craig amendment that changes the ability of these victims to sue?

There are conditions, are there not, that he places in there that make them jump through another hoop in order to be able to sue?

They may have not met these conditions but they still have had the damage and the tragedy that befell them?

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague and good friend from New Jersey with whom I have worked very closely on many issues. There is not anything that we have done that binds us more closely than this action because we are witnessing it firsthand. We talked to the two officers who were mentioned in Senator Corzine's commentary.

To me, this whole situation is surreal. The fact is, when there is a photo opportunity with a cop who is in uniform, we can see him chased by six Senators to get a picture taken with him. When there are townhall meetings, Senators will talk about how brave those cops are and that what they do is they put their lives on the line each and every day, and many of their families may be thinking that just maybe they may not see daddy coming back from work.

And here, the hard cold hearts are saying, well, listen, put your back on the line, put yourself on the line, but do not expect that we are going to help you collect any damages. You can be the breadwinner in the family, the only working person in the family. When that person is shot and killed, the incomes rarely continue for a significant period of time with enough income to take care of a family.

What do you tell a family which has a couple of children and a spouse dependent on the wages of that police officer? You tell them, Well, look, just remember one thing. It is like being a pilot in the military. You could go out

and lose your life. The difference is the military takes some care of you. There are insurance programs, other programs. Many of these small police departments don't have the kind of resources to provide on their own for the well-being of those families.

This is an outrage that is being perpetrated on these law enforcement people. It is an outrage. I hope the public understands what we are doing here. We want the people to work in those dangerous jobs, but we don't want to let them on their own go to the courts. That is the process in this country of ours. We will not let them go to court to see if there are any damages. They never repair the damage to the mind. They never repair the damage to the heart. You can't repair the damage to the soul. But we at least ought to be able to say: Listen, if you can bring a suit that shows either the manufacturer or the distributor or the retailer, like the shop in Oregon, was negligent in their handling of the weapon--no safeguards on these weapons--we ought to be able to say to them, if anything happens to you, you can go to court and you can seek damages.

But there is a group here who says no, we want to take away your right to sue. Do you know why? Because the NRA doesn't like it--putting it straight up. The NRA doesn't want that to happen. The NRA writes the legislation, for goodness sake. They don't want it to be available. They don't want these people to have the same rights everybody else has. If you are killed in an airplane crash or a car crash or otherwise, you have a right to go to court.

I have heard the story about product liability. We are not going through that again. We don't worry about product liability. We worry about negligence and recklessness and you are blocked from bringing suit. It is outrageous.

In the year 2003, 148 law enforcement officers across the nation were killed in the line of duty; 52 of those fallen officers were shot to death. I would like it if the managers of the bill who so desperately want this to pass would go to those families and say: You know what, we are sorry. Gosh, Joe was a good guy. We heard about him. He was a Boy Scout leader, all of those things. But that is the nature of the job. So you lost him. Go find another way, Madam Smith, to see if you can support your kids. See if you can get a job. You may have to leave the kids at home because you don't have enough money to take care of them and buy other things.

Every law enforcement officer fatality is a national tragedy. The only place it doesn't ring true is here. They don't want you to have the same rights ordinary citizens have when they are injured. It is incredible to me.

We go through semantic schemes here about: No, it doesn't really mean that. But it does block their right to collect damages if they are injured.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of police officers who object to this bill and feel they are not protected, including an ad run by the Brady Campaign.

Mr. President, I ask to have the Presiding Officer call attention to the fact when I have 30 seconds remaining.

We listen to the same rhetoric, decry the risk that our law enforcement people take when they go out to work and how we really respect them--except that we do not want to give them the same environment that every ordinary citizen in this country has.

We hear about the fact that if you get the criminals off the streets and they do not come out again, and then they go back again, what does it have to do with whether or not we block the suit from law enforcement personnel who have been injured, who have families who want redress for them having been killed at work? It has nothing to do with it.

That is the whole thing. It is an obfuscation of what this bill is about. This bill does not change a bit with this amendment. It just reinforces what the bill says, and that is, take away people's rights to sue, people's rights for redress. Whether it is an errant gun manufacturer, a dealer, a distributor, an errant airline, or an errant car manufacturer, people should have the right to sue.

There have been opinions thrown around that, unfortunately, do not match that of a distinguished attorney such as David Boies who says this bill will cause a dismissal of the suit of Lemongello and McGuire immediately. The proposed immunity legislation would require the immediate dismissal of these claims.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record what the office of David Boies, one of the most prominent criminal attorneys in the country, has confirmed.

Many police officers and police chiefs wrote in their opposition to this bill, law enforcement personnel from various police departments around the country, including Chief William Musser of Meridian, OH, Police Department. He writes that he is opposed to this. We have officers from other States as well, including Chief Cory Lynn from Ketchum, ID, Police Department, in opposition to this legislation.

This letter was printed in the Record of yesterday.

Mr. President, today I rise to commend one of the many unsung heroes of our Senate family, Alma Kristoffersen, who will retire tomorrow after 20 years of service as a transcriber and reporting technician for the Congressional Record.

I worked in the private sector for more than 30 years before I first came to the Senate. One of the things that struck me about this institution as I came to know it is the dedication, skill, and professionalism shown by the people who work in all capacities here. Senators and committees have their own staff, and we rely on them, to be sure. But we also rely on the hundreds of staffers who make up what I call the ``infrastructure'' of the Senate. For the most part, they go about their business unnoticed and certainly underappreciated. We have to remind ourselves now and then that this place would screech to a halt without their tireless devotion to their jobs and to our Nation.

Alma is a fine example of that tradition. She has many talents, including a strong knowledge of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary; a quick wit; and dry sense of humor. But her most enduring asset is her absolute commitment to teamwork. She is always willing to volunteer for extra duties.

Alma was born in Liverpool, England, and moved to the United States in 1968. She became a citizen in the early 1990s, qualifying for a high security clearance to work on classified material. She and her husband Tom have a son, Alex, who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Alma plans to enjoy all her various hobbies in retirement, including gardening, tennis, travel, and actually being able to attend her book club on week nights.

I know that I speak on behalf of the entire Senate when I say how much I appreciate Alma's service to this institution and to the Nation. Alma's colleagues and friends here in the Senate, particularly in the Office of Official Reporters of Debates, will miss her, but we wish her a long and happy retirement, which she has certainly earned.

Madam President, returning to the gun immunity bill that is being presented, this is legislation that is being bullied through the Congress.

I have been here a long time, now going into my 20th year. This is one of the most outrageous pieces of legislation I have ever seen. We have never seen such a complete sellout. This is like a fire sale to a special interest lobby.

The bill is absolutely a free pass. It says to the gun industry: Do anything you want, and you have no one who can punish you by going to our court system, established effectively by our Constitution. They can do whatever they want, no matter how negligent, reckless, or irresponsible.

Of all the people in society to provide special protections to, why in the world would we give immunity from redress to this industry?

This immunity bill says even reckless behavior--forget about negligence. Negligence says I didn't mean to do it, but I didn't check on the process. Reckless behavior could be deliberate. There could be reckless behavior in the manufacture, sale, or distribution of guns. No matter how destructive the result is to life and limb of innocent people, the victims of that conduct cannot hold you accountable. It just does not make sense.

We hear this claim from our friends on the other side about ``frivolous lawsuits'' is how they describe it. Frivolous lawsuits-- lawsuits that, frankly, are far from frivolous because the damage is beyond description when a family loses a child, a father, a brother, a mother, or a sister, or some child is permanently injured and cannot function normally. Frivolous? I don't call that frivolous. These are valid claims of wrongdoing by an industry that puts profit ahead of human life, and we can't let them go without consequence.

Let us ask the gun victims if their lawsuits are frivolous. Ask those who have lost loved ones at the hands of the DC area snipers just over a year ago. And talking about the DC snipers, they were prohibited by law from buying guns. Under law, they could not sell guns to Lee Malvo. He walked into a gun shop and walked out with a sniper rifle. A sniper rifle is a pretty big piece of equipment.

I invite my colleagues to look at this image. This chart says they lost 237 guns; 237 guns for which they have no responsibility to account. They said: Gee whiz, how do you like that, we lost all these lethal weapons that may have just kind of walked out or fallen down a crack in the floor someplace. It is outrageous--including one of those weapons that wound up in the hands of those who committed these atrocities, Lee Malvo and John Muhammad.

This is a picture of a gun shop that has become all too familiar. It is called the Bull's Eye Shooter Supply. They lost the guns.

In the wake of the sniper case, we now know that in addition to losing hundreds of guns from their inventory, this gun shop cannot locate the firearms sales records they are required by law to keep to help police solve crimes. Those records that were recovered showed that Bull's Eye frequently sold numerous guns to individual buyers, a sure sign of phony straw purchases. But obviously this rogue gun store looked the other way.

According to ATF records, between 1997 and 2001, guns sold by Bull's Eye were involved in at least 52 crimes, including homicides, kidnappings, and assaults. Guns in 52 crimes were traced back to this one gunshop.

Under this gun immunity bill, Bull's Eye gets a free pass. They would not be accountable to victims of their negligence, and it is a despicable proposal.

DC sniper Lee Malvo could not have legally purchased a Bushmaster assault weapon from Bull's Eye. He was too young. But he walked into the Bull's Eye store in broad daylight and walked out in a short time with a Bushmaster XM-15. That is the weapon he and John Muhammad used to murder and injure their victims.

I ask my colleagues to take a look. How could he get behind the counter, walk out with a weapon, and not be noticed? It was captured on film, but they didn't see it. What an odd coincidence that is.

It is outrageous. It is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who looks at this picture to know this weapon could not have disappeared without being noticed. Look at the size of it. It tells the story. But then I guess what is being asked for is sympathy for this gun shop, this place that let the murder weapon out of its sight and into the hands of these madmen who shot people at random.

Let them get away with that, with no repercussion, no lawsuits: You injured my child, you injured my husband, you injured my wife? People were shot sitting alongside their mates, and we want to protect them? What do we have to protect them for? I don't understand it.

To me there is an element of curiosity here that just does not register. I don't understand the wailing and weeping about how to protect these guys, these dispensers of murder. It is awful. Yet we hear the case: Gee whiz, if you had an automobile and a drunk driver drove it and killed somebody, why should the automobile company be responsible? We saw that once.

Ford Motor Company made the Pinto. When it was struck from the rear, it would catch fire. We had people testify. They were so disfigured, it was painful to look at them. Imagine what it felt like to be one of them--so disfigured.

They went to the Ford Motor Company and said: Change the design. Ford had a board meeting supposedly in which they said: Change the design? Do you know what that is going to cost us? The heck with it. Let's pay the damages that come from lawsuits. That is the way it goes sometimes.

The automobile is not intended to be a lethal weapon, and we lose a lot more from fewer of these gun manufacturers every year than we do manufacturers of cars. We lose over 28,000 people a year, 11,000 of them homicides, the rest suicides, accidents. That is what happens. We have millions of cars on the road, and we do not have much more of a mortality rate with those cars than we have with these weapons. But we do not try to protect the automobile industry.

We do not try to protect the aviation industry if there is negligence in an air crash. You can bet people have a right and do take advantage of the right to get some redress. They don't want the money, for gosh sakes. They do not want any other families to have to suffer the same humiliating loss they experienced.

If anyone proposed that we go ahead and say to the airlines: Look, tell you what, for reckless behavior and one of

those planes goes down with 200, 400 people on it, we know you really didn't intend to do that, so, therefore, you ought to be excused. We are not going to excuse them, and we should not excuse the gun industry, the people who manufacture these weapons in any form, any shape, disguises for assault weapons that say this really isn't an assault weapon. It passes the specifications test, except if you make an adjustment here in the cartridge carrier or there, it becomes, effectively, an assault weapon. No, we are saying, no, we are not going to punish you for that. Go ahead, be careful because people may not like you, but we are not going to punish you for it.

That is the situation in which we find ourselves.

Do we really believe that in this situation these weapons were lost or stolen from this store? It is ludicrous. So we should not pretend we do not know what really happened. What we are doing is closing our eyes to responsible behavior throughout our Nation. It is obvious they sold the Bushmaster to Malvo under the table, or however he got it. It is a pathetic and irresponsible recognition we are giving these people.

Should Bull's Eye be held accountable for their outrageous actions that resulted in the death of innocent people? The sponsors of this bill say, no, they should not pay for approximately a dozen deaths. The sponsors of this bill say, no, this outlet should not be punished for murder; that, after all, they are okay. They sell things that kill people or close their eyes to the distribution of weapons.

The sponsors of this bill say, no, if one is negligent, they cannot be held accountable. It says if they are reckless, they cannot be held accountable.

The bottom line is there are many victims with valid legal claims who will have their lawsuits wiped out. It is outrageous.

Today we were visited by a policeman from my home State, the town of Orange, NJ. He was shot in an exchange of fire with an assailant. He has a lawsuit in place. He can no longer work at his job. We are saying, too bad. Why were you standing in the way of that bullet when it came? Essentially that is what we are saying: Why did you get in the way of the guy who was going to pull the trigger? You should not have done that. They should not be punished for their complicity by getting a gun for this would-be murderer.

This bill before us tells Bull's Eye and their cronies in the business, keep up the good work; do not worry about it; in the Senate, we are going to take care of you. We are going to immunize them from wrongdoing.

Why on God's Earth do they want to immunize these people? I do not understand it. I have seen pretenses at logic that said, well, we will have no gun industry to supply our Army. Baloney. Everybody knows that is a phony argument. They will get their weapons made. We can protect those who make arms for the military and we can make sure they are under better care than we see now.

The snipers who did the killing wreaked havoc on our society and now we want to reward the gun dealer responsible for illegally giving them their killing weapon with immunity from civil lawsuits. This is absurd.

This Senate is about to make these sniper victims and their families victims a second time. After all they have gone through and that they are going through, we are going to pass a bill to take away their fundamental legal rights. It is reprehensible. There are so many other people who are going to be denied justice by this bill.

I want to take a moment to tell the Senate about two brave police officers, one of whom I mentioned earlier, who are going to be victimized by this bill, Ken McGuire and David Lemongello. They are two police officers from Orange, NJ, who were shot and seriously wounded by a criminal who obtained his gun through the negligence of a gun manufacturer and gun dealer in the State of West Virginia. The criminal who shot them was barred from legally buying guns, but he was able to obtain these weapons from a straw purchaser who was sold 12 guns by a West Virginia gun dealer in a single transaction.

This gun dealer completed the sales in spite of the obvious signs that the purchaser was not buying the guns for himself. The gun dealer admitted he was suspicious of the transaction but turned the other way. Then less than 6 months later, Officers McGuire and Lemongello were shot by one of those weapons.

Is the police officers' lawsuit against the gun dealer frivolous? A West Virginia judge ruled the officers' claims are supported by West Virginia negligence and public nuisance law and that the officers' case should proceed against the dealer as well as the manufacturer of the gun who imposed no requirements on its dealers to cut large volume sales.

If this gun immunity bill is passed, the rights of these two brave police officers are abolished. To make matters worse, it will allow other gun dealers to look the other way and complete suspicious sales because, well, there are not any consequences; we cannot be sued for our negligence.

I want my colleagues to know Officer Ken McGuire is in the Capitol today. He is here to ask Senators not to take his rights away, and I ask my colleagues to give him a moment of their time if he approaches you.

These lawsuits are the only real way to hold these rogue dealers accountable because current laws regulating dealers are a joke. The ATF is restricted to only one announced inspection per year.

In reference to Bull's Eye, I heard the Senator from Idaho say the shop is shut down now. He is very careful with the things he said, but I think he made a mistake. It just is not true. Bull's Eye took advantage of the weak gun dealer laws and merely transferred its license. They are very much in business. My staff called Bull's Eye today and they said they are open until 7 p.m. It does not sound to me as though they are closed. So if someone from the Senate wants to make a quick trip over there today to pick up an assault weapon, they have until 7 Pacific time to do so.

There are a host of other cases that would be affected if this bill is passed. Supporters of this bill will be trampling the rights of innocent victims who only want their day in court, to which I think they are entitled.

The supporters of this bill claim the lawsuits against the gun industry are frivolous. Frivolous? Ask Denise Johnson whether her lawsuit is frivolous. She lost her husband at the hands of the DC area snipers. On the morning of October 22, 2002, Denise Johnson said goodbye to her husband Conrad with her usual ``be careful.'' Neither he nor her children had any idea this would be their last words to their husband and father.

This 35-year-old bus driver was shot on October 22 in Silver Spring, MD. He was standing at the top step of his empty bus when he was hit. He was killed instantly by the Bushmaster portrayed here that Bull's Eye ``lost'' to Lee Malvo.

Some have the impression it is only the DC sniper victims and Officers McGuire and Lemongello from New Jersey who would have lawsuits blocked by this bill. Unfortunately, there are many other victims of gun violence with valid cases who would have their suits dismissed. I ask the sponsors why do they want to do that? Why? Loss of a family member? Perhaps it is the principal breadwinner in the family. Should we have the family suffer from now newly found poverty and doing without the capacity to pay the rent, perhaps be evicted from their homes? Why do we want to punish them a second time? Was it not enough they suffered like that the first time? We want to cut away from them their right to have redress for what took place.

There is Tenille Jefferson. Her 7-year-old son was killed by another child with a .44 caliber rifle. This tragic shooting occurred because the gun ended up in the streets after being negligently sold through a gun dealer to an illegal drug user and gun trafficker.

Then there is Sherilyn Byrdsong who lost her husband, former college basketball coach Rick Byrdsong, when he was shot and killed as he walked with their children in Evanston, IL. The crime was committed by a white supremacist, Benjamin Smith, who targeted minorities in a shooting spree through Illinois and Indiana. Even though Smith was prohibited from buying guns, he was able to obtain a gun because of the actions of a reckless gun dealer.

This reckless dealer sold one gun trafficker over 70 handguns in less than 2 years, almost all of them Saturday night specials, commonly used by criminals. Mrs. Byrdsong's lawsuit is pending in a State court in Chicago. Other victims of this same shooter have joined the lawsuit. If this bill passes, their lawsuits are wiped out. I cannot understand why we would want to do that in this, the Capitol of this Government of our great country. I can't understand why we are bent on taking away people's rights and making them suffer because of a special interest group that has a special reach to those in this Senate and the House who say: We have to take care of this industry. This is an essential industry. We want this. Maybe we can build this into a major industry, make it bigger than it is, sell more guns.

That is hardly a way to see a productive existence in a society that essentially has respect for the law.

The Reverend Stephen Anderson, a minister shot during this spree I was talking about, on his way to join his family in a Fourth of July celebration, would have his lawsuit dismissed. Steven Kuo, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, would have his rights taken away. Hillel Goldstein, one of several Orthodox Jews shot when walking home from temple services, would have his family's lawsuit terminated.

There are other cases that would be dismissed--the parents of 15- year-old Kenzo Dix, who was shot and killed unintentionally by a 14- year-old friend because the gun lacked well-known safety features. The boy thought his father's pistol was unloaded as he had emptied the magazine. Had the gun included an indicator that alerted him that a round was in the chamber, or an integral lock that would have prevented him from firing, Kenzo would not have been killed. But Kenzo's parents' case would be terminated by this bill.

The family of Joan Moore, who was shot and killed by a mentally deranged man in the town of Belle, WV, would have their suit dismissed. Her family brought suit for negligence against the gun dealer who sold a 9 mm rifle to Moore's killer, 18-year-old Robert Copen. Mr. Copen stood in the gun shop's parking lot all day in plain sight, smoking marijuana before he entered the store. He apparently acted so oddly while in the store that an employee asked his supervisor if Copen should be trusted with a gun. Management told the employee to go ahead and make the sale anyway.

This gun dealer was clearly negligent. But Mrs. Moore's family would lose their rights under this bill.

This Senate looks as if it wants to administer a second punishment because the first punishment was not severe enough. It is shocking to believe this could take place.

Since when is Congress in the business of rewarding the worst in our society? Why would we want to send a message that says: Circumvent the law, put our families in danger, and we are going to protect you?

The reality is that the gun industry engages frequently in improper conduct with deadly consequences. We have seen many examples of this. Corrupt dealers who frequently sell to criminals would be immune. Straw purchasers who work with rogue gun dealers to obtain guns for people who are not eligible to buy guns would be immune. Dealers who engage in large volume sales, such as the Illinois dealer who sold 60 Saturday night special handguns to one customer, would be immune.

And, of course, there is the problem of gun shows, where criminals and terrorists can buy guns without background checks.

As many here know, the Senate passed my gun show amendment with the help of Vice President Gore, a 50-50 tie in 1999. But the House Republicans killed the provision in conference. They were not willing to shut down dealers who are not required to get any data about a purchaser--no names, no addresses, no pictures, nothing, not even a fingerprint.

If the NRA immunity bill is signed into law--and I call it the NRA immunity bill deliberately because that is who we are servicing today. We are not servicing this list of people who had the punishment we have seen, punishment that should never be permitted to be put upon a family, a loss of a child, a loss of a husband, a loss of a wife or mother. We should not do that. But if the NRA immunity bill is signed into law, victims of industry recklessness will be denied their day in court.

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to me, and I am sure it doesn't make sense to people across the country. And I hope they are listening. People across the country have to understand what we are doing. We are protecting an industry that provided the murder weapon to kill lots of people. Why in the world do we want to protect those people? If your behavior is bad, no matter what the product is, if it is a toy, if it is a crib or otherwise, and it is made improperly, you pay a price for it. I come from a State where pharmaceutical manufacturers are a giant industry. Let a pharmaceutical manufacturer put the wrong ingredient in the capsule which hurts somebody's health, they go to court. They are very conscious of that. They are very much afraid of the repercussions of a lawsuit. That is what makes people pay attention. It does it in that industry. It does it in all other industries.

But we want to exempt this one industry for their noble behavior, for their concern for human life, for their concern for jobs, I heard earlier. The Senator from Illinois scoffed at it and said: Oh, I didn't know we were talking about a jobs bill.

Why don't we make hand grenades and distribute them freely? You could get people to do that.

This is ridiculous. Unfortunately, it is not about common sense but, rather, it is about dollars and cents. It is about political support on the outside. It is about nasty mail campaigns. It is about the deterioration of common sense and collegiality. It says: Look, I don't owe my constituents all that. What I do owe is I owe some special interest friends of mine who helped author the legislation in the House that applies to this. We know the role that the NRA plays in financing political campaigns. It seems as if it is paying off for them right now.

Thankfully, there are still people here who see their responsibility differently, who will stand up for principle, who will do all they can to prevent this unconscionable piece of legislation from passing. We have friends on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans. This isn't the special property, the unique property of Republicans. It is people who are not looking clearly at the problem, who are not willing to say: Hey, I can catch a little abuse from the NRA and its membership and its friends.

I took a lot of it in my previous term in the Senate. But we did take gun permits away from spousal abusers. Some 40-plus thousand were denied gun permits because of a piece of legislation we passed. Does anybody regret that fact? I wonder, if we asked the question, do you, sir/ma'am, regret the fact that we have taken away those permits from those spousal abusers, permission to buy guns, permits.

I wonder if you feel badly about that, and about other things that try to curb gun violence.

This bill takes away a critical tool in the fight to eliminate gun violence. It is comparable, in my view, to taking away medication from doctors trying to treat a deadly disease, perhaps to prevent death, or immobility, or mental fatigue in a person without proper medication. Why do we not want to prevent the possibility that someone can be permanently injured or incapacitated?

What are the symptoms of this disease? In the year 2000, there were more than 28,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States. About 11,000 were homicides. These deaths and injuries cost an estimated $2.3 billion a year in lifetime medical expenses alone, much of which is borne by the U.S. taxpayer. The total societal cost of firearms is much higher--an estimated $100 billion a year--and the cost to families cannot be measured.

But we know this: The bill on the floor today is a direct attack on people who have already suffered a tragedy. This bill is an embarrassment to the Senate, to our Government, and our Nation, and it ought not to be permitted to go forward.

I ask my colleagues one thing. Before you cast your vote on this bill, spend a second thinking about a child's face who learns that daddy is dead, or about a father's face when he learns that his

child is dead--killed not by nature or something that perhaps could not be prevented. Much of this can be prevented. Think about these victims. Give them their fair consideration before you victimize them once again.

I hate to think that this wonderful body in which I am privileged to serve would want to inflict punishment on those who have already suffered so deeply, or who will suffer so deeply by protecting those scoundrels who break the rules with reckless behavior. Imagine what is being said--that even if you are reckless, you are going to be immunized by this legislation. Negligence is bad; reckless is unacceptable under any condition.

I hope I am talking for the majority of those so we can get a vote against this bill.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator from Idaho.

One thing I know is that we often disagree, but I would never accuse him of these statements. He is an honorable man. We have our differences on things that we ought to be putting into law. But I would like, if I may, to correct my friend's impression because not only was there a phone which was answered but the now owner of the license is a good friend of the former owner.

If one looks at the pictures that we displayed, the weapon used was a pretty sizable piece of equipment. As I remember from what I saw on the film shown on television, there was evidence that this Lee Malvo was carrying a weapon out of that store. The camera saw it. Certainly it could have been negligence. It could have been reckless or maybe the gun was paid for by a friend, and with the wink of the eye, out it went. But to give this criminal credit for telling the truth is something that I--

The Senator is absolutely right. My question was, Did the Senator know that the new owner of the license was the friend of the former owner?

Mr. President, I wonder if I could ask the distinguished Senator a question.

I believe the Senator has examined the opinion offered by Mr. Lloyd Cutler and others. Is it not their opinion that these lawsuits would be obstructed from proceeding as a result of this law being put in place?

Mr. President, I rise to discuss a troubling issue that has plagued our political debate for many years and now has come to a head. I cannot stay silent any longer.

We so much admire the eagle, the bird of strength, the bird that portrays the courage of America, the willingness to support our country no matter what the cost. That is what the eagle says to me. At times it has been an endangered species. But there is another bird I want to talk about today. That bird is called, in my view, the chicken hawk. There is such a bird, but usually it is the hawk chasing the chicken. But now I want to talk about the chicken that really chases the hawk.

Those of us who answered our Nation's call for military service at wartime have not grandstanded on that issue. We served our country and, frankly, many of my colleagues who answered the call are not always willing to talk about their experiences.

But now I see a disturbing trend from the other side of the political aisle. More and more, Senators in this body are tagged as lax on national security or homeland security or support for the military because of votes they took against problematic defense bills over the years. For years the charge coming from across the aisle is that Democrats are somehow or other less patriotic, less supportive of defense, and it is a shameful and grotesque charge. In my view these charges typically come from people I would simply call chicken hawks.

My definition of a chicken hawk is someone who talks tough on national defense and military issues, casts aspersions on others who might disagree on the vote, but when they had a chance to serve, they were not there. Now they are attacking the Senator from Massachusetts for opposing bloated or poorly designed defense bills. Is it known how much courage it takes to vote against a bad Defense authorization or appropriations bill? We all know it takes a lot of political courage, because even if the bill contains wasteful and damaging provisions, the vote can be twisted by your opponents. But when faced with a bad defense bill, what do the chicken hawks do? They take the easy road. They fly the easy route. They always vote for it, no matter what it says. How much courage does it take to vote for a bad defense bill? None. Zero. It is the easy thing to do.

Our colleague, the distinguished junior Senator from Massachusetts, is being attacked this week by the other side of the aisle as being weak on support for the military and compromising the defense of our country. I say shame on those who impugn the patriotism of those who supported their country's call for duty and paid for it with injuries resulting from their obedience to that call.

In my view, that is the cry of the chicken hawk who has no idea what it means to have the courage to put your life at risk to defend your country and its ideals. But the Senator from Massachusetts knows it all too well. When our country went to war in southeast Asia, the Senator from Massachusetts enlisted in the Navy. He requested to be sent to Vietnam to fight for his country, and he did that. For his heroic

service in Vietnam, the Senator from Massachusetts won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts--that means he was wounded three times; it is a miracle he is still alive--the Combat Action Ribbon, the Navy Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy Unit Commendation Ribbon, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. How dare they challenge his commitment to our defense? His patriotism?

The Senator's action took courage. It is the same courage the Senator showed when he refused to vote for defense bills merely because they were defense bills. As a man who has seen a battlefield, he has a keen understanding of military needs and military policy and he voted accordingly. He actually did what his constituents sent him here to do: evaluate legislation on its merits and vote with your conscience and your obligation to our citizens.

Did it take courage? Of course. Integrity? Of course. Was it an easy thing to do? Absolutely not. The easy thing to do would be to simply vote for all the defense bills, no matter what they say, and pretend these votes are the real measure of patriotism. That is what the chicken hawks do. That is the easy road.

It is the same easy road we see when someone files for five student deferments and then claims an old football injury should prevent him from fighting for his country. Only a chicken hawk would attack a political rival who lost three limbs in Vietnam as being soft on defense.

So I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we are not going to put up with these insinuations that attack our patriotism, our support for our troops, anymore. Because real patriotism and real support for our Nation's defense should not be judged on whether we ignore our constitutional duty and rubberstamp legislation. Real patriotism and support for the defense of this country has to do with answering the call. In my view, as a fellow veteran, the Senator from Massachusetts not only answered the call to fight for his country, but also to perform his duty and judge legislation on its merits.

I served in the Army. It doesn't mean I should approve $1,500 toilet seats or poorly designed military equipment that is being procured simply because of political influence. In fact, I believe because I served, I have the duty to the men and women who are now in the military to make sure our military is strong and is as free from waste and corruption as possible, and our military men and women are protected to the fullest extent possible during their service and, when they are veterans, to provide for their health care needs and other services without question.

Our job is to think as Senators and not to bow to everything defense contractors or Pentagon officials want. The Senator from Massachusetts has voted for plenty of defense spending increases, but he has also voted to prevent bad programs from moving forward. He does his duty to his country and to his constituents.

The way I see it, the President and his proxies are attempting to bring American politics back to the days of dirty tricks. We saw it in 2000, not against just Al Gore but also against the most serious Republican challenger, the Senator from Arizona. The Bush campaign coordinated attacks on the Senator from Arizona that questioned his commitment to our troops. Outrageous. An attack on a man who not only fought for this Nation but spent years as a prisoner of war. They didn't stop there. They even attacked the Senator's family. It was a new low in modern American campaigning.

I want the administration and its allies in Congress to know we are not going to put up with these despicable insinuations and dirty campaigning. From now on, they question our commitment to our troops and the defense of this Nation at their own peril.

We saw it just the other day, I think it was yesterday. In a speech that was publicly televised, those members of the NEA, the National Education Association, who stick up for the quality of our teachers, for their ability to earn a living, for the ability to take the courses they need--to talk about them as terrorists? That is no different than the chicken hawk line I just talked about.

With that, I will yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the bill that is the subject of today's cloture vote on the motion to proceed.

We must not be fooled by the seemingly friendly title of this bill. The Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act of 2003 does nothing to promote the health of mothers or babies. This bill will devastate the rights of parents and children, but it will help neither patients nor doctors. The real beneficiaries will be insurance companies, HMOs and large medical corporations. Sponsors of this bill insult us by calling it a Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Act. How can shielding from accountability an entire medical specialty area result in healthy babies? Less accountability will never lead to better health care.

This bill discriminates against women and infants by restricting their right to hold physicians, hospitals, insurance companies, HMOs, and even drug and medical device manufacturers fully accountable for injuries resulting from the provision of obstetrical and gynecological care. Although proponents of the legislation say the bill is necessary to increase access to women's health care, nowhere does the bill make liability insurance for doctors more available or affordable. And nowhere does it provide access to health care for women who are uninsured. What it does do is greatly limit the ability of women and children with the most devastating injuries to hold the wrongdoer accountable.

It is another example of what I call the ``maleogarchy'' that prevails around here placing a higher value on a man's worth than a woman's. The bill cynically devalues the worth of pregnant women injured by medical negligence. Men's injuries are given full value. For example, if a woman is inappropriately prescribed blood pressure medication during pregnancy that causes blood clots, her recovery is limited under the bill's provisions. If a man is prescribed the same defective blood pressure medication by his internist, he may recover against the drug manufacturer in accordance with available State law remedies.

The legislation unfairly reduces the amount of time that an injured woman has to file a lawsuit. Under the bill, a suit would have to be filed no later than 1 year from the date the injury was discovered or should have been discovered, but not later than 3 years after the ``manifestation'' of injury. Thus, a pregnant woman who contracted HIV through a transfusion but only learned of the disease 4 years after the transfusion would be barred from filing a claim. In addition, the bill limits the rights of injured newborns by requiring that actions on their behalf be brought within three years from the date of the manifestation of injury. This is in direct contradiction to the laws of many States, which preserve the rights of minors to seek legal redress upon the age of majority.

The bill limits non-economic damages to $250,000 in the aggregate, regardless of the number of parties against whom an action is brought. Noneconomic damages compensate patients for very real injuries such as the loss of fertility, excruciating pain, and permanent and severe disfigurement. They also compensate for the loss of a child or a spouse. These are very real damages, and juries are able to calculate them fairly. How do you calculate the economic damages to infants who sustain life-long injuries during childbirth or stay-at-home mothers who lose their fertility due to a defective drug taken during the course of pregnancy? Their injuries may be almost completely non- economic and this bill would have a devastating impact.

This bill is an appallingly cynical attack on the rights of mothers and their babies. In many ways, it is even more insidious than the bill that failed in the Senate last July. It is almost as if the proponents of that bill, having failed to eliminate the rights of all patients injured by negligence, decided they would simply target the rights of the most vulnerable: pregnant mothers and their babies.