Floor Statements

Madame President, there are times in history when one person can and does make a difference.

The recent death of Sally Kabisch reminded me of one such person and one particular period of time.

Sally Kabisch dedicated herself to a remarkable career of conservation. She worked at various times as a grassroots organizer and advocate for conservation efforts in Nevada, California and Alaska.

One of Sally's great achievements was in Nevada.

Perhaps more than any other citizen, Sally is responsible for Nevada's Forest Service Wilderness bill, which I had the opportunity to pass through Congress in 1989.

From 1986 until President Bush signed the Nevada Wilderness Act on December 5, 1909, Sally was an indomitable and ever-optimistic force for protecting wild places in Nevada.

She worked doggedly to build support for wilderness. She organized, she advocated, and she traveled.

As she worked to pass that law, she was patient, positive, enthusiastic, stubborn and determined.

As her friend and another great advocate for Nevada's outdoors, Marge Sill, says, ``she was a constant inspiration to all of us.''

Sally's husband Tom Kizzia and her children Emily and Ethan know what the rest of us should remember: One person can make a difference.

Sally was one person who made a great difference. Nevada and America are better and wilder for it, forever.

Madam President, today I celebrate the Clark County School District's inaugural International Mariachi Conference and Festival. This event, promoting cultural awareness and appreciation in the Las Vegas community through the performance of mariachi music, will be held in Henderson, NV, this September.

The Clark County School District, already highly regarded for its progressive approach to music education, serves close to 1,000 mariachi students in 12 schools through its newly formed Secondary Mariachi Education Program.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Jesus Javier Trujillo, Marcia Neal and many others in the Clark County School District, the conference and festival will offer participants a quality musical experience and help foster a lifelong interest in music. For performers, such as the members of Mariachi Cobre, Mariachi Los Arrieros del Valle, and the Clark County School District Mariachi Task Force, the event will offer an opportunity to promote their culture and showcase their musical talents.

I salute Mr. Trujillo, Ms. Neal, and the Clark County School District on establishing the International Mariachi Conference and Festival, and extend my best wishes that this event will enjoy a successful future.

Mr. President, while the distinguished Senator from Mississippi is on the Senate floor, I will propose a unanimous consent request.

I ask unanimous consent that following the completion of my remarks, Senator Nelson of Florida be recognized for 10 minutes, and following his statement that Senator Dorgan be recognized for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I acknowledge--and I failed to tell my two colleagues this--that Senator Frist has announced that he is going to come to the Chamber and give a speech. He said he wanted to come around 12:30 p.m. He is due any time now; isn't that right?

So I say, if he shows up, I think it would be appropriate to have the majority leader take the floor.

The request is--I am going to give a statement now-- following my statement, if Senator Frist is here, he would supersede these two Senators who are waiting.

Mr. President, I say to my friend, the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, and all those within the sound of my voice, I appreciate his dissertation on what we should do in the approximately 15 days we have left in this legislative session. I appreciate his observations. The fact is, whether we want to acknowledge it, we have not done anything the whole year. If there is any cause for our having so little time to do so much, it is because we have not done anything up to now. We have not passed any appropriations bills--one.

To hear talk about an omnibus bill should cause the hair on everyone's neck to rise. The omnibus bill we had last year was a disaster, in my opinion. I hope we do not do that again. I would rather have a series of continuing resolutions than have this big, ugly piece of legislation that has so many ways of creating mischief.

I do appreciate my friend from Mississippi, who has a wealth of experience, having been majority and minority leader of the Senate, but he should acknowledge what he is talking about is pie in the sky. We cannot do that. We do not have time.

I will be happy to yield. Mr. President, we have to do the best we can with the tools we have.

I will be happy to yield for a question from my friend.

Mr. President, I say to my friend, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, he has pointed out in reading from the Wall Street Journal a few of the problems are around here. These very important issues cannot be resolved, in my opinion, in just a matter of a few days. For them to come out now and say we suddenly have our act together now, let's have no debate and rush these through because we have no time left in this legislative session, is not fair. It is not fair to the Senate but, more importantly, it is not fair to this country.

Mr. President, I hope all Senators had a good productive 6 weeks since we were last in session. I personally had a productive time in Nevada. I held many townhall meetings all over the State of Nevada, from Sparks to Pahrump in southern Nevada. They were productive meetings, but I was surprised the meetings all related to the same subjects.

People brought up the same issues no matter where we were in Nevada: Health care. People are tremendously concerned about health care. The people of Nevada realize we have 44 million people with no health insurance, millions more who are underinsured, and those who have health insurance see the costs escalating. Small businesses are finding it more difficult all the time to give health benefits to their employees. It is not because they are cheap. It is not because they are mean. It is simply that they cannot afford health insurance. They know they would have a more productive workforce if people had health insurance. This is a tremendous issue all over the State of Nevada and this country.

Senior citizens. I had a number of townhall meetings related specifically to senior citizens. To say they do not like the new Medicare bill is an understatement. It is a bill that is designed to bankrupt Medicare and is in the process of doing so. To top this off, they were told last week that there would be a 17-percent premium increase. They are very concerned.

Education. The Leave No Child Behind Act is leaving children behind. It is ruining public education not only in Nevada but all over the country. Nevada is a rapidly growing State. We created about 15 new schools this year. When school started a week ago, we had in Clark County alone 15 new schools, 3 new high schools. There are so many new teachers hired in the Clark County school district they cannot get them all together at one time. I talked with all the new teachers, but it took 2 separate groups of 1,000 each--2,000 new schoolteachers in Clark County alone.

These young men and women are anxious to begin a new career. There are some teachers who have transferred from other places or who have come from other places, but most all the teachers are first-year teachers, and they are excited about being able to educate these children, to form the minds of these little people who appear before them.

They are concerned because they know the reputation of the Leave No Child Behind Act has preceded them, and they know how difficult it is with this law, these unfunded mandates that are contained therein, to do a good job of teaching. Administrators acknowledge this.

I met with all 17 school administrators, school superintendents, in the State of Nevada. All 17 said the Leave No Child Behind Act is destroying public education. These 17 superintendents are from school districts as large as the one in Clark County of 300,000 students, to Esmeralda County, Goldfield, NV, 88 students in that school district.

I did not ask their party affiliation, but I am sure they are Democrats and Republicans. They all acknowledge that the Leave No Child Behind Act is simply not working.

My friend from Mississippi gave a short dissertation on all the things we need to do, but what one needs to do is look at the calendar and how we are going to accomplish this. It is a very short period of time. I think the majority leader will tell us we are going to end around October 8. This is a real short week, so there is 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks. That is 5 weeks. We have the Jewish holidays week after next which will make that a very short week. We have Columbus Day. We have so few days to do so much.

What I think we need to do is make sure we fund the Government. If it means a lame duck session, which none of us like, it means a lame duck session. The fact is, we have so little time to do so much. I hope we would be able

to focus on what is absolutely necessary.

Again, I have the greatest respect and admiration for my friend, the junior Senator from Mississippi. But what he is talking about does not acknowledge what we did not do before the break occurred.

I look forward to working with Senator McConnell. Senator Daschle has asked me to work as the lead Democrat on the working group to consider the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. We will focus on the role Congress plays in supporting our intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security.

I start out on this acknowledging that the two people who led this Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, are two of the finest public servants anywhere in America. They spent a year of their lives working on this issue. They had good Commission members. They had 80 of the top people in the world to help them do their research and investigations.

What they came up with is good, and it is going to take some real strong evidence to show why we should not follow that. I have an open mind and look forward to working with Senator McConnell, for whom I have the highest regard. This is a bipartisan working group and we must keep it that way. We have to keep politics out of this process. We are in the middle of an election, but this is not a partisan issue. I am going to work with every member of this group to find solutions that will make our Nation stronger and improve our intelligence capabilities.

I hope we can finish the so-called FSC bill that the majority leader has named the JOBS bill. I hope we do this for lots of reasons, but the most important reason, as far as I am concerned, is when I went home people are concerned about energy.

This country has less than 3 percent of the known oil reserves in the world, counting ANWR. We cannot produce our way out of the problems we have. There are things we can do to improve our production, but we cannot produce our way out of our problems. We use 12 million barrels a day. We import over 60 percent of those 12 million barrels. That cannot go on forever.

I hope we would recognize that this FSC bill, the JOBS bill, has in it section 45 production tax credits to give tax credits for Sun and wind production of energy, geothermal production of energy, and biomass. This is the future. When a country has less than 3 percent of the known oil reserves in the world, this is where we need to go. We need to go to alternative energy. That way we can move to a production society. We can do lots of good things.

The tax credit for wind energy expired the first of the year. We know it worked well. We know there are some farms in the Midwest that make more money producing electricity than they do growing soybeans, corn, and wheat.

Developing these clean, renewable resources, in addition to being the right thing to do, will create thousands of new jobs, and it will help consumers by providing a steady and reliable source of electricity and it will protect our environment. Because renewable energy is made in the USA, it will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

We have so much to do. We have only passed 1 of the 13 appropriations bills. We need to address these most important issues. As I have already indicated, I personally am opposed to an omnibus. I would rather have continuing resolutions than an omnibus bill because it was not a good experience last time. We have a lot of work to do. Let us get busy.

I see the majority leader on the floor of the Senate, and I yield the floor to him.

I certainly have no objection to the Senator from New Mexico speaking. Unless a Republican comes, because we want to alternate back and forth, I ask that following Senator Dorgan, Senator Boxer be recognized for 10 minutes.

He is already recognized.

Will the Senator yield?

I express my appreciation to the Senator from California for her diligence in coming to the Senate floor and spreading on the Record the names of these soldiers who were killed in Iraq. As the Senator knows, about 25 percent of all the deaths in Iraq are related to the State of California.

We are within a score of having a thousand deaths in Iraq. I say to my friend from California, I appreciate it so much because I have been on the Senate floor where I have lamented the fact and have referred to major newspapers around the country where the deaths of our servicemen have been relegated to page 14 and page 7 of newspapers around the country. Each one of these 254 deaths involves the sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, cousins, and neighbors, people who will long remember those who died in service to their country.

We cannot take for granted what is happening in Iraq.

I simply want to say that it is important to me to do what we can to recognize what is going on in Iraq. It is a situation that is extremely difficult and desperate. It appears now that we have not solved the Sadr problem. We have moved from Najaf to where we lost 7 Marines last night in Sadr City where he now resides, with more than 2 million people residing in that city.

So I again want the record to reflect my appreciation to the Senator from California for giving recognition to these gallant servicemen who have lost their lives in Iraq. I wish she would continue to do so. At the very least, the relatives and friends of these gallant soldiers should have their names recognized. They deserve more than that, but certainly that is a step in the right direction.

I did not realize that. The last number I saw was about 978.

Would the Senator yield?

We are focused today, and certainly I support the Senator in doing so, on the soldiers who are dead. As the Senator indicated, it is now 999. The one thing we do not focus on is this war is different than any war we have ever had. The ratio of deaths to casualties is much different. The casualties in this war--those people being wounded--are very severe although they have the use of body armor and other protections included in most of the vehicles. We have many severe burns, people being blinded, paralyzed, losing limbs. These are people who are nameless, hundreds and hundreds, into the thousands now, of people who have been severely wounded, not wounded but severely wounded. I wish there were some way we could recognize the suffering that is going on.

Mr. President, I have no objection to the distinguished Senator from Virginia speaking as long as the time for the vote does not change.

I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

No objection.

Mr. President, I can remember a famed lawyer named Melvin Belli who came to Las Vegas to try a case. The law at the time was you had to associate with a local attorney. Belli was very articulate and was so good at speaking to the court and the jury. When he finished, the Las Vegas lawyer stood and said, well, what he meant to say. This same lawyer said: When in doubt, wave your arms, scream and shout.

I think that is what we heard today on the Senate floor.

But what is really present in the Senate is the fact that we have approved 199 judges. We have turned down 6. There are crocodile tears that really are not necessary.

In this situation, if we followed the Republican rule established by the Thurmond rule, there would be no judges approved during the month of July. But we have indicated that we would be willing to approve judges during the month of July, and we have done that. I have spoken to a number of Republican Senators who indicated we would do that. The situation involving these three involve not only substance but procedure--199 to 6. That is the rule.

On behalf of Senator Daschle, I ask unanimous consent Senator Landrieu be recognized for 10 minutes and Senator Schumer be recognized for 15 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Would the Chair advise the Senator from Nevada what the status of the floor is at this time?

I yield that time back.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

I move to reconsider the vote.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, will my friend restate the unanimous consent request?

Yes, please.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, in committee I voted for this matter, to have it reported out. The ranking member, Senator Jeffords, did not, as did a number of other people who are in the minority. Their belief is this bill does not require wastewater systems to do basic tasks such as even completing a vulnerability assessment. Senator Jeffords believes this legislation is a step backward from existing law for drinking water plants and what we have agreed to already for chemical plants. So because of that, I object.