Floor Statements

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, this is legislation I really understand. Senator Inhofe and a couple others worked hard to get this legislation passed. I would say, initially, this legislation could not have passed but for the support, under some very difficult times, of the majority leader. I commend him for his outward support and inward support. He supported us openly on the Senate floor and in all of the discussions we had off the Senate floor. I am very grateful for that.

We have a very fine bill. The House bill is a bill that is OK. It is not as good as ours. But let me say this. We were moving along just fine on this legislation until, for reasons unknown to most people, the President said he is going to veto the bill if it is more than X number of dollars. Keep in mind that this legislation that passed the Senate does not create a single new tax. A vast majority of the money comes out of the trust fund to take care of this. It takes care of highways and transit--a good bill. It would create more than a million new jobs--high-paying jobs--directly.

So I say to my friend, the distinguished majority leader, I believe if conferees were appointed tonight what we would do is the Senate would designate staff people to work on this bill with the House people. I would suggest--and I don't care what it is called; call it whatever you want to call it--our staffs should start working on this legislation.

It is obvious, because the Speaker has indicated why he does not want this bill. He said he does not want his Members to have to cast a tough vote. Mr. President, 357 to 65--I served in the House. I know how many votes it takes to override a veto. Over here I know how many votes it takes to override a veto. This bill is a good bill, and the majority of the House and the Senate would vote to override the President's veto. I believe the President, when confronted with the facts of what good legislation this is, would not veto the bill anyway, with the need for creating jobs. But I would hope the majority leader would allow the staffs to begin working on this to see if we can get to a point where a conference committee can be appointed. I want this bill to pass. I think it is something that needs to pass for our country. But I would hope we don't get in a position where our staffs can't work on this. I am sure the majority leader knows the staffs have already had one productive meeting. We could have a couple more and maybe get to the point where the majority leader would be satisfied that the staffs are doing the right thing, in his estimation. I would be happy to talk to my distinguished leader. He knows my interest in this bill. Hopefully, we would get it passed.

I apologize, this late in the evening, for talking as long as I have. But I object.

Mr. President, I believe--although I am never certain--that cloture will not be invoked on the asbestos bill. The reason I mention that is I think the work done by Senators Feinstein, Hatch, Kyl, and Leahy has been tremendous on this piece of legislation that we are going to debate tomorrow. It was originally in the form of a constitutional amendment. Even though I was a cosponsor of that early on, I think this is the appropriate way to do it.

I am very happy this most important legislation will be completed tomorrow. We don't often get to pat each other on the back around here for cooperation, but certainly this is an indication that people have worked well together and it is very good for the people of our country.

Mr. President, let me, first of all, say I tried to not be the last person speaking in the Senate, as people want to go home. We have lots of people here, including the Presiding Officer. I was asked early yesterday to give a statement today, and certain people are expecting me to do this. So I apologize to all the staff. I will try to be as quick as I can. I do believe that the statement is one that is important.

Let me, first of all, comment on the statements made by Senators Hatch and Sessions--those statements I heard today dealing with the asbestos legislation. I acknowledge that it is important legislation.

For example, I met in my office with Ken Bowa from Nevada, one of the vice presidents of the Pfizer Company. You would not think that a company that manufactures pharmaceuticals would have an asbestos problem, but they do. They bought a company 30 years ago,

or thereabouts, and that company at one time produced a material that had asbestos in it. Even though this is a multibillion-dollar company, that small purchase they made is causing them a lot of grief. So I know the problems from the business perspective. There are lots of problems. I understand that. I understand that my friend, Ken Bowa, had the interests of his client at heart, as do the other businesspeople, and their representatives come to see us.

One of the issues we always have to understand with asbestos is that in addition to the companies having problems, people are killed as a result of messing around with asbestos, working with it, working around it. Women who washed their husbands' clothes now have very serious illnesses, such as asbestosis, mesothelioma. With mesothelioma, it is not a question of dying; it is only a question of how soon. The average life expectancy is 14 months.

There is no question that as a result of some of the books written in the past year on Libby, MT, ``Fatal Deception,'' where companies knew the danger of this product and they covered it up, they hid it, as a result of that, people will get sick and will die.

This is an issue about which we must be very cautious before we do something. The main thing we need to do is make sure there is enough money to take care of the people who are tragically ill as a result of this substance.

My friend from Alabama, the distinguished junior Senator from Alabama, said: Why don't we take care of this bill; there has been a lot of work that has gone into it, speaking about the bill on which we are going to vote regarding cloture tomorrow.

We reported out a bill--the way it should be done around here--we reported a bill out of committee on a bipartisan vote. That bill had a price tag of $154 billion. The bill we are being asked to deal with tomorrow has a price tag of $109 billion. That is a huge difference. We were not allowed to work on the committee-reported bill. We are now being asked to vote on this aberration of that bill.

This is not about greedy lawyers. It is about sick people. It is about companies that are in dire straits as a result of asbestos.

In spite of all this, we have not taken appropriate action to ban the importation of this toxic, poisonous, horrible substance, asbestos. I have joined with Patty Murray to deal with the importation of this substance into our country, as other countries have done. We have not done that. This will need a lot of work.

Mr. President, the reason I came to the floor is, first, to express my appreciation to the former chairman, now the ranking member, of the Education Committee, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, for constantly reminding us of the importance of education, enabling America's families to improve the quality of their life.

I want to talk about the negative impact of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Congress is not expected to pass much legislation this year, even though there is much more that should be done. Of the dozens of issues we have yet to consider, addressing the consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act is paramount.

When the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, there were many who lauded President Bush's commitment to education. After all, who among us would allow any child to slip through the cracks of our educational system if it could be prevented? None of us would do that. At the time, many thought this was sweeping legislation and that sweeping legislation would fill those gaps.

Sadly, this has not been the case. The No Child Left Behind Act has done more harm than good in more States than not. In the State of Nevada, we are suffering under the burden of unfunded mandates this law imposed. In fact, a leading headline in the Reno newspaper, the second largest newspaper in the State of Nevada, reads:

Educators Give No Child Left Behind Act a Failing Grade.

The man who stated that is the superintendent of public instruction of Washington County, the second largest school district in the State of Nevada. He said it is not working. It took a lot of courage for this man to do this. He comes from a county that is a Republican county by registration, but it is a county that is very fair and very independent. I am sure they recognize that Jim Hager, the fine man that he is, the long-time superintendent he has been, would not say anything unless he truly believed it was true:

Educators Give No Child Left Behind Act a Failing Grade.

When I talk about Jim Hager, I am talking about the Washington County School District superintendent, but he is also president of the Nevada Association of School Superintendents. We have 17 counties in Nevada, 17 school superintendents, and he is speaking for them. He is speaking for the Nevada Association of School Superintendents.

Let me give a snapshot of the education landscape in Nevada. We have 17 counties, as I have mentioned, in the State of Nevada. Clark County, of course, is the county Las Vegas is in. Well over 70 percent of the people of the State of Nevada live in Clark County. It is a big county. The State of Nevada has approximately 400,000 students. About 280,000 students are from Clark County. It is the fifth or sixth largest school district in America.

I also want to say here, for future understanding of my remarks, in the Clark County School District, about 30 percent of the children in that school district are Hispanic. The vast majority of those Hispanic students come from Mexico. Many of those children, even though they are as smart as any other kids in America, have language problems because some of their parents do not speak English.

Clark County, which has this huge school district, needs $1 million annually for recruitment efforts. They have to hire 2,000 new teachers a year.

We have a real problem graduating minority students. We are 49th in the Nation. We graduate overall about 63 percent of all students. That is not good. We recognize that. But you will not meet a single parent, teacher, principal, superintendent, or school administrator of any kind who is not concerned about preserving and improving the quality of education for the kids in Nevada. In fact, there is no one within the sound of my voice who is not committed to giving every child an opportunity to graduate and go on to higher education, whether that higher education is college or some kind of trade school.

Whatever it takes for us to get there, we are going to do that. In fact, Nevada did create its own accountability system that will work in our States. It addresses the needs of our children in our own way. The No Child Left Behind Act was passed and now we are living in its wake. It reminds me of when I went to Hawaii for the first time. There was this beautiful beach on the island of Maui. We were eating in a restaurant and it was such a beautiful view. We had a conversation with the waitress and she told us when she was a little girl the beach that we could see opened up and went out for a football field, way out into the ocean. The kids ran out there. There was a school nearby where the restaurant is now. They ran out there. What they did not realize is that was a tsunami and it pulled the water out and you could not see the waves coming in. It washed over everybody and killed a lot of kids and a lot of people were hurt.

That is what has happened with the No Child Left Behind Act. One cannot see on the surface what has happened, but the undertow, the tsunami, has wiped out a lot of children. It is ironic that this sweeping education reform legislation authored by President Bush is receiving a failing grade from every school system it was intended to help. There is no question about it, as I indicated before, that it is hurting kids in Nevada. It is so bad in Utah, they have withdrawn from the program. The State of Utah--I am sure it is the first of a number of States to do that--said: We want no part of it. We want to educate our kids the way we think we should, and not have these burdens that I will talk about in just a minute.

So more than 2 years after this legislation was passed, parents are still struggling to understand the basics of the law, especially when they learn about terms such as ``annual yearly progress'' and ``failing school.'' As a parent, people want the best for their children. It is disturbing to be told

that the school their child attends is now considered failing.

As a result of this legislation, as my colleagues can see on this second chart I have, we have come up with some terms but hardly anyone understands them. In this glossary of terms, AYP--we will see that a lot--adequate yearly progress is a minimum level of improvement that school districts and schools must achieve each year as determined under the Federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Individualized educational plans are specific goals set by an educational team for a special education student and includes any special supports that are needed to help achieve these goals.

We can run through this whole list of definitions: Safe harbor, a provision intended for schools and districts that are making progress, at least 10 percent, in student achievement but are not yet making adequate yearly progress targets goals. It is designed to prevent the over identification of schools not making adequate yearly progress.

The definitions are unbelievably difficult. The people back in Washington do not understand them. The people in Nevada certainly do not understand them, nor do people around the rest of the country.

I have tried to help improve this legislation by introducing and supporting measures that will help, not hurt, our most vulnerable educational communities. I will give an example. Every day in Nevada, rural communities are confronted by a shortage of resources. We have 17 counties in Nevada. We have one county, Esmeralda County, that does not have 1,000 people living in it, and it is a pretty good size county. We have some schools that are very sparsely populated. We only have two counties that are heavily populated. Clark, I have talked about, that 70 percent of the people live there, and 20 percent in the metropolitan area of Washoe County. That leaves 10 percent of the people around the rest of the State.

It may surprise some people to know that there are still small towns in rural America where the citizens wait for a doctor to make rounds or a mail truck to drop off mail. These families have elected to stay in their communities despite all the obstacles, and they deserve an opportunity to enjoy a good quality of life.

We have rural schools in Clark County. My home is in Searchlight, NV. I am very fortunate the school there is named after me. It is not a very big school. There are about 50 kids in it, grades 1-6, but in Clark County we have schools that are rural schools. In Nevada, we still have one-room schools. So we are concerned about what is happening in rural America.

I have not traveled to Minnesota very much. After they immigrated to this country, my in-laws settled in Minnesota, and I know that a lot of very small communities are in Minnesota. People think of Minnesota as Minneapolis and St. Paul, but I am confident there are a lot of rural communities, just like in Nevada. That is why I introduced legislation entitled ``Assisting America's Rural Schools Act'' that addressed the concerns of rural school systems trying to comply with the teacher quality standards set by No Child Left Behind.

When I went to school in Searchlight, we had one teacher who taught all eight grades. There is a small town in Nevada called Austin in Lander County. It is a community much like the one I was raised in. Austin boasts a total of 63 students in grades K-12. For grades 6-12, there are only three teachers for all subjects. These teachers are considered highly qualified in science, English, math, and physical education. In order for Austin to acquire a teacher who is highly qualified in the subject of history, the local education agency must either find and recruit another teacher or send one of its three current teachers back to school to get accredited in history via distance learning.

Unfortunately, Lander County does not have the money to do any of this. The issue is not whether teachers in rural areas should be qualified to teach multiple subjects. They should. However, requiring them to obtain highly qualified status in all subjects simultaneously is unreasonable.

So my legislation gave rural school systems some flexibility in meeting the definition of a highly qualified teacher without diminishing high accountability standards for teachers. Rural school districts would be able to give a one-year exemption to any teacher who is already qualified in at least one core academic subject. A highly qualified teacher who is working toward that certification in another subject can still teach both subjects. The Department of Education adopted the principle of this bill last month.

The Secretary of Education came to Reno and made that announcement. Teachers in eligible rural school districts who are highly qualified in at least one subject will now have 3 years to become highly qualified. I am certain rural school districts and teachers are relieved the administration recognized the burden No Child Left Behind had placed and they recognized that my legislation was important.

That was just one of the many glitches in this mammoth bill. How many more will we face in years to come? Superintendent Jim Hager--I have talked about him--is responsible for 60,000 students in Washoe County. He gave an honest assessment of what is going on with the Leave No Child Behind Act throughout the State, and probably every other State. One of his chief frustrations is that all students who come into the Nevada school system are facing formidable challenges--learning disabilities, language barriers, or influences beyond their control attributed to their living conditions.

These challenges are significant and oftentimes the school system is intended to be the primary system to fix, help, or remove these obstacles. No Child Left Behind expects these school districts to turn these troubled children into top flight students within 1 year without receiving full funding from the Federal Government to do so.

If the schools do not turn these children around in a timely manner, they go on what is called a watch list, a badge that is not good, a badge these schools have to wear. This badge puts these schools on the verge of being branded failure.

Let me show a chart that depicts Clark County's failing school cells. If we look here, we will find in the Clark County school district where the problems are. If we look across, we will find that white kids are doing just very nicely. They are doing very fine. The schools that are mostly white have no problem, but if we go to a school that is Hispanic, there is a problem. Every place we see the red, which is failure, is Hispanic--one, two, three, four, five categories, and if we look at other minorities, African Americans, the same thing. I think this is a glaring example of why this legislation is bad.

It would be nice if you had a school which represented the percentage of people within the community, but that is not how schools are. We find in Nevada, as every place else, schools that are heavily Hispanic. You have schools that have large numbers of African-American children. In these schools, these people who are teaching have problems with language arts.

Let's say you have somebody starting school who has bad English. The way I look at this, even though my skin is white, I look at every one of these problems here as me. When I grew up, my parents were uneducated. They were not dumb; they were uneducated. My father never even graduated from the 8th grade. My mother never even graduated from high school.

I would have been part of this failing school system. If they had tried to test me out of the schools then, I couldn't have made it. It is just like a lot of these children.

These children here are not dumb. They have social problems. Maybe their parents didn't graduate from the 8th grade. Maybe their parents didn't graduate from high school. Maybe they don't have both parents at home. That doesn't mean they are dumb. Maybe what these children need, rather than a badge that they are in a failing school is extra help. That has not happened.

I believe we should hold our teachers and students accountable. But if we expect them to achieve miracles without providing the resources they need, we are setting them up for failure. That is what this bill has done. It is not helping children learn and it is not helping teachers teach.

Testing a child to make him learn is like weighing a steer to make him gain weight. By weighing a steer, he doesn't

gain weight. You have to feed him. That is how you get a steer to gain weight. Testing a child to make him learn is the same thing. You can't test a child into being proficient in English or Spanish.

The No Child Left Behind Act is having a ripple effect throughout the State of Nevada and throughout the country. That is why I am going to sit down with every county superintendent in the State next month and ask them what needs to be fixed. I think I know, but I want to hear them. I want them to have the opportunity to speak to me. We need relief in Nevada, and if we have to do it bit by bit we will. But this law as it stands puts our educational system in peril.

Nevada is not the only State that has problems. I was pleased the Department of Education adopted the principle of this bill last month, as I said. But if we look at the failing school system--look at another chart I have. Look at this one. This really, as far as I am concerned, is showing that it is pathetically horrible.

You can have a school that meets every criterion that is important under the No Child Left Behind Act--except one. Everything is just fine. But if there is limited English proficiency in that school, they are a failing school. If everything else is fine but they have limited English proficiency, they are given the red badge and now they are held up to being a failing school.

It is because they have children in the school who have come to school not being able to speak very good English. They are not dumb. They deserve an education. The No Child Left Behind Act is having a ripple effect throughout Nevada and throughout the Nation.

Nevada is not the only State having difficulties implementing this law; it is a national problem. Thousands of school districts are already trying to juggle school construction costs, increase graduation rates, find money for textbooks that they don't have. Reducing class sizes is impossible. They are figuring out what to do about overcrowded schools.

During the April recess I spoke with concerned citizens of Nevada. I went to several schools in what I call my Capitol Classroom program. I talked about overcrowded schools. There is one high school in Clark County with about 5,000 students in it. There are others almost that big: a high school with 5,000 students. More than 70 percent of our Nation's high schools have 1,500 or more students.

When the President signed the No Child Left Behind Act, he signaled his support for programs that were supposed to help students learn, including smaller schools and smaller classes. In contrast to that promise, in this year's budget the President zeros out the Smaller Learning Communities Program--zero.

I had the good fortune at one time in my career to be chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee. We had one of our retreats up in Wilmington, DE. I brought in there a woman by the name of Deborah Meyer. She was from New York. Deborah Meyer was a school principal of a big school in New York, an elementary school. Her kids were doing so awful that she decided to go to the school authorities and she said: Look, this is not working. Trust me. I want to try something. I want to take this school and, instead of having one school, we are going to have four schools. We are going to have four principals, four separate faculties, four separate lunch hours--everything is going to be like a separate school.

The school administrators said: We have nothing to lose. You are doing so bad you can't do any worse than you have done.

She did that and within one quarter, in 3 months, the scores had risen in every category and Deborah Meyer has become famous because of that and she has gone other places and tried the same thing. We need to understand smaller schools help.

Senator Bingaman and I, along with 14 other colleagues, sent a letter to the labor subcommittee requesting funding be restored. Not enough, but $200 million in the Smaller Learning Communities Program. We really need that.

The President has been given bad advice by the budgeteers down there. Common sense tells us students do best when they receive plenty of personal attention from their teachers. Studies tell us the same thing. According to the Department of Education, research suggests that positive outcomes associated with smaller schools stem from their ability to have close, personal environments where teachers can work with a small set of students, challenging and inspiring them.

They build big schools because it is cheaper. Smaller learning communities can achieve in different ways: small learning centers, core academics, magnet programs, schools within a school, as I have just described. It would seem to me, if this administration really wanted to help our teachers teach and help our students learn they wouldn't be trying to eliminate a program like this, to create smaller learning communities, which have been proven to do just that.

I touched only on a few things tonight dealing with problems of the No Child Left Behind Act. It is going to take a lot of work to improve this bill and make it what it promised to be, a tool that will help teachers and students in every public school in America. It is a difficult job but we must keep our promise to America's children. We can't afford to leave them behind.

Mr. President, very briefly, under our controlled one-half hour, we yield 15 minutes to Senator Harkin, 7\1/2\ minutes to Senator Corzine, and 7\1/2\ minutes to Senator Sarbanes.

What was the unanimous consent request?

Reserving the right to object, does the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee know approximately how long he might speak when he does get the floor?

We want to let other people come and speak. So it does not matter how long he speaks, just so we have some general idea. I withdraw the reservation of objection.

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

Mr. President, right before we had our break we were asked, Senator Daschle and I, to see what we could do to move the FSC bill along. The majority has affixed the name the jobs and opportunity bill, or something like that.

We have always known the importance of this legislation, and we did our very best to move this along. It was held up initially because we wanted a vote on overtime. The majority, for reasons I fully don't understand, refused to allow us to have a vote on this.

As the Chair will recall, this amendment passed previously. What our amendment would do is say the President does not have the right to take away the ability of American nurses, firemen, police, and a total of 8 million people, from getting overtime. In effect, what we have been told by the administration is they were going to promulgate a rule that would take away overtime pay for people who make more than $22,000 a year.

We wanted a vote on this. You can't do that. It passed once; it was stricken in a Republican-only conference. The House passed a resolution saying they wanted their conferees to do the same thing the Senate did and stop the President from doing this.

We have been told by the majority--the distinguished majority leader has come out here on a number of occasions and said this is a must-pass bill. American businesses are getting hurt. So Senator Daschle and I worked for the better part of a day calling individual Members. We had 75 amendments. We worked to get them cut down. We not only cut down the amendments to 18, but we have time agreements on these amendments, as little as 5 minutes on some of the amendments. We clearly could have finished all of these amendments in 1 day. All of them wouldn't require votes but, if they did, we would be willing to put in an extra-long day. Therefore, we, through our Democratic leader, went to the Republican leader and said, Here is what we have. Some of these amendments, quite frankly, would not require votes and some would not even be offered. So we wait one night, come back to the majority and say, We are willing to do this deal. We know this is an important bill, that tariffs are being applied against American manufacturers and other business people; what is the problem?

To make a long story short, we were told the majority had 50 amendments with no time limits on them whatever.

The FSC bill is not going forward not because of anything we have done. It is because this Congress, I am sorry to say, using the Harry Truman term, is a do-nothing Congress. We do not do anything. If we have to work past 5 or 6 o'clock at night, that is not a good idea. We cannot even consider coming in and voting at noon on Monday. To think we could vote past 9 or 10 o'clock on Friday, even on a bad day, is out of the question. We usually vote Tuesday afternoon and finish the votes as early on Thursday as we can. This is not a good way to accomplish things. That is why this Congress is doing nothing.

I don't want another word ever said about the FSC bill not going forward because of the Democrats. We want to go forward. We have done everything we can to move this forward. We have wasted on this piece of legislation many days of legislative business when we could be working on things that need to be done in addition to that.

Gasoline prices in Nevada have increased 46 cents a gallon since the beginning of the year, almost 50 cents a gallon. I have not checked today. They may be up another 4 cents. Since the first of the year the prices in Nevada have gone up 46 cents per gallon.

I talked to a contractor who is the largest contractor, he says, in northern Nevada, the Reno area. Diesel fuel prices for his company are costing his company $7,500 a day in addition to what he was paying at the first of the year. This is in addition to the mess we have with steel prices. This is a tremendous burden.

There is no doubt the price of crude oil has contributed to higher prices in Nevada and throughout the country. However, the outrageous 46-cent-a-gallon increase in Nevada since January is not driven by crude oil but corporate greed and profit.

We are used to it in Nevada because during the Enron debacle we were told it was supply and demand. It had nothing to do with supply and demand. It had everything to do with Enron reaping windfall profits. Enron told consumers it was a matter of supply and demand. But it turned out Enron was manipulating the supply of electricity.

In Nevada we get all of our gasoline from California refineries, so any problem with the supply in California is a problem for Nevada. This is a lot of talk about the tight California gasoline market, where prices are typically 20 to 30 cents above the national average. We hear about the law of supply and demand all the time driving prices higher.

One thing I know for certain about the law of supply and demand with the Enron situation, is that it cost the Nevada ratepayers nearly $1 billion during the electricity crisis almost 3 years ago. Based on this bitter experience which is still being litigated in the courts, I was concerned Nevadans might be getting ripped off again when gasoline prices went through the roof early this year. I asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate these wild price increases, particularly with an eye toward any possible manipulation of gasoline markets. After 5

weeks, the FTC responded by saying prices in Nevada were ``unusually high'' and above predicted norms. An informal FTC investigation is still looking into the cause of the price hike.

There are spikes FTC says they cannot understand. They are having a hard time showing collusion or market manipulation, but they know something is wrong. As they said, the usually high prices are above predicted norms.

I don't need an investigation to tell me big oil profits have soared at the expense of working families. These markets are not competitive when a handful of companies can decide what price they are willing to sell for and what price a consumer is forced to pay.

As a nation, we need to address both the supply and demand side of the energy equation to promote a truly competitive market. On the demand side, we have to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and promote public transit. Maybe that is wishful thinking. On the supply side, we can increase the use of alternative fuels and renewable energy.

In the short term, we have to increase supply. We can do that, in my opinion, by having the President at this time, when the Saudis and others are turning off the spigots and making the supply less--we can increase supply by pulling oil from our petroleum reserves. We need to do that. President Clinton did it. The first President Bush did it.

In the long term, we have to do something with alternative energy. We have to. It is important. I was encouraged before the recess when the energy tax incentives were added to the FSC bill, which I just talked about. I applaud Senators Grassley and Baucus for the excellent provision dealing with section 45 production tax credit for renewable energy resources that expands and extends the credit for wind, geothermal, solar, and biomass energy. We must harness the brilliance of the sun, the force of the wind, and the heat within the Earth. By using the bountiful resources to diversify our energy supply, we protect the air we breathe and we protect consumers from these wild price swings.

We cannot lose sight of the fact renewable energy will make our Nation more secure because it is made in the United States of America. I was disappointed to learn we will put off consideration of the FSC bill, even though we have agreed to the finite list of amendments.

The other thing the President can do on a short-term basis is have the Saudis provide more oil. We are told in Woodward's book he has a deal to do this in the fall. Move it up, make the deal a little earlier.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have been listening to the discussions today on asbestos litigation, and there have been some provocative statements made on both sides. This is a very important issue. I have to say I have some sympathy for the businesses. But the sympathy I have for the businesses is overwhelmed by what I have seen in the personal suffering of the people who have been injured, some of whom are dead. We do not know how many thousands will die this year. Estimates are probably 10,000 from asbestos.

We still import thousands of pounds of this poison into our country. So I hope all the people who have good intentions--I know they all do-- talking about this asbestos reform will, first of all, understand Judge Becker, whom I have never met, is not a Senator. It is nice he has agreed to come in and work on these proposals, but Judge Becker is not a Senator, I repeat. He is not a member of the staff. I do not know who he is meeting with, why he is meeting with them. There are a lot of judges in America, retired judges. It so happens this one is from Pennsylvania. There are retired judges in other places who have the same expertise he has.

I listened to Senator Hatch speak today. I listened to Senator Leahy speak today. We cannot write an asbestos bill in the Senate. We cannot write it outside here in some office building downtown. The only way I will ever feel comfortable about legislation dealing with asbestos is if it goes through

the channels it is supposed to go through: the Judiciary Committee.

We have men and women on the Judiciary Committee, both from the majority and the minority, who have spent years working on this issue. They are certified experts. They not only understand litigation, they understand legislation.

So I hope everyone understands it is good people who are interested in this legislation do everything they can to weigh in on this issue, but I hope we all look to the Judiciary Committee to come to us with a product. It cannot come out of the Environment and Public Works Committee that I work on. It cannot come out of the Appropriations Committee. It cannot come out of the Governmental Affairs Committee. It cannot come out of any other committee. It has to come out of the Judiciary Committee.

But we have people who have worked on this issue--not only the two leading members of the committee; that is, the ranking member and the chairman--but also people on that committee who have listened to hours and hours and days of testimony. Maybe they should listen to some more. But this is legislation we are talking about that is going to have a price tag on it from $150 billion--I should say, the figure in this bill is a very ridiculously low figure of $109 billion, to maybe as much as $700 billion or $800 billion, maybe $1 trillion. So this is not something we need to rush into.

We need to help victims of asbestosis, mesothelioma. I would hope we would do as the State of Illinois has done, have some type of pleural registry so people who have worked around asbestos and are afraid they are going to get sick would be able to go on to that registry so the statute of limitations is not tolled.

In short, the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over this legislation, and this is from where the legislation should come that we deal with on the floor, not some retired judge, or not a Senator who feels he knows more about it than others. I am not pinpointing any Senator. I am saying there are a lot of people who think they have an interest in this issue. Everyone has an interest in this issue. All 100 Senators care greatly about this issue. Some feel more strongly about the businesses than I do; others feel for the victims.

But I would hope we do not try to rush into this and do something that is written here or downtown someplace; that whatever we do, whatever suggestions, whatever people feel will improve our ability to pass this legislation, they will work through Senators Hatch and Leahy and have the full committee vote on what we do.

If the Senator would yield for a comment?

The staffs are not quite ready to do the close yet. They should be ready in a matter of a few minutes. So if the Senator would allow us a few more minutes?

I will make a statement that will take a couple minutes. Senator Daschle is going to make a statement. We can go ahead and do the close, and he can speak after the close, but we are not quite ready on this side to close. It will take another few minutes.

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for me to make a very brief statement?

Mr. President, I would agree with my friend, the former attorney general of Texas, the PATRIOT

Act has made America a safer place. I think that is a fair statement. But I would also say the PATRIOT Act is something we have to watch very closely. We realized when we passed this legislation there may be provisions in it that went too far, not far enough. As a result of that, we have put a provision in this very important bill, the PATRIOT Act, that it would sunset; that if we did not renew that legislation, it would fail; therefore, next year we have to renew this act.

I am confident, based on what is going on around the country, in spite of the statement from the American Civil Liberties Union--we can look to Las Vegas, my home, on one criminal prosecution, what the authorities did there. It is my understanding they used the PATRIOT Act. A person bought a car with global positioning in it. The reason they bought that, of course, is in case something went wrong you could press a button and come and find out where the car is, or, if it was an emergency, someone trying to hijack the car, emergency authorities would be notified. The person never realized law enforcement authorities could focus on that vehicle and listen to everything that went on in that car. That is what they did.

I would have to think without getting a judge's order, without doing some things in addition to what I have described, that was probably going a little too far. The point being, the PATRIOT Act is something we need to take a look at. That is why we have this legislation that will sunset.

I hope the Judiciary Committee and other committees that believe they have jurisdiction will begin as soon as possible taking a look at this legislation to see if there are provisions that should be revised, eliminated, added to. I don't think we need to criticize Senator Kerry because he thinks we need to take a look at the PATRIOT Act. I believe we do, and that is certainly appropriate. The Senate agreed. That is why we included a sunset provision in this most important legislation.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I object.

Mr. President, today, April 20th, is being observed as Equal Pay Day.

I wish I could say it is a celebration of Equal Pay for women. But it isn't.

Instead, this day symbolizes the fact that women continue to earn only 77 percent as much as men, 77 cents on the dollar.

Today, April 20, marks how many extra days a woman has to work to earn as much money as a man earned last year.

Women are paid less than men even when they have the same experience, the same education, the same skills, and live in the same parts of the country.

And they are paid less for doing the same jobs.

For example, women lawyers and women doctors both have median weekly earnings that are nearly $500 less than those of male lawyers and doctors.

Women food service supervisors are paid about $100 less each week than men in the same job, and waitresses earn about $50 less than waiters.

Women professors' weekly earnings are nearly $300 less each week than men's, and the median weekly salary for women elementary school teachers is $70 per week less than that of male elementary school teachers.

When women are short-changed in their paychecks, it doesn't just hurt them. It hurts their whole family, including their children and spouses.

Lower pay for women means a family can't afford as nice of a home, or give their children the same opportunities, as they could if women were paid as much as men.

If married women were paid the same as comparable men, their family incomes would rise by nearly 6 percent. And the poverty rate among families of working women would decline from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent.

On average, every working family loses $4,000 every year because of unequal pay for women.

If single working mothers earned as much as comparable men, their family incomes would increase by nearly 17 percent, and their poverty rates would be cut in half, from 25.3 percent to 12.6 percent.

If single women earned as much as comparable men, their incomes would rise by 13.4 percent and their poverty rate would fall from 6.3 percent to 1 percent.

Women lose 23 cents on the dollar compared to men--almost a quarter.

Over a lifetime of work, that 23 cents adds up fast. It adds up to real money.

For an average 25-year old working woman, it adds up to about $523,000 during her working life. That's more than a half-million dollars less than a man will be paid.

Because women are paid less when they work, they can't save as much toward their retirement. Half of all older women who received a private pension in 1998 got less than $3,486 per year, compared with $7,020 per year for older men. In other words, the pensions for women were less than half of the pensions for men.

The figures are even worse for women of color. African-American women earn only 67 cents and Latinas 55 cents for every dollar that men earn. Asian Pacific American women still earn only 83.5 cents on the dollar compared to men's salaries.

These statistics remind us that we still have a long way to go, even though we have been fighting for decades to win equal pay for women.

When President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, it became illegal for companies to pay women less than men who were doing exactly the same work.

Unfortunately, other forms of discrimination have continued, including relatively low wages for jobs that have traditionally been considered ``women's work,'' like teaching, nursing and child care.

Some recent legal settlements provide insight into the kind of discrimination that women still face in the workplace: In 1997, Home Depot and Publix Supermarkets each agreed to pay more than $80 million to settle major lawsuits charging them with sex discrimination against thousands of working women. The lawsuits alleged that, among other things, the companies had assigned women to lower-paying jobs, refused to give them raises, and denied them promotions. In 1999, Texaco agreed to pay $3.1 million in a ``glass ceiling'' settlement to women who alleged they were consistently paid less than their male counterparts in similar positions. In 2000, Ford Motor Co. agreed to pay $3.8 million to women and minority applicants who claimed they were denied jobs as entry-level assemblers. In 2002, American Express Financial Advisors Inc. agreed to pay $31 million to settle a sex discrimination case alleging that female professionals were paid less and unfairly denied promotions.

Everyone agrees that women deserve equal pay. But we still haven't reached that goal.

That's why we must vigorously enforce the equal pay laws that are already on the books. Pass stronger and better equal pay laws, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, which I am proud to co-sponsor. And protect the rights of workers to organize and bargain with employers.

It is simply not fair that a young woman beginning a career in the workplace today will earn a half-million dollars less than a man.

It isn't fair that pensions for women are half as much as pensions for men.

And it isn't fair that the families of working women are penalized in every paycheck.

Let's pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, and let's work to finally ensure that women who work get paid as much as men.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the Washoe Tribe and Stephanie Lefevre of Nevada on receiving the 2004 Environmental Achievement Award from the U.S. EPA's Region 9 Office.

One of the greatest legacies we can bequeath to our children is a clean and protected environment. I take this opportunity to recognize the Washoe Tribe and Ms. Lefevre for their strong commitment to preserving our State's rich natural heritage.

Headed by Marie Barry, the Washoe Tribe Environmental Department has helped restore a section of the Carson River corridor through Jacks Valley in Douglass County, NV.

The tribe has contributed significantly to the environmental health of its ancestral land, while engaging the local community in a constructive and educational experience. Its ``Washoe on the River Day'' events attracted dozens of volunteers to participate in the restoration process, and learn about the environmental history of the Carson River and its cultural connection to the Washoe people.

As Director of the Nevada Outdoor School, Stephanie Lefevre has developed an environmental education plan to teach students about the problems posed by illegal dumping in local areas. She has also created several other environmental programs in Winnemucca, including a community garden and composting program and a volunteer community recycling program. The recycling program expands conservation efforts and teaches students about responsible environmental stewardship.

Please join me in congratulating the Washoe Tribe Environmental Department and Stephanie Lefevre on their outstanding work and well- earned recognition.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am going to let these matters go forward, but I have spoken personally with the chairman of the EPW Committee, which has jurisdiction over these matters. I have told him I am going to be very direct in my opposing anything that comes out of the committee until we get something resolved regarding a nomination of Gregg Jaczko, which has been sent here from the White House. As I said, I am going to let this go. This is fair warning to my distinguished chairman and friend, Senator Inhofe. I am not going to let anything else move, period, until we get a hearing date set on Gregg Jaczko. Here is a man who is a distinguished scholar in physics; he worked in the Senate; he is a Democrat, and we are entitled to have a Democrat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It has been sent here by the White House. That doesn't happen very often.

I don't want this to be held up in committee. If it is, everything will be held up in committee. With that, I have no objection.

Senator Durbin will speak for up to 15 minutes.

If the Senator will withhold, Senator Daschle wishes to give a speech. He has said to go ahead.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, the Democratic leader wanted to speak. He yielded to the Senator from Kansas. If the Senator from Texas will withhold for a minute, he should be coming here.

Yes, there is, until the Democratic leader gets here.

How much time is remaining on----

I would say, Madam President, we have no objection.

Madam President, I was told that the Senator from Texas didn't understand what I said. What I said earlier was that Senator Daschle wanted to speak and that is why I objected. I ask unanimous consent that the time on both sides be extended for an additional 10 minutes.