Floor Statements

Mr. President, I introduce, along with Senator Hagel, the Healthy Housing Council Act of 2008. This legislation would establish an independent interagency Council on Healthy Housing in the executive branch. The bill would improve the coordination of existing but fragmented programs, so that families can access Government programs and services in a more efficient and effective manner.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 6 million households live in housing with moderate or severe heating, plumbing, or electric hazards. This count of moderate or severe physical problems does not even include significant lead-based paint hazards, which persist in 24 million, or approximately four times as many, households.

Low-income and minority individuals and families are disproportionately affected by housing-related health hazards. We know that residents of poorly designed, constructed, or maintained housing are at greater risk for serious illnesses and injuries, including cancer, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, falls, rodent bites, childhood lead poisoning, and asthma. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, non-Hispanic Blacks and Mexican- Americans are three times as likely to have elevated blood-lead levels, compared to non-Hispanic whites. About 1.2 million housing units with significant lead-based paint hazards house low-income families with children under 6 years of age.

If the disease and injury toll taken on our Nation's individuals and families, particularly our children, is not enough to demonstrate the need for coordinated Federal Government action on housing-related health hazards, consider some of the annual costs.

According to research at the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center, annual costs for environmentally attributable childhood diseases in the U.S. total an estimated $54.9 billion. That number is approximately 3 percent of total health care costs.

The good news is that low-cost preventative measures can have dramatic effects. For example, properly installing and maintaining a smoke alarm can cut the risk of fire death in half. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that providing healthy housing to American families will help prevent 20 million asthma cases, 240,000 incidents of elevated blood-lead levels in young children, 14,000 burn injuries, and 21,000 radon-associated lung cancer deaths.

While there are many programs in place to address housing-related health hazards, these programs are fragmented and spread across many agencies, making it difficult for at-risk families to access assistance or to receive the comprehensive information they need. It is time for better coordination.

This bill authorizes $750,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 to 2013 for an independent Council on Healthy Housing, which would bring Federal, State, and local government representatives, as well as industry and nonprofit representatives, to the table at least once a year.

The council would review, monitor, and evaluate existing housing, health, energy, and environmental programs. The council would then make recommendations to reduce duplication, ensure collaboration, identify best practices, and develop a comprehensive healthy housing research agenda.

In order to ensure that members of the public are informed of and benefit from the council's activities, the council would hold biannual stakeholder meetings, keep an updated Web site, and work towards unified healthy housing data collection and maintenance.

While there is a growing consensus on ways to help communities make housing healthier, there is also a lack of coordinated programs and information, which has made it difficult for the public to access research and data. By creating this council, we can provide a sorely needed forum for otherwise disparate health and housing experts, whether in the Government, private, or nonprofit sector, to share their experiences, successes, and agendas for the future.

The Healthy Housing Council Act will help us start working towards a time when an affordable, decent, and healthy home will be not just the American dream, but the American promise. I hope my colleagues will join me and Senator Hagel in supporting this bipartisan bill and other healthy housing efforts.

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

Mr. President, today marks the 18th annual National Sportsmanship Day. This initiative, the largest of its kind in the world, is a program of the Institute for International Sport based at the University of Rhode Island. Since 1991, the program has promoted the highest ideals of sportsmanship and fair play among not only the young people of Rhode Island but also among youth in every other State and, indeed, around the world. This year alone over 7 million children in more than 14,000 schools throughout the United States and countries as diverse as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Australia, and Bermuda, will celebrate National Sportsmanship Day.

Our appreciation of sports is deep-rooted. The ancient Greeks, for example, recognized ``a sound mind in a sound body'' as the foundation of a good education. But a complete individual not only develops the mind and body, he or she also develops and exhibits fairness and honesty, key elements of sportsmanship.

This year, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the famed Olympic Gold medalist, serves as chair of the National Sportsmanship Day program. She and the program's founder, Dan Doyle, remain committed to the goal of making sports a more positive force in society. They hope to achieve their objective by focusing this year on improving parental involvement in athletics, encouraging parents to be good sports on the sidelines so they can be good models of ethical behavior for their children.

I am proud that Rhode Island is the home base of this program, and I hope it enjoys continued success.

Mr. President, let me commend the Senator from Ohio for his very thoughtful and very persuasive remarks about a crisis that is gripping almost every family in this country. We are in an extraordinarily daunting moment in our history, and I was disappointed, to say the least, when our colleagues on the Republican side blocked consideration of the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. Every household in this country is beginning to recognize the specter of decreasing house prices, and for many it is not just a looming potential, it is a reality, and it is forcing them to consider very difficult choices in their own family lives.

We have had a situation over the last 8 years in which the income of working families has been stagnant, and in contrast, prices for items that are essential, such as energy and food and health care, have gone up dramatically. Families across this country have been squeezed by flat incomes and rising prices. But there was one point of hope and confidence, a foundation, at least, for their hopes going forward, and that was the value of their home because it was appreciating. Now that has reversed dramatically, and there are estimates that if nothing is done, if the administration continues to block efforts through their colleagues here in the Senate and the House, we could lose somewhere up to 30 percent of the value of homes throughout the United

States, from their peak several years ago to the trough that is anticipated. That would mean the loss of $4 to $6 trillion in household wealth--a staggering figure. It is a figure that, from a macroeconomic standpoint, would have huge ramifications.

But let us step down to the actual effects on a family. What does it mean? Well, it means your senior in high school who was planning on going to a prestigious college is not going there. They are going to find an alternative, maybe a State school or another school, because you were going to pay for that, partially, by taking some money out of your house, which was worth so much. If you didn't have adequate health care, that was the reassurance you had, that if there was a major health care crisis in your family--a child or your spouse--that at least you could go in and quickly get some money. Now that has evaporated. If you are a retiree or about to retire, your plan was pretty simple: You had a home you were going to sell and you were going to use the profits to help you fund your retirement.

This housing crisis is affecting working families across the country. They are now discovering, around the kitchen table, that their plans are being frustrated. We have to do something.

Yesterday, when this Senate failed to at least consider moving to legislation like this, I think it is a telling indication of the detachment from the reality of American lives that the administration and some of their colleagues here have.

Today, in my home State of Rhode Island, an added complexity, unemployment, is beginning to creep up. And ``creep'' is probably too mild a word. It is 5.67 percent, the worst record of unemployment we have had since the mid-1990s. That is another blow to the working families in this country.

So we must act. One other startling statistic to me is today it has been estimated that 10 percent of the households in America are upside down, not physically but financially. Ten percent of the homes, the mortgage is greater than the value of the home because of declining home prices.

Now, what does that mean? Well, not only have you lost your nest egg, in many cases you now are in a situation of being tempted to just walk away from the home. Why are you making expensive mortgage payments at great sacrifice when the home is not worth it?

These are real problems people across the country are facing. It is no longer a localized problem. It is no longer a certain section of the country is having a bad time, but the rest of the country is doing well. Nationwide, for the first time since the Great Depression, we have seen housing prices decline. That is a phenomenon that has to be dealt with. Ignoring it or suggesting that we are indifferent to that, as I think one can assume from the action of yesterday, is, I think, not only wrong, it is bad policy. It also is bad policy because the sooner we take proactive action, the more effective we will be in lessening the consequence of this crisis on working Americans.

We are going to act eventually. This is not going to go away. The staggering numbers that Senator Brown pointed to, the estimates that there are so many more interest rate resets and so many more people will be overwhelmed by these alternative mortgages, these subprime mortgages, that is not fiction; that is the projection of the financial analysts. It is going to happen.

We have to move now. If we move now, we move deliberately. We cannot eliminate some of the pain, but we can certainly lessen it. We also have to recognize, too, that we can only help those who are prepared to carry and shoulder the mortgage going forward. But I think if we act, if we act properly, we cannot only make progress, but we can respond to what is becoming an overwhelming cry for relief for American families across this country.

In Rhode Island, for example, we have seen mortgage delinquencies increase from 6,100 in the third quarter of 2005, to 10,300. Again, Rhode Island is the smallest State in the Union. We have 1 million people. So these numbers, when you project them to Ohio, are much larger. But in my State, we are, unfortunately, seeing unprecedented foreclosures.

According to the Joint Economic Committee, the number of subprime foreclosures in Rhode Island will total 5,800 between the third quarter of 2007 and 2009. We are seeing an acceleration and, in fact, we have the dubious distinction of having the highest foreclosure rate in New England. There are other parts of the country that are worse, but we have that unfortunate distinction.

We are going to see the cost of these foreclosures in Rhode Island rise to an estimated level of $670 million from the end of 2007 to 2009. Those are huge figures from a small State like mine. In fact, forecasters are estimating that the foreclosure cost could total nearly $104 billion nationwide. But one of the things about these numbers that the numbers are growing--I have been looking closely at this crisis since last April when I was chairman of the Subcommittee on Securities and Insurance. We had a subcommittee hearing on securitization of subprime mortgages and the experts estimated that the subprime crisis was going to result in $19 billion in losses worldwide; that it was over because the mortgages were no longer being issued; that we were in a situation that would be almost self-correcting if we just let the markets work their will.

Well, that $19 billion in terms of losses to financial institutions is now being estimated to be as high as $600 billion worldwide, and the losses keep growing and growing and growing.

Again, I think another strong rationale for immediate action, not simply letting the market take its course, is we are seeing not only a deterioration in the financing mechanisms in the mortgage market, but this liquidity crisis is spreading over to other financing mechanisms. We have seen financing mechanisms for municipal bonds, for example, literally shutting down. There was a technique where municipalities and hospitals would, on a weekly basis, reset the rate for their bonds in an auction. The auctions have failed. The Port Authority of New York just a few weeks ago went from an interest rate of 4 percent to 20 percent, the default rate.

I have talked to a hospital in my State. I asked them, among many other issues, what is happening with respect to their financing. Their rates are shooting up because their option securities are not working any longer.

This credit crisis, this liquidity crisis, is spreading from mortgages to car loans to securitization of credit card receipts to municipal securities, and it is slowing down the economy.

Now, the President does not think we are going into a recession. But, frankly, most everybody else does think we are going into recession. And we have to act, not only to directly respond to this housing crisis, but also to pull this country back as quickly as we can from this pending recession.

I think one of the most important lines of approach to dealing with this problem is bolstering the housing market. That was one of the major engines that moved our economy for so many years. If we let it deteriorate, if we just shrug our shoulders and say, eventually, it will come back, we not only will see a very poor housing market, we will see a recession. And it will be more severe and more consequential than it ought to be.

Now, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates dramatically. We, very quickly, in a bipartisan fashion, passed a $168 billion stimulus package that will help. But I do not think it is going to be sufficient unless we make significant efforts to deal with the housing problems that are affecting all Americans today.

The administration proposed a Hope Now Plan, a voluntary effort to deal with foreclosure problems. And, again, as Senator Brown pointed out today, to date 3 percent of potential foreclosures have been avoided through this voluntary effort. This is not an effective way to deal with the huge problems that threaten the economic well-being of this country and all of the families of America. This administration is great on slogans but poor on strategy and execution. Just a week after I was talking to the Under Secretary of the Treasury about the Hope Now Program, I said: Well, do you have a plan B? This does not seem to be working.

``No, this will work. We will have the metrics in a few weeks.'' Then the administration announced another program. I think it is called the Lifeline

Program. Well, we need something more than slogans. We are going to need something more than hopeful wishes that everyone will get along and coordinate together. We need definite help for the homeowners in our communities.

Embedded in the legislation that Senator Reid proposed was that specific kind of help: foreclosure counseling funding, CDBG monies for communities to deal more comprehensively with the problems caused by foreclosures, because one of the consequences of foreclosure is it is not just the individual's home, statistical analysis over many years points out very clearly that the surrounding homes lose value when there is a foreclosure on the block. And if those homes are on the tipping point, guess what. They will tip into foreclosure. I do not think I have to tell anyone in this Chamber, because we have seen it before, that once you have this growing sort of malaise in the community, it spreads block by block by block by block until you have a community-wide problem of not only foreclosures but of despair.

I am taking, I think unfortunately, an example from Senator Brown's State. But I read a few weeks ago about a community in the Midwest, either Ohio or Pennsylvania, and it was an old ethnic community. In fact, I think the nickname for the community was Slavic Town. There, the foreclosures have been so extensive that literally gangs are going in and ripping off the vinyl siding, the plumbing. They are taking out the copper piping because it has been abandoned, this forlorn community, in the heartland of this great country.

A tragic case was a retired gentleman who was trying to protect his property which he had worked for all of his life. He was killed by some of these marauding gangs. That is here in America. We are just going to sit back and say: Well, the market will adjust someday. No, I think we have to do much more.

Unfortunately, because of the policies of this administration, we are not as well positioned to do what we have to do. Yesterday Chairman Bernanke was before the Banking Committee. In response to a question by Senator Dodd, he said: Frankly, we are in a worse position today than 8 years ago to deal with this crisis, the housing crisis. Falling productivity, falling value of the dollar--yesterday, the dollar hit a new low against the Euro, and I think today against other currencies. Surging oil prices--yesterday the price of oil went to $102 a barrel, which is translated automatically at the gas pump into higher gasoline prices, higher heating oil prices.

These are huge, huge, huge problems. Because of decisions made by this administration, we do not have surpluses we had 8 years ago. We are committed to a conflict in Iraq which costs $190 billion a year. And even with a change in policy, there will be, unfortunately, not a dramatic shift in spending in the next several months because it takes time to disengage and to change policies.

So we are seeing economic vulnerabilities because of, I think, the policies of this administration. We have forfeited the strength we had 8 years ago to deal with these issues. We understand, too, from looking across the globe at other countries that if you do not move promptly and aggressively and deal with problems like this, they do not go away, they get worse.

In the 1980s, we had a S&L crisis. It took about 2\1/2\ to 3 years for, first, the Reagan administration, then the George Herbert Walker Bush administration to deal with it. In those 2\1/2\ years, experts on either side of the aisle pointed out that the cost of remediation went up and up and up. I fear that is the same situation we are going to have today unless we deal promptly and immediately with this housing situation.

Again, I think the vote yesterday to stop consideration of legislation to help deal with this crisis was very short-sighted and unfortunate. Now, as I said before, the legislation we would have considered, the Foreclosure Prevention Act, of which I am a proud cosponsor, deals with, in a very pragmatic way, many of the features of the housing crisis that are of immediate concern: the $200 million foreclosure counseling, and part of that has to be not only setting up the counseling but also outreach. We have to do more of that.

It also allows State housing finance agencies to increase their bonds, raise capital to buy mortgages to essentially take out the current mortgage holders, renegotiate the terms with the borrower, and put them in a mortgage plan they can live with and afford. In fact, the President has called for that, but he is objecting to its inclusion, I presume, in this legislation. Then there is a change in the Bankruptcy Code, which has been carefully tailored so as not to roil the financial markets. It would allow a very limited category of individuals who have these subprime mortgages to go into bankruptcy court and allow the bankruptcy judge to set up a new payment plan. The first criterion he or she would have to look at is the fact that these individuals do, in fact, qualify for bankruptcy protections, that if there is a restructuring of their mortgage loan, they can carry out the terms of that loan.

This is not only giving people a chance who don't have the wherewithal to take up that opportunity. There is also language in the bill that sets the lowest rate charged as the prime rate, plus a premium for risk. So this does not allow a bankruptcy judge to take an 11-percent mortgage and make it a 1-percent mortgage or a zero-percent mortgage. There is a very narrowly tailored exception. As my colleague, Senator Brown, pointed out, you can do that with a second home. You could do that with a farm, if you are in bankruptcy. I don't see why, in this particular crisis, we cannot extend that same protection to homeowners who have subprime mortgages and need immediate help. I think it would accelerate efforts to not only help these individuals in bankruptcy, but it would send a strong message to the financial community that unless they get engaged with working out these foreclosures and mortgages, there is the alternative of bankruptcy court which, if they think it is so onerous, then they should be even more incentivized to work with borrowers to ensure foreclosure doesn't take place and new mortgage terms are negotiated.

An additional element in this legislation is language I suggested as a way to prevent a reoccurrence in the future of this type of mortgage problem by giving the borrowers, in a timely way before they close on the loan, specific information that is essential. The most specific information is the maximum payment they would pay under the terms of the mortgage. There is a lot of discussion about people who were winking at each other across the table, can't afford the mortgage, but ``I will take it if you give it to me.'' Many people honestly walked in, sat down, and thought they were getting a mortgage of 5 or 6 percent with a payment on a monthly basis of perhaps $1,500 or $2,000. Tough to afford, but it was within their budget. But lo and behold, years later or months later, that initial teaser rate became much higher. That maximum payment should be disclosed. A borrower should be able to look at the piece of paper and say: At some point in this mortgage, I will have to be paying $2,500 a month. That is the type of information people need to know. Frankly, many would say: I can't afford that.

There is a suggestion I have heard so often in the debate that we would be rewarding families and homeowners who were trying to take advantage of a good deal with these subprime mortgages. The impression I have, from talking to people in Rhode Island, is that for many families, going back 2 or 3 years, they found themselves saddled with extraordinary credit card debt at interest rates that could be as high as 15 to 18 percent. Why? If you have a health care problem, where do you go? The first response is to put it on the credit card. If you have to go to an emergency room and you don't have health care insurance, if you have an unexpected expenditure, the first thing you do is to put it on the credit card. So many families were stuck with a huge credit card bill.

Somebody walks in and literally sells them a bill of goods by saying: You have 18 percent interest rates. I can put you in a mortgage for 2 years at 9 percent. Of course, it goes up a little later. The little later was not dwelled upon. So for many families, this was not an irresponsible, irrational act.

They were buying time, in other words. They were hoping this would be a bridge to a better future, that they would get a raise at the job so they wouldn't have to depend on their credit cards and, when the reset came up, they would be able to refinance. Little did they know that many of these subprime mortgages were constructed so there was a prepayment penalty exactly at the time the reset took place. So as you tried to get out of it, you discovered you would be paying a huge penalty.

The point I wish to make is we have families who now, for the last almost decade, have been struggling. They have exhausted all their options. The last option was their home. Now that option seems to be evaporating in terms of financial strain and support. What we have to do is respond. I believe that is the nature of Government, to respond to the genuine concerns, the genuine expectations of the people we serve. I defy anyone in this Chamber to go back to their States and talk not just to low-income families but to every family and say: Shouldn't we be doing something dramatic, challenging, visionary, and doing it immediately with respect to housing? The answer would be an overwhelming yes. We should listen to the people of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and also to engage in a colloquy with my colleague from Oregon.

Mr. President, I initially wish to make a few comments, and then I will yield to my colleague from Oregon. Today, I rise to honor two young heroes and their families. Ben Haight of Rhode Island and Boey Byers of Oregon were two remarkable young people whose lives were cut short by cancer, but whose hopes were not.

Of course, when a child has cancer, it deeply affects the parents, siblings, friends, and extended family. In fact, a pediatric illness affects the entire family. Even those who don't bear the damage of the illness bear the pressures, the strains, and the frustrations over dealing with the serious illness of a child. These two young children were extraordinary. We mourn their loss and at the same time we celebrate their lives.

Ben Haight was only 4 years old when he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma. He fought valiantly, enduring chemotherapy, two bone marrow transplants, and total body radiation. Ben did not let cancer stop him from living life. I am told he would dictate his treatment schedules to his doctors: ``No treatments during science class; have to be out by 3 to go to Cub Scouts, baseball or soccer.''

Even at a young age, Ben knew a lot about what was important in life. He cared about others and wanted to help. He held a bandaid drive at school to donate colorful bandaids to the hospital, which used plain bandaids to save money. Ben knew that patients enjoyed picking out a ``cool'' bandaid and that this simple pleasure offered them a brief respite from the rigors of their disease.

Ben's cancer went into remission, but after 2 years it came back. The doctors gave him 3 months to live, but he was tough. He fought for 2 more years. Ben was 9 years old when he died.

I never had a chance to meet Ben, but I have had the honor of meeting his wonderful family. His family has turned the tragedy of losing their son into a message of hope for other families.

Just before Ben died, he and his family enjoyed a special activity together--swimming with dolphins. Now, the Haight family's mission is to do all they can to fight cancer and to provide one child a year with the opportunity to swim with dolphins.

I think there is a sort of symbolic link here between his family and these dolphins. His father was a career enlisted man in the U.S. Navy, a chief in our submarine service. Of course, submarines use the dolphins as the symbol of their service branch. This is a family who has served the Nation in uniform and who continues to serve the Nation by fighting hard for other families who are afflicted by childhood cancer.

Now, Boey Byers was, in her words, a warrior against cancer, and I was very saddened to learn she has recently passed way. A few months ago, I had the privilege of speaking with Boey over the phone. She was full of life and spirit and struck me as very polite, poised, and wise beyond her years. I wanted to thank Boey for all she was doing to try to help other kids with cancer. Her passion in life was to find a cure for her warrior friends, as she called them, so they didn't have to suffer anymore and so they could live out their dreams and contribute to this great country.

We must remember there are thousands of children like Ben and Boey across the country. Each year, there are about 9,500 new cases of pediatric cancer, the leading cause of death by disease among children in the United States. While the incidence of cancer in children is increasing, the causes are largely unknown.

The National Cancer Institute--the NCI--currently spends about $170 million a year on pediatric cancer research, but most of the money goes toward laboratory research and preclinical testing. While it is important to test treatments in a test tube, Petri dish, or on animals, it is equally important to test treatments on humans in clinical trials.

For example, a recent clinical trial found that for children with neuroblastoma, less intensive chemotherapy is as effective as more intensive and toxic chemotherapy.

In 2002, an NCI peer review group of scientists recommended about $50 million in funding for pediatric cancer clinical trials. That level was never funded, and since then it has been cut, despite biomedical inflation and the increasing incidence of childhood cancer. Unfortunately, declining funding has stopped promising clinical trials. Pediatric cancer researchers expect only flat funding for clinical trials this year.

We can do better. The Conquer Childhood Cancer Act invests $30 million a year to expand pediatric cancer research and develop pediatric cancer clinical investigators. The bill also creates a national childhood cancer registry to track pediatric cancer. Researchers would be able to contact patients within weeks, enroll them in research studies, and follow up with them over time. Similar registries are already in place in Europe. If Europe can do it, we can do it, and we should do it.

This bill awaits action by the full Senate. It recently reached a significant milestone, garnering its 51st cosponsor. So even before any vote, we know for sure a majority of the Senate supports the bill. It has broad bipartisan support, with 14 Republican cosponsors and the support of both the majority and minority leaders.

Regrettably, a small minority is blocking this bill, and I call on the Senate to carry out the will of the majority and pass the bill. It is my hope

that in doing so we will intensify our fight against childhood cancer, so that one day the hopes of Ben and Boey, and thousands of children like them, will be realized.

Mr. President, I yield now for the purpose of a colloquy with my colleague from Oregon.

I thank the Senator. One of the things we are doing this evening is once again highlighting the critical importance of this legislation, the impact it would make in the lives of children and families across the country. And your voice is a strong voice for not only this legislation but for issues affecting health care and children in this country.

I think we are picking up speed, but we need the cooperation of virtually all of our colleagues, not to pass the bill--we have 51 votes--but to get it on the floor. That is not something unusual here in the Senate. But I think this is the type of legislation that should not be caught up in the kind of procedural rules that we all use.

I am going to try to reach out and explain personally what is at stake, how we have tried to make changes, how we have pursued a bipartisan approach. I hope we can be persuasive enough to get this legislation on the floor for a vote. I do not think the opposition, frankly, is the concept and the mechanisms we are talking about. Certainly it is not opposition to helping families and children who have cancer. I think it is caught up in other issues. We would like to disentangle those issues and focus on what we can for children who have cancer.

I think that is one of Boey's works.

I am encouraged also. It is incumbent upon supporters like myself and yourself to begin to reach out, which I think we are both committed to doing, and doing it personally to try to get through. I think my sense is a lot like yours. It is not an issue that people are objecting to; it is caught up in bigger issues. And sometimes we just have to step back and understand that the big issues will still be there and the points can still be made, but we can get this bill done.

I noticed the warriors in Boey's drawing at the White House. My hope is one day the President in the White House is going to sign this bill. She will be there, and Ben will be there in spirit because they are the warriors, and the young men and women who are helping us in our mission.

So that is my hope. I think we can do that. We are going to try. If it is because we have not been as explicit or as communicative as we should have been with all of our colleagues, that is something we will correct very quickly.

I agree. I think it is something we can do. The effort is to bring people together and move from 51 to 61 to 71 to 100. I think we can.

We have begun in earnest months ago, and we are picking up the pace. I thank the Senator for his wise and kind words.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we have had a lengthy debate, and in the end I decided to vote against final passage of S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act of 2007.

First, I commend Senators Rockefeller and Bond for recognizing immediately that the Protect America

Act, passed in August, needed modifications. S. 2248 does improve FISA procedures. The bill increases the role of the FISA Court with respect to targeting. It mandates FISA Court review and approval of the minimization procedures governing the protection of identities and nonpublic information about U.S. persons. This bill also provides statutory rules for the use of information acquired under it.

However, when S. 2248 came before the full Senate for debate, I, and many of my colleagues, believed that additional protections and clarifications could and should be added. But it soon became clear that all such measures would be defeated.

I was particularly disappointed that Senator Feinstein's amendment on exclusivity did not pass. I believe it is very important to reiterate that FISA is the exclusive means for conducting surveillance on Americans for foreign intelligence purposes. I would have thought that every member of the Senate would have been interested in clarifying what the administration was authorized to do under the laws that Congress passes rather than allowing the administration to boldly and erroneously assert authorities from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al-Qaida and the Taliban. But unfortunately I was wrong.

I also admit that I had serious concerns about granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies for actions they may or may not have taken in response to administration requests that may or may not have been legal. One of my concerns is regarding the accessibility of information. First, my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee were allowed to read the necessary documents only after extensive negotiations with the administration. I, and the rest of my Senate colleagues who are not on those committees, were denied access to those documents. In addition, the telecommunications companies who have been named in several lawsuits have been prohibited by the Government from providing any information regarding this issue to the courts, to the plaintiffs, to Members of Congress, or to the public. Yet we were asked to blindly vote for retroactive immunity, which is something I simply could not do. Therefore I supported Senator Dodd's amendment to strike immunity, but it did not pass.

I was then willing to consider some compromise approaches, such as the Specter and Whitehouse amendment, which would have substituted the Government for the telecommunications companies in civil suits, or Senator Feinstein's amendment, which would have provided for the FISA Court's review of the telecommunications companies to determine if immunity should apply. However, neither of these amendments was able to secure enough votes to pass. At the end of day, retroactive immunity remained in the bill, setting what I believe could be a dangerous precedent.

S. 2248 is indeed an improvement over the Protect America Act. But in my judgment, it still did not provide enough protections to American citizens and did not provide ample justification for retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. I therefore voted to oppose the bill. I hope to continue to work with my colleagues to pass the modifications I believe are needed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, across the Nation, millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet as our economy has slowed dramatically. In December, I spoke on this floor about how President Bush has presided over a period of divided prosperity in the United States, where a privileged few have done remarkably well but the rest of us have been trying to get by. For most working people, the trademark of the Bush administration and their economy is wage stagnation. Indeed, in my home State, real median wages have not increased since 2000.

Rhode Islanders are coping not only with flat wages but increasing prices in critical commodities they must consume. Energy, education, and health care have all gone up. In January, in Rhode Island, gas was $3.11 cents a gallon; heating oil costs in the Northeast are projected to be at least $2,000 this year, which is about a $400 increase from last year. These price increases would be difficult to manage even in good times, but again paychecks for most working families have not kept up. In fact, they have been flat.

With prices accelerating, wages flat, and a huge gap in the capacity of middle-income working Americans to keep up and try to get ahead, the subprime crisis is real. This housing crisis is having huge and devastating effects. Two years ago, most of our constituents, the vast majority of them, were sitting around the table thinking: Well, when my daughter is ready to go to college in 2008, we will go ahead and borrow from the house to provide the extra income she will need to go ahead and make it through college. A lot of those families now are recognizing they can't do that. They are more concerned about a health care incident, because, unlike a few months ago, there is no reservoir in the value of their house to cushion the blow of unexpected expenses.

So this housing crisis, together with this wage stagnation, together with increased prices for energy and health care and education, and so many other things, is putting middle-class Americans in a vise and squeezing them.

We have to do much better. The Joint Economic Committee and others have estimated some of the costs already in terms of this mortgage- related foreclosure crisis. In my home State, they think $670 million will be lost to the family incomes of Rhode Island from 2007 through the end of 2009.

These economic conditions are being felt across the country. They are not localized warnings. The weakness in housing has spread to all parts of our Nation and across our economy. Growth in the fourth quarter of last year was .6 percent compared to a 4.9-percent increase in the third quarter.

We are slowing down, moving into a recession. Yesterday the market, Wall Street, went down over 300 points, largely due to a very weak report of a survey on the service sector. We have known for many months now that the manufacturing economy was having difficult times, but the service sector was holding up a bit.

Yesterday, there was a chilling indication the service sector has also contracted. The market took the news very badly. The market also took the news very badly a few days ago, when we showed a loss of 17,000 jobs, the first time we have actually lost jobs in more than 4 years.

Again, the administration's performance in terms of creating jobs has been less than stellar, barely keeping up with the new entrants into the labor market on a monthly basis. Now, for the first time in more than 4 years, we have lost jobs.

Furthermore, the average length of unemployment is increasing from 16.6 weeks in December to 17.5 weeks in January. More people are losing jobs and it is harder to find a new job.

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released a survey of senior bank loan officers who indicated that the credit

crunch is spreading from consumer loans into the commercial and industrial loan sectors and that foreign banks are tightening their lending terms, in fact, even more so than some U.S. financial institutions.

Taken together, it clearly shows Wall Street is going into what one analyst called a recession panic mode and many economists are seeing signs that weaknesses in our economy are spreading internationally. In fact, one investment banker today, in a speech reported on the Internet, suggested that in the credit markets fear has overtaken greed, creating a situation of near panic in many respects.

So there is no doubt we have to act quickly on this stimulus package, not only to inject needed spending power into the economy to try to revive our consumer sector but also to signal to the American public we will act decisively to try to moderate, if not head off, the effects of a pending recession.

We have, I think, a lot to be grateful for in the work of Senator Baucus and Majority Leader Reid and Senator Grassley in terms of taking a House proposal and increasing it with important provisions, such as expanding the eligibility criteria for income tax rebates, including 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans.

The package we are considering also includes $10 billion for a temporary extension of unemployment insurance and $1 billion of emergency funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the LIHEAP program. Both of these initiatives are targeted to families, seniors and low-income households, and they would help jump-start the economy.

Economists agree these programs among others are a good use of taxpayer money. Last week before the Budget Committee, Alan Blinder from Princeton University and Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com both recommended that unemployment insurance and LIHEAP be included in the stimulus package. They also included other elements, but at least these elements are part of the list they feel will provide a bang for the bucks we are going to invest in the economy.

They meet the three T test--timely, targeted, and temporary.

Now, Friday's disappointing jobs report showed that the ranks of the unemployed are unfortunately growing. Nonfarm payrolls actually decreased, as I said, by 17,000 workers last month. In fact, even President Bush acknowledged ``troubling signs in the economy.''

So given these facts, I was surprised to hear Treasury Secretary Paulson say yesterday, in testimony before the Finance Committee, that he does not support including unemployment benefits in the stimulus package because national unemployment is only 4.9 percent, which is not historically high.

What we want to do is take preemptive action to prevent the situation from further deterioration. We want to move now so we do not see unemployment rates climb, so we do not see the duration of unemployment continue to grow, so that we give Americans a real chance to get back to work; and if they are not back to work, then at least we provide something to sustain them in these difficult moments.

In Rhode Island, my home State, we have reached a very high unemployment rate, 5.5 percent. Many other States are creeping up there too. We should, I think, move quickly, move decisively and support the Senate Finance package.

We are also beginning to see that unemployment insurance provides a very good return on the investment. Mark Zandi, the economist I mentioned before, indicated that for every dollar the Government spends on unemployment insurance, it adds $1.64 to the national GDP. In other words, it leverages the investments we are making.

So contrary to what some have talked about as excessive spending, this is exactly the targeted, temporary, timely spending that will accelerate, not decelerate, the economy.

The stimulative effects of unemployment insurance will get more money into the hands of people who will spend it right away in their local communities, which is generally the whole purpose of our stimulus approach.

Moreover, providing these benefits to these individuals will give them not just some dollars but a sense, I hope, of hope, that their Government is responding to their concerns and that we will respond in the future, if necessary.

Making the long-term unemployed eligible for a temporary extension of an additional 13 weeks at this time also makes good sense and is the right thing to do. Two weeks ago, I wrote a letter to the majority and Republican leaders asking that they include unemployment insurance in the stimulus package, and 26 other Senators joined me.

Senators Durbin and Kennedy have long led the fight on this issue. I commend them for their efforts. I hope unemployment insurance is part of the final package we are able to vote out of this body.

Now, there is another aspect of the package we will consider later today, I hope; that is the LIHEAP support. We have seen a huge increase in energy costs. On average, Americans are spending about 11 percent more to heat their homes this winter. For Rhode Islanders who rely on heating oil, that is about 39 percent higher than last year in terms of their heating oil expenses.

We know that the timely, targeted, and temporary aspects of stimulus have to be met. LIHEAP will do this. It is timely because it will be delivered very quickly. We have a delivery mechanism in place. It is also something that will fund families, low-income families, who desperately need this money.

I do not have to belabor the point that today, around the kitchen table, people are figuring things out. They are thinking, first of all, they probably need to take off sending their first born or their second or third child to the expensive school; that may be off the table for a few years. But they are also talking very basically about which bills to pay this month? Do we pay our mortgage? Do we pay the energy bill? Do we pay the credit cards which we are using to buy food at the supermarket these days?

I mean, these are the debates American families are having. They are not talking in terms that we are here, such as what is the best macroeconomic policy or how we can delay these expenditures, they are talking in terms of a real crisis in the family. We have to respond. One way we can respond quite clearly is with this LIHEAP money because that will go to one of their major concerns: How do we keep the heat on in the Northeast for the next several weeks and month; and in the Southwest, in anticipation of the grueling temperatures down there in the summertime, too. This additional money will provide an advance payment on cooling problems in the Southeast and the South, parts of the country that will soon encounter warm temperatures, not cold temperatures, which cause their energy costs to rise.

Again, these are the households who need LIHEAP. And so we know we have a program that works in LIHEAP. If we can deliver additional resources, it will get to the families who need it, particularly seniors, it will get out immediately. It will add to the stimulus effect because as the economists--both Mr. Blinder and Mr. Zandi-- pointed out, it will leverage our investment in the economy.

So with the escalating costs for energy I would urge my colleagues that we go ahead and accept this amendment, particularly the funds for LIHEAP. I urge us all to support the Senate Finance Committee package, a package that provides for greater coverage to seniors and disabled American veterans and also provides unemployment insurance for those who desperately need it and heating assistance for, again, the families who desperately need it.

I hope that today, not only good sense, good economic sense, but a sense of our obligations to the most vulnerable in this country will persuade us to support this package strongly.

The Senator from Texas.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the recess be delayed until I complete my remarks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order with respect to Senator Dorgan be changed to provide that if Senator Dole is here at 2:15 p.m., she be recognized for up to 5 minutes and then Senator Dorgan be recognized.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the state of our economy. Regrettably, the news is not good. Two weeks ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the rate of home foreclosures and the percentage of loans in foreclosure is at the highest level ever recorded by this organization. At the same time, surveys by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board showed consumer confidence at the lowest levels in many years. The financial troubles that began with the subprime mortgage crisis last summer have now spread to all credit markets and created a liquidity crunch that threatens our entire economy.

Some say these troubles are merely temporary. In fact, some say there are two economies--the real economy, with people getting up and going to work, and the economy of Wall Street, which is financial engineering and all sorts of incredibly exotic financial products. The reality is these markets intersect. As a result, our whole economy is threatened now by forces that may be temporary, but they are working themselves out in a very difficult way for the people of this country, the men and women we represent, our constituents.

Some contend that the market has undergone a correction since the end of cheap credit and speculation in the housing sector. They point to job figures and quarterly GDP growth as indications that the overall economy, the real economy, is strong.

Frankly, I think we have to look critically at those assertions. What troubles me more than the numbers--the GDP and all the other financial statistics--is what I am hearing from Rhode Islanders and what I presume my colleagues are hearing from their constituents across the country. The mortgage crisis and credit crunch in many ways represents a culmination of their fears and sort of the tangible acknowledgement of what they have been fearful of for many months. Lately, I have been struck by how many people are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a decent standard of living, despite having a steady job. People tell me they feel squeezed by the rising costs of energy, food, health care, and higher education, while at the same time the size of their paychecks does not seem to be expanding at all.

For thousand of families in Rhode Island and millions of people across America, wage stagnation has created a general feeling of anxiety. Instead of trying to get ahead, most people are finding it hard to get by. The subprime meltdown and subsequent credit crunch are adding additional stress to that equation. For some people, it has pushed them to the brink of personal and financial crisis.

Today, we are living in an era of divided prosperity, where a few do extremely well--extraordinarily well--and the rest of us are struggling to keep up. The Bush administration has aided and accelerated this trend of growing inequality, and its lax attitude toward regulation has allowed major economic liabilities to develop unchecked, allegedly for the sake of allowing the market to function ``efficiently.''

The latest crises show markets are not always efficient, nor always equitable, and rampant speculation in the absence of oversight can create problems that cannot be quickly assessed or fixed. This President has perpetuated a system that encourages a fortunate few to collect as much of the benefits of our economy as possible, while sharing very little with the rest of society.

At the same time, what we have seen developing are enormous blind spots that have begun to reveal themselves with disturbing frequency. The tragedies of Katrina and the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis, as well as the subprime crisis, and even our policies in Iraq are all evidence of the administration's consistent failure to plan for long- term liabilities. Moreover, this shortsighted focus is reflected in massive trade and budget deficits and the absence of any comprehensive plan to address our addiction to foreign oil or the skyrocketing cost of health care. These are creating real challenges for our country.

This year, the new majority in Congress has tried to set a different course, but, unfortunately, we have not had the cooperation or support of the President in any real sense of the word. As a result, we have made some progress in addressing and correcting these issues but not nearly enough. In order to end the Bush era of divided prosperity, which some people speak of as two Americas, we have to, I think, reengage ourselves in a process of making sure America is competitive in the global economy and that it has sustainable policies that lead to true growth, which is shared by all Americans. We must reprioritize and take a more serious approach to the policy challenges at hand.

Since World War II, every period of economic expansion has resulted in shared prosperity for most America. To be sure, growth varied by degrees over time and from place to place, but in general the tradition in America has been that a rising tide will lift up all boats. Yet for the past 6 years, under the Bush administration, this tradition of shared prosperity has not been sustained.

In my State, the Poverty Institute of Rhode Island announced last month that our median wage actually declined since 2000, which makes Rhode Island the only State in New England to experience negative wage growth during this period. With stagnation in most places, we have actually seen negative growth. Since President Bush took office, the real national median household income has declined by $962, from $49,163 in 2000, to $48,201 in 2006. In fact, between the first quarter of 2001 and the third quarter of 2007, real median weekly earnings fell 1.2 percent, compared to 7.1 percent growth between 1996 and 2000 under the Clinton administration. We have seen a startling change in the economy affecting the families of America, whose incomes grew from 1996 to 2000 and have declined in real terms since then, and that reality is shaping the lives of millions of Americans.

While the President's economic policy has yielded extraordinary gains at the very top of the income scale, his fiscal policy has multiplied differences and exacerbated the disparity between the very wealthy and, frankly, most everyone else.

According to data recently published by the Congressional Budget Office, in 2005, real after-tax incomes jumped by an average of nearly $180,000 for the top 1 percent of households, while rising only $400 for middle-income households, and $200 for lower income households, which signifies an extraordinary divergence in terms of the wealth of the very few versus everyone else. That average income gain for the top 1 percent is more than three times the total income of the average middle-income household.

Taken together with prior research, this new data indicates

that income is now more concentrated at the top of the income

scale than at any time since 1929. I grew up in an era where

we looked to the history of the lives of our parents who

endured a depression

in which the economy collapsed, and then through the policies

of this Federal Government and State government, we saw a

rising tide literally lift up every family in America. We saw

a more equal distribution of wealth. In fact, many people

prospered. Now we are seeing a reconcentration of wealth that

has great consequences not only for our economy, but for our

society.

We pride ourselves as Americans on having a country where anyone can rise to the top, where opportunity will propel you forward, take the chances that are available to you. But what we are seeing in other economic studies is, frankly, today we can predict the success of a child based on the income of the parent more than we could 20, 30, and 40 years ago. If your parents are wealthy, you are likely to stay wealthy. That was not the case 20, 30, and 40 years ago.

In his new book ``The Squandering of America,'' the economist Robert Kuttner writes:

Between 2000 and 2006, the productivity of American workers

increased by 19 percent. But the total increases in wages

paid to all 124 million non-supervisory workers--

These are the blue-collar workers who come in every day, punch in, work hard, go home, and take care of their families.

--was less than $200 million in 6 years--a raise of $1.60

per worker--not $1.60 per hour, but a grand total of one

dollar and sixty cents in higher wages per worker over nearly

six years . . . Compare this $200 million total for all

nonsupervisory workers to the nearly $38 billion paid in

bonuses alone by the top Wall Street firms during the same

period.

That is $38 billion to those people who are extremely successful on Wall Street versus $200 million for every nonsupervisory worker in the country.

Since 1997, the pay of CEOs of large corporations has increased to an average of $10.5 billion per year, or about 369 times the average wages of a worker and 821 times the average wage of a minimum wage worker. Such facts make it clear that most Americans are working harder and more productively.

Yet these facts go against what many of us were taught in school about the tenets of economics. I am referring to the basic idea that as the economy becomes more productive, those productivity gains are shared, and as a result workers get more in their paychecks. That is not happening. It is not happening as it should.

Let me give another example. According to ``Alpha'' magazine and the New York Times, in 2006, the top 25 hedge fund managers combined earned $14 billion. That is enough to pay New York City's 80,000 public schoolteachers for nearly 3 years. Ask yourself: As a matter of social worth and value, should 80,000 public schoolteachers be paid for 3 years with what 25 individuals have earned?

I understand there is a risk premium for the pay that these financial managers earn. They are not only talented, dedicated people, but they are also going in there and taking chances and rolling the dice and creating innovation, entrepreneurship, and opportunities for others. But still I must ask: Is this distribution of wealth and reward commensurate with all the efforts of those teachers, men and women in urban school districts who are laboring to give kids a chance so they can seize opportunities? As Americans, we have to stop and ask ourselves why is this happening. Is there something we can and must do to make this country a little bit fairer?

Even some billionaires are concerned about this. Warren Buffett has criticized the U.S. tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary. Mr. Buffett paid 17.7 percent on the $46 million he made last year. He did not try to avoid paying higher taxes, he simply took the advantages that were in the tax code to which he--indeed, to which each of us--is entitled. Meanwhile his secretary, who earns $60,000, was taxed at 30 percent.

If you consider these inequities, these differences, it is hard to understand why the President is so adamant about protecting the tax rates for the top 1 percent of earners. The consequence of this is that we also have fiscal complications. We have the most rapid deterioration of our Nation's fiscal health in the history of this country. In this administration, we have swung from a projected surplus to a projected deficit dramatically.

When the President took office, we had a surplus. Yet he has run a budget deficit every year for the past 6 years. Over that period of time, Bush's deficit spending has increased our national debt to nearly $9 trillion, which is virtually $30,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. He has pushed this country into record levels of debt to finance tax cuts for individuals who, frankly, are earning at a level at which they do not need additional tax cuts.

Not only does it give more to those who already have a great deal, it also starves the Government from funds to use for investing in the future productivity and prosperity of this country.

The only areas where the President has consistently supported more money have been for his tax cuts and for unlimited spending on his policy in Iraq. With these items, there is no limit to what he will accept. A recent report released by the Joint Economic Committee estimates that the total economic cost of the war in Iraq has been approximately double the direct budgetary costs. We have been spending billions, but the costs are much more than that. As we look to a drawdown of our troops going forward, the JEC estimates that the total economic cost of the war will reach $2.8 trillion for the entire 2003- to-2007 period, when you factor in veterans health care, the cost of equipping and replacing the materiel we have consumed in this war, and the reinvestments we will need to make in our military. It is a huge amount of money.

We are spending $10 billion per month on Iraq. Just 2 months of the cost of that war is roughly the same amount that was at issue between the President and the Congress in our debate about the budget this year. The President refused to spend $22 billion more than his limit on domestic spending, but in 2 months, we will consume at least that much in Iraq without any revenue offsets, without any qualms, and without any additional considerations. Unconditional spending was the message he sent to us last evening when he demanded that this Congress send him money for Iraq.

The President's policy seems to be not guns and butter but guns and caviar--money for Iraq, money for Afghanistan without limit, without end, it appears, and benefits through the tax system for the very wealthiest Americans, not the rich, but the super-rich.

This year, the Government is effectively spending $49 billion to provide tax breaks averaging $130,000 for those with incomes greater than $1 million. And we are seeing the impact throughout this country. We particularly see it as we go back to what has to be, I believe, the reference point for what we all do, and that is, what is happening to families across this country.

In Rhode Island, the cost of health care premiums is rising twice as fast as wages and inflation. Premiums in Rhode Island increased 67 percent between 2001 and 2006. Wages did not increase that fast, I can tell you that. The number of people without insurance increased 50 percent in that same period. They cannot afford to pay for the cost of insurance.

Gas prices have more than doubled in Rhode Island. The price of regular gas has jumped 95 percent from $1.52 when President Bush took office to about $2.97 in June of 2007. People are spending more and more money on getting to work, getting the kids to the Little League games.

College education costs are rising in Rhode Island and across the country. Average tuition fees in Rhode Island have increased 6 percent for our 4-year public colleges and 5 percent for our private colleges.

At the same time, the value of a home has been decreasing, and people are beginning to sense that decrease. A home used to be the great source of economic security, economic wealth, economic flexibility, and a hedge against the uncertainty of the economy, but now we are seeing in Rhode Island, and indeed across America, an explosion in foreclosures.

And we can also factor in the uncertainty of pensions. The fact is that more and more of my constituents are being pushed from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan or in some cases to no pension at all. The erosion of traditional pensions is adding to this uncertainty.

The net effect of all of this is that many Rhode Islanders are working longer hours but are barely able to maintain the same standard of living.

What we have to do is respond to these issues. We have taken some

steps. We have passed, in terms of education, the College Cost Reduction Act. This $20 billion increase in student aid is the result of this Democratic Congress and our priorities, but we have to do much more.

We have moved forward with respect to some issues on housing, but progress has come much too late and is still too little. We finally cleared the Federal Housing Administration Modernization Act, the FHA Act, which is going to increase the amount of loans the FHA can guarantee. That is going to get them back into the lending business. But this action has come months after we should have moved more promptly, more efficiently, more effectively to do that.

We have to respond to this growing crisis now in terms of foreclosures. Secretary Paulson announced his plans recently and I think the plans are important because at least they signal some action. However, I suspect they are probably inadequate for the scope of the problem that is developing. We have legislation that is pending that has to be moved that I think will be much more effective going forward.

On energy, this week, the President is signing an energy bill which is long overdue. It increases gas mileage, or CAFE, standards. But we have to do more there, too. The tax provisions which are so essential, I think, to ensuring that there are incentives for alternate fuels, incentives in the marketplace so investors will put in money with the confidence that they will be repaid, those tax incentives are still languishing. They have to be passed. Again, we have made progress, but it has not been adequate progress to date.

We have to deal with the broader sense of our dependency on oil. Again, this energy bill is a very good step forward. It has to be supported. It has to be advanced. It has to be extended.

When we look at the economy from the standpoint not of the macroeconomic statistics of gross domestic product, when we look at the economy not simply in the context of financial markets, when we look at the economy from the standpoint of people who live in Harrisville, RI, or Harrisburg, PA, it is a tough economy. People at home are asking us to stand up and do something, to give them again the sense that when they work and their productivity goes up, their wages will go up as well; to give them the sense that they can actually provide for their family, maybe even put a little bit aside. Very few middle-income people are putting anything aside these days. That is our challenge.

This Congress has taken some steps to meet that challenge in terms of education policy, in terms of energy policy, in terms of at least beginning to deal with the housing issue. We have a lot more to do, and we need the cooperation of the administration.

I think this is a historic moment. Are we going to abandon our sense that this country is based on opportunity for all of our citizens? Are we going to abandon the sense that our economy works for all of its citizens; that those who are creative and clever and take risks will get great rewards but that no one is going to be left behind, no one is going to be left without anything to show for working hard, working smarter, and working better? I hope not.

I think that will be one of the ultimate judgments not just on this Congress and this administration but on our tenure as Members of the Senate as we go forth.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for his consideration in allowing me to speak beyond the recess time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow in my office, Melissa Fiffer, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Thank you, Mr. President. First, let me thank the majority leader for arranging this time.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to an outstanding Rhode Islander and a superb employee of the Senate who is retiring after 34 years of Federal service--my friend, my colleague, someone I admire immensely, Dennis P. Riley.

Dennis Riley has worked in my Providence office since I was elected to the Senate. But before that, he was a longtime employee of Senator Claiborne Pell, my predecessor. Dennis was born in Pawtucket, RI, on March 3, 1948, and attended St. Raphael's Academy. He went on to earn a bachelor of science in history and political science at the University of Wisconsin in 1971.

He taught history for a brief time in the Pawtucket School System and was a graduate student in the Masters in Teaching Program at Rhode Island College. In 1972, he became the field coordinator for U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell's reelection campaign and formed a bond with Senator Pell and public service that lasts to this day.

Dennis came to serve on the personal staff of Senator Pell, first as a staff assistant in Washington, DC, from 1973 to 1978. But in recognition of those skills and the commitment he brought to bear as a staff member for Senator Pell, Senator Pell chose Dennis to serve as his campaign manager for his next successful reelection effort. So Dennis returned to Rhode Island and successfully planned and executed the Senator's reelection campaign.

From 1979 to Senator Pell's final day in office, Dennis worked as assistant director of the Senator's Rhode Island office. He was a trusted employee of Senator Pell, and, more importantly, Dennis remains close to the Pell family today.

As Senator from 1961 to 1997, Senator Claiborne Pell's legacy includes establishing Pell grants as well as creating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Senator Pell was also noted as a diplomat, and he served with distinction as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Pell's legacy is a model for all of us, particularly for myself. Dennis Riley is a testament and a part of that tradition of talented and conscientious public servants who labor, perhaps in the shadows, but it is their work that is decisive in our success on the floor.

After Senator Pell retired, and the people of Rhode Island gave me the chance to continue his good works, Senator Pell spoke so highly of Dennis that I asked him to join my staff. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made. He brought with him a keen knowledge of the workings of the Senate, a history and knowledge of Rhode Island politics, good judgment, great wisdom, and great character. In the ensuing years, we have become dear friends, and he is a trusted adviser.

During his tenure with my office, Dennis has worked on special projects and has assisted hundreds of agencies and organizations as they sought Federal assistance and thousands of Rhode Islanders who needed help, who needed someone to listen to their stories, and to let them know there is a government that cares about them, because Dennis Riley is a person who cares deeply, not just about Government but about the people we serve.

In Rhode Island, he has been involved in crafting many public policy initiatives, and he has been particularly active as my point person on Federal grants and the applications process for the Appropriations Committee.

He has shepherded projects through. He has brought people together for the common good. He has made a significant impact on the economic vitality of my State. Although Dennis's name will never be lauded in the news reports or press releases, his hand is seen in so many efforts to make our State an even better place to live, work, and raise our families.

Everyone who knows Dennis sees him as a kind and decent man, with a great heart, a great mind--someone we are proud to call a dear friend.

His compassion and quick Irish wit are legendary. For years, transplanted Rhode Islanders in Washington, DC, and politicos in our State eagerly awaited, every day, the ``Riley Report''--a carefully crafted summary of the day's topical stories, political news, and a retelling of the events of the day in Rhode Island. This complete and unbiased commentary of the author provided the ``real story,'' very often, of what was going on in Rhode Island.

Well, after his distinguished service to the Senate for 34 years, Dennis now will be retiring to his beloved home in Little Compton, RI, with his wife--the love of his life--Kathy McLaughlin Riley. Kathy is a warm and lovely person, who has devoted her life to educating children. She is an elementary teacher at the Elizabeth Baldwin School in Pawtucket, and she will soon join Dennis in retirement.

In their well-deserved retirement, Dennis and Kathy plan to travel extensively. They are avid baseball enthusiasts, and they plan to visit all the ballparks they have not yet seen. It will be an inspiring and interesting trip for both of them.

He will also be spending time caring for his family, including creating more memories with his many nieces and nephews who so treasure his company. I wish both Kathy and Dennis much happiness and fulfillment in the years ahead.

Now, on behalf of myself--and also I will take the liberty to speak on behalf of my esteemed predecessor, Senator Claiborne Pell--I would ask all my colleagues in the Senate, who treasure, as I do, the loyalty and the devotion of their staffs, to join me in paying tribute to a stellar Senate employee, Dennis Riley.

Rhode Island has been honored by his service, and the Reed staff will fondly remember his time with them. We formed a lasting bond that will never be severed, and we treasure that bond.

As Dennis files the final ``Riley Report,'' I wish him every good wish.

Now, Dennis is Irish, and that means he has a rather somber view of the world. He has a saying on his office door that reads: ``There is nothing so bad that it can't get worse.'' That is a typically Irish sentiment. As we send him off, however, let me offer another sentiment. Dennis:

May the saddest day of your future be no worse

Than the happiest day of your past.

Thank you for your friendship, and thank you for your service.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senator Levin has very eloquently pointed out the premise of the President's surge strategy; that was to provide the political space so that the Iraqi Government could essentially begin a reconciliation among its own people, begin to function effectively. Little or none of that has happened.

What has happened is that the violence has been reduced. That is commendable. It is attributable to several factors; first, the increase of American forces there and the way they have been deployed very adroitly by our military commanders; secondly, the fact that coincidentally but propitiously in Anbar Province, Sunni tribesmen have finally figured out that al-Qaida is as much a threat to them as to anyone else, particularly Americans. They have banded together with us to attack al-Qaida elements there. How long that relationship of convenience lasts is a question that has not been resolved.

Within Baghdad, there has been significant ethnic cleansing. In fact, we recall just weeks ago, refugees started coming back. They were told by the Government in Baghdad: Do not come back. You are going to provoke another destabilizing situation. That ethnic cleansing is one other factor.

Sadr, the leader of the Shia in the South, one of the purported leaders in the South, has basically told his Mahdi army to stand down for 6 months so he can reorganize, so he can regroup, so when he feels the moment is right he is in a much more powerful position to strike.

Then the administration has finally embraced some diplomatic efforts; quietly, I think, with the Iranians, much more publicly with the Syrians and others. All of those factors together have contributed to this reduced violence.

But here is one of the most significant and salient facts we have to recognize: The surge is over. Our force structure will not allow a continuation of 160,000 American forces in Iraq beyond the middle of this year, beyond this summer. That is not because some politician in Washington said so, that is because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because the Chief of Staff of the Army understand that the operational tempo will not allow that.

The question before us is: Well, what is the strategy now? Is the strategy coming here and asking for billions of dollars every 3 or 4 months? Asking for troops that cannot be actively or effectively provided, because our force structure is too small?

The essence of this amendment, an amendment that Senator Levin and I and others have been pursuing for months now, is to focus on a strategy that can be sustained and supported so we can do what we must do. That strategy, in our view, boils down to three very specific missions: Go after the terrorists, the al-Qaida people, wherever they are; train Iraqi security forces to support their country, because ultimately the Iraqi people and their leaders will decide whether their country will survive and prosper, not American forces; and, finally, protect our forces on the ground.

Those are three discrete missions that can be done, should be done. There is no attempt in this amendment to cut off funding. There is an attempt, though, to focus our policy on a strategy that will work over time. What we have here is no simple situation in which you have got an al-Qaida rogue group we are going after. This is a very complicated situation.

Ultimately at the heart of this, it is a political struggle between Sunni, Shia, and Kurds; Sunnis, who feel a profound sense of entitlement which has been frustrated by our operations over there, and the departure of the Baathist regime; Shia, who feel profoundly paranoid because they suffered grievously under that regime; and Kurds, who want their autonomy.

These political forces have to be settled. They will only be settled internally by the Iraqis standing up. This amendment will help direct that policy, force them to recognize we are not there indefinitely with a blank check. It will also guide our forces to missions that we can perform, that will be essential to our security and will allow us, I believe, to do what we can to help that country stabilize itself.

This is a message. It is a message to the troops that we are going to adopt a wise, sustainable policy that is worthy of their sacrifice. It is a message, I hope, to the President that he cannot come back here every 6 months and ask for 5, 10, 50, 70, 80, $100 billion. It is a message to the Iraqi politicians that they must seize this moment.

I urge passage.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow in my office, Louis Bervid, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

First, I thank the Senator from Michigan for her kind words and also for her tremendous leadership as the leader of our Democratic caucus on so many issues, and a great representative of her State of Michigan. I thank the Senator.

Today, Mr. President, the Bush administration announced a proposal to help stem the burgeoning crisis in foreclosures across this country. It is a welcome step, but it is a very timid step. It is one that is long overdue, in my estimation. This crisis has been evolving over many months, and the White House and the Treasury have taken a very long time to get to this moment and to propose this plan. And it is cautious plan, and only a partial approach to a very complicated and very dangerous problem.

The problem is dangerous in the sense that millions of American homeowners are facing the peril of losing their homes to foreclosure because of the exotic mortgages that were sold to them with low introductory rates and now are being triggered to reset to relatively high rates, forcing many people to make the choice between giving up their home or giving up everything else to pay for their mortgage. That is the human aspect. And we are seeing it in our home State of Rhode Island, Mr. President, a record number of foreclosures, page after page in the newspaper of homes that are going to be foreclosed upon.

This has an effect not only on the individual family but on the community as a whole because as homes are foreclosed in a neighborhood, they lower the value of the other homes. It has a ripple effect.

I was meeting just a few weeks ago with the mayor of Central Falls, RI, who pointed out the increased number of foreclosed homes in his community, and also the mayor of Pawtucket, who has seen a significant increase in foreclosures. This goes right to the fabric of a community. So on the individual family level, on a community level, and now on a nationwide, indeed, global level, this liquidity crisis, this crisis in credit, is threatening the ability of our economy to function efficiently, to provide resources, credit, and loans not just to homeowners, but to industry and business as well.

So the White House acted today, and I applaud their action, but it is timid. The proposed plan will only address a very small fraction of the foreclosure problem, and the Administration has yet to talk about and deal with the larger issues of economic growth and continuing an adequate supply of credit in our economy.

According to Treasury officials, and an analysis that has been done by financial institutions, this initiative will help about 200,000 people. But the reality is there are millions of Americans who are facing the danger of foreclosure. This 200,000 is just a small fraction. It is better than zero, which was the President and the administration's position just a couple of months ago as they worked on this, but it is not adequate to the daunting challenge of the foreclosure crisis which is facing America today.

Indeed, the plan itself relies on a very complicated and, indeed, convoluted process. There are two classes of inquiry. First, they have to determine if the borrower is eligible for this relief, and then they have to go through another analysis to determine what type of relief the borrower would be eligible for. In addition, it appears the borrower is in the position of having to contact their lender or servicer if they would like to figure out if they are eligible for a loan modification. This is not the responsibility of the lender or servicer. In other words, this is not a systematic approach to relief. This is rather a case by case approach, involving very elaborate procedures which I don't think will in effect reach all the eligible homeowners who are in danger of losing their homes. I think this approach is backwards. It should be the obligation of the lenders and servicers to reach out to the borrowers who are in danger of default, to help walk them through the process. And it should be a much more efficient process.

Today the President offered an 800 number to borrowers, but there are a profusion of 800 numbers, all the way from buying a salad maker to buying an exercise machine. I don't think an 800 number is going to be able to engage people who are fearful about losing their homes and actually get them involved in this process and keep them involved. So I think this is a shortcoming in the approach, which is already a limited approach.

Finally, this plan has not been ratified and accepted enthusiastically by all of the important investors and the other industry players. The final plan was characterized as an agreement with the HOPE NOW industry coalition. This coalition consists mainly of trade groups and has no real ability to implement the plan. They are not the spokesperson for all of the people who will actually have to do the work, and the list of members seems to be a partial list at best.

So for many reasons this plan is really just a set of guidelines regarding how the Administration would like to see part of this problem worked out but does not have the action-forcing devices and the incentives for the servicers, the lenders, and all of the people who really can make this work to go out and put it into effect.

We need to do much more, and there are several things we should do. We need to do much more because this is a burgeoning crisis. I can recall last April convening a committee meeting, as I chair the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment, and we had witnesses from some of the major investment banks in New York City and the rating agencies. We had individuals who were facing the problem of foreclosure, and at that point industry was describing this as a rather narrow, self-contained crisis pertaining only to subprime mortgages. They talked in terms of this being about a $19 billion problem, which in a worldwide economy is not a staggering amount of money. It is to you and I, but not in a worldwide economy. And they also essentially said, well, this is over. The market has already corrected itself.

It is not over. It is now spilling over into other forms of securities. It is now eroding, as I suggested initially, because of psychological factors as well as financial factors, confidence in the overall banking system and the economy's ability to function.

In the newly released Mortgage Bankers Association National Delinquency Survey, the rate of loans entering the foreclosure process was approximately .78 percent. That is up 32 basis points from 1 year ago. This is a problem that is growing. This is not at all a self- contained problem. This is a growing problem. This is the highest

rate of loans entering foreclosure ever recorded in this survey--ever recorded, going back many years. So this is not only an increasing problem, it is a significant problem in our economy and in the lives of Americans everywhere. The percentage of loans actually in the foreclosure process also increased to 1.69 percent, which is also the highest level ever recorded.

In Rhode Island, we have the dubious distinction, Mr. President, of the highest foreclosure rates in New England. The percent of loans that were seriously delinquent or in the process of foreclosure in the third quarter of this year was 3.23 percent, and the percent of subprime loans in this category was 14.97 percent. So for our own home State, we are seeing an explosion of these foreclosures.

We are also seeing, simultaneously, the largest price declines in the housing sector since the Great Depression. Not only are people losing their homes, but those who are still paying their monthly mortgages are seeing the value of their homes diminish significantly. For so many people, that was their whole source of wealth. In fact, I would suggest that it was one of the major reasons that consumption and consumer activity were so robust over the last several years. As energy prices went up, as other factors intervened, what kept consumers in the game was this notion they were wealthy because their house was appreciating every year. That has changed, and that will have an effect.

At least one housing expert I talked to thinks this housing downturn is going to be one of the longest we have experienced in the last 50 years. Instead of lasting an average of 24 months, he expects it to last up to 48 months, which would take us to at least 2 years from now.

What we know now is that the banks and the rating agencies underestimated the underlying risk in many of the financial products offered to home buyers, and their actions have resulted in serious consequences to the availability of credit and to the capital markets in both our economy and the worldwide economy. What started out as a problem centered on subprime loans has spread to other parts of the market and the economy. And there need to be serious policy recommendations to address these problems as well.

Now, what we have to do is a series of steps, none of which is the magic solution, but they are all collectively important. We cannot stop today with the announcement by the administration. Secretary Paulson himself has urged Congress to pass the FHA Modernization Act. The administration should take the next logical step and not simply be cheering from the sidelines, but get in the fight and encourage those in this body who are holding up that FHA bill to let it go. Words are important, but deeds are more telling. So if the Secretary is truly interested in getting that bill moving, he needs to come up here and be talking to the members of the Republican caucus who are holding up this bill.

We also need the administration's leadership in passing bankruptcy reform. Senator Durbin has an excellent bill that will allow borrowers and lenders to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages so that people can stay in their homes as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.

We need Tax Code changes so that borrowers would not pay Federal taxes on the debt discharged by lenders on their home mortgages the so- called short sale. There are some people who recognize they can't keep their home. They can sell the home at a loss, and with an agreement from the lender at a price less than the value of their mortgage. The lender takes this discharge as a loss, and the IRS, under current tax law, determines that this is income for the borrower and taxes it. We need to change that.

In fact, Senator Stabenow has a bill to do just that, and it was part of the proposal that Senator Baucus offered earlier today in conjunction with AMT.

Finally, I think we have to have a substantial increase in the availability of housing counseling, and this is included in the bill I introduced, called the HOPE Act. An increase in housing counseling funds is also in the appropriations for Transportation, Housing, and other agencies bill which has received a veto threat from the President.

In the HOPE Act, I also have suggested that we include mandatory loss mitigation requirements; that a lender has the obligation to work with a borrower to see if there is a way to avoid foreclosure if it is economically feasible to do so.

We need to work together--the Congress, the administration, the regulators, and the industry--toward the goal of keeping American families in their homes, and we also have to recognize that if we don't act coherently, comprehensively, and in a timely fashion, what presented as a small subprime loan crisis and has burgeoned into a national foreclosure crisis could undermine economic progress in this country and maybe across the globe.

Time is wasting. We have to move forward. I urge my colleagues to do so.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.