Floor Statements

Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to COL Herbert S. Lockett, former ombudsman for the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. Colonel Lockett has a long and distinguished history of service to our Nation, both as a soldier and as a volunteer ensuring that National Guard and Reserve soldiers are prepared for battle. His service, both on the front lines and behind the scenes, is noble and commendable. It is for this reason that I honor him today.

Colonel Lockett served as a combat medic in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II, earning a Bronze Star, an Outstanding Leadership Commendation, and three Campaign Stars. He cared for those who were wounded and risked his own safety in service to others. Those who brave bullets to provide care are truly heroic, and Colonel Lockett was no exception.

He went on to serve in Korea as an infantryman, where he earned a Silver Star for Gallantry at the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. While his unit had taken heavy casualties, and many in his unit threatened to desert, he took charge and they fought until reinforcements arrived, earning two Presidential Unit Citations and credit for 2,000 Chinese KIAs.

Even after retiring from active duty, Colonel Lockett continued to serve his country. Colonel Lockett has been a volunteer with National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve helping to prepare soldiers in National Guard and Reserve units to be deployed for combat operations. For his efforts in this regard he has been awarded the James N. Roche Spirit of Voluntarism Award, the highest award given by the committee.

Mr. President it is my honor to pay tribute to this great Alabamian, and most of all this great American. He serves as a shining example of the American spirit. He is loved by all who know him for his tireless work and determination.

Madam President, I believe, in accordance with our understanding on both sides, it would be appropriate for me to call up amendment No. 3373, and I do so now.

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

Madam President, this amendment is similar to the one I introduced yesterday, except it provides a different offset to pay for the needed additional funds for the Office of Labor-Management Standards in the 2008 Labor-HHS budget.

This is a program that I believe is critically important. It is a program that has been very successful. It has resulted in over 700 prosecutions in the last several years and restitution to union members and union locals in the amount of about $101 million.

This is an important program. It is a working program. It represents the only required audits, the only required reporting and disclosure for unions in the country. The Securities and Exchange Commission does that for corporations and other institutions that are required to be audited. Other than this program, there is no real integrity to protect union members from fraud and corruption and theft. I will mention in a moment some extraordinary thefts that have occurred from union members, why this is important, and I will express my personal and deep belief that one reason we have as much broad corruption in unions is because we are not auditing them. We are not doing it. Even with the current level of funding, we are way behind and it would take, at this rate, 33 years to do a basic audit of all the unions around the country. That is not acceptable.

People are not being watched. They feel like they are free and temptation and money is coming before them. Obviously, people are succumbing to that temptation. More rigorous enforcement and audits are needed. The Office of Labor-Management Standards is a group that is required to enforce the statutory provision that mandates that unions provide, each year, public disclosure of how they spend their money. It was a bill offered and passed in 1959 by former Senator and former President, John F. Kennedy. It was an important reform.

During the Clinton years, sadly, this reporting requirement was almost totally abandoned and, under Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, in recent years she has worked hard and those reporting numbers are up. But 36 percent still don't report. There is not even a way, with our staffing level, that she can insist on that. So 36 percent are not reporting properly. The members don't know where their money is being used. That is the fundamental question.

The committee mark doesn't even flat fund the Department; it cuts its funding by $2 million. Every other enforcement agency is given an increase, but this one is cut. I think our members ought to ask themselves, do we need to be listening to certain union leaders who don't want disclosure, or do we need to be listening to union members whose funds and dues are being misappropriated? If we do regular audits, they will be more effective, and

I am convinced we will see a dropoff in this kind of problem. It is the right thing to do.

My proposal is to add $5 million, $2 million of which would get us back to last year's budget only, and a $3 million cost of living on top of that, so they can continue an aggressive effort to ensure integrity.

I have Senator Enzi with me, the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Senator Alexander, who are both interested in speaking on this. I will yield to Senator Enzi at this time. I believe I have 30 minutes; is that right?

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Madam President, I thank Senator Alexander for his comments. Indeed, what we are talking about is funds contributed by union members to further union causes, not to line the pockets of persons who embezzle, steal, or otherwise cheat and use the money. That is an important issue we need to keep in mind. It is troubling to me that we have opposition to keeping this program on track.

I have offered this amendment, as I indicated earlier, a new amendment that has a different offset. I know there was concern over the international union funds that go to the U.N.-affiliated agency. There is a big increase in that program, a $10 million increase. I am troubled by that increase, frankly, because last year Secretary Chao met with the people who were receiving this money, and they gave very inadequate explanations of where the money went. In fact, they couldn't explain where it went. I don't know whether it is being well spent.

At any rate, the most important thing for us to do is focus on making sure we are protecting the contributions of union members and that their funds are being protected. That is why I altered the offset to one that takes this $5 million from the administrative, management and related expenses of the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. That is where the funds would come from. I believe that would not be a heavy burden on those agencies. In fact, they can absorb it readily, and this is clearly, as a question of priorities, more important to make sure we are not cutting back on this budget.

Senator Specter talked about the status of the budget. I repeat, I think he understood it and explained it eventually correctly that the committee mark cuts the budget $2 million below last year's funding level. Because of inflation and cost increases, that is a most significant $2 million cut.

What we are proposing is that there be a $3 million increase in the overall budget, a total of $5 million--$2 million to get up to last year's funding and an additional $3 million to increase the funding. I think this is valid. I think it is justified. It is something we really should do. If we don't do it, we are going to have a severe, adverse impact on the ability of OLMS to fulfill their statutory requirement of auditing unions and requiring unions to publicly file their financial disclosures.

Some say this is a burdensome regulation, but in today's day and age, being able to maintain records of where you spend your money is not too much to ask. Most of these records are done by computers now. People have bookkeepers, and if they don't, they are taking serious risks. So to be able to report this information is not too much to ask. It is very valuable to their members. Union members should have the same protection, as Senator Alexander said, as corporate stockholders. This OLMS legislation is to union transparency what the Securities and Exchange Commission is to corporate transparency.

This chart shows the mission of OLMS. The mission of OLMS is a good mission. It is not to harm anybody. It is to assist in the integrity of this system--No. 1, to provide union financial transparency. That is why the bill was passed in 1959, so that union members can know where their money is being spent. That is the report which is required. Then to protect union financial integrity--that is part of the audit function of the OLMS. They are required to audit the union activities, and they do so, but, as I noted, even at this current level of funding, they only get around to doing every union in the country once every 33 years. Until we had some increases in this budget, it was once every 133 years. It is a small agency, $47 million in last year's budget, but it has shown big results.

OLMS does not tell unions how to spend their money; it simply requires them to file accurate and timely reports, which allows union members to determine for themselves whether the expenditures that are being made are appropriate. If they don't know what is happening, they cannot express their opinions in leadership meetings.

That there is a high level of demand from union members for this kind of information is very evident. This is a remarkable number. Between May of 2006 and May of 2007, on the Web site of OLMS where these reports are posted so members can access them--so they don't have to go down and ask the officer or the boss at the local union to ``give me your records,'' they can just access them on the computer--767,980 hits were identified on last year's Web site. People are looking to see where their elected union officers are spending their money. Why shouldn't they? That is an average of 64,000 a month and over 2,100 a day. If union members don't care about how their hard-earned dollars are being spent, I ask, why do they take time to access this Web site? Of course they want to know, they have a right to know, and the only way they are able to get this information in a readily available form is through this reporting requirement.

Unfortunately, the reports are not being submitted, and because of shortage of personnel and a certain lack of legal enforcement ability, only 36 percent of unions are not filing the appropriate forms. The delinquency rate is 36 percent. That is not good for union members.

Now, Secretary Chao has met with union leaders. But let me tell you what happened. Under the Clinton years, this was not being enforced. That is just it. You want to know the truth? It was not being enforced. And the number of personnel went from 427, in about 1990, down to 260. They just weren't enforcing this 1959 mandate. When Secretary Chao realized it was her responsibility to make sure union members could see financial disclosure forms, and she asked that it be done, a lot of grumbling occurred. They said, oh, it was burdensome; oh, there were problems. So she met with them and met with them and they altered plans and they figured out ways to do it that were cheaper and better and less burdensome, but she required them to comply with the law that requires this disclosure.

Now, after our colleagues have gained ascendancy in the Senate, lo and behold we come in and whack their budget. Now, who is being listened to, politically powerful bosses or is it the interest of union members? Embezzlement is not something we ought to

support and put up with. We in Congress are focusing on transparency right here. We talk about it a lot. It is embarrassing to me that our colleagues have seen this budget be reduced.

This chart gives a clear indication of just how significant overall the problem is we are dealing with. From 2001 to 2007, 796 people were convicted. Most of them pled guilty, and court-ordered restitutions totaled $101 million. But I indicated to you that less than 5 percent of the unions per year are being audited, and it appears that for every four of the audits that are conducted, about one person is convicted of something, on average. So we have a problem, we really do. And I submit it is not because people are necessarily bad people. Some of them may be, but a lot of it is because there is no real oversight and accountability, and temptation is too great.

I have been a prosecutor for 15 years. I will tell you, you give people lots and lots of money, it goes through their hands and nobody is watching it. Temptation takes over, and you will rightly expect problems to occur if you don't have tight fiscal controls. We don't have it. I think we need to have a lot more emphasis in this area than we do, other than just a $3 million increase in this department. It is obvious.

We hear a lot of talk about integrity in here about our financial disclosures and other things. Well, if we don't do our duty, people will complain. If businesses don't file their reports, they will complain. And we need to make sure unions do the same, not to beat up on unions but to help unions have integrity.

Now, not to be monotonous--and I find this remarkable--but some may say, well, they are abusing unions and picking on people. But the conviction rate is 95 percent--95 percent of all indictments have resulted in convictions. They do not always get big sentences. I thought some I have seen were pretty light. But the point is, if you are convicted of these kinds of offenses, you lose your leadership position in a union, and that is important. So if you are stealing from a union, you ought not stay in as an officer.

So I would just suggest that from my review of the cases, people are not being abused. They are being fairly treated. Overwhelmingly, the defendants are pleading guilty, and restitution is being made. People who are corrupt are not being able to remain in office to keep their hands in the till where the money is.

The legislation that requires this is not new. This law has been on the books for some time. I will admit that we been very lax, and it was not being enforced, but the conviction rate, the amount of restitution, the number of fraud cases per audit indicates that was not a good decision. And if the audit rates had been maintained, I submit we would have had a lot less crime and fraud and loss of union members' money. This occurred in 1959. One of the leaders of it was our own Senator Robert Byrd. He spoke earlier today. He has been here a long time. He was here in 1959 when this bill passed. And as a Senator from West Virginia, a State with a strong union heritage, a proud union heritage, he decided to vote for this bill.

The bill was actually introduced and led by Senator John F. Kennedy. This is what Senator Kennedy said at the time.

The racketeers will not like it, the antilabor extremists

around the country will not like it, but I am confident that

the American people, and the overwhelmingly honest rank and

file union members, will benefit from this measure for many

years to come.

And until we stopped enforcing it a few years ago, or got lax, it has been beneficial. I think the work that is being done now, the $101 million in restitution, indicates that progress has been occurring that has benefitted union members.

Now, Senator Byrd wrote a letter that was included in the Congressional Record in response to certain criticisms he received from a district president of a union in West Virginia. They sent a letter of condemnation, and Senator Byrd was direct about it. He responded:

The bill which passed the Congress will not hurt honest

unions, and it will give added protection to the rank and

file members in the unions. Honest union leaders have nothing

to fear from this legislation. The corruption and

racketeering that have been revealed in the fields of both

labor and management made it imperative that some kind of

legislation be enacted.

And I think that remains as true today as it was when he made those comments in 1959.

Madam President, since 2001, OLMS has only had the resources to audit 3,275 of the 26,000 unions on record. That means in the past 7 years combined, only 12.5 percent of the unions have been audited. It is able to audit only about 2 to 4 percent of the unions each year. It is important to note that unlike corporations, unions are not required by law to have outside auditors. Most corporations have to have outside auditors. So in many cases, this audit is the only outside audit a union will have.

In 2000, OLMS only did 204 audits out of well over 20,000 unions. That is the equivalent of a union being audited once every 133 years. Last year, they did 736 audits, a better number, but that still translates into an audit only once every 33 years at that rate. It is better, but I think we need to do a lot more.

With the $2 million reduction in funding which is currently in the bill, it is estimated there will be approximately 350 fewer audits each year, and that is almost cutting the number in half. So we should be seeking more, really, considering that from those 3,267 audits that were completed there came 827 indictments and 796 convictions. OLMS has been funded below the President's requested levels over the past several years. Yet if the proposed cuts in the bill are implemented funding will drop from $47.7 million to $45.7 million. That is below last year's budget. So I would just note again that we had 427 employees in this department in 1990. It fell down to 260, it has been inched up to 331, and if this bill passes in this form, cutting the budget, we are going to see a loss of personnel instead of an increase in personnel. We ought to be closer to the 400, it seems to me. OLMS was the only enforcement agency in the Labor Department that received a budget cut during the congressional markup.

Let me mention this story of the United Transportation Union. We have a picture I think is sad. It is a picture from an undercover operation. The person who is handing off this money that is on this picture is a UTU-designated legal counsel by the name of Victor Bieganowski. The person receiving the money is John Russell Rookard, 58, of Olalla, WA, a top special assistant to Alfred Boyd, Jr., UTU president at the time this bribe money was paid.

In 2004, Boyd, the international president of the Nation's largest railroad operating union, pleaded guilty to participating in a bribery scheme involving Houston lawyers. Union officials extorted bribes from the lawyers in exchange for access to injured union members.

A March 12, 2004, Houston Chronicle article explains that Byron Alfred Boyd, Jr., of Seattle, is the last of four officials of the UTU to plead guilty in a plan to extort bribes from lawyers in exchange for access to these injured members.

Boyd admitted using the bribes he was paid--get this--to gain control of the union. He persuaded former union president Charles Leonard Little of Leander, near Austin, to resign in exchange for $100,000 and a new pickup. This would allow him, Boyd, to assume the presidency of the union. Little resigned, but I guess he didn't get a promissory note or a mortgage because he was never paid his $100,000. Boyd not only stole from his union and breached the trust of his union members, he didn't pay the man he promised to pay to give up his office. Little pleaded guilty last year, as did former union insurance director Ralph John Dennis.

We have too many examples of this kind of disregard for the integrity of the funding of unions. People are being entrusted with this money, and it is not being managed well. And it is something that we need to do more about, in my view.

Madam President, I would just share a few other examples which I think are instructive of some of the problems that have occurred in recent years.

In Pennsylvania, in June of 2007, in the eastern district of Pennsylvania, Lawrence Marable and Deborah Powell, former president and treasurer of AFGE Local 1793, representing employees at the VA Medical Center, both

pled guilty to conspiracy and theft of property in a special territorial case. They conspired to convert dues checks and issued Local 1793 checks for their personal use totaling $184,129. This was a very serious matter, I suggest.

In May of this year, in Michigan, Alan Raines, former financial secretary of Steelworkers Local 1358 was charged with embezzling union funds in the amount of $274,262. That is not chicken feed. That is huge money. A lot of these unions do not have that many members, and the cost per member in one, I remember specifically, was about $1,000 per member in the amount of loss that occurred.

Here, on April 2, 2007, in Puerto Rico, the president of the International Longshoremen's local was found guilty of 12 counts of embezzlement. He was charged among other counts with conspiracy to embezzle union funds in excess of $1,950,000. That is a breathtaking amount. Both of those, in May and April of this year. In March of this year, in New York, John Daley, former chief financial officer of the New York State Nurses Association, was sentenced to time in prison after pleading guilty to grand larceny for taking $1,193,000 in union funds. These are public records. These are huge amounts of money.

In June of last year in Connecticut, a former financial secretary of Local 745 of PACE was charged with taking $138,000, embezzling that much money.

In June of this year, in my hometown, sadly, the Southern District of Alabama, where I at one time was a Federal prosecutor myself in the United States District Court there, Kenneth Mays, the former treasurer of IBEW Local 1053, was sentenced after pleading guilty to embezzlement and ordered to pay $37,000 in restitution, reimbursement. This is right in my home state.

On July of last year, in Fulton County, GA, in the district court, a bookkeeper for IBEW Local 613 was indicted for taking $11,000.

In December of 2005, in the Northern District of Iowa, Debra Herrig was sentenced and pled guilty to embezzling union funds and made restitution in the amount of $13,000.

In December of 2004, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Rodney Fox was charged with embezzling $89,000 of union funds.

In May of 2005, in the Southern District of Iowa, Amanda Kemmer was sentenced to 24 months and ordered to pay $209,000 in full restitution for embezzling union funds.

There are lots more I can indicate.

I will repeat. I don't believe there is any need for this kind of criminal activity to go on. I believe a lot of it occurs because there is so little oversight. If we had a rigorous oversight and audit function by the Department of Labor, we would see a lot less of it. If the unions were required to promptly and fully report the expenditures, union members would be able to watch for problems and pick them up sooner and keep these kind of embezzlements from going to hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars. That is why this office, of all offices, should not be reduced.

I understand some people believe it is a burden, and for a good union that never had any problems I guess filing it is a burden. It may not be a necessary thing. But, really, probably it is because the union members get to see where their funds are being spent, honestly and fairly.

Most unions, of course, are honest and do a good job, and most union members are the salt of the Earth and couldn't be better people, and most union leaders are honest and decent and work hard every day to protect the interests of their own members. They try to make sure they get a fair deal in the workplace.

I am telling you we need to be attuned to that because wages are not what I think they ought to be for the average worker in America today. There are a lot of reasons for that. I suggest one of them is this very large surge of low-wage labor that comes into our country illegally.

But, regardless, we want to help our union members receive the highest possible wage and to be able to know that their leadership is honest and trustworthy and doing the right thing. I believe we have to get this money back into this account. We need to be sure we have at least a modest increase in spending to keep up with the inflation rate so we can continue at least this modest rate of enforcement.

I urge my colleagues to not see this as an action that goes against unions but as an action that will strengthen unions, that will affirm the importance of the union members' money that they contribute, and to make sure it is spent wisely.

It is sad to say, sometimes you get a big restitution order of $1 million--I have been there and seen them, but it is like getting blood from a turnip. It will never come back. It is gone and the members have actually lost it and nobody can do anything about it.

I urge my colleagues to give serious consideration to this amendment. I think it is reasonable and fair and the offset, let me repeat, does not deal with the controversial ILO, International Labor Organization, that does some good. It certainly has good objectives. How well they spend their money, I have my doubts, but it has good objectives. It is an offset against administrative expenses, and across the board it will be a small impact on the administrative budgets of these agencies.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I wish to share a few thoughts on some of the discussion we had earlier today. My colleagues shared some ideas about whether we are funding OSHA sufficiently, that sort of thing. The spending per business from OSHA is different from spending per union. OSHA has many businesses they serve, and so they go out to each one and make their visits and do their inspections and assess penalties. But unions serve many businesses, and one inspector would come there and spend some time and would cover their relationship with quite a number of businesses. All workplaces are not unionized so I don't think that was a fair comparison.

Also, the Department of Labor just reported that the indictment and conviction numbers continue to go up. They now have 798 convictions and 834 indictments. It seems every day they are out there making good progress, where they have the capability to do so, against fraud and corruption.

With regard to the full-time equivalent, the number of employees, in recent years we have seen an increase in the number of employees--that is true--but the truth is those increases have been modest. For example, in 1990, there were over 400 OLMS employees. Now that number dropped down below 300. Mostly during the period of the Clinton administration there was a sharp dropoff. Now it is back up to 331, but that is well below the amount it used to be.

I don't think there is anything that can be said except that Secretary Chao has begun to restore that office a bit, tried to get it on a stronger basis, have it do a better job of enforcing the law. She needs that. One can only interpret this budget cut--the only budget cut within this whole line item of appropriations to her enforcement agency, the agency that requires the unions to publish their expenditures, the enforcement agency that actually does audits--as an indication of something rather serious, especially when the audits are uncovering extraordinary amounts of problems. That is what we have. We have a situation in which we have had so little oversight that there is abuse of union members' money going on on a regular basis. That money is too often being abused. Not by everybody; overwhelmingly, the average union leader is honest and decent. The locals are run by good people elected by their members. But long-term tenures, lack of controls, no audits puts people in a position where their good discipline fails.

I have seen it in churches. People in church have access to large amounts of money. Nobody is monitoring it, and they take it, sometimes large amounts. So we need to understand that oversight, auditing, and financial disclosure is not punishment. It is not demeaning. It is serving the rank-and-file union members. It is serving their interests so they can know their leadership is functioning honestly and with integrity, and they can know what they are spending their money on. It may be an honest expenditure, but a union member might look at it and say: They paid too much for this copy machine because that is his brother-in-law. They might want to complain about that. Isn't that the way we want it to happen? That is what the whole system is about.

It is disappointing to me to see that we have a cut in this agency, of all agencies. I am disappointed in that. I know Secretary Chao would be concerned that people thought that somehow in doing these few audits--and we are so slow in what we are doing and doing so few it would take 33 years to audit all existing unions. But to suggest they were spending so much money on that, and they weren't protecting workers. There is actually some good news there. For example, since fiscal year 2001, the fatality rate among Hispanic workers has fallen by over 18 percent. Since 2002, the injury and illness incident rate has fallen from 5.3 per 100 workers to 4.6 per 100 workers, a drop of more than 13 percent in the injury and illness incident rate, which is a substantial improvement.

With regard to the number of resources, from 1992 to 2002, there were budget cuts and the FTEs dropped 34 percent. That is the number of workers during basically the period in which President Clinton was in office. The audits of unions, the local unions dropped by two-thirds in that decade. That is all we are saying. Secretary Chao has a statutory responsibility to do audits, a statutory and compelling responsibility to insist on these reports being filed on time. They are required by a law that was passed in 1959. Thirty-six percent of the unions are not submitting those reports on time so their members cannot access where their money is going. We had almost a million people in the last year access the Web site where these reports are required to be filed to see where the money is being spent. This is union members accessing these Web sites so they can find out where the money they are contributing to the local union is being spent. What is wrong with that? Why would we want to cut this agency when we still are not where we need to be? We are auditing only a very small fraction of the unions, and a substantial number, over a third, are failing to report as required by law--not a law I am asking us to pass, not a law that is part of this amendment--a law that was passed by then-Senator John F. Kennedy in 1959.

So I believe this is a good government issue. It is the right thing to do. It will not hurt unions. It will strengthen unions. It will make people feel better about their membership. It may be some bosses do not want to have to disclose where they spend their money, and they may be contacting Senators and telling them: Don't give in. Fight. Don't let them go back and make us do these audits. Don't do it. Cut their budget. Stop Elaine Chao from doing what she is required by law to do. Don't give her the money.

Maybe that is what is happening. I do not know. I hope not. I think we ought to keep this going. We ought to at least have this modest increase which is a little more than the inflation rate--a net $3 million increase on a $47 million budget from last year. That modest increase will allow her to keep the momentum, to keep these delinquency rates going down, moving in the right direction, with financial disclosure, sunshine. That is going to help eliminate fraud in itself. Then she will be able to also do a certain number of other audits. Maybe we can see not an increase in convictions, but we might see a decrease, if we know there is more accountability.

Again, there were 796 criminal convictions over the last 6 years, with court-ordered restitution of $101 million. Whose money is that? Whose money was being ordered to be paid back? It is union members' money--working Americans who have trusted their leaders. Maybe in the union hall there are 10 officers and leaders and only one of them found themselves in a position to steal. I am not saying we have this wholesale problem. What I am saying is there is a very real problem. There is no doubt about it. We are finding far too many criminal cases for each audit that is done.

As a result, it takes up time by the investigators. It takes up time by the auditors. It results oftentimes in a loss of money that no matter what the judge orders to be restored--no matter how much restitution they order--it may not actually ever be paid back if they do not have it. That is a true fact.

So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Once again, some of you may be concerned that the offset was to take money from the ILO, I believe it is, the U.N.-affiliated international labor group that is supposed to help labor conditions around the world. They certainly have high and good goals. I am not sure they have been very effective. But this money for my amendment is not coming from there anymore. I know a lot of people want to see that budget increased.

So this offset will be an offset from administrative expenses of Labor and HHS and Education. It will be a small impact on their overall budget.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments now and call up my amendment. I wish to make some comments about amendment No. 3324. It is an important amendment that deals with an issue that is too often overlooked, and I will share my thoughts about it.

The amendment will restore funding to the Office of Labor and Management Standards at the Department of Labor by increasing funding at OLMS by $5 million. There is an important principle involved here. Union members should have the same protection of their moneys that stockholders have in businesses. In many ways, they deserve better protection than stockholders.

The Office of Labor and Management Standards is to union transparency and integrity what the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, is to corporate accountability. Yet for fiscal year 2008, the Senate appropriations bill that is now before the Senate funded the SEC at $905 million. That is $12 million above the fiscal year 2007 level and at the requested level of the President's budget.

The Office of Labor and Management Standards is the only Federal agency created to protect rank-and-file union members. It enforces the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, which requires financial disclosure by labor unions and union officers. It requires disclosure, that is all it does.

This office audits, in addition, union books to detect embezzlement and other thefts of union members' dues and ensures fair elections of union officers.

The mission of the OLMS, referred to on this chart, is to provide union financial transparency; that is, it would require the officers to tell their members how they are spending their money. That is all it does. It does not tell them what they must spend it on. It requires that they give a fair report of the money they obtain from their members.

It has as its mission to protect union financial integrity. As I will point out, we have had quite a problem with that issue over the years.

It will safeguard union democracy. That is fair elections in unions.

All those points are important issues. Anyone close to this issue for the last 50 years knows we have had constant problems in this area. This is popular with the union members and is the right thing for us to do.

This office has been funded at $47.8 million, and it has shown big results. It

is a small agency that is showing big results, and I will talk about that point.

From 2001 to 2007, OLMS investigations have resulted in 796 convictions--that is since 2001--and have resulted in court-ordered restitutions to unions and to union members of $101 million. Those are pretty good results.

I am going to explain in a moment how they are vastly underfunded already. We need more. I will go into that issue in a moment.

Since 2001, OLMS has recovered, as I noted, $101 million. I doubt that is all that was stolen. No doubt it is not all that was stolen. This is what was actually ordered and recovered in restitution. I would say that, by any standard, $101 million is a lot of money.

Since 2001, the work by OLMS has resulted in convictions and restitution, so we are talking about an agency that is working on behalf of the American worker, ensuring the American worker knows how the union dues they have contributed are being spent. When it is clear their money is being abused, OLMS works to fairly return the money to them; this is a good program and an important program.

Embezzlement is not something the American people support. We as a Congress are focusing on transparency in a lot of different areas, and it is embarrassing that our colleagues have decided to cut funding in the one office in the whole Federal Government, the only one, that is required to carry out this job with regard to our unions.

Let me show this chart. As a Federal prosecutor myself for a number of years, I have to say I am impressed with these numbers. Since 2001, 95 percent of indictments that have been produced as a result of OLMS investigations have resulted in convictions. That is a pretty good success rate. So it is clear they are not picking on people who have made honest mistakes or where honest errors are occurring and people are doing what they are supposed to do as union leaders.

In fact, they have offices strategically placed around the country. Every union in the country has OLMS employees who live within driving distances of their offices. They are ready to help the union leaders figure out how to complete any required forms and disclosures. They are prepared to assist in any problems that arise in union elections. They are a resource and were not created as a punishing tool for unions.

We are not, as a part of this amendment, and those who support this amendment, out to kick labor unions around. We are trying to make sure they comply with the law and ensure that the rank-and-file members have someone watching out for them and their money. It is clear from these statistics that there is still a need for oversight, sunlight, and transparency. That is clear. We have a problem out there and it still exists. It is painfully clear we need to be monitoring union officials who are taking bribes--and some have been convicted of that--who are involved in racketeering and stealing hard-earned money from working Americans.

Since 2001, OLMS has been able to audit only 3,275 of the 26,000 unions on record. They are supposed to be auditing these unions, but, in fact, since 2001, they have only been able to audit 12\1/2\ percent of the unions on record. I have to tell you, if you do more audits, you are going to have less criminal activity. It is when people know they are not being watched, know they are not likely to be audited, that they take chances and make mistakes and get themselves in trouble and cost their union members a lot of money.

OLMS, in the year 2000, only did 204 audits out of well over 20,000 unions. That is the equivalent of a union being audited once every 133 years. Last year, OLMS did 736 audits, which translates into an audit every 33 years. So we are doing better, but we are still a long way from a regular audit program.

Now, with the $2 million reduction in funding--and you have a cost- of-living increase with salaries and electricity and all those kinds of things that tend to go up--if you have taken a flat net reduction of $2 million in funding, there will be approximately 350 fewer audits each year. That is about half.

Shouldn't we be seeking more audits, considering that from the 3,267 audits that were completed between 2000 and 2007 there came 827 indictments and 796 convictions? I think so. I think this is a good investment for our country.

Now, in the very few reports OLMS audited, evidence was found in many of them that warranted other action. In my home State of Alabama, 41 audits were completed, and from that came 20 convictions; that is, almost half the audits resulted in some conviction.

Here in the District of Columbia, 30 audits were completed, resulting in 27 convictions. One of those was the Washington Teachers Union. Let me give that example. On October 23 of last year, in the U.S. District Court, Cheryl Martin, the daughter of a former Washington Teachers Union executive assistant to the president, Gwendolyn Hemphill, was sentenced to a probationary sentence--which she should be most thankful for, it appears to me--for her role in an embezzlement scheme which defrauded the union of $4.6 million. Right here, just last October. She pled guilty to conspiracy to laundering money and for assisting her husband Michael Martin in laundering more than $500,000 in Washington Teachers Union members' funds, most of which were funneled back to Hemphill and the then WTU president, Barbara Bullock.

Well, that is quite a lot--$4.6 million stolen from only about 5,000 union members. That is about $1,000 a member. This isn't chickenfeed, it is real money. I have heard stories of how some of those very same teachers who lost their money through union embezzlement are the same ones buying pencils, books, and supplies for their students out of their own pockets. So despite what some might say, convicting people who steal from unions and seeking restitution is not anti-union activity; it is pro-union activity.

There are many cases such as this that need transparency to come to light. Since 2001, the administration, President Bush, and Secretary Chao have worked hard to reach consensus on how best to work with the unions to get voluntary compliance on disclosure forms that the law requires them to make. But, still, many unions are not reporting as they are required to do. This chart shows, unfortunately, that the compliance rate for unions is only 64 percent, with 36 percent failing to comply.

That is an unacceptable number. If this were the Securities and Exchange Commission, we would not accept the fact that our stockholders and employees are placed at risk because those entities, those corporations, are not being monitored. If it were the Federal Election Commission and we didn't submit our financial disclosures on time, people would be very critical. Somebody would probably ask that we step down from our offices as we would be committing a violation of the law. However, we don't seem to be as willing to protect our workers and the money they pay in to their unions.

The way this works here, we have public access when these forms are reported, the ones that do, and you can call or go to the Department of Labor in person or get online information at www.unionreports.gov and review these reports.

Now, union members care about this. It is most valuable information to union members--those people in the town who know the community, they know the company, they know the union, they know their coworkers, the stewards, the union reps, the employees. By law they are required to have this information to see what is being done with the money. Union members want to know how their dues are being spent, and it is clear they are looking to see how their money is spent.

Between May of 2006 and May of 2007, in the past year, there were 767,000 hits on the OLMS Web site, an average of over 2,000 a day. People are looking to see how their bosses are spending their money. According to a 2004 Zogby poll, 71 percent of union members want disclosure. They want to know how their funds are being spent. The foundations of this transparency were established in the 1950s when the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 was passed.

Transparency and sunlight--full disclosure of financial gains and losses. These are the tenets that Senator Kennedy, John Kennedy, former President Kennedy, and the McClellan Commission report, set in place 50 years ago to

protect union members, our hard-working Americans, from corruption, bribery, coercion, or maybe worse.

The data shows the actions OLMS is taking in pursuing corruption are spot on. They are doing what they should be doing; they just don't have enough resources now to do it. They certainly don't need a cut in their budget.

When President Bush took office and Secretary Elaine Chao was appointed to be the Secretary of Labor--and she has done a fantastic job, in my opinion--they quickly learned that most union members didn't even know they had rights or what agency would enforce those rights if they were abused. Now there are posters placed at every union workplace stating clearly the rights and duties of unions and employees.

The funding increase proposed in this amendment, which I will be offering, I believe is warranted as OLMS is showing substantive results that are benefitting rank-and-file members, and providing valuable resources to union leaders as so many of them work to uphold the law, but they need assistance in doing that correctly. In fact, the Department of Labor has gone to great lengths to ensure that labor union officials have all the help they need and that the reporting requirements are reasonable.

To make the rules fair, you must sometimes work out problems you have and decrease the burden. Over the years, the Secretary has consulted with labor leaders, has made the forms easier to understand, has worked closely with the AFL-CIO and other unions to create exceptions, exemptions, and to simplify reporting requirements where possible. But you have to know where the money is being spent ultimately. DOL last year added examples and further guidance to one of the forms that is required, the LM 30.

OLMS has been funded below the requested level for the last several years. This is beginning to accumulate in a way that is hurting their ability to meet their needs. This is the level requested by the President to keep this agency on track, and we have been seeing a decline in funding. Last year, the budget was $47.753 million. This year, the committee bill cuts it by $2 million to $45.737 million. With all due respect, I think that is a bad decision. We have a lot of increases in this agency. It is a very important agency, but that is a major reduction when you see it has continued to fall behind what we projected their growth to be.

This agency has seen difficult times. It does seem to be an issue that is political, I have to say. During the Clinton administration, OLMS was cut to only 260 employees. Understaffed, the division was purposefully and expressly prohibited from even carrying out the enforcement duties the law required. This administration has at least attempted to restore resources to OLMS so it can carry out its mission. Even so, the President's fiscal year 2008 staffing request for only 369 FTEs--that is full-time personnel--is still below the 1985 level, which was 463.

Now, as you can see, the trend has turned away from providing even those resources, resulting in a more substantial cut. It indicates to me that if we maintain this level, this Congress is not interested in seeing that this agency, the only one in Government empowered and given the responsibility of enforcing integrity in unions, would be reduced in its ability to do so, to a precarious level indeed.

In fact, OLMS was the only enforcement agency, the only one in the Labor Department, that received a budget cut during the congressional markup of that bill. It is the only one in this bill on the floor now, the only office at this agency, that got a cut. The Appropriations Committee increased the Department's overall budget by $937 million above what the President requested for the Department of Labor. The only cut in the Department's budget, which totals $10 billion, was an $2 million cut for OLMS.

Senator John F. Kennedy was instrumental in passing this act in 1959 and the act says that a member:

. . . must have access to union financial records and has

the right to recover misappropriated union assets on behalf

of a union when the union fails to do so.

That is what the act called for. Senator Kennedy spoke on it aggressively. Then Senator Kennedy, later President Kennedy, said:

The racketeers will not like it, the antilabor extremists

around the country will not like it, but I am confident the

American people, and the overwhelmingly honest rank and file

union members, will benefit from this measure for many years

to come.

That was in 1959, almost 50 years ago. He said they will benefit from this law for many years to come, and I submit they have: 796 crooks have been convicted, $101 million in restitution has been received in the last 6 years.

Senator Robert Byrd, a champion of union rights who, I have to tell you--isn't it something? is still a Member of this Senate--he was active in this debate. During that time, he got a letter from a member of the UMWA in West Virginia. They sent him a letter condemning his vote for it.

Senator Byrd, who still retains great respect in the union membership--and leadership, too, for that matter--this is how he responded on the floor of the Senate:

The bill which passed the Congress will not hurt honest

unions, and it will give added protection to the rank-and-

file members in the unions. Honest union leaders have nothing

to fear from the legislation . . . the corruption and

racketeering that have been revealed in the fields of both

labor and management made it imperative that some kind of

legislation be enacted.

I applaud the efforts of OLMS to pursue those who are misusing their power over our hard-working union members, those who are using that money for their personal benefit, abusing their position by squandering the hard-earned dollars of working Americans.

Let me mention this story about the United Transportation Union. I think it highlights what can happen when there is no consistent oversight. I have a photograph that was taken in the course of an investigation that shows a person handing over money in a corrupt transaction. What is happening here is that the money is being given by a designated UTU legal counsel named Victor Bieganowski. The person receiving the money was John Russell Rookard, 58, of Olalla, WA, a top special assistant to Byron Alfred Boyd. Mr. Boyd was president of the UTU at the time.

This picture shows the handing over of the money. There was an undercover agent working there and they recorded the deal.

In 2004, Boyd, the international president of UTU, the nation's largest railroad operating union, pleaded guilty to participating in a bribery scheme involving Houston lawyers. Union officials extorted bribes from the lawyers in exchange for access to union members who might have been injured so they could file lawsuits.

As a March 12, 2004, Houston Chronicle article explains, Byron Alfred Boyd, Jr., 57, of Seattle, is the last of four officials of the United Transportation Union to plead guilty--he admitted that he did it--in a plan to extort bribes from the lawyers in exchange for access to injured union members. He admitted using the bribes obtained from the lawyers, extorted from lawyers, to gain control of the union. He used it for his political strength too. He persuaded former union president Charles Leonard Little, 69, to resign in exchange for $100,000 and a new pickup, so Boyd could assume the post. He wanted to be president of the union. He goes to the former President and offers him $100,000 and a new pickup to resign so he could be president.

Mr. Little should have been a little bit more careful before he resigned because when he resigned he never got his money, but he was out of office. Little also pleaded guilty last year, as did the former union insurance director, Ralph John Dennis, 51. The man in this picture, John Russell Rookard, 58, of Olalla, WA, a top assistant to Boyd, also pleaded guilty. The indictment alleged that some union presidents determined which lawyers were to be included on the union's designated counsel list. That position was coveted and very valuable because he gave those lawyers easier access to get clients from union members who might have been injured. They would therefore be able to make a lot of money off lucrative personal injury lawsuits.

At the time of the indictments, 56 lawyers were on the list, including 6 in Texas. Unfortunately, we have example after example of this kind of disregard for doing the right thing with the money of our hardworking Americans.

On August 31, let me note, Judy A. Thurman, former treasurer of Federated Independent Texas Union Local

900, pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to embezzlement of union funds totaling $164,268.50. That is a lot of money.

We also have election violations. Assisting labor unions when problems arise in elections is an OLMS responsibility. One union officer generated over 300 phony ballots using the union's computer. He marked the ballots for himself--who else, I suppose--placed them in false return envelopes and returned them to the union, where they were subsequently counted in the election. Those kinds of things are hard for an average union member to understand, ascertain or prove. An agency such as this, that knows how to investigate and prove these things, can make sure our elections in unions are legitimate.

All of us in this Senate know we have to have good staff, and Liz Stillwell, with me, is very much that. So staff capacity at OLMS is an important reason I have introduced this amendment. In 1992, staffing at OLMS was around 392. During the Clinton administration, it was cut back to 260. Today it is back up to 315, which is a little better. As you can see from this chart, the cuts have hit the Department hard. As a result, they are still unable to audit more than 2 to 4 percent of the total unions each year. Only 12 percent of unions have ever been audited. Of those audited, there have been 796 convictions. It tells us something.

Let me say this. I spent most of my professional career as a Federal prosecutor. I prosecuted labor cases. But let me say, if you don't want to have these convictions, if you don't want to have this kind of theft from union members, let me tell you how to stop it. Have regular audits. Once everybody knows the money is going to be accounted for, that somebody is going to be watching closely, they are not going to steal. It is when there are no controls that people feel they are out on their own in some town or city or wherever, and nobody is looking, there is lots of money coming through the headquarters there and they have an opportunity to get it and they think no one is going to know it--temptation takes over.

It will happen to anybody, not just union members or business people; it could happen to anybody when that kind of money is lying around. It happens in churches. People steal from churches. They have an opportunity and nobody has an ability to watch and account for it. If we want to end this kind of thing and strengthen unions and create a better reputation and environment, we need to step up prosecutions and we will begin to see a major reduction in crime, fraud, and abuse. That is the way it is.

Since 1959, when Senators Byrd and Kennedy and other leaders passed the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, these priorities that I mentioned have been the guiding standards of this agency. The standards are to promote union democracy, protect union members' funds, protect American workers and fight labor racketeering.

This $2 million cut is not aimed at an anti-union agency. It is, I have to say, an act that appears political and it appears it is conceding and giving in to union leaders and forgetting the interests of union members.

I know a lot of the union leadership have complained about this law. They don't want to have to file a reporting document. They don't want to have to put it in--36 percent of them are not getting it in on time or at all. But who are we representing? I say we ought to represent union members and 71 percent of them want this disclosure; over 700,000 last year checked their union leadership reports on the Web site to see how their money was being spent. What is wrong with that?

When it was created by Senators Kennedy and Byrd and others, it was not to shut down unions, it was to shut down theft, waste, fraud, abuse, criminal activity. Of around 26,000 unions active today, only 2 to 4 percent have been audited each year since 2001; only 12 percent have been audited at all. A quarter of the unions audited, 25 percent, have been found to be in violation of the law; 75 have been correct, were not found in violation. But 25 percent were found in violation. If we did those audits more regularly, we would have fewer problems with compliance, we would have fewer criminal convictions, we would have less restitution to have to be paid as a result of theft and abuse of the money.

This transparency will help us there. When you turn on the lights, you can actually see what is going on and take action to fix the wrongdoing. So I hope somehow we can work through this.

I know the managers of this bill have done a tremendous job. They had thousands and thousands of people making suggestions on thousands and thousands of issues. Then, to have somebody such as me come in and tell them this is what I think you ought to do--one more time, I am sure our colleagues such as Senator Harkin and Specter get tired of everybody's complaining. But I think we ought to work on this. I think this reduction in funding cuts from an agency that is actually doing a good job.

We ought to encourage that agency to do a better job and actually increase their funding more. So I am asking simply that $5 million be put back in, which would bring it a little bit above last year's appropriations for the agency so they can at least stay on track of inflation and everything to continue at the same level of auditing and investigating they are now doing. I wish we could do more. Frankly, I wish we would. This would be my suggestion.

I continue to look forward to perhaps seeing if we could reach some sort of accord on this. I ask my colleagues to study it carefully. I urge them to vote in support of this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Leigh Ann Ross be given the privilege of the floor during consideration of the Labor-HHS bill.

Mr. President, prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I

served Alabama as the attorney general. During that time I had many opportunities to work with the organization that assists attorneys general in their many dealings with the Congress, White House, and government agencies the National Association of Attorneys General,

Madam President, I call up amendment No. 3192.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Domenici, Dole, and Ensign be added as cosponsors.

Madam President, it is unfortunate and sad, I think, that the Senate--and I would say the administration--has made a decision to prematurely draw down the National Guard presence at the southern border. That is an unwise event, and it signals uncertainty about our commitment to completing the lawful strategy we have for immigration at our border.

It is not impossible for us to create a lawful system of immigration, but we have to do some things. We have allowed unlawfulness to continue for an extraordinary amount of time, to the extent that it is going to take us some effort now to reestablish a rule of law. But the whole world will be better off and everyone who wants to come to our country will be better off if they know what the rules are, how to apply, and have an understanding that their competitors who would like to come here are not going to be allowed to come illegally and then be rewarded by amnesty while they wait in line to come lawfully.

So the amendment I have offered will fully fund Operation Jump Start at its original level--the 6,000 National Guard troops--through the end of fiscal year 2008. Currently, the Department of Defense has plans only to keep 3,000 at the border instead of the full 6,000 who were to be deployed through 2008. Furthermore, Operation Jump Start is actually now scheduled to end completely on July 1, 2008. So the increased funding provided for here--and I do believe it is an emergency and it is a legitimate emergency expenditure to create lawfulness at our border, which will protect the national security of the United States-- this increased funding will be needed to do these things: keep Operation Jump Start at the deployment level that has been so successful and keep Operation Jump Start running until this time next year.

On May 15, 2006, President Bush announced Operation Jump Start, which was the employment of up to 6,000 National Guard members to the southern land border. According to Operation Jump Start Year 1 Review, its intent was to provide:

An immediate means to enhance border enforcement operations

while Border Patrol increased its own internal enforcement

resources through hiring additional Border Patrol agents,

mission support personnel, and procuring and applying new

technology and infrastructure.

It goes on to say:

OJS is providing interim support as Border Patrol recruits,

hires, and trains 6,000 additional Border Patrol agents by

the end of calendar year 2008--

End of calendar year 2008; that is December of 2008.

My amendment would simply carry the strength of the National Guard through September 30, 2008, the fiscal year. That is important because we are facing a rather substantial drawdown without this amendment.

So deployments began on June 15, 2006, to give us a bit of a background. By August 2006, an average of 5,677 National Guard personnel were deployed. By June 2007--that is June of this year--an average of 5,759 were deployed.

Since the beginning, on the border, the National Guard has supported the Department of Homeland Security by providing, among other things, the following skills: construction of tactical infrastructure; that is, fencing, roads, and lighting and those kinds of things that are really critical if we are serious about making sure people just don't walk across our border. You have to have those things. We made some progress in that regard, although, in truth, we should have made more. They are involved in fence repair, welding, and facility maintenance. Many of these are engineer Guard units with a lot of capabilities in this area. They provide vehicle and fleet maintenance. Many of these are transportation units that are skilled at fleet maintenance. Entry identification teams, surveillance and reconnaissance teams, law enforcement communication assistance, intelligence analysis--we have a lot of those capabilities in the National Guard.

So I would say they are not being utilized on a daily basis to patrol the border and make arrests. We decided that would not be what they are deployed for. But they are really providing a lot of capability that frees up a limited number of Border Patrol agents to be the front-line troops, to go out and make the arrests and do the day-to-day work that has to be done.

The success of the operation is undeniable. By early December of 2006, just 6 months after the deployment began, Robert Gilbert, the chief Border Patrol agent for the Border Patrol's El Paso sector, stated:

Jointly, we are making a definite impact on the border. The

professionalism and dedication and training the Guard units

have brought to our mission and our fight, the way they have

made it their mission and their fight, is more than we

expected.

That same month, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, LTG Steve Blum, stated:

I was here 2\1/2\ months ago and things that I didn't think

would be possible in a year have already been accomplished.

Infrastructure is up, fencing is up, roads are built,

lighting is up, and apprehensions are down.

Those aren't just words. The success of Operation Jump Start is tangible.

According to the Year 1 Review:

Force multiplication has allowed more Border Patrol agents

to remain in the enforcement mode, not the support mode. The

additional manpower has allowed DHS to return 563 agents to

frontline positions. The result is referred to as ``badges

back to the border.''

The Guard presence has added 337 miles of expanded border surveillance capabilities along the southwest border. Guard personnel provide 6,500 hours of camera monitoring. Somebody has to monitor the cameras. There is no doubt that an electronic fence, as some have said, is not a worthless idea. You can use cameras and electronic technology to enhance our capabilities at the border, but in the high-traffic areas, it is not a question of seeing people, it is a question of how you can detain them if they are coming illegally. So I think we made progress there with the help of the National Guard.

Guard personnel have assisted in apprehending more than 10 percent of the aliens apprehended during the past year--a total of 84,878 apprehensions. Overall, apprehensions of illegal immigrants trying to cross the border are down by 25 percent. What most experts conclude that means is that an estimated 25 percent fewer illegal immigrants are attempting to cross. The Guard's presence is, in fact, having a deterrent effect.

With the help of the National Guard, marijuana seizures are up 22 percent. The Guard was responsible for seizing 201,000 pounds of marijuana at the border.

As a matter of fact, when we talk about security and the need to do something about openness and illegality at our border, we have to consider drugs to be a big part of that. Guard personnel have assisted in the seizure of 4,783 pounds of cocaine, 703 vehicles, and $60,000 in currency. So this is an important matter in the success we are having.

The Guard presence has produced sizable gains in critically needed tactical infrastructure along the border. They have already repaired 428 miles of roads. You have to have roads if you are going to be effective in maintaining a border. And 16 miles of all-weather roads have been repaired and maintained. They have installed 58 miles of vehicle barriers. At least it prohibits people from driving into our country loaded with drugs or illegal items.

They have constructed 18.2 miles of fencing, which is a disappointing number. After all that we funded in this Congress, which was 700 miles of fencing, we have only 18 miles completed.

We voted for it. We talked about it. We go back home and tell our constituents we have done it. The President says we are doing it. The Secretary of Homeland Security says we are doing it. We have not accomplished much, but the Guard has played a role by using their engineering capability. Frankly, if they had been focused more on actual barriers, they probably would have accomplished more.

The real reason is the way we planned this out has been very slow in development, in terms of building our fencing. In fact, we are informed that the fencing numbers are improving right now; that miles of fencing are appearing and coming much more rapidly on line than before. If you examine the situation closely, you will see there appears to be a move afoot to draw this out and end up with far less fencing than the Congress contemplated both with our authorization and appropriations bills.

The Department of Homeland Security indicates that the Guard's presence will have an even greater impact on tactical infrastructure over the next year:

The deployments will be focused on providing a greater

residual value by raising the percentage of troops that are

working on tactical infrastructure projects. This

infrastructure will greatly enhance the ability of the men

and women of the border patrol to access the border and be

more effective in the enforcement efforts for many years to

come.

OK. What they are saying is they have projected in the coming months that the Guard is going to be even more effective because they will be providing a greater residual value by raising the percentage of troops working on infrastructure projects. Now, there are people who don't want infrastructure at the border, and they would like to bring the troops home, I suppose, before that happens. That would be a big mistake.

The National Guard is helping the border to save lives. In the last year, they have rescued 91 people--illegal aliens--in the area who were in desperate trouble for lack of water or being lost. They rescued them. Now, this is what has happened. Despite the proven success of the program, the operation is scheduled to stop by next July. Troops are already being reduced. By the end of July, troops were down to 4,500; that is July of 2007. By the end of August of this year, troops were down to 3,500. So it dropped even more. Today, only 3,000 personnel are on Operation Jump Start orders, and, of those, only 2,300 are actually at the border.

So already there has been a drawdown of more than half of the National Guard personnel, and not communicating that to the American people is leaving us in a difficult situation, I suggest. The National Guard was supposed to fill the gap until 6,000 new Border Patrol agents could be recruited, hired, trained, and stationed at the border. That goal has only been accomplished halfway. Only 3,000 new agents have joined the 1,000 who were on the border when President Bush announced Operation Jump Start. The National Guard is assisting in fence and other critical infrastructure construction.

The Secure Fence Act that we passed mandated that the Department of Homeland Security construct more than 700 miles of new fencing. The administration's goal apparently is not to do that. Apparently it is to just complete 300 miles by the end of the whole next year, 2008. So with 2 years of authorization and funding, they will have only completed less than half of the fencing. To date, only 70 new miles have been constructed, for a total of 145 miles of fencing on the border. That is not the kind of signal we need to be sending.

The reason that is important is because it has a psychological impact, as well as an actual apprehension impact. What about alien apprehensions? To date, alien apprehensions on the border are down 25 percent. While this is positive, because it indicates the attempts at crossings are likely down by 25 percent as well, the job is certainly not finished. The year before that, we arrested 1 million people at the border. Can you imagine that? One million people were arrested at the border. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a wide-open, lawless area that needs attention from our Government. If we don't give it, we are breaking faith with the American people because we have said we are going to fix that, we are going to do something about it. We just haven't.

I have to tell you there are some people who really don't care about it. They talk about it, but they don't care. We have some progress; 25 percent is a lot. It is not insignificant. But if we really got that fencing up and built, if we kept the National Guard down at the border, if we broaden the Border Patrol and motivate them to be as effective as they possibly could be, I absolutely believe--absolutely believe--we can reach a tipping point where the whole world begins to say the border of the United States is no longer wide open; that you can get in trouble going across there. Most people are getting caught. It is an entirely different place, so maybe we better not try it this time. Maybe somebody suggested we can do that, but that is not a good idea. But for the last 20 years-plus, it has been a well-known fact worldwide that you can just walk across our border, if you have very much initiative, and be successful at it. If they catch you, nothing ever happens.

Now, I will conclude by noting that, according to the year review of Operation Jump Start:

OJS is one of the many enforcement initiatives employed to

expand enforcement capabilities to gain better operational

control along the Southwest border. OJS, combined with other

initiatives, such as Operation Streamline, Zero Tolerance,

Arizona Border Control Initiative, and the Expedited Removal

Program, has resulted in a cumulative, positive impact on current levels of border control.

Good news. A positive impact. What it should do is give us encouragement. If we will just follow through, expand what we are doing, adjust to the changing tactics of those who want to enter illegally, and do it with will and determination and a positive attitude, we can make a difference. We can end this open border, end the illegality that has made the immigration system a mockery of law and an embarrassment to our people.

Operation Jump Start is a proven success. It is a critical component of our strategy. Guardsmen are filling critical law enforcement roles. They are building fencing and infrastructure and interdicting narcotics and conducting surveillance and reconnaissance; and, by the way, a substantial majority of our cocaine and methamphetamines, for that matter, are coming into our country through Mexico. I talk to law enforcement officers in Alabama all the time. They say we used to get a lot out of Miami and south Florida. Now it is all coming across the Mexican border. So we have a law enforcement interest in this also.

There is no reason Operation Jump Start should end this June. At a minimum, it should be extended until all 6,000 Border Patrol agents are on duty. The way we have been going, we authorize it and say we are going to add 6,000 Border Patrol agents, and they don't get added, if you want to know the truth. We have seen that happen time and time again. They said we were going to continue this Operation Jump Start and the National Guard, but we have already reduced our Guard personnel by more than half. That adds credibility problems with the American people. No wonder they are suspicious about what we are doing here. This amendment will provide the needed funding to keep Operation Jump Start at its original capacity, 6,000 Guard personnel, instead of what they have planned now. It makes no sense to the American people to say we found something that is effective, that is beginning to work to reduce the illegality we are facing, but we are stopping the program before the job is done. The border is not yet secure. It is too early to end this program. We need to step it up, and I think we will be in a position to have greater progress than anyone can imagine.

Madam President, to sum up, the good news is we have made some progress, but we have not really begun to get to finishing up. If we get the fencing up and keep our Guard there full-time and get our new Border Patrol agents up and we move to ending the catch-and-release and adopt the Texas plan, where individuals are prosecuted for violating the laws by entering illegally--that has reduced border crossings in that area by 45 percent or more--and if we can do other things

like that, this will work and we can make good progress.

The problem is, I think some are not desirous of us being successful. Everything that tends to work seems to be delayed and slowed down and undermined. If we move forward, we can send a message to the world that our National Guard is there, our troops are there, the Border Patrol has been increased, we are building barriers, and you are not going to get in easily anymore, so you better wait in line and come here lawfully, and the whole country will be better off. This amendment will be a big part of doing that.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask that amendment be accepted by voice vote.

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

Madam President, I wish to take a moment to say that my wife and I watched closely Ken Burns' production of ``The War'' or, as Katharine Phillips Singer from Mobile,

called it, ``The Wah.'' Some of the people we know there have enjoyed and been so impressed with the remarks of Senator Inouye as he was interviewed about his experiences during World War II. His heroism and commitment to America was demonstrated in so many different ways in that program. He spoke so eloquently and so insightfully about the nature of war, the difficulty and brutality of war. I think not only did he affirm the courageousness of our soldiers, but he gives us cause to look for ways to avoid such events in the future. It is worth noting.

Hopefully, that whole production will be seen around the country and more people will get a better picture of the enormity, the breadth, the commitment our Nation gave during that decisive period in our history.

Senator Stevens also, of course, was a person who served courageously in that conflict. It is an honor for me today to be with these two fine patriots as we apparently move to final passage of this important legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I had the honor today to be at the retirement ceremony, a few hours ago, for the 16th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed services of the United States, GEN Peter Pace, and the installation of the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ADM Mike Mullen. The weather was beautiful, indeed, in your State of Virginia at Fort Myer, the brass shining in the Sun, the music was stirring, and the uniforms of the services in their bright collars gave appropriate recognition to the passing of the torch from a Chairman proven to a new Chairman challenged.

It is always thus, I suppose. It was a thrill to see the commander of the Honor Guard one last time advance and say: ``General Pace, the Honor Guard of the United States is ready for your inspection.''

And General Pace did just that, it appeared with pleasure and satisfaction. That he is admired within the military cannot be denied. I understand last week they planned a surprise for him in the Pentagon. He was invited to come to a meeting for some business, it was suggested, and the halls filled with over 1,200 people who appeared and applauded him for 20 minutes. It was a true expression of the admiration and affection in which he is held throughout the military. Such support is not a surprise for anyone who knows that wonderful man.

He made a number of remarks at his retirement or change of command. He expressed his admiration for President Bush's willingness to listen to his advice the entire time of his tenure. He made clear President Bush did listen, and he was a regular briefer of the President; and General Pace's admiration for the President for standing by his commitments when he sent military men and women in uniform into harm's way was quite personal and strong. In other words, General Pace is there. General Pace has been part of this process. General Pace has seen this Congress and this President authorize soldiers and send soldiers into harm's way. He felt a sense of appreciation for President Bush, I would say, for his willingness to not give lightly and to be totally supportive of those troops once they had been sent in harm's way.

He said the No. 1 question he is asked when he goes about with military personnel: Does Congress still support us?

I remember not too many months ago, a gentleman right out there caught me. His son was about to go to Iraq. He told me: Senator, make no mistake, those soldiers over there and in training to go over there are watching what you do like a hawk.

Secretary Gates, President Bush, Admiral Mullen were exceedingly complimentary of General Pace. They discussed his bravery as a young lieutenant at the battle of Hue in Vietnam. They lost quite a number of officers. He was moved up as a second lieutenant to be in command of the company they would have to have led. There was a bitter battle and he lost a number of marines.

He said he felt a debt to those marines, that he had spent 40 years of his career in the military attempting to pay off.

Several people made reference to that. He called those marines he served with, who lost their lives there, by names at that retirement ceremony. He indicated he still did not believe he had paid that debt that he owed those people who had given their full measure to our Nation's defense. But other speakers said he had, and they were most complimentary of him.

Recently, at a hearing, he was encouraged--let me say it that way--to retreat from a statement he had made that reflected his personal moral and faith beliefs; but he admirably, I suggest, declined to pander or to retreat from what he honestly believed, and he restated his personal values. That is the kind of man you want leading us, I suggest.

Our Nation is in the debt, I think, of GEN Peter Pace. He has given tirelessly of himself to support the policies of our country and to make those policies successful.

I say: Well done, good marine, well done.

Mr. President, on a different subject, I want to take a few minutes to note that on Friday, September 21, the Missile Defense Agency had a highly successful missile defense intercept. A target vehicle was launched from Kodiak, AK. It went into space. The interceptor missile was launched at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It was, indeed, a realistic test of this capability. According to Rick Lehner, the spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, ``This was a very operationally realistic test.''

In those tests we want to determine whether our missile defense capability will actually succeed in knocking down an intercontinental missile. These two missiles were launched, the target vehicle on a track not unlike what we would see if, for example, the North Koreans launched an attack. We launched our defensive missile out of California. And they collided and destroyed one another over the Pacific, like we planned, a bullet to bullet. There were no explosives in the ``kill'' vehicle. Just speed, guided by computers and sophisticated guidance systems, allowed those two to collide and to destroy the incoming missile.

The American people have a number of questions and misconceptions about missile defense. Some think we already have a complete missile defense system that can knock down incoming missiles. That is not so. Some think we do not have any capability, that this is a bunch of money being spent on programs that are never going to work. That is absolutely not so. We now have proven the technology. General Obering and his team at the Missile Defense Agency have continued to have success after success. We know we have the capability to knock down an incoming missile that threatens the people of the United States, who knows--with a nuclear weapon or biological or chemical munition contained within it.

This is an important matter for the United States that the President can know. If he is negotiating with some extreme nation that threatens to attack us with a missile and tries to use that threat as leverage or bargaining power, he can say: We are not afraid of you. You send a missile off and we will knock it down.

We are reaching that point in our capability. Intelligence tells us Iran also continues to build its systems and produces greater capability.

I would say, we need a site in Europe. I hope we continue to work toward that. We need to maintain steady appropriations and authorizations in this Senate to make sure our missile system that we have committed so many years to, and so many dollars to, is now completed, since it has been proven to be a good investment from the beginning.

I thank the Chair for giving me this opportunity and note I am excited about this test's success. I do believe it is important for all of us in Congress to note that and make sure about our funding--which I think this year is a bit tight. The President took some money down out of missile defense. The Congress has taken some more. But I believe we have enough funding to keep this program on track.

I see my colleague, Senator Lieberman. I note there are few in the Senate who have studied the issue more or who have been engaged in it longer than he. I know he and Senator Thad Cochran offered the resolution, not long after I came to the Senate, to

deploy a national missile defense system ``as soon as technologically feasible.'' That was the language, wasn't it, Senator Lieberman? Indeed, we are now deploying it. We are already deploying the system, and the American people took comfort last July 4, when the North Koreans launched missiles to demonstrate their power--they took comfort because of you and others, before I even came into the Senate--such as Senator Shelby, my colleague from Alabama--who were pioneers moving that forward. We can now take comfort that we do have ability. It means a lot for our people and for the safety of America.

I yield the floor.

I object.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Shelby for recalling the remarkable facts of the life of Mayer Bubba Mitchell, one of Mobile's great citizens, a national leader, as well as a local leader, someone who has friends throughout the country and the world. It is remarkable, the extent of his reach and impact. He had a clear vision. He wanted his life to be a life that made the world a better place. He worked at that. He had a strong will to do that. Senator Shelby and I were talking about that this morning. It was remarkable. He had an ability to get things accomplished. To me, one of his most remarkable characteristics was the fact that he could have many different activities going on, but he always seemed to complete each one of them and get it done successfully.

At a final AIPAC banquet he attended, realizing it would be his last--it was recalled at his funeral service Friday--he asked these questions about himself but really applying to others. I think it would apply to all of us in the Senate. Knowing that he would not be back, he asked: Have I done enough? Have I done my best? Have I made a difference? All of us ought to ask those questions more and would probably be better performers when we do.

His wonderful partner Arlene is such a fabulous person, so well liked, a former Mobilian of the year. She is so gracious. His son Richard spoke so movingly at his memorial service. His son-in-law Jimmy Grodnick likewise, married to his wonderful daughter Joy, made remarks. His grandchildren read from the Talmud such wonderful passages that reflected his values. His brother Abe, who has been a partner in business and in so many of these activities, told me afterwards it wasn't over. He still had things he wanted to do and he would continue to work at them. I know that is exactly what Mayer would have liked.

The business school I visited at the University of South Alabama is so well endowed by the Mitchell family. The athletics center, the Mitchell Center, is where his memorial service was held, the sports complex. And perhaps in the long term, the greatest financial investment he and his family made is in the Mitchell Cancer Center that will be a place for research as well as treatment of those who have suffered with

cancer, because he felt so blessed, having been allowed to survive what many said at the time was a fatal disease.

So many people came from all over the country to that service, it was really remarkable, including the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who himself came down and was an honorary pallbearer. He was on a first-name basis with Presidents. Indeed, I am aware that President Bush called him twice in recent months. Foreign leaders, Senators, and Congressmen were on a first-name basis with him. His life is a testament to what can happen when a person focuses his life on making a positive difference in the world and living a good life. He accomplished those things. Probably outside of a public official, he was on a first-name basis with more Senators than maybe any other person in our country. There may be some others, but not many would know as many and be as well respected as he was over the years.

I appreciate the opportunity to make these remarks. Not only did he serve on the board, chairman of the board of the University of South Alabama for 32 years, he gave hours and hours of his time and attention and ideas and ability to making that the great university it is. So he not only gave money, he gave of his time and of himself to make it the great university it is. Gordon Moulton, the president, certainly reflected that in his remarks.

I thank the Chair and Senator Shelby for his excellent remarks and yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I recognize the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, an organization that is headquartered in Huntsville, AL.

On this day, October 3, 1957, the Army activated the Redstone Anti- Missile Missile Systems Office. With a staff of 5 military and 19 civilians, this organization set the foundation of the Army's space and missile defense programs. From these beginnings, they have become an international organization of more than 2,000 military and civilians devoted to providing around-the-clock space and missile defense research and development and operational capabilities. I wish to express my congratulations to the Army community in northern Alabama for their splendid record of achievement in space and missile defense and to ask my colleagues to join me in saluting them for their contributions to the security of our Nation and her warfighters.

This organization and the U.S. Army have led the Nation in space and missile defense from the 1957 authorization to proceed with the Nike Zeus system to the deployed hit-to-kill national and theater missile defense systems today. Along the way, the Army's missile defense team has achieved a number of significant milestones: the first successful intercept of an intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, in 1962; the first deployed ballistic missile defense system in the United States in 1975: the first non-nuc1ear intercept of an ICBM in 1984; the first kinetic energy intercept of a tactical missile in 1987; and the first directed energy intercepts of rockets in flight in 1996. Their battletested products are currently deployed around the world defending our Nation, our service members, and our allies.

In 1957, missile defense brought a new facet to the Army's exploration of space in the 1950s. As missions changed, it remained constant. In the 1970s, the Army returned to space exploration with a precedent setting tactical exploration program. From the 1970s through Operation Desert Storm, the first space war, space has become an integral element of the warfighter's life. Since then, this organization has become the focal point for Army Space. They provide research and development to expand the possibilities provided by space. They have established a brigade of space soldiers dedicated to space superiority and the application of space technology. And today, space soldiers and technologies continue to provide battlefield communications, satellite imagery and analysis, three-dimensional visualization, guidance information, precise early warning of threat missiles, and a host of other space-based capabilities tailored for the warfighter.

Together with their Government and industry teammates, the future of space and missile defense rests in the hands of the men and women who work in this Army organization in Huntsville and Colorado Springs, as well as other locations throughout the world.

Mr. President, I salute Huntsville, the surrounding area, and the hard-working men and women of this great region of our country. Most importantly, I wish to extend a warm and hearty congratulations to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command team for a job well done, and best wishes for its continued success during the next 50 years and beyond. Secure the high ground.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that MAJ John Muller, an Army fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor for duration of consideration of H.R. 1585.

Mr. President, I just want to share a few thoughts with my colleagues on the pending amendment. This hate crimes legislation is constitutionally dubious and very unusual legislation in the history of how we do law enforcement in America.

What I want to say to my colleague is that a murder in Utah, a murder in Massachusetts, a murder in Alabama is not a Federal crime unless certain other events occur, unless it is related to some other event. A robbery in any State is not a Federal crime per se. It has to be robbery of a Federal bank. It has to be robbery of an interstate shipment or something of that nature. But simple assaults, simple murders, no matter how grievous, are not Federal crimes. So the Supreme Court has been cautious about that and has raised questions about it.

Now, with regard to our history of legislating in this area, we have made Federal civil rights laws applicable to assaults and murders of people in America on account of their race, and the Supreme Court has upheld that. One of the fundamental reasons for that is that in many areas of the country, for many years--truly not so today, I believe, but in the past, areas such as my area of the country, have not prosecuted those cases, and there was a historical record of a failure to effectively prosecute in racial assaults that affected people's fundamental civil liberties. So that has been upheld. But the legislation we are talking about today is about picking an area that people care about and are concerned about and feel deeply about, which is that people should not be assaulted or abused as a result of their sexual orientation, and now we want to create a Federal crime wherever in America such an assault or an illegal activity or murder against that person occurs. We want to make that a Federal crime.

One of my colleagues said it is a backstop for the Federal Government. It is not a backstop. I was a Federal prosecutor. Federal law has priority. So this is a move in that direction.

So the question is, what about the elderly? What about those who are sick and infirm? What about police officers, if they are murdered? Do we need the Federal Government to make that a crime also and be able to prosecute all of those murders throughout the country when we have never done that historically? It is a big deal from that perspective, and that is why it is constitutionally suspect.

A State can pass such a law, I will admit. The Federal Government can pass such a law on Federal property, military bases, and the District of Columbia. But when the Federal Government reaches into a State that has no interstate nexus and creates a crime of this kind, I think it is, first, constitutionally questionable; secondly, not necessarily good policy because what other kinds of crimes motivated by what other kinds of malintent are we going to now make a Federal crime?

So Senator Hatch has explicitly and openly and directly delineated the very aggressive prosecutions we are seeing in States for hate-type crimes against homosexuals, and he has shown how a number of them have gotten a death penalty, which this act does not provide for, but State laws do. We have no record to indicate there is a shortage or a lack of willingness to prosecute these cases, so I think, under those circumstances, we ought not to do it.

I also would note it would be a tragic thing indeed if this Defense bill would be vetoed as a result of this extraneous piece of controversial legislation.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that I be added as a speaker at that point before Senator Nelson. But if Senator Lott wishes to speak, I will yield to him.

Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Arizona is to be recognized next.

Mr. President, any American I know should be, and is, vitally interested in what is happening in Iraq and what our policy should be. There is no doubt that good people can disagree about how we should handle this important and difficult situation. Nobody's patriotism should be questioned in this process. But I would urge that these disagreements that might be expressed be expressed in ways that minimize the negative impact on what may be, and will be the decided policy of the United States. In other words, we need to be sure that as we conduct this debate--we have a policy in this country, and we need to make sure that we execute it in a way that most likely will provide us a method of success.

Let me recap the history of how we got here because I think it is important. By more than a three-fourths vote, 77 Senators in this body authorized the use of military force in Iraq. The initial invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein went well, surprisingly well--better than most would ever have expected. But the postinvasion situation has been much more difficult than expected. My personal view, for what it is worth--and it

may not be worth much--is that we underestimated the difficulties of establishing a functioning democracy in an undeveloped nation that had deep sectarian divides, that had no history of law or democracy, and that had been traumatized by years of oppression in a war. So we can look back and say there are a lot of mistakes out there that have been made, but I think the real problem is we are facing a difficult job that is not going to be easy, and no one should underestimate the challenge.

But we must honestly evaluate our current position and use this time in this Congress right now to decide what we are going to do. I know good people will disagree, but we will reach a decision before this debate is out. So we owe nothing less to those fabulous men and women who serve us in Iraq than to give this our best judgment, our hardest work, our most sincere consideration. There can be no doubt but that this is the correct time for a national evaluation.

Remember how we got here. In May--May 24 of this year--in a bipartisan vote, we voted to clearly affirm the surge; 80 to 14 was what that vote was. We debated the question. We knew General Petraeus was there. The President asked that we fund 30,000 additional troops as part of this surge, and we decided to do so. We voted for it. This Congress said we will execute that surge. I remember Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi meeting with the President and working on the deal, and we agreed to do the surge 80 to 14 on final vote. So it is really not President Bush's surge or General Petraeus's surge, it was and is America's surge, and our troops are carrying out America's policies. I hope our colleagues here won't be adopting the reasoning of MoveOn.Org instead of recognizing the responsibilities that we all have to those we have sent into harm's way.

Now, no one in May was sure how things would work out. Things had not gone well in 2006 and in early 2007. All of us were worried about what was happening. Violence had increased, the uncertainty had increased, and I think Congress rightly was concerned. After debate, we decided to execute the surge operation which was more than just increased troops, and I will talk about that in a minute. We decided that, for the purpose of openness and accountability, as part of the funding of this war that we had appropriated, we wanted some reports. In fact, we asked for five separate reports. Those reports have been produced as required. A report was required on the status of 18 benchmarks submitted by July 15. A report was required for an independent commission of experts to report not later than September 1 analyzing the progress of the Iraqi security forces. That was the General Jones commission, former supreme allied commander in Europe, former commander of the United States Marine Corps, and 20 other experts compiled that report. A report from the GAO, the comptroller general, on whether the 18 benchmarks had been achieved by September 1; a followup on the benchmarks report submitted by September 15. Then public testimony was required from the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and the commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq, General Petraeus, not later than September 15.

We have had all of that in the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member. We had Mr. Walker from GAO give the GAO report. We had General Jones and his commission give their report, and we had General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker give their reports. They testified before the House. They testified before other committees. We have had now a national discussion about this situation, and it is time for us to begin to make some decisions. So what I hope we will do is make a decision, and we will stick by it, and next week we would not have leaders in this body saying it is a failure before it ever gets started, as we have had in the past.

Let me summarize the reports that came in briefly. The administration report on benchmarks, as well as a GAO report, shows that we had some progress on some matters but that there had been limited political progress in Iraq. I would note that the GAO report, which was valuable and I think not inaccurate but could be misinterpreted, was important. It did not, however, incorporate data from August and early September from Iraq. That data shows remarkable progress in those recent weeks, and it was not part of its report. So the progress on the military front that they reported was not as significant as the later reports would show. It only measured whether the goals of each one of the benchmarks were fully achieved. It didn't measure whether progress had been made.

Ambassador Crocker, on the benchmarks, made some important comments. Those I would point out to my colleagues. One, he said, yes, an oil law had not been passed by the Iraqi Parliament. They couldn't get together on that. Sometimes we can't get together in this body and agree on things. So what happened is, they are indeed sharing oil revenue throughout the provinces in a fair and just way, although they have not yet been able to pass an overall oil law. So we are saying, according to benchmarks, they haven't met the benchmarks because the benchmarks said they must pass an oil law that would share their resources. But, in fact, they are sharing.

He talked about a benchmark dealing with reconciliation with former members of the Baathist Party and the Saddam Hussein regime. He said, no, they had not been able to pass in the parliament the legislation that would effectuate, as we would like to see it, a reconciliation among the former Baathists and the current leadership in Iraq, but it was happening out there. He said in various different places throughout Iraq former members of Baathist activities are coming into the government, Sunnis who allied with al-Qaida are coming in and working with the American military, and at the grassroots level real progress is being made and reconciliation is occurring in a lot of different places in Iraq.

Now, the Jones commission was a very valuable commission. General Jones is a very distinguished, 40-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, former commandant. He served as supreme allied commander of Europe and commander of USOCOM. This bipartisan commission he headed was composed of 20 members representing senior military leaders, civilian officials, former chiefs of police, former DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey, former TRADOC Commander General John Abrams, and Mr. John Hamre, former Under Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, a respected voice on defense matters. Between them, the commissioners had more than 500 years of collective military experience and more than 150 years of police experience.

The Commission reported strong progress within the Iraqi Army but much weaker progress among the national police--in fact, unacceptable activity within the police. They called for massive reform and restructuring of the Iraqi police forces.

I asked General Jones and his colleagues in this fashion--I told him that before General Petraeus went to Iraq to take over the effort there, he told us he would define the challenge as being ``difficult, but not impossible.'' So I asked General Jones:

What are our realistic prospects for a long-term situation

in which there is some stability and a functioning government

that is not threatening to the United States?

This is what General Jones said:

Senator, I think that General Petraeus's words were

correct. I think it is a difficult situation that is

multifaceted. It is about bringing about in Iraq not only

safe and secure conditions, but a completely different method

of government, jump-starting an economy, rule of law. The

whole aspect of transition is just enormously complex.

He added this:

And regardless of how we got there, we are where we are. It

is, strategically, enormously important not only nationally,

but regionally and globally, for this to come out and be seen

as a success. And our report, I think, not only unanimous but

very hard-hitting in certain areas, intentionally makes the

point that there are some good things happening and that we

are all excited to see that. That is certainly encouraging,

but there is more work that needs to be done. We wanted to be

very specific about where we think that work should be done.

It doesn't mean it can't be done.

They call for a massive overhaul of the Iraqi police. He said it is difficult and it needs to be done. More progress needs to be made, but it is not impossible. So I followed up with that. I said:

Did any of your commission members, or any significant

number of them, conclude that this could not work, that this

was a failed effort, or that we ought to just figure

a way to get out of there regardless of the consequences?

Here is General Jones's answer:

I don't believe that there is a commissioner that feels

that way. But let me just take a poll right now.

He turned around and surveyed the Commissioners, and they all agreed with General Jones.

Then General Petraeus and Ambassador Corker came before us last week to give their report, which detailed progress on a number of different levels. General Petraeus is one of our most distinguished officers in the Armed Forces. He graduated as an academically ``distinguished cadet'' from West Point. He was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, class of 1983. He also has a master's and a Ph.D. from Princeton, and he served as a professor at West Point. He is on his third tour in Iraq.

I know a lot of people in this body think they have figured out how to deal with Iraq. He spent 2 full years there and now over a half a year again in Iraq dealing with these circumstances. He is a very capable person, as anyone can well see.

Well, I have been to Iraq six times. On the first trip, I met General Petraeus. He commanded the 101st Airborne in Mosul. They were achieving some fine success and reconciliation. They were able to catch Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay. He worked with Alabama engineering National Guard units impressively, in my opinion, to bring them on line in an effective way. I was impressed in my meeting with him.

The next year, he came home, and then they asked him to go back to train the Iraqi Army. He went back and took charge of that operation and spent a year doing that in Iraq, meeting people in Baghdad and getting a real feel for that country. Then he came home.

When he got home, he wrote the counterinsurgency manual for the U.S. Department of Defense, which details the principles and tactics that can work to defeat an insurgency. In fact, insurgencies can be defeated if you have a sustained and intelligent policy that is well led. So he wrote that manual, and President Bush met with him and decided to send him back a third time in January, and he asked him to lead this effort. He has been doing so with integrity, skill, and effectiveness. As a matter of fact, one commentator said even in the early months you could feel that there was a new atmosphere and a new strategic vision and new leadership. It was filtering down throughout the system.

So to have a group like MoveOn.org suggest--not suggest but call him a traitor and a liar, that is despicable. I cannot imagine anybody who would not condemn such a statement. This is a patriot of the highest order. We have asked him to go into harm's way for the third time to serve the national interests of the United States, not serve President Bush--to serve this Congress, by a 80-to-14 vote in May.

So I am telling you that we need to get serious. We sent him there by a unanimous vote, confirmed him to be commander, and we voted to fund the operation, fund the surge. That wasn't President Bush who put up the money; we put it up. We asked him to come back and give us a report on how well it is going. We asked an independent commission to give us another report. We asked the GAO to give us a report. We have gotten those reports, and it is now time for this Congress to make some decisions. It is just that serious. This is a very important matter for the United States. It is important for us.

You tell me about the morale of the military. People say the morale of the military is not well. They are doing beyond anything I could expect. Reenlistments remain very high. I have to be amazed at that, and I know others are. We have a good reenlistment rate, and we are able to retain people and bring people into the military. They are going to Iraq and serving ably. As a matter of fact, in a moment, I will share a report from some of our Alabama people who came by to see me and what they had to say about their tour there. So we have done this, and we are now at a point where we have to make some decisions.

I have been asked: Well, has the situation changed since General Petraeus has made his report? I think it has, mainly because of what he said, not how he said it. I asked him back in January at his confirmation hearing would he always be truthful with the Congress and the American people about the status of this war and would he tell us if he didn't think he could be successful. He said that he would.

I asked him at this hearing: General Petraeus, when you came before us in January, before you went to Iraq, you had previously told me that no matter what happened, you would tell the Congress the truth. He told me that in private the night before. So the next morning, I asked him: Will you tell the truth to the American people? He committed that he would. So at this hearing last week, I asked him:

Have you, to the best of your ability, told this Congress

the truth about the situation in Iraq today?

He said:

I have, yes, sir.

You can call him a liar if you want to. I don't. I believe he gave us the truth as he had the ability to give it to us.

I asked him further:

General Petraeus, in your opinion, is there a circumstance

in which--in your opinion, is this effort in Iraq such that

we cannot be successful, that we would be putting more effort

in a losing cause if we continue it, or, in your opinion, do

we have a realistic chance to be successful in this very

important endeavor?

He replied:

Sir, I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our

objectives in Iraq.

So we received the reports and the information. What did some of that information tell us? I cannot tell my colleagues or the American people that this will continue, but, remarkably, violence in Baghdad is down dramatically. Remember, it was the President and everybody who acknowledged that if the large capital city could not be stable and was sinking into violence, there is no way we could have a peaceful settlement in Iraq and reconciliation and make progress. We had to reduce violence in Iraq. The report General Petraeus gave us and the charts he produced showed that civilian deaths in Iraq, in Baghdad, were down 70 percent. In his report, he declared that civilian deaths throughout the nation of Iraq were down 55 percent. Now, that is really big. Remember, the surge didn't reach full strength until June or July. He has only had the full surge in place for a month or two. So this is really big.

Yes.

Mr. President, I will respond to that. I don't believe that is accurate.

The most dramatic reductions in violence occurred in the last months of August and September. Regardless of that, I would say the Senator is making a point I think I can agree to--that it is not just the number of troops that are affected. General Petraeus is executing a strategy utilizing counterinsurgency tactics that are more suited to the problems in Iraq and are proving to be more effective in reducing violence and protecting the civilian people in Iraq.

I will give my best answer to that. We had the President of the United States and the majority leader in the Senate say we had to have an immigration bill. They tried to pass it right here on the floor of the Senate. They could not pass it. The President could have stood on his head, and that bill would not pass.

Just because we think we can order the Iraqi Parliament to vote out some law doesn't mean they can do that. So I am really worried about it, frankly. I am fully willing to acknowledge that it is a very troublesome development that the Iraqi Parliament hasn't been able to pass laws to carry out some of these needed reforms. But I don't think they are going to be more likely to be effective in passing legislation if we precipitously withdraw, allowing violence to increase again and whatever

else might happen, with Iran expanding its influence.

I have to tell you that the substantial reduction in violence we have seen is not small. This is really large. If you told me when the surge started that we would see a 70-percent reduction in civilian deaths in Baghdad, I would not have believed it. I would have thought that would be more optimistic than I was prepared to be. So whether it will hold, I don't know. We have seen some improvement.

I know the Senator from Massachusetts would like to speak. I will just conclude by saying, OK, we have had these reports, we have seen this progress, and we know what the difficulties are. I have decided, based on General Petraeus's testimony, the Crocker testimony, the Jones Commission report, and other information we have, that things are moving in a better direction.

I personally believe it is the new tactics, not so much the number of soldiers. I am very happy General Petraeus has concluded he can draw down troops while maintaining this progress of reducing violence. In fact, he has recommended that within the next few weeks, a Marine unit not be replaced. So that represents an initial reduction in our forces within a few weeks. Then the next reduction will come before Christmas will be an Army brigade, and he would have 30,000 troops withdrawn by next summer and would report to us again in March on whether he could continue this rate of reduction or accelerate it.

There is not that much difference, I say to my colleagues, in what we want. Senator Levin wants to see troops withdrawn. He wants to see a stable Iraq. The question is, Do we do it with a mandated withdrawal rate dictated by Congress or do we do it in harmony with the situation on the ground that leaves us in the best possible position to allow a stable, peaceful Iraq, an ally to the United States, to exist?

I think we should accept the report. We should see this as good news, celebrate that some progress has been made and recognize that serious challenges are out there. I do believe Congress has every right to monitor this situation closely. We have every right to reject the President's recommendation, to reject General Petraeus's recommendation, to cut off funds and order our troops home if we so desire. I think that would not be a good decision. I think it would not be in the long-term interests of the United States of America. Therefore, I oppose the Levin amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts. I believe this matter is an important one. We have troops in the field who are executing the policies we have asked them to execute. We don't need to be using buzz words; we need to be talking about truth and facts and trying to make the right decisions for our country, and for the world for that matter.

I detect fundamentally in the Senator's comments and from quite a number of others that they believe, as the Senator said, ``there is no real way out,'' and, in effect, we have a doomed

policy that will not be successful. Therefore, we should withdraw now. If that is the fact, I would agree we should withdraw now. So that is why I think we need to analyze this very point.

Last fall, a lot of people were worried about what was happening in Iraq. I certainly was. I visited Iraq in October. I visited Al Anbar. It was a very troubling report we received from the marines. It caused me great concern. Remarkably, Al Anbar region has shown, almost overnight, tremendous progress.

But let's go to the facts. The Congress asked General Jimmy Jones and his commission in May to independently evaluate Iraq when we did the funding for the surge. General Jimmy Jones's report dealt with the fundamentals we are facing. I asked him did he believe it was realistically possible that we could be successful in Iraq. And he said: Yes, sir. I asked him did a single member of his 20-member commission believe that we were doomed to failure in Iraq, and he looked around and asked his commission members, and none of them said that was their view. They all believed we had a realistic chance of success. I asked General Petraeus did he believe we had a realistic chance of success in Iraq, and he said, yes.

So I guess what I would say is, some say we do not. I would say the people--the generals who are leading the effort there--say we have a realistic chance of success. The independent commission we sent over there of 20 members unanimously believes we do. So I think we should base our opinion on the best information we have. As for me, I have to accept that.

I also factor into that rather dramatic improvements in the reduction of violence in Iraq, where within Baghdad we have seen a 70-percent reduction of civilian deaths and a 55-percent reduction of civilian deaths across the country of Iraq. That is very significant. It is a product of many different things. It is a product of the new strategy as well as the new troops we sent there.

So I have to say to my friends and colleagues in the Senate: Yes, this is a tough vote. Yes, we need to worry and agonize and think carefully about the challenges we are now facing, and we need to make rational decisions. Based on the information I have and the committee hearings I have attended in Armed Services, my 6 visits to Iraq, I think we should not precipitously withdraw. Well, they say, this is not a precipitous withdrawal, it is a deadline, and that is going to make the Iraqis do better. But it is not a deadline; it is a precipitous withdrawal. I mean I just have to tell you, let's deal with facts.

The Levin-Reed amendment says the Secretary of Defense shall commence the reduction of the number of U.S. forces in Iraq not later than 90 days after the enactment of this act. And then it says: The Secretary of Defense shall complete the transition of the U.S. forces to a limited presence and missions by not later than 9 months after the enactment of this date. So this is basically a 9-month mandated withdrawal in Iraq, whether it creates instability and problems in places and puts our soldiers at greater risk or not. Unrelated to the facts on the ground, it is an absolute, mandated withdrawal.

Now, if we were doomed to failure, maybe this is what we ought to do, but I don't believe we are doomed to failure. I believe, as Senator Lieberman said, there are a number of things that can cause us to feel better, and General Petraeus has certainly infused our effort with more leadership and effectiveness and purpose. His tactics utilizing counterinsurgency principles seem to have made some real progress.

For example, he told us he is embedding his soldiers with the local people and the local forces to an extraordinary degree, compared to what we have done before. As a matter of fact, I asked him about that. I said: What are you doing differently? He seemed to, I have to say, appreciate the question because he had been asked so many other things. But he is doing things differently, and he explained some of the things he is doing. We are embedding our soldiers with their soldiers. They are living with them. They are in the neighborhoods. As a result, we are receiving more information, and the number of caches of weapons that have been seized so far this year put us on a pace to double the number of weapons and munitions seizures that we have achieved this year, doubling the previous rate. He said in his mind that may have something to do with the fact that attacks have been down and the number of IED attacks have dropped 37 percent. He didn't overpromise or declare that. He said it might have something to do with that, that we are obtaining twice as many caches of weapons and seizing those as a direct result of more and better information from the people of Iraq.

So I would also join my colleague, Senator McCain, who certainly knows something about war firsthand, in concluding that the limited presence mandated in this amendment, the Reed-Levin amendment, that says that the mission of our forces that are left in Iraq can only be for the following purposes: No. 1, protecting U.S. and coalition personnel and infrastructure--base security, defending our bases--No. 2, training, equipping, and providing logistic support to the Iraqi security forces; and No. 3, engaging in targeted--this is a legal mandate--targeted counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida, al- Qaida-affiliated groups, and other international terrorist organizations. That is all they can do. As Senator McCain said, asking this question: Are they going to wear T-shirts that say: I am an al- Qaida, I am a Shia, or a Sunni terrorist; I am a Baathist warrior, and we can only shoot at those--use force against those who wear the al- Qaida T-shirts? This is not a practical, realistic directive to the U.S. military. We are not capable of deciding how to deploy the forces we have there. We are just not capable. This is a bunch of politicians--that is all we are--doing our best effort to serve the people. We don't have to be bound--I certainly agree--by a report from a general or the President.

We can act if we choose to act. But we need to ask ourselves, are we going to dismiss the testimony of our top generals and the independent Jones commission about the progress that is being made and the realistic chance of success that exists? In fact, I think it may be a realistic fact that one reason Osama bin Laden is all over the television apparently in the last few days is because he is getting worried. The Sunni support area of Al Anbar in Iraq has turned against him and his people, and they are fighting against him and have devastated much of their capability in the Al Anbar region--a direct change from what I was told last October when that was not occurring. We are working with local police, local mayors, local tribal leaders, and that is yielding progress to a degree we have not seen before in Iraq. It appears to be a model that can lead us more successfully than trying to meet with a bunch of politicians in downtown Baghdad and trying to reach an accord that is going to affect something in Fallujah or Samarra or Mosul. Washington, DC, can't affect Alabama or Nebraska very well.

But this country is not capable of issuing orders that can impact successfully the daily lives in these provinces and small towns. That is a product of the new nature of that Government and the lack of maturity it has. So we are using different tactics that seem to be working.

Well, we have said our military is being damaged and our morale is bad and we have real problems there. Certainly, we have had a tremendous amount of our military personnel there, and they have performed with the greatest professionalism. They are well trained, well disciplined, well equipped, they know how to use the equipment with which they have trained, and they are performing in a magnificent way. They are at risk every day and they are doing their jobs effectively.

For example, a few days ago, a group came to visit my office from Alabama. They were called Veterans for Freedom. It was made up of Alabama Army National Guardsmen and Army Reservists. I had the honor of being an Army Reservist for 10 years. I never served in combat, but I am honored to have been one of them. These are citizen soldiers. They recently returned from being mobilized in Iraq. These soldiers were all senior noncommissioned officers. They had demobilized and were back at their civilian jobs. They asked for a couple days off to visit the offices of Alabama's congressional delegation. They

had several messages for me. The first message was: We have to win this battle.

The group truly believes the contribution their unit had made in the war effort was measurable and positive. One of the guardsmen had been wounded in an IED attack early in the deployment. Thankfully, he was not seriously wounded and he returned to duty. He noted that by the end of the deployment, IEDs were no longer a threat in his area of operation. The message was simply their service had made a difference.

Another message to me was: We cannot afford to lose this fight by simply giving up. I didn't make up that phrase--that a precipitous withdrawal is equivalent to giving up. That is what four veterans of Iraq told me they perceived we were considering doing. They urged us not to do it. Certainly, Iraq cannot be another United States in a short time, they told us. But it can become self-governing and self- sufficient.

The group further stated it may be necessary for us to modify our objectives in this fight, but please don't quit. The senior NCOs finished by telling us they had at least one child, or spouse, on active duty or serving as a reservist or Guard member. This was a testimony--a form of saying to me they and their families believed in what they were doing, even if it meant they have to go back to Iraq again. After making this statement, they were quite polite. They thanked my team for the time they had with us and the few minutes they had to be heard. They came all the way up here to share that.

I say that because I am not hearing the kind of talk from the people who are in Iraq serving our country now that I am hearing from the politicians in Congress. I am not hearing that.

What about Jeff Emanuel, a former special operations veteran of Iraqi Freedom? He wrote an article in the Washington Times recently. He talked about the situation we find ourselves in today. The title of the article is: ``Iraqis show courage. Can Congress do the same?''

My colleague from Massachusetts, I think, was a bit too dismissive of the challenges faced by the Iraqi military police and the Iraqi leaders. They have a very difficult challenge, I admit that. I certainly admit that. I think this Nation cannot pour resources into Iraq if we reach the decision it cannot be successful. We will have to extricate ourselves no matter what.

But I have to tell you I don't see it that way right now. This is what Mr. Emanuel said:

. . . Iraqis in many locations have shown amazing courage,

not only by providing an ever-increasing amount of

information on insurgent activity to coalition forces, but

also by working to rebuild what the insurgents have

destroyed, as well as by putting their lives on the line to

drive terrorists out of their own villages. They do this

despite the fact that they do not know whether they will wake

up the next day to find that the coalition--currently their

best source of protection--has succumbed to the calls from

home (which are heard here by civilians and terrorists alike)

to leave Iraq, and has abandoned them.

So they are hearing the talk here. It creates instability and uncertainty for those who want to stand with us and help them to prevail and create a good and decent government in Iraq, if they think we may flee the country the next day. Mr. Emanuel says:

In April and May of this year, and again from the beginning

of August through the present, I have been embedded [him

personally] in some of the most kinetic combat zones in Iraq,

observing General Petraeus's strategy from the ground level

in several different locations, and have seen clear evidence

of the strategy's effects on the situation there.

I have personally observed clinics in which coalition

medics and doctors provided villagers with a level of care

that has long been unheard of in the country.

He goes on to say this is still a broken and unstable country. That I do not doubt. Yet progress is inarguably being made, he said. He goes on to note this:

A successful counterinsurgency is one thing, with a

timeline which is measured not in months, but in years.

However, to wage a successful counterinsurgency and then to

build a stable, autonomous and secure state, which we can

leave behind without risking its imminent collapse, is

another matter altogether.

He went on to note we must not break faith with those who have stood with us and made their commitment.

We all are concerned about the situation in Iraq. The people I talk to--the military people I talk to see us as having a realistic possibility of helping to establish a decent government in Iraq--maybe not the kind of democracy we would like to have seen but something that can work, be a bulwark against an aggressive Iran and be a bulwark in a hostile base against al-Qaida and the terrorists there, who could be an ally to the United States. We have allies in the region. We have a base in Qatar, Bahrain, and we have strong allies in Kuwait and other places in the Middle East. We continue to have those and we will continue to do so. But there is a danger, without a doubt, about an expansive Iran and its leadership who seem to be disconnected from reality in many different ways. Iran's President Ahmadi-Nejad declared a few days ago that U.S. political influence was collapsing rapidly and said Tehran was ready to help fill the power vacuum. He said:

Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of

course, we are prepared to fill that gap.

That is from the Philadelphia Inquirer of August 29. So the consequences of what we are doing are serious.

Let me address one more time a rapid precipitous withdrawal and what it means as it is contained in the Levin-Reed amendment. Imagine you are a military commander and you have 160,000 troops in Iraq. You are told you have 9 months to withdraw everything but a token force to train Iraqis and to protect your own bases and to chase individual al- Qaida members and those associated with them. We are talking about more than a brigade of 5,500 troops a month having to be pulled out. When you have an area of responsibility that has been assigned to a military brigade and you draw those down, then somebody has to assume the responsibility for that territory. How do you do that? That takes time, planning, and care. You can get in a withdrawal or a situation that costs lives and will completely destabilize any progress that has been made. The military commanders have told us it cannot be done. You cannot draw down more than a brigade a month. That is a too fast pace. Remember, it is a brigade that has an area of responsibility of interfacing with American and coalition forces all around it, plus it interfaces with local police, mayors, and tribal leaders, plus it interfaces with the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police.

All of that is part of the responsibility and the relationship that has built up. To precipitously pull out in 9 months all these forces and draw them back to only a few bases and give them a limited responsibility, is a huge, reckless idea that can only result in chaos, confusion and unnecessary death and will destabilize Iraq, destabilize the region perhaps, and cost more lives.

Why don't we listen to what our fabulous general, General Petraeus, has said? He said: I understand we need to draw down these troops. I plan to draw down troops in Iraq. That is certainly my goal.

I will say what I have said many times. The surge was a bitter pill for me. I had certainly hoped that in 2006 we would be drawing down troops, not having to increase troop levels. But that is what we voted to do in this Congress by an 80-to-14 vote. We funded that surge, and now we are getting a report on it.

He said: I have had success by reducing violence in Baghdad and in the country. I am not going to replace a Marine unit that will be departing within a few weeks. That will reduce the numbers. I will bring a brigade home before Christmas and that will be another 5,000- plus personnel. I will continue to draw down next year according to my plan through the summer, and I believe I can achieve a 30,000 troop reduction by next summer.

He said: In March, I will report to the Congress again, and I will tell you what further reductions we can achieve, and I hope to be able to announce further reductions.

That is the kind of withdrawal that is consistent with our ultimate goal, to create a stable and decent Iraq in which the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police can assume more and more responsibility.

To me, the stakes are so high, the challenges and threats so great that we ought not be driven by polling data. We ought to ask ourselves: What is right for America? What is right for our soldiers? If they are pulled out and this country falls because we acted recklessly, there are going to be more morale problems than we can imagine in the United States military. There are going to be some angry people. They are going to be very disappointed in the Congress. They put their necks on the line because we asked them to. They lost friends and have wounded friends in this conflict, and then we up and jump away and undermine all that effort. It is not going to be pleasant, either.

I say to my colleagues, I understand the purpose of this amendment. It wants reduction in forces. It wants to see us less engaged in the actual military operations in Iraq. We want to see more of that done by the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police, and that is what General Petraeus wants. He has a plan to achieve that goal. This is a general who has written a manual for the Department of Defense on how to defeat an insurgency, a counterinsurgency manual. Let's give him that opportunity. He is making progress so far. Let's do our duty and watch.

We are not bound by everything General Petraeus says. We are not bound by everything President Bush says. Yes, we are an independent body. We have individual responsibilities to make up our own minds. But if we do this, let's do it right. Let's don't be flip-flopping around. That is not worthy of a great nation. We cannot send troops in one day and jerk them out the next. Let's follow through in this difficult period and see if we can achieve that realistic chance of success that all 20 members of the Jones commission reported they believe is possible and as General Petraeus has told us he believes is possible. I believe it is the right thing for America to reject the Levin-Reed amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to----

Yes.

Mr. President, let's see how the time looks. I think perhaps so. How much time is left on this side?

Mr. President, I would utilize that 3 minutes and allow the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee to close with his remarks.

First, I express my appreciation to Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Jon Kyl, who meticulously explained the origin of the situation we find ourselves in today and why we have never provided the writ of habeas corpus to enemy combatants and why we should not do so.

Let's back up a little bit and go to the core of it. The Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, I think correctly gave us the status of the case. Congress passed section 2241, part of the United States Code, a statutory provision of Congress dealing with habeas. At that time, I suggest, without any doubt in my own mind, Congress had no idea that years later the Supreme Court would conclude that language--and rightly or wrongly on the Supreme Court ruling--that language would provide habeas rights to combatants captured on the battlefield. OK. But the Supreme Court ruled that based on the way the statute was written. It was an unintended consequence. I would note, three members of the Supreme Court dissented and did not think that statute covered that.

So after that happened, we had to ask ourselves: Is the Supreme Court saying: You, Congress, provided habeas rights to prisoners. You did it when you passed the statute. We are not saying the Constitution requires it. We are not saying the Supreme Court requires it. What we are saying is you did it when you passed the statute?

So Congress said: OK, we did not mean that. Then we passed the amendment last year Senator Graham offered

that fixed it, and did not provide, for the first time in the history of American history--or world history, for that matter--enemy prisoners be given the right to sue the generals who have captured them.

All right. So we did that, and we passed it. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in interpreting that statute, has followed it and concluded that Congress has changed the law and that the prisoners in Guantanamo are not entitled to habeas rights that we provide to every American citizen.

Now, that is the right thing. This is exactly what we should do. So I am somewhat taken aback by the suggestion of those who are promoting this amendment that somehow Congress denied the Great Writ and changed the law and they are here to restore it.

This is purely a matter of congressional policy and national policy on how we want to conduct warfare now and in the future. How are we going to do that? Are we going to do it in a way that allows those we capture to sue us? Now you can utilize those rights if we choose to try a prisoner of war and to lock them up or to execute them. You can use a lot of legal rights. A prisoner can use those rights, but not in this circumstance. This is merely to restore the historical principles of habeas that already existed. The current law does that. The new amendment would change it.