Floor Statements

I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. President, how much of the 20 minutes remains?

Mr. President, if the Senator from New Jersey would agree, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes, and I would, of course, agree that he could have an additional 5 minutes, if we could modify that previous unanimous consent request.

No, 5 minutes in addition to my 11 minutes, and then my request would be that you would have an additional 5 minutes, for a total of 25.

Under the same parameters as the unanimous consent request of the Senator from Illinois, I ask to extend the 20 minutes to 25 minutes on each side. I think I can do what I need to do if I have about 15 minutes.

If the Senator from Nevada will yield, it is only a minute, but a minute is a minute. I think I had 11, so an additional 5 would be 16 minutes.

I thank the Senator from Nevada. I don't mean to quibble over a minute. On the other hand, the Rams would probably have won the Super Bowl a couple of years ago if they had had another minute, so one never knows.

And the Senator knows, I also served in the House and came from there more recently than he did. I do guard my minutes jealously.

The Senator has had a similar experience as I have. Having prepared a nice set of remarks on issues about which he feels passionately and gone to the floor manager in the House and asked how much time he could have and being told: Well, a couple of other people have expressed a desire for time; how about 90 seconds.

I thank the Senator from New Jersey and the Senator from Nevada for their flexibility. I will proceed with my 16 minutes as best I can.

Mr. President, I share the observation of the Senator from Texas that our friend from Illinois is certainly very angry and seems to be rather negative about the prospects for America. He would probably say he is negative about the administration, but he seems to describe an economic and foreign policy picture that is very bleak. I don't think it reflects reality or what most Americans believe is reality. I am certain it does not reflect the views or the policies of the administration.

I do think it is important to get some of these charges correct. I don't have time to go through everything. I want to talk about a couple of things that have interested me. I don't generally get up here to participate in these debates that are clearly part of the Presidential campaign. I am here to try and do things. I have an agenda I am trying to accomplish, and others share it.

I was distressed when the Senator from California referred to some of the remarks of the Senator from Utah and said: Talk about flimflam, talk about misleading the seniors.

That was with reference to the Senator's comments regarding the Medicare prescription drug bill, which I happened to rather like and I supported. It is already helping thousands of Missouri seniors, and I don't think that is flimflam. I will get to that in a minute.

The Senator from Texas correctly pointed out that when the whole issue of jobs lost over the last few years comes up, it is important to keep in mind, before blaming President Bush, that President Bush was not in office when the recession began. Americans all across the country understand there is something called a business cycle, an economic cycle in the country. I don't tend to blame Presidents for recessions. I blame them if they have long-term policies that depress the economy over the long term.

I agree with the Senator from Texas, if you want economic growth--and we should all want that because we cannot do anything we want to without growth; we cannot fund education, we cannot have good health care, or a strong defense, and we cannot have retirement security without growth.

How do you get growth? Our Democrat friends believe you get it by raising taxes on people. What the Senator from Illinois said--they didn't used to think that. There was a time not so long ago when there was a bipartisan agreement that, if you wanted growth, one of the things you did was cut taxes. That is not some kind of modern conservative philosophy. That is what John Maynard Keynes thought; that is what FDR thought; that is what LBJ and JFK thought. But they don't believe that today. They are entitled to

their beliefs, but they are not entitled to blame President Bush for a recession that was in effect and had started before he assumed office and was magnified by events over which he had no control--the attack on 9/11 and corporate fraud.

I don't blame any President for that either, but it didn't happen on President Bush's watch. He took steps to get the economy moving. He proposed a tax cut, which we passed despite the opposition of many-- although not all--Members of the other side of the aisle. He proposed tort reform, restrictions on abusive lawsuits, which I think is the most important thing we can do to get the economy going. That was filibustered by the other side. You can filibuster if you want to, but you cannot filibuster and then blame somebody else for not getting things done.

You heard from the Senator from Illinois that energy prices are too high. I am on the Energy Committee. It is one of my priorities to get energy prices down. We put together a really good Energy bill. We got it all the way through the process, with one vote left. We could not take that vote. Do you know why? It was filibustered. Is it President Bush's fault that the Energy bill was filibustered--a pro-production, pro-jobs, pro-growth Energy bill?

Many Members on the other side joined us in trying to defeat the filibuster, but there were not enough. We lost three-quarters of the other party. Senator Kerry voted for the filibuster.

Iraq. We hear over and over again that there was no reason, no plan, no coalition. There was a reason and it goes back to 1991. I remember during the 1990s, when people criticized the first President Bush because he didn't get rid of Hussein. He was trying to appeal to the U.N., and he left Saddam Hussein in power.

I was in the House all through the 1990s on the Armed Services Committee. This man and his regime was an organic threat to the interests and security of the United States of America. Everybody saw it. He had attacked his neighbors twice, lobbed missiles all over the country. He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. We cannot permit an anti-American tyrant to take control of that part of the world.

I believe very strongly that President Clinton was moving toward a resolution of that when he left office. Look at the statements he made then and the statements he has made since then. Even if there had not been a 9/11, we would have had to do something about Saddam Hussein and, no, we could not wait longer. How long are you supposed to wait? At what point do arguments in favor of waiting really become just a disguise for doing nothing and not wanting to admit it?

No plan. The plan was to remove Saddam Hussein and replace him, with the help of the Iraqi people, with a liberal democracy that would be an ally against terrorism. Saddam Hussein is gone. We have had the provisional convention. We have a provisional government in place. We are going to have elections in January. Prime Minister Allawi stood on the dais in the House and said that. He also said: We are going to stand with you. He said--I remarked on this--``as you have stood with us, we will stand with you in the battle against terrorism.''

No coalition. Look, this kind of a military effort, no matter where it occurs, and whether the U.N. supports it or not, is going to be 95- percent led and executed by forces of the United States of America. In the air war in Bosnia, which everybody supported, even though there was no U.N. resolution in support of it, 95 to 97 percent of the airpower was American.

There is one very important coalition partner--the Iraqis. It is incorrect to say that 90 percent of the casualties have been American. We have taken casualties, but they are taking them too, and they will take more and more as they assume responsibility for this war.

The Medicare prescription drug bill. The Senator from Illinois says it is a terrible political conspiracy on the part of the President to delay the full implementation of the bill until after November 2004. Nobody's proposal would have been implemented before November 2004. I didn't like that. I complained about that. I thought, well, in 1965 they did the whole Medicare bill in 8 months. Why does it take so long to set up one new feature? Everybody believed that. There were not any of their proposals that would have taken effect before November of 2004. I don't like that, but that is not a political conspiracy. I don't know if the Senator from Texas heard that. I had not. You cannot bargain.

Look, this is the reason for the Medicare prescription drug bill--and I have 200,000 senior citizens in Missouri who have no insurance for their prescription drugs. They are paying not only out of pocket, which is the first thing that is wrong, but they are paying the highest price because when they walk into the pharmacy, it is them against the big insurance companies. The whole idea is to get them into a pool because if you are part of a big pool, you have economies of scale and prices will be lower. That is what this bill does. I don't have time to go into length on this issue.

The bargaining with the prescription drug companies is going to be done by the organizations that put the pool together--like we have discount cards, one, for example, that AARP puts out, and AARP bargains with the prescription drug companies and you buy the AARP discount card and you get the discount. People are getting that discount today.

If I go to the car dealer and buy an automobile, I may bargain with the dealer about the price of the car. I am not going to bargain about the price of the tires on the automobile. That doesn't mean there was no bargaining over the price of the tires; it means the automobile manufacturer did it. The difference between us and them on this--and it is a legitimate difference--is they want a one-size-fits-all, Government-dominated program where the Government would directly do the bargaining with the drug company.

There are worse things than that. We thought ours was better. We wanted a number of different options for seniors, where the people who organized the options would bargain with the prescription drug companies. It is a difference of philosophy because they are more trusting of the Government than we are. It is not some kind of conspiracy with the drug companies.

How much time do I have left?

I think I can do it in 6 minutes.

This is the reason I got up. President Bush actually has a plan to lower health insurance premiums. It is a pretty good plan. It is my plan. He kind of got it from me and Senator Snowe and Senator Bond and a couple of us over here, those of us who have worked on this since 1997 when I was in the House. I don't like people saying my plan is not a plan.

President Bush wants two things. He wants medical liability reform-- reform of frivolous lawsuits in medicine. In Missouri, they know about this because we are losing doctors because malpractice insurance premiums are going up due to a problem with frivolous lawsuits.

The Senator from Texas told me they just passed a bill to reform that and their health insurance premiums are going down substantially, and I know this is happening all over the country. If you cut that risk of the frivolous lawsuits, where people are recovering many more times the value of actual injuries, insurance premiums will go down. President Bush wants that. We didn't get that here because it was filibustered. His opponent in the election supported the filibuster.

How can you say he doesn't have a plan? You can say you disagree with the plan if you want--you filibustered it. The plan I have that the President supports is called the association health plan.

Most of the people who do not have health insurance in the country are working people. They work for small businesses or are farmers. They cannot get health insurance because it is more expensive to buy health insurance as part of a small group than it is as a big national pool.

There is a reason everybody else who has health insurance, except people who work for small businesses, get in as part of a national pool. Think about that for a minute. You work for a big company, you are part of a big labor union plan, Medicare, a national pool, Medicaid, a national pool. You are a Federal employee, retired Federal employee, retired military, you get it as

part of a national pool because there are economies of scale to insuring a large group. Administrative costs are less, and the bargaining power is more. You get more for less. You get better quality health insurance at less cost and no sacrifice of access or quality.

What I would like to do and the President would like to do is allow small businesses to do the same, to get health insurance through their trade association, so that my brother--and I have mentioned him on the floor before--who has a little restaurant in St. Louis--and I encourage anybody within the sound of my voice to patronize it; great hamburgers, Mr. President--he would like to get health insurance for his people as part of a big group. He would get it then. He is an employee of his corporation, his little business. He has to buy it on the small group market. But what if he could join the National Restaurant Association and become part of a 10-, 20-, 30-person pool and get health insurance on the same terms as if he worked for Anheuser-Busch headquartered in St. Louis or Hallmark headquartered in Kansas City. The health insurance premiums would go down 30 percent, at no cost to the taxpayers because it is not a Government program. It empowers small businesses to do what big businesses can do.

We hear over there how they do not like big business. They are not supporting this. It has passed in the House year after year with bipartisan support. The President supports it; his opponent does not.

Mr. President, look, there are differences between President Bush and Senator Kerry. The nature of our elections, unfortunately, is our candidates--and I can assure voters of this--are never as bad as they make each other out to be. They are both better people than you would believe from the commercials, but there are big differences of opinion. And I am proud of the fact that with the support of many people on the other side of the aisle, my party in leading this Congress and my party's leader at the White House has proposed a series of measures that empower small businesses and farmers that create jobs, that lower health insurance costs in innovative ways that will not cost the taxpayers a lot of money, that has built up our defenses, has taken the fight to the terrorists and has stood with respect but clearly for the commonsense cultural values of this country.

I would say in each of those areas, there is a big difference between my party's nominee for President and the other party's nominee, as much as I respect him and as often as I have worked with him on various issues in the past. With the greatest respect to the Senator from California and the Senator from Illinois, that ``ain't'' flimflam. That is not misleading anybody. That is the way it is. If we are going to debate out here on the floor regarding the Presidential election, we ought to at least get it right.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I rise today in honor of William S. Rupp of St. Peters, MO. I join his wife June, the rest of his family and his many friends in honoring and recognizing him on his 80th birthday, October 10, 2004.

A devoted husband, father of five and grandfather of 16, Bill's first 80 years have been rich and full. He has achieved a great deal and has contributed tremendously to his State and his country.

As a United States Marine in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Bill saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war. He served bravely for 3 years until he was honorably discharged in 1945.

Bill chose not to end his devotion to the military when he left the Pacific, and he has been a very active and highly effective veteran. He has served as chairman of the St. Peters Veterans Memorial Commission and helped design and coordinated the city's Veterans' Memorial site. He was also instrumental in the construction of St. Peters' Korean War Memorial. Bill is a member of Congressman Todd Akin's Veteran Memorial Commission and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10838, where he has served as Commander, All-State Quartermaster, Safety Chair, Hospital Chair, Military Assistance Chair and Deputy Inspector.

In addition to veterans' affairs, Mr. Rupp has been involved in other important civic matters. While his children were in school, he served with distinction as president of the McBride High School Father's Club, president of the Rosary High School Parent Teacher Association and as a judge for the Amateur Athletic Union's 75th track meet. In addition, he is a past president of the Summerhill Association.

After his military service, Bill attended Washington University before becoming a marketing representative for Gateway Seed Company and a department manager for Famous-Barr Company. He attended St. Louis University High School and St. Roch's Catholic Grade School.

I am honored to congratulate Mr. Rupp on this special occasion. He has many accomplishments in his long life thus far, and I wish him many more years of happiness and success.

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

Mr. President, I rise tonight in support of legislation which I have sponsored along with Senator Bond that would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to illuminate the gateway arch with pink lighting in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I want to say how much I appreciate the cooperation from both sides of the aisle on this important measure so that we can get it done and passed in time to honor those who have struggled against this disease during that month which has been set aside to recognize what they have done.

It is amazing how many American families have been touched by this disease. Speaking personally, my mother fought and eventually lost the battle against breast cancer. Her struggle certainly had a profound impact on me and on my family.

Currently, breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths for women in the United States. Approximately 40,000 women in this country will die from the disease in 2004, and the American Cancer Society estimates that a woman in the United States has a 1 in 7 chance of developing invasive breast cancer during her lifetime, and this risk was 1 in 11 in 1975.

For the past 20 years, October has been designated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Events around the world are dedicated to spreading the message of early detection so that prevention and the ongoing search for a cure can continue. Throughout the month, women are reminded in many ways that regular screening for breast cancer continues to be the most effective way to detect this disease in its earliest stages and therefore save lives.

Recently, I was contacted by a group of Missourians who wanted to highlight the need for breast cancer awareness. They wanted to illuminate the arch, which is, of course, a landmark not only in Missouri but in the country--a landmark with both national and local significance. They wanted to illuminate it with pink lighting in order to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month. People everywhere associate the pink ribbon and the color pink as a symbol of breast cancer

awareness and the ongoing search for the cure.

Lighting the arch with pink lighting will also recognize the millions of women who are currently battling breast cancer and those who have lost their lives fighting their disease.

The bill I introduced will give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to allow for that kind of lighting of the arch one night in October. I am hopeful that women not only in Missouri but all around the country and around the world will see the arch and take the message of that lighting to heart.

I am very grateful to the majority leadership and the Democratic leadership as well for clearing this bill. I am grateful to the Senate for passing it by unanimous consent this evening.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for her comments. I am going to make a couple of comments about an amendment the Senate adopted an hour or two ago that I am strongly supportive of and was pleased to cosponsor. I want a little more on the record about what that amendment does.

As I travel around Missouri and talk with first responders about homeland security, there is a consistent theme I hear. This goes back several years ago when I was not even in the Senate and was just campaigning. Over and over again, what I heard from fire chiefs, local public health authorities, police chiefs, and sheriffs was this: Look, we thank the Federal Government for sending money to help be prepared, but do not tell us in a detailed way what to do with the money.

I had one fire chief from Missouri say his big fear is: They will send the money and I will need the dollars to buy a better communication system so

that in the event there is a terrorist-related disaster, I can find out where my guys and gals are and tell them where to go. My big fear is they will tell me I have to buy HAZMAT suits when I don't need HAZMAT suits, because we already have in Missouri a tremendous HAZMAT regional team that I would call if we ever had that problem.

This concern resonated with me. I said to myself, that is what the Federal Government will do. It will send them the money but then tell them what to do with it. Accountability is fine. It is fine maybe to have certain standards in certain areas that are off limits--maybe you do not want them to spend the money on routine personnel costs. But I am a big believer that our first responders are best prepared to handle disaster-related emergencies when they prepare themselves better just to handle emergencies. The kind of problems or threats associated with terrorist disasters are 80 percent the same as with any other disaster--fire, people being crushed or trapped in buildings. The better they are prepared to do their job on a day-to-day basis, the better they will be prepared to protect, help, cure, or get us loose from some terrorist-related disaster.

After I came to the Senate, I found out in large part we have, unfortunately, done exactly what they were afraid we were going to do, which is send them the money with so many strings attached that they do not have the flexibility to use it the way they want.

We had an example of this in Missouri last year when Senator Bond and I were contacted by the local Jewish community in St. Louis which was hosting the Maccabi Games--like the international youth Olympics for Jewish youth from around the world. Those games drew over 5,000 young Jewish people from around the world. The Maccabi Games were an obvious target for a terrorist threat--that is just a matter of common sense-- and there were a lot of extra costs associated with protecting the games.

The local hosts wanted some of those costs reimbursed. We certainly understand that. We tried to get money that had already been assigned to the State of Missouri reprogrammed or changed so they could use it for this obviously necessary purpose, and we could not. The statute was too closed to let the money be reprogrammed, despite the best efforts of Senator Bond and I.

It turned out that the Maccabi Games went on without incident, and we are all very grateful. But the problems remain for the discretion on the part of the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination to at least have the authority to entertain a waiver application by States to reprogram dollars where, at least, some unexpected need arises.

I joined with Senator Collins in cosponsoring legislation to that effect. I offered a sense-of-the-Senate resolution on the Homeland Security appropriation which did get adopted by the Senate and had a colloquy with Senator Cochran at the time about the need to follow up on this issue. I was very pleased to cosponsor with Senator Collins, an amendment that, among other things, does create that kind of waiver authority for the Secretary of Homeland Security and for the Director to help out in instances such as that.

I congratulate the Senator from Maine for her interest. She has heard the same things I have heard. She knows the need to do something about it. I am very pleased that with the adoption of that amendment, we have taken a step in that direction. It is not as far as we need to go, in my judgment. We can trust our first responders more than we will trust them even with this amendment becoming law--and I hope it does become law--but it is a step in the right direction. I will keep working in that direction. The people of Missouri and the people of the country will be better off as we make progress toward that end.

To reiterate, as I have traveled across the State of Missouri discussing homeland security, nearly every police chief and every first responder has told me the same thing: Don't tie our hands on how we are going to use money you give us. Leave us some discretion on how to use those funds. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security asserts it must tightly control how every dollar is spent. I appreciate the need for accountability given the department's mission. I also appreciate that in many instances our first responders know best how to allocate these funds and that sometimes very legitimate concerns fall outside the narrow spending guidelines of the department.

For example, in St. Louis last year, our local Jewish community hosted the Maccabi Games, an international Jewish Youth Olympics, which drew over 5,000 Jewish youth from around the world. Given the security environment, Missouri's Homeland Security Office threat assessment team stressed the need for greater security but lacked the latitude to reallocate even a modest sum from the monies awarded to the State. Despite all of our efforts here, they were unable to free up dollars to provide for the necessary security.

Thankfully, the event ended without incident, but it still illustrates the need for discretion on the part of the Secretary and the director of the Office for State and Local government Coordination to approve waiver applications on the part of the State to reprogram some of their Federal grant homeland money when some new kind of security issue arises that was unforeseen when they originally applied for those grants.

Last year, I engaged in a colloquy on this floor with Chairman Cochran on this issue and have been working since arriving in the Senate with Chairman Collins to craft language that would provide State and local governments with flexibility in the reallocate a portion of homeland security grant funds based upon the changing threat environment. Last week I successfully offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill that addressed this issue.

I am pleased that Senator Collins has included in her amendment language that we worked on together over the past year to provide the discretionary authority needed by the State homeland security officials.

Mr. President, I will make a comment or two on the bill as a whole. I will not hold the Senate up a long time. We are trying to get this bill done, and I fully support that.

There is an area of the bill I would like to register, for the record, concern on the part of this Senator. Probably the bill's managers will recognize the legitimacy of that concern.

First, I want to say how much I have appreciated the work by the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Connecticut on this bill. I have enjoyed this debate and enjoyed the part that I played in it--not that it has been significant but just attending the briefings, visiting with the Senators on and off the Senate floor. In my work on the Armed Services Committee, we have had hearings on this subject.

This has been handled in the way the American people like to see the Senate handle things. It has been bipartisan in the best sense of that word--not that we have tried to conceal legitimate differences of opinion that sometimes separate the two parties, but because we have understood that the right way to deal with those differences is to reconcile them where we can, to have

them out without being personal or political about it, and understand we are all working for the good of the American people and the security of the country.

We can all agree, having been here now through almost this entire Congress, that unfortunately, the Senate does not always operate in that ideal fashion. I believe it has operated in that way on this bill, and the leadership of the two Senators is the reason. It is clear from listening to this debate and watching it on TV in my office that both of these Senators have done their due diligence. They know their subject. There has not been a point raised that they were unfamiliar with. That has been very impressive to me and has led me to decide that I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt on amendments that are offered because clearly they have studied this. It is not a case where they are refusing to consider any concern or looking down on a Senator who is raising it.

It is important for the public to know that personal factors like that can play a part in legislation. The trust and regard in which these two Senators are held by the rest of the body is making a difference.

I also agree with them that it is time to do something; that 3 years is long enough. Some people say 40 years, because there have been a number of recommendations for changing how we do intelligence over the decades. I think it is time to get something done. I agree with that.

I also like the creation of a national intelligence director. I do wish we could have come up with a different name than NID. Imagine how often that name is going to be used and what it may come to represent in Washington, but it may be too late to do anything about that.

For some reason, I do not think people have aired on the floor--and I want to; it is a practical reason--there are times in our history when foreign policy and national defense are bigger issues than at other times. The American people in the United States of America are a people who are concerned with their day-to-day lives. That is as it should be. We would rather, if we could, avoid having to engage extensively in these tremendous efforts abroad and in all the foreign policy discussions and reconstructions that go with that.

In our elections, sometimes we elect Presidents in a context where foreign policy does not seem to be all that important. I think it is another way of saying some Presidents are more interested than other Presidents in intelligence on a day-to-day basis. I do not say that to be critical. I do not think there has been a President who has ever served in that high office who has not cared about the security of the country. But I think people here understand what I mean.

Now that we are fighting this terrorist war, we all read stories about intelligence. We know how important it is. We are all following it on a day-to-day basis. Everybody wants to serve on the Intelligence Committee or the Foreign Affairs Committee, and that is fine. But in other times, attention and interest wanes.

I think by having a national intelligence director, what we will help ensure is that even in those times when interest is waning on the part of other high-level political actors, maybe even the President, we will have somebody in Washington whose job it is to look at all this in a comprehensive way, and try to make sure the agencies under him or her are working together on behalf of the interests of the American people, in a way rather like we have done with the Federal Reserve, where we have created an agency and we have vested a lot of authority in a Chairman of the Federal Reserve. We know that person is watching monetary policy and other policy.

Over time, what has happened is Presidents of both parties and under all circumstances realize that appointments to that kind of job are very highly scrutinized, and you put in people who have prestige and gravitas and the regard of people of both parties and the regard of the country.

It is my hope that will happen with the national intelligence director. Presidents, whether foreign policy is the No. 1 concern for them or not, will know this is an important appointment and they need to put somebody in this position, from administration to administration, who has the regard of everybody in the country, who watches and knows about foreign policy and about intelligence. That will help create a stability over time and a continuity in our intelligence policy.

Now, I am not downgrading the concerns people have expressed. There is always a tension in this kind of thing. You cannot create and set up a higher authority such as this without increasing the risk that if you get a person in there who is very autocratic, it may tend to create a certain kind of group-think among the agencies even more than we now have, that people could be acting in way that is designed to please only this national intelligence director rather than trying to have their own opinions regarding intelligence. But there are safeguards in the bill designed to deal with that. I certainly have had some concerns along those lines, but I am going to exercise the benefit of the doubt in favor of supporting the creation of a national intelligence director.

There is an area, though--and the Senators have addressed it; I think perhaps they could again in response to my remarks--I am concerned about the flow of intelligence to the troops in the field. Here is the kind of classic situation I am concerned about. We have, of course, an extensive satellite system in place. We get intelligence all the time from those satellites. Particularly since the first Gulf War, the Department of Defense has become pretty good at getting that intelligence off the set satellites and getting it out to the field in real time. That means virtually instantaneously, so that it can be used by our special operations troops, by commanders in the field to check and select targets. This kind of mapping and satellite intelligence can be used even to move troops around during some kind of an engagement. It works pretty well. I know that for a fact.

I think one of the reasons it does work is these agencies--the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency--are in the Department of Defense and the customers they are serving with that intelligence are in the Department of Defense. It is very reasonable to believe that if the provider of the intelligence and the customer of the intelligence are in the same Department, the same bureaucratic structure, they will share intelligence better.

If that were not true, then why are we doing this bill? Because the whole point of the bill is to get all these intelligence agencies under some kind of joint authority so they will share better. In most cases, I think it is very clear how the bill is doing that, that the bill is breaking down existing bureaucratic barriers.

But I do think we all ought to be honest enough to admit with respect to this particular kind of sharing, we are setting up a bureaucratic barrier that does not exist now, because we are going to pull those agencies out of the control of the Department of Defense and put them under the national intelligence director, at least partially. So there is at least a risk we will put up a stovepipe in the name of taking down stovepipes, that we will put up a stovepipe in an area where the sharing is working. It would be ironic if one of the effects of the bill were to interrupt the sharing of the intelligence in the one area where we have confidence now that it is being shared.

Now, I feel a lot better about this concern than I did when I first heard about this bill. I know the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Connecticut have put measures in the bill designed to ensure that flow of intelligence continues. I am glad they have done that. I am glad they recognized the importance of this concern, because it is going to grow as time goes on.

Let me give you an example. We are trying, on the Armed Services Committee--and both Senators serve on that Committee, so they know this as well as I--to make all the various what we call weapons platforms for the Army network-centric. What this means is they will all be networked in, so that we hope in the near future intelligence from a satellite will not even have to go through a middleman at the NGA or the NSA, it will go directly

from the satellite down to the commander in the field. It is very important that we procure weapons systems and platforms and communications systems and signal intelligence systems that are all linked together.

This bill, for example, gives procurement authority to the NID over the satellite end of those systems. So we are going to have the NID procuring the satellites, the platforms that are getting the intelligence. We are going to have the Department of Defense procuring its end of the platform that is going to be receiving the intelligence, and there is a danger we will end up with a stovepipe we do not want.

I am not saying this is a reason to oppose the bill. I am not saying it is a reason to change the bill. I am saying it is a concern. I guess what I would say to my friends from Connecticut and Maine is, if they could give us their assurance that not only in the passage of the bill but in the implementation of it, and in the months and years after that, they will remain conscious of these concerns and try to ensure a free flow of intelligence from these various intelligence organizations out to the troops in the field, even though they will no longer be in the same bureaucratic organizations.

Maybe the Senator from Maine would yield for a question from me or have a brief colloquy, if I can ask consent to do that.

I have been airing the point you and I have talked about privately, and you have addressed on the floor as well, about the importance of making sure that tactical military intelligence continues to flow from the NGA and the NRO and the others out to troops in the field.

I was telling the Presiding Officer you all have done a lot to allay my concern in that regard. What I was hopeful of, and I wanted to put on the record, is to get assurance from you and the Senator from Connecticut that in implementing this bill you will continue to oversee this aspect of it and try to make certain the NID understands the importance of acting jointly with the DOD in ensuring that this intelligence continues to flow. Because no matter what protocols you put in the bill, this is a fruitful area for oversight to make certain that this intelligence is not interrupted. Would the Senator from Maine care to comment?

I have been much reassured by the debate, by your comments, and by my further thinking on the subject. I do think it is unlikely that any national intelligence director would not be sensitive to this. And given the congressional concern that has been expressed, if he or she were insensitive, we certainly could do something about it.

To give an example--and I shared this with the Senate--on procurement, you know the extent to which we are trying to procure network-centric type platforms for the Army. And since now the various satellite agencies would be under the procurement authority of the NID, it would be important early in this process to get some kind of memorandum of understanding or protocol so there would be a joint type procurement process to make certain that what the Army was doing to get network-centric receivers was compatible with whatever the NID was procuring for satellite.

I expect there will be a number of instances in practice where it will be useful for all of us to be aware on a continuing basis of this concern and trying to make certain that they work together, as we did with Goldwater-Nichols. There is an example of a congressional enactment and oversight that has increased the joint process.

I don't offer these remarks in hostility to the bill but to put on the record again the importance of this, to make clear your intent and the intent of the Senator from Connecticut in this regard. I would be happy to have the Senator comment further.

I am grateful. I don't know if the Senator from Connecticut wanted to say something now or later. I am not inviting you to admit a concern that you don't think is in the language of the bill, that would suggest a weakness in the bill that you don't believe is there. It is just that any change in structure like this has the potential, if we are not careful, to interrupt that flow. I am pleased about your reassurances. I won't make you say it for the 15th time. I will just reclaim my time and close briefly. It has been a pleasure to participate in this debate and to watch how my friends from Connecticut and Maine have handled it. I do think it is time to do something. I had concerns. I had concerns about the speed with which we were acting. I think we can all concede the honesty of those concerns. I do believe, however, for the reasons I have indicated, that we ought to move forward. I think we can, while guarding against the dangers that are present whenever you have a major change like this. There is a lot about our intelligence system that is working. We do want to be careful that in trying to fix the parts that aren't, we don't cause problems for the parts that are working.

The Senators from Maine and Connecticut have done a good job in guarding against that. I congratulate them on their work. Again, I am pleased the Senate has adopted an amendment which finally takes a first step toward allowing our first responders, our State and local officials on whom we depend, to have discretion in where they are going to use these homeland security grants the country is giving them.

I yield the floor.

I can see how that would happen, and we should not accept something that is working fairly well if we think we can make it better. It may be possible by moving these agencies into the NID for budgetary purposes that they will get a higher priority than they get now with the DOD which does not see itself primarily as an intelligence department. I can see potential pluses to this. I just thought it was very important that the record show the concern about this is not only deep with you two as the managers but also all throughout the Senate and the Congress, that there are many of us who are familiar with this and who know this current system is working, certainly working much better than it used to.

I hope whoever is going to be the national intelligence director--I certainly will bring this up in the confirmation process, and I hope you two do as well--knows we want his cooperation and will continue to want this to be a priority.

I thank the Senator for his comments.

I yield back my time.

I ask unanimous consent that a fellow from my office, Lore Aguyo, be allowed floor privileges for the remainder of the bill.

Mr. President, I have a brief inquiry. My understanding is that with the unanimous consent agreement, I will now have longer than 10 minutes, if I need it, to speak in morning business.

Mr. President, I thank my friend for his comments. I want to talk about several issues, but let me say with regard to the whole question of illegal status of the freedom we are winning, along with the Iraqi people, in Iraq, there are many people in the international community for whom the definition of ``international legality'' is quite flexible, depending upon what it is they happen to want at any particular moment.

I was serving in the Congress, albeit on the other side of the Capitol, in the 1990s and remember when, at the urgent request of the Europeans, particularly the western Europeans, the United States assembled a coalition and used its military power to prevent genocide in southeastern Europe, to protect the Kosovars from genocide that was being conducted by Milosevic and the Serbs at the time.

The nations that wanted to do that asked the Security Council for a resolution of support and were denied it because, if you will recall, Mr. President, the Russians threatened to veto it, just as the French indicated 2 years ago they would veto any resolution of support for our action in Iraq.

Now you would think that to be consistent with the position they are now taking, some of the Western European countries, in particular the French and Germans, would have said at the time, If you can't get a Security Council resolution, then we don't want to intervene in Kosovo and prevent genocide there. But that was not the position they took at all. They insisted, they urgently pleaded with the United States to lead a coalition of nations to intervene for humanitarian reasons at that point, notwithstanding the fact they could not get a Security Council resolution because they recognized then what we have been consistent in recognizing all along: That we always seek the support of international alliances, and we have support of an international coalition in Iraq. We always seek to operate within international bodies and get the support of the U.N. when possible, but we protect our freedom with or without the support of that body in any given circumstance.

That is what we did in Kosovo when we prevented genocide, and that is what we are now doing in Iraq.

I want to add a few more words along those lines and then talk some about health care. Let me say how moved I was by the eloquence of Prime Minister Allawi and the way in which he represented the aspirations of freedom and free people everywhere.

I think of two statements in particular, one in which he quoted Prime Minister Blair in saying that whenever people are given a choice, they choose freedom over tyranny, democracy over dictatorship, and the rule of law over the rule of the secret police. It does not matter whether the people who are being asked to choose are of the Islamic faith or the Christian faith or the Jewish faith or any other faith; it does not matter where they live or the circumstances under which they are raised; there is a universal desire placed in the human heart by our Creator for freedom. We are seeing that desire in Iraq, and we saw it with Prime Minister Allawi today.

I was tremendously impressed by his courage. He probably has the biggest target on his back of anybody in the free world, and yet he stood there and said not only do the Iraqi people want freedom--and I made a note of this comment--as you have stood with us, we will stand with you in the ongoing battle against terrorism.

I think this is a vindication of the underlying strategy that the United States is following with its allies and the coalition in freeing Iraq.

There were two strategic goals in going into Iraq. One of them was to remove a regime and a person who even if there had never been a 9/11 was on his own a serious organic threat to the security of the region and the freedom of the United States.

We saw this and lived it in the 1990s. We saw him attack his neighbors twice. We saw him plow missiles into his neighbors. He developed weapons of mass destruction. He had stockpiles of sarin gas and other chemical and biological weapons. He showed he was willing to use them on his own people and on his neighbors.

We had tens of thousands of American personnel, American airplanes and warplanes in the region specifically designed to contain him year after year. I could see the Clinton administration building up toward a policy that would end this threat to American interests and American freedom and the stability of the region, and it was necessary to remove him. That was part one.

Part two, necessitated by 9/11, was to replace Saddam Hussein, in corroboration with the Iraqi people, with a democracy that respected human dignity, stood for human rights, would fight for human rights and be an ally with us in the war against terrorism. We heard from Prime Minister Allawi today the determination of the Iraqi people to do that and to be an ally.

I was greatly encouraged that this man, who represents a nation that is in some turmoil, that is coming out of decades of totalitarian rule and terror and is in a weakened condition, stood defiantly against the terrorists with courage. Many others, who are in stable countries and have much more power, are trying to appease them. The Iraqis know the danger of tyranny and terrorism. They have lived it, and they are going to stand with us in fighting it in the future.

The existence of this new democracy in Iraq will be a standing rebuke to the vision of the terrorists of a Pan-Islamic world dominated by terrorism, totalitarianism, and twisted religious extremism. Prime Minister Allawi made that point clearly and made it without apology to anybody, and he made it again and again. And have we not seen several of those from the dais on the other side of the Capitol in this Congress? I thought it was an inspiring and brilliant speech. We owe it to ourselves, to our own freedom, to our allies and our own courageous people to see this through and to win this in Iraq.

I was also tremendously encouraged by his statement that we are succeeding there. Anybody who looks at the facts in an unbiased way can see that. Most of the country is stable. We are constantly seeking new ways to stabilize the rest of it, in part through the application of military power on our own or with our allies, in part through negotiations with people who are not yet committed completely to the terrorists on the other side. He made that very clear. They are using a combination of political and military tools to stabilize the country in anticipation of the elections in January. Hearing him, I have full confidence those elections will go forward.

I am proud of what we have done there and proud of the resolution of the American people. I want my constituents in Missouri and constituents around the country to take satisfaction in what we have done through their resolution and through the sacrifice of the men and women in the American military.

Mr. President, I will take also a few minutes, putting on a little different hat because I had not intended to talk about health care today, but my friend from Massachusetts spoke with his usual vigor and eloquence on this subject and I thought perhaps a few words in response were warranted.

I agree with my friend about one thing--there certainly is a very big difference between the approach of the President to resolving the problem of the uninsured and costs in health care and the approach of my friend and his colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry. There is no question that there is a problem in this country because too many people do not have health insurance. I have been leading a fight on this issue for at least 7 or 8 years. There are about 45 million people who at any given time are uninsured. The interesting thing is that most of those people are working people, and they are working on farms or for small businesses.

There is a reason why a disproportionate number of the people who are uninsured are working for small business. It is because health insurance costs more to purchase for small groups. The administrative costs to small businesspeople of buying health insurance for their employees is about three times the administrative costs of buying it for national pools, for the employees of big companies.

It is interesting to note that if one looks at the people in the country who have health insurance, everybody, except the employees of small business, gets their health insurance through some kind of national pool, public or private. They are either employees of big national companies, they have it through a big labor union plan, they work for the Federal Government, or they are participants in Medicare or Medicaid. Everybody else is part of a big national pool because of the efficiencies and the lower costs that are available if one does that except the employees of small business and farmers who are relegated to trying to buy health insurance to cover 5-, 6-, 8- or 10- people units. It costs more. They do not get as much health insurance for it. In many cases it becomes unaffordable, so the small business does not provide health insurance at all to their employees.

How many more minutes do I have? I do not want my eloquence to consume all of my time.

So approximately 15 minutes remaining. I thank the Chair.

I have talked literally to hundreds of small businesspeople who are suffering with this problem. They want to provide health insurance to their employees. They would like to because, of course, in almost all cases the owner is an employee of the corporation, like my brother is, for example. He runs a little restaurant in Missouri. He is an employee of the corporation. He would love to get health insurance for the whole company. Then he would be able to get it, too, at better rates than buying it on the individual market. He cannot because it costs too much for small businesspeople.

What is the President's solution? It happens to be a solution I have been working for for a number of years, so naturally I think the President is right. His solution is to allow small businesspeople to pool through their national trade associations to buy health insurance. For example, the

President wants to pass authorizing legislation which would allow the National Restaurant Association, to take an example, to contract with insurance companies nationally, and then any restaurant that joined the National Restaurant Association would become like the little division of a big company. If we had that in place, my brother could join the National Restaurant Association and his employees would get health insurance on the same terms and same conditions as if they were employees of, let us say, Anheuser-Busch, a fine company headquartered in St. Louis, or Hallmark, a great company headquartered in Kansas City.

Why should they not be able to do it? It would reduce the cost of health insurance to small businesses, conservatively speaking, 10 to 20 percent. It would make it available to millions of small businesspeople who currently have no insurance at all, and millions of others would get better health insurance because the costs would go down and the quality would go up. It would create competition in the small group market that currently does not exist.

Here is another thing that working people in small businesses or big businesses will be pleased about, and it does not cost anything because it is not a Government program. It is empowering small businesspeople and farmers to do the same as their colleagues who work for big companies already can do.

The President has strongly supported this measure. It has passed in the House by a huge bipartisan vote. We pushed it further than ever before in the Senate. I think next year we are going to get it, and we will reduce the number of uninsured by getting more people good quality private health insurance which reflects what they want in health insurance instead of what the Government condescends to give them. It is not going to cost the taxpayers anything. Or we could pursue Senator Kerry's plan, which will cost the taxpayer, by two different estimates, one $1.5 trillion and the other $1.25 trillion. It will not even insure everybody who is uninsured. It is basically a vast expansion of Medicaid.

I have supported expanding Medicaid to cover people who are unemployed or people who cannot get insurance any other way. I believe that is our responsibility as a society. But if we can help people get health insurance on their own, why should we not do it? That is the President's approach.

Something else the President wants to do is he wants to reduce the costs that are driving health care by passing reasonable liability insurance reform to prevent frivolous or abusive lawsuits. I hear about nothing more often in Missouri than the whole question of liability reform, reforming our liability system so we can prevent the frivolous or abusive lawsuits that are driving up costs all over my State and States across the country.

I was in Chillicothe, MO, a couple of weeks ago. The last OB/GYN shut down, moved. You can't get a baby delivered anymore in Chillicothe because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance that we all pay.

I was visited the other day by a group that is involved in providing services in building facilities for seniors--assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. They were complaining because the cost-- from the time they decided to build until the time they are building, the cost of their liability insurance went up, I think it was from $200,000 to $1.5 million a year.

The people of Missouri know who is paying those costs. It is getting passed on to them. We see it in the cost of health insurance premiums. We see it in the pressure on the Medicare and Medicaid budget.

We can have a reasonable reform that prevents that. It doesn't have to be all or nothing at all. It doesn't have to be a system where either we allow abusive and frivolous lawsuits that are driving up costs or we don't allow recovery at all. We can do what we did for hundreds of years, which is have a system that fully allows recovery for people who are injured through negligence to the extent of their injury but doesn't allow actions that drive up costs on behalf of frivolous lawsuits or huge awards or settlements that are out of relation to any damage that is actually done.

The President wants reform of that. So do the people of Missouri. They are aware of this issue. It got filibustered. The President supports reform and Senator Kerry supported the filibuster.

Let me just say, there are a lot of things we can do on a commonsense, bipartisan basis to reduce the costs of health care in this country. The more you reduce the cost of health care without affecting quality or access, the more people will be able to get health insurance, the more people will be able to get health care. That is what we have to do.

It is time to stop treating this as if, depending on which side of the aisle you are on, you either want or do not want people to have health care. I have never met a serious political leader in either party who did not want the people of this country to have health care. The question is how we are going to go about it.

One of the things I like about the President's proposal is he has decided to get away from deeply ideological solutions and to do what makes common sense, to take steps each of which will substantially improve the situation and put us in a better position and then open up options for other things we can do. It is what we need to do. I am convinced if we set politics aside, and we can once we get past this election and pursue those measures for reform, we will pass them and not only pass them but pass them with bipartisan majorities.

With regard to the bill for national insurance pools for small businesses, small business health plans, that bill has repeatedly passed the House with a bipartisan majority and it can here as well. I am hopeful that it will, after the elections this fall.

We live in interesting times. There are a lot of key issues we are confronting. I continue to be optimistic. This war in Iraq is difficult. Wars are always difficult--the sacrifices, the heroism of the people of this country and their resolve, and then the men and women in the America's military who are a model for us all. They are writing another glorious chapter in the story of freedom that really is the story of the American fighting man and woman. The spread of freedom in the 20th century was the story of the American soldier all over the world making a reality, for other people as well as for this country, the ideals on which this Nation is based.

We saw another example of the power of those ideals today in the House of Representatives. It was an honor to be there and a pleasure to take a few minutes to recall what we all heard.

I thank the Senate for its indulgence, and I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to mourn the passing of Donald Comlish, who was the vice president for international affairs of the Air Transport Association. Through his years of service, Mr. Comlish helped provide great service to our airline industry as well as the traveling public, and he will be truly missed.

Mr. Comlish worked for the ATA for 22 years as the chief representative of the airline industry in the negotiation of the international agreements between the United States and foreign countries that provide the legal and operational basis for international airline flights.

He participated in the negotiation of aviation agreements with France, Germany, Japan, Thailand and many other countries during his career, helping to literally open up the world to American travelers. Mr. Comlish helped to negotiate the 1977 Bermuda II agreement, which eased restrictions on air travel between the United States and Britain. He also helped to complete a partnership between the United States and China that provided for post-World War II resumption of direct air service between the two countries.

Donald Comlish was born in Stratford, CT and enlisted in the Navy after high school. He attended the Navy School of Music in Washington and played with the Navy Band. He graduated from St. Bonaventure University in 1961, and received a law degree from Catholic University in 1965. He began his career as a law clerk for the firm of Spencer & Whalen and the Civil Aeronautics Board, and then began working for the ATA. Donald was a well-respected and accomplished attorney who was admitted and qualified as an attorney and counselor to the Supreme Court. After leaving the ATA in the mid-1990s, he remained a consultant to the airline industry until his retirement in 1999.

Shortly before he retired, he decided to once again pursue his love of music and began playing saxophone and clarinet for the Montgomery Village Community Band and the Virginia Grand Military Band. He was also a member of the International Aviation Club.

Mr. Comlish's survivors include his wife of 42 years, Carol Comlish; 6 children: Jeannie, Michael, Gregory, Matthew, Paul, and Chrissy; and 1 grandson. His efforts improved the lives of every American who travels, and he certainly left the world better than he found it.

Mr. President, I certainly appreciate the efforts of the Senator from Montana to make certain our farm families do not lose, as the Senator from Kansas said, because of the droughts that have periodically struck the Midwest. Missouri has suffered as well. I am very interested in this issue being worked out in a way that is satisfactory.

I do want to take a minute, though, on a different subject to thank the ranking member and the chairman for what I understand is an agreement on a sense-of-the-Senate resolution I have offered in the form of an amendment, and I think it is going to be added later on a voice vote. I believe it has been cleared on both sides. I wanted to make the Senate aware of the importance of this subject.

We had a situation in St. Louis last year where our local Jewish community was hosting the Maccabee Games. It is an international event where Jewish youths come and participate in effect in Olympic games. Obviously, it is an event with special security risks in today's day and age. Locally, we needed several hundred thousand dollars in extra funds for security.

The State had the Federal homeland defense money but not in the right account, and despite all of our efforts on a Federal, State, and local level, we were unable to free up dollars to provide for the necessary security. It ended up being okay, but it did not have to end up okay. As a result of that, I have become very interested in allowing at least some discretion on the part of the Secretary and the Director of the Office for State and Local Government Coordination to approve waiver applications on the part of the State to reprogram some of their Federal grant homeland money when some new kind of security issue arises that was unforeseen when they originally applied for those grants.

So the sense-of-the-Senate resolution in effect says that we ought to be able to do that. It is a first step toward what I hope will be a successful change in the law by allowing this kind of discretion in these kinds of cases.

I ask Senators to think about the situation because it could come up in anybody's State where an unforeseen new security risk arises and their local authorities have to spend substantial dollars in order to be able to deal with it. That is exactly what we have this

homeland defense money for. Under certain circumstances, they will be unable to access it without some kind of discretionary waiver authority being allowed the department. I hope we can follow up on this sense-of- the-Senate resolution with an appropriate change in the underlying authorization.

Again, I appreciate the help of the Senator from Mississippi and the distinguished Senator from West Virginia in getting this amendment cleared.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I believe it is safe to say that later on in the evening the Senate will consider and I am certain approve a resolution of support and solidarity with the Russian people over their recent tragedy and atrocities that have occurred in Beslan. I am privileged to have the opportunity to cosponsor that resolution, and I congratulate the leaders on both sides of the aisle because I believe it will be cleared.

I know it is not the desire of the chairman that we have a lengthy debate on it, and I certainly understand that.

All of our hearts break at what happened, and although we have seen terrorists at low points before, to hold hundreds of children hostage for days, to deprive them of food and water, to terrorize them, to ignore their pleas for mercy, to shoot them in the back when they are trying to escape when it can achieve no possible end, is a level of depravity I do not believe I ever witnessed in my lifetime.

Like all who watched the horrific coverage of the school hostage situation in Russia last week, I was shocked by the images of frightened children and their parents inside the gymnasium of School Number One, surrounded by several hooded hostage-takers and plastic explosives hanging from basketball hoops. On September 1, more than 1,100 parents, students, and

teachers who had gathered for the first day of school were taken hostage by approximately 30 terrorists who had rigged the school with explosives. On September 3, Russian troops and the Beslan hostage- takers exchanged gun fire, a bomb exploded collapsing the roof of the school, the terrorists began killing the hostages, and massive loss of life ensured. This horrendous terrorist action left at least 335 people dead, many of them children, as well as hundreds more severely wounded and over 200 unaccounted for, who are most likely dead.

I join my colleagues, Senators Daschle, Frist and Santorum, in condemning this despicable terrorist act and in expressing our condolences to the Russian people and in particular to those families who lost their loved ones in the Beslan school tragedy. We commend the continuing efforts of the U.S. Government in providing humanitarian and medical assistance to the people of the Russian Federation.

The terror last week at the school in Beslan is the same face of evil we saw in the U.S. on September 11. The terrorists held children, parents and teachers hostage for more than 2 days without food, water or medicine. Without conscience or mercy, the terrorists shot children in their backs as they fled for safety. These killers seek to terrorize the entire civilized world. They have no regard for human life, even the lives of children. Today, America stands together with the Russian people more resolved than ever to win the war against terrorism.

I know the Senate will vote unanimously for the resolution. I am confident that because of incidents such as this in Beslan and around the world, Americans and civilized people everywhere will draw increased resolution to lead and win the war against terrorism that has really become a war of civilization against barbarians, like those who committed these atrocities.

I thank the Senate for giving me a moment to give my remarks.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I was unavoidably detained and unable to participate in rollcall vote No. 164 that took place on September 7, 2004. My flight was diverted from its intended destination of Reagan National Airport to Dulles International Airport and prevented me from being able to cast my vote. Had I been present I would have voted in favor of the nomination of Virginia Maria Hernandez Covington to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida.

I understand we have about 20 minutes until lunch. May I have the 20 minutes?

I appreciate that. I very much appreciate the kind words of my friend from Colorado in introducing me. That is probably more than I deserve, and it is certainly better than I usually get when I stand up to speak on the Senate floor.

We are in the midst of another filibuster. I say that because if I didn't say it, given the Senate procedures, it would not be evident to people that that is what is happening. But we are filibustering yet another measure before the Senate. This one has a little twist to it. Those who are filibustering are willing to allow us to go to a vote on the amendment, if we have no amendment to the amendment. In other words, if nobody wants to offer any amendment to change this amendment at all, to try and perfect it, then they will permit an immediate vote. So what we are told is that we must either have an immediate vote without any changes even being considered or no vote at all.

I suspect that the filibuster will be sustained when we vote on it. It is a shame because this is an important measure, and the people are entitled to see who in this body is for protecting traditional marriage and who is not, because nothing less than that is at stake. Members of the Senate should not be mistaken or deceived by discussions of other issues or attempts to restate what this amendment is about or assurances that we don't really need to do anything and everything will be OK.

The courts of this country are engaged in a process by which they are going to force the people, whether they like it or not, to accept a fundamental change in the basic building block of our society. I kind of think that is important. I think it is worth debating. It is a sign of the regard in which marriage is held by some of those who are filibustering that they don't think it is important enough to be worth debating.

Marriage is our oldest social institution. I was thinking about this the other day. It is not older than the impulse to seek God, but it is older than our formal religions. It is older than our system of property. It is older than our system of justice. It certainly predates our political institutions, our Constitution, even our union in this country. And marriage may be the most important of all these institutions because it represents the accumulated wisdom of literally hundreds of generations over thousands of years about how best to lay the foundation of a home in which we can raise and socialize our children.

Every society has to be able to do certain things in order to survive. It has to produce wealth, goods, and services so people can live. It has to resolve disputes so that people don't kill each other over problems that they have. It has to be able to raise children who are reasonably content, reasonably well adjusted, and reasonably committed to the norms of that society. It is possible to do that. I put in that word for those in the gallery who may have teenagers as I do. It is possible for children to be reasonably content, well adjusted, and committed to the norms of society. And the way that we do that, the way we have decided over the millennia to do that in this country, and, indeed, throughout the world, is through marriage.

It doesn't always work that way, obviously. No human society, no human institution is perfect. A spouse may die. The marriage may break up. The marriage may be so completely dysfunctional that maybe it ought to break up. People sometimes are single when children are born, and very often in those circumstances the person who is raising the child is able to make it work. They act heroically to raise the child on their own.

If a child in that circumstance went to his mom or dad or aunt or uncle or grandma or grandpa or guardian, whoever was trying to raise him or her on his own and said, When I grow up, when I want to have children, would you recommend that I try and find somebody who is committed to raising the child--say it is a girl--if I try and find a man who is committed to me and committed to the home and committed to raising our children in that context, would you recommend that I do that or not? How many of those single moms or dads or grandmas or grandpas or aunts or uncles who have raised kids or are raising kids, how many would say, No, do it the other way? They would say: Do it that way, if you can.

It is hard under any circumstances. But it is less hard if you have a husband or a wife who is there, who is committed, who wants to help. That is what marriage is about. Americans know that as a matter of commonsense. Americans live in this civilization. Americans of all different backgrounds, all different ethnicities, all different religions, all support traditional marriage. They know that, if possible, kids should be raised by a mom and a dad, committed in the context of marriage to their family. Americans know that and have known it. They have built that society and that culture.

The social scientists have figured it out. Here is a representative statement. The Senator from Kansas read a

number of similar statements the other day, but this was by Scott M. Stanley who is a Ph.D. at the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, which my friend from Colorado has the honor to represent. He said:

As a result of decades of accumulated data, many family

scientists, from the fields of sociology, psychology and

economics, have concluded--

Here is the news bulletin--

children and adults on average experience the highest level

of overall well-being in the context of healthy marital

relationships.

And what is marriage? We are entitled to ask that about all our social institutions. What is it? It is not complicated. In short form, it is one mom, one dad, one at a time. Everybody has the same right to get married. There is no discrimination involved in a social institution. Everybody has the same right to get married. But nobody has the right to marry anybody they want to. There are certain restrictions. You can't marry a close relative. You can't marry somebody who is already married. Is that discrimination if we tell people, No, you can't marry somebody if they are already married? That is not marriage. And you can't marry somebody of the same sex.

And why? Because marriage is the institution--remember, it is many things; yes, it is an expression of love and commitment between two people and that is beautiful--that we in our society rely upon for raising our children. And it is best for kids, if possible and where possible, to have a mom and a dad. And that is one thing that two people of the same sex cannot give children. They cannot give them a mom and a dad.

It comes down to this: People in this country are free to live the way they want to live. That is one of our cultural norms that, by the way, marriage supports. Marriage is the building block of a society which believes, among other things, that people should be free. And people are free to live the way they want.

The Senator from California talked about two same-sex people who love each other and want to live together. Legally people are free to do that. But that does not mean that they are free to change the basic cultural institutions on the health of which everybody and everybody's rights depend.

We have models of this around the world. In Scandinavia they have changed traditional marriage, legalized same-sex marriage. The result there is increasingly nobody gets married. Fewer and fewer kids are raised outside of that context. It is not good. If you think it is good, come down here and say that. Say that is why you want to oppose the amendment.

It is worth asking also how we got here. No legislature has acted on this. I haven't heard about hearings in the State legislatures around the country. No referendum has passed. I served in the legislature for 8 years in Missouri and was proud to do so. I served on the committees that considered family law. We debated a lot of issues involving family law. We changed the law a lot. It has not happened in this country. People have not adopted referendum. In fact, all the actions have been the other way. To the extent that they have passed referendum or laws, they have all been in support of traditional marriage.

So how did we get here?

We got here because a majority of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided people should have the right to same-sex marriage. Because of the way our Federal system works, it is very likely--whether people want to admit this or not--that other courts will force people in other States to recognize same-sex marriage because one State has. That is the way our system works. It may not happen, but it is quite likely to happen.

When I heard about that decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, I asked myself: What about everybody else's rights? What is the most basic political right people in this country, and indeed throughout the free world, have? What is the political right that people in this country have fought and died for for hundreds of years? We see people around the world now heroically fighting for this. The first and most basic right is the right of the people to govern themselves.

The Framers thought that right was so self-evident, you didn't have to argue for it. Maybe we should restate it for the Massachusetts Supreme Court. It means that the only just government is the one that derives its powers from the consent of the governed. That means that every act of any governmental body has to be the result of a process in which the people have, at some time, consented.

In this country, people have to consent to the acts by which they are governed. Typically, they could do that through the process of a representative democracy. They elect people or defeat them, depending on whether they agree with them. We would not tolerate it for a second if a President got up one day and said: I don't like the way our society is functioning; I am going to issue a decree and everybody has to do it differently now.

It would not matter whether we agreed, we would say you don't have the authority to do that. It is because of that basic right of self- government that judges are supposed to construe and apply the law, not invent and impose the law.

Now, the construction may be strict or liberal. Provisions of the Constitution may be vague. But the construction has to be a faithful construction--whether it is strict or liberal--to the proper exercise within the American constitutional system of the judicial power. Even if a provision of the Constitution is so vague that we are not certain what the right answer, the right interpretation is, it doesn't mean there are no wrong interpretations. It doesn't mean there are no interpretations which clearly are outside of the scope of what the people who wrote the document said or intended.

I want to assert this before the Senate now: It is wrong to say the Constitution of the United States, or any of the several States, contains a right to same-sex marriage. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that the Massachusetts decision was one of interpretation and application, rather than invention and imposition. They were not interpreting the Constitution; they were imposing what they wanted on the people of Massachusetts, without their consent.

In this country, you don't do that. I have been around legislative bodies a long time. I have won some battles and lost some. Sometimes I think I have lost a lot more than I have won. Certainly, when I served in the minority in the Congress and in the legislature, I lost more battles than I won. That is the way the system works. I can live with that. But I don't like being told I have no right to participate. I don't like being told my views are such that I cannot petition the representative process to get what I want out of it.

Unless we pass a constitutional amendment, we will allow the courts of this country to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans on an issue that is of greater importance to them on a day-to-day basis-- because it involves the way in which their children and other people's children are going to be raised--than most of the issues we discuss. If we cannot agree in this body on anything else, we can agree on this: Everybody should have the right to advance their point of view in the legislative process on this issue, and that we can trust the good sense of the American people to produce the right result in the end. I am willing to do that, but the only way we can do that is by passing a constitutional amendment. That is what this country is about.

I have just a few minutes. I will deal with some of the arguments that have been raised against this. One is that this is political. Well, I have been in legislative bodies a long time. When people start talking about a bill or an argument being political, they are really saying that we know if we have to vote on this, we are going to vote in a way that people probably don't like back home, and we would really rather not vote on it.

Let me say this. This is not a battle that my friend from Colorado sought when he introduced this amendment. This battle is being forced upon us by the courts of the country. If you don't want to vote on this, get the Massachusetts Supreme Court to reverse itself. We will go back to what we had before, and gladly so.

Another argument is that we are holding up other business. I say to the people who are making that argument, as I said at great length on the floor of the Senate the other day, you are filibustering the other business. If you

want to go to other business, stop filibustering it. You filibustered the class action bill last week, the welfare bill, the Energy bill, medical malpractice, and judicial nominations. You can filibuster if you want.

Unfortunately, here we allowed very broad filibustering. But one thing you cannot do is filibuster and then accuse everybody else of being obstructionists. That isn't right. Let the other measures go and we will go with them.

Another argument is that we should show more respect for the Constitution and that we should not amend the Constitution. You know, that is kind of a selective argument. That says basically you can amend it through the courts. The courts can amend it any way they want, without regard to the right of the people to govern themselves; but we cannot amend it through the process that the people have provided to amend it. The argument is kind of cheeky. It says we can get court decisions that exclude you from participating in the normal process, so you cannot pass a law to do anything about it. But then, if you go to the constitutional amendment process, which is the only process we have left open to you, you are not showing any respect for the Constitution.

Look, my time is running out. I see a colleague who may want to add a word or two at the end. You are either for protecting traditional marriage or you are not. There is no way around this debate. The courts are forcing it on us. They have changed the law in Massachusetts. People are getting married there and filing lawsuits in other States to challenge those State laws. This is here. We are either going to do something about it or we are not. You are either for protecting traditional marriage or you are not. It is not about homeland security. It is about whether you really think that marriage, as we have understood it for thousands of years, is important in some sense, even if you cannot explain it, to the kind of society we live in. I think so. I know most of the people think so.

My tone has been one of frustration. I am sorry about that. This frustrates me. It is something that, clearly, we ought to do. I don't know anybody who has come down here and argued against traditional marriage. Let's pass this constitutional amendment, work on it for a reasonable amount of time, get it in as good a shape as we can, and do the business the people expect us to do. Let them make their own decisions about their own culture.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senate, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Utah for being willing to assume the chair for a few minutes so I could make a brief statement about the bill pending before us. I want to say, as I listened when I was in the chair, I appreciated his eloquence on behalf of the bill.

The Senate will realize pretty soon that I have a bit of a cold. If I pause to take a sip of water now and then, it is not for the dramatic effect but so I can finish the statement.

I had originally not intended to say anything about the legislation, although I support it. Anybody who has gotten around their States and heard about the destructive impact of abusive lawsuits on jobs and economic growth has to support doing something. I was not planning to speak on it, but the other night I was presiding when this debate began, and I was fortunate to hear Senator Carper from Delaware give one of his initial remarks. I don't think he realized I was listening as I was presiding because I was doing a little paperwork, but I did listen.

I heard him give examples of abuses of class actions that have occurred around the country, items such as a class action lawsuit in Illinois against a bottled water giant named Poland Spring which claimed that the company's water wasn't pure and wasn't from a spring. Under the settlement the consumers received coupons for discounts on the water. The company didn't agree they had done anything wrong, didn't agree to change the water, and all the plaintiffs got were coupons to buy more of the water they were complaining about. But their attorneys got $1.35 million.

In a Texas class action settlement with Blockbuster over late fees on movie rentals, class members received coupons for more movie rentals. The attorneys received $9.25 million. I don't know how my family missed out on those coupons--I guess because we didn't live in Texas.

I could go on, but Senator Carper made the point that there was obviously a need to remedy these abuses and a need to do that without undermining the efficacy of the class action lawsuit in principle. In other words, we need to be able to have class action lawsuits because sometimes a whole lot of people will be done a small wrong. Each of them will experience some wrong that is so small it is not worthwhile for any one individual to sue, so if they can get together in a class we can remedy that wrong and the attorneys can get reasonable attorney's fees.

But when there is, in fact, no remedy for the plaintiffs, when there may have been no wrong, and when there are these outside attorneys' fees, it is obviously something unjust because it is unjust to make people pay when they have not done anything wrong and it is not very good for the rest of us.

We all know how it works. Those awards are paid and then it is passed along in the form of higher prices or fewer jobs. Senator Carper's point was it should not be all or nothing at all. We should not have to have a system where either we have no class action remedies or we allow these abuses to continue year after year. There is no reason in principle why we should not be able to fix the abuses while keeping the remedy.

He is right. There is no reason in principle we should not be able to do that. There are people of good will on both sides of the aisle who want to do that. There is obviously a solid majority of the Senate who wants to do that. Yet year after year, we do not do that. Why?

It was his speech and my thinking about it that led me to decide to come down here and make a statement because I think I know the reason why. It is because of the filibuster, or more precisely it is because of the way the Senate allows the filibuster to be conducted.

This principle of filibusters is actually a pretty good thing. I think if a determined minority in any legislative body believes something is really bad, it makes sense to give them some remedy to stop that legislation from passing. In fact, I submit to you that the filibuster has been consistently abused in the Senate. Why has that happened? Because the discipline on the filibuster is public accountability. The public doesn't like obstructionism for its own sake. If they see that happening, they will not like it; and if the American people do not like something happening here and focus on it, it tends to stop. I have been around here long enough to see that.

But because of the way the filibuster is conducted in this body, it is almost invisible. Therefore, the people do not know it is happening, and therefore there is no accountability. That is why we have the abuses of it. Why is it invisible? In the Senate, in the first place, as you know, the passage of a bill requires many different steps: the introduction of the bill, assignment to a committee, first and second readings, and all of that.

In most legislative bodies, those steps are pro forma. In the Senate, many of those steps are debatable. And anything that can be debated can be filibustered.

The classic idea of a filibuster, as in ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' with final passage of some bill, people speaking all night to prevent it from being voted on doesn't have to happen in the Senate. You can filibuster a bill on any number of points. You can filibuster it after it has passed to keep it from going to conference. The public doesn't know what is happening.

The second and bigger reason is that in the Senate, as all of us here know--and I think the public may be beginning to realize--you don't have to talk to filibuster.

I have served now in my third legislative body. It is a tremendous honor to serve here. The pinnacle of the legislative career is to serve in the Senate. In most legislative bodies, when people are finished talking about the proposition that is pending, you vote on the proposition.

Many times I have sat in the Chair where the distinguished Senator from Utah is now sitting. When the last speaker has finished some eloquent set of remarks, I have asked, Who seeks recognition? And nobody seeks recognition. It doesn't mean we vote. It means we go to a quorum call, as we did a little while ago. You don't have to speak

to filibuster. You don't have to debate. You just have to decline to agree that debate will end. Unless everybody here either agrees to a unanimous consent agreement, or vote by a 60-vote majority to end debate on a cloture motion, which itself is a rather clumsy way to end debate, the debate goes on and on.

To allow a filibuster in that way, and make it so invisible, tends to empower the extremes in a legislative body in any given proposition.

In most legislative bodies the power in any given proposition, once it reaches the floor of that body, belongs in the middle. It makes sense, doesn't it? Because to pass it you have to have the middle with you, typically. But here the filibuster empowers those folks who like confrontation most. I am not running them down. Every legislative body has to have people whose instinct is to say: I am not going to give in. I am going to stand up for this. I believe in this, or I think it is wrong, or I think it is right, and I am not going to give in much. It is important to have those folks in a legislative body. But you can't have them running the whole show all the time. It empowers those people. It tends to educate people to the temper of partisanship.

It is so tempting when you are in the minority to stop everything through the invisible filibuster and then blame the majority for not being able to pass something. That happens in this whole Congress. I don't blame my friends on the other side of the aisle.

It is so tempting it would require almost a heroic effort, particularly given how divided the country is on a partisan and philosophical standpoint, for them not to have done that.

The way the Senate does it makes interest groups more militant. This bill is a classic example of that. Everybody who looks at this issue knows that we have problems with litigation, at least in certain areas. We have problems in State class action abuses. We have problems with the whole asbestosis system which is driving dozens of big companies into bankruptcy and reducing the number of deep pockets that are available to pay for people who really are sick and have asbestosis. We clearly need reform in these areas.

What would happen if the process was healthier is that our friends in the personal injury bar would know that something was going to happen and would sit down and negotiate, and we would come up with a moderate bill, I think, probably pretty similar to what we have before us today. We would pass it more or less by consensus. But what do you do when you have this filibuster? You can just say no. You can say it doesn't matter how bad it gets, we are going to pressure and lean on those in the Senate who are generally with us philosophically, and we will stop everything from happening. We are empowering the tactically more extreme in this body. We are educating people to the temper of partisanship. We are driving interest groups, which are pretty militant anyway, to be even more extreme. Then we are gumming up the few bills that do pass because now, if you are sitting here and you have some constructive measure you are trying to pass, and you know the only legislation that is going to get through this body this year is the defense authorization, let us say, or the tax relief bill for manufacturers that we have to pass--because if we don't pass it we are going to get increasing trade sanctions all over the world--if these are the two or three bills you know you are going to pass, what do you do? You take your constructive measure which you have wanted to pass for months but can't because nothing else is going through the Senate, and you say: Well, that train is leaving the station and maybe none of the others are, so I am going to put my bill on that.

You use the opportunity to offer nongermane amendments, which personally I like and support. So you offer all kinds of amendments that are completely unrelated to the bill before you just because you know it is the only opportunity you are going to have to pass anything.

Then the public wonders how we get immigration bills on class action reform bills, or how I did this: I put a bill that I believe in very strongly to help fight sickle cell disease on a tax relief bill for manufacturing, and I would do it again. But that is because of the way we are running this place.

What is the effect? It affects everything that gets filibustered. We have seen filibusterss so far in this Senate and in this Congress on the Energy bill, medical malpractice reform, the welfare bill, a number of judges, the asbestosis bill, the class action bill, and a number of other bills which are slow-walked through--the highway bill, the JOBS bill, the faith-based bill. And that doesn't even count all the bills that aren't even brought up because the leadership knows they are going to be filibustered.

Nobody is ever held accountable. The public wonders why the Senate doesn't work.

I am going to say something. I get around this town and I get around Missouri. I am afraid that we are being held in increasingly low regard. I am afraid the Senate is being reduced to its constitutional minimum of authority and effectiveness in this town. We are like a big roadblock. Ideas don't come out of here and go places. It is like the commercial about the roach motel. They check in but they don't check out. That is what happens here. The legislative ideas check in and they never check out.

I know some people say that is a good thing. We don't want anything to pass.

I just sat down this morning preparing these remarks and I made a list of the things which I think we are going to have to address. This is a top 10 list: Keep America strong; a long-term solvency issue involving Social Security and Medicare--I am on the Aging Committee. I will go into that more in a moment. The Senator from Idaho, Mr. Craig, has spoken eloquently on those issues.

The rising cost of health care is a problem, shortage of oil and natural gas, need for alternative energy sources to protect our energy independence and security, the failing electricity transmission grid in all parts of the country, the need to renew the distressed and urban neighborhoods, a burgeoning immigration system, a crumbling transportation infrastructure system, shortages of water in parts of the country, contamination of water resources, management of federally owned natural resources, and a policy we are going to take regarding defense both in the war on terror and also the potential rising power of competitors, such as England and China.

This is the top 10 list. I am not even counting the more divisive issues or the cultural issues on which it would be nice if we could work them out and be able to act. Some of these problems may go away on their own. I am a believer in that.

America is a great country. Maybe if we do not do anything, some of them are going to go away. But they are not all going to go away. Some of them are going to get worse. We cannot solve any of them without some element of participation by the Federal Government. Maybe it is just reform of regulations to allow people in the country to solve the problem.

We are going to have to have Federal participation. That will require, at some point, a Senate that works better than the Senate is working now. We have reached the point where the paralysis in this body is threatening the welfare of the people. Some may say--and I heard it said with response to the motion for cloture--respect for the traditions of the Senate means we cannot do anything about this. Everyone who has been here a while, and I have not been here a while, tells me that never before has the filibuster been taken to this degree.

If we were to apply a corrective, we would be restoring rather than overturning the traditions of this great body. And it is a great body. It is a privilege to be here. I don't know that I have ever worked with as motivated and passionate and intelligent a group of people. I call on Members on both sides of the aisle to consider carefully whether it is not time to change our practices in a way that permits us to work together, that encourages those who seek compromise solutions to the problems facing the country. Not to do so would be a historic abdication of the responsibilities of this Senate.

I yield the floor.