Floor Statements

Mr. President, I simply want to thank the chairman of the Finance Committee, and I thank the ranking member for working this out and having everybody in it together. I welcome working with Senator Santorum. It is a good thing to do. It is dark days in Appalachia now, and this will help a lot. Thank you.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask that I be allowed to speak for several minutes.

Madam President, I rise to let my colleagues know that, at an appropriate time, I plan to offer an amendment to the package of tax cuts that the Senate is, in fact, considering today.

The recent tragedy in West Virginia's coal mines, as well as in Kentucky, highlights the need for Congress to take steps to better protect miners who have worked hard for years to extract the coal used to create over half of all of our electricity and the country doesn't know it because we are always talking about oil.

The amendment I am going to offer provides incentives for coal companies to make crucial investments in equipment and training that will help coal miners return to their families safely each night. The world of coal mining, as you know, is a very close one. Almost nobody ever gets to go into a coal mine for the obvious reasons--its danger and the training needed. So as to that which provides the majority of our power in this country, people never get to see and understand the dangers involved.

Let me briefly explain the tax incentives this amendment would create. First, coal companies would be allowed to immediately expense 50 percent of the cost of purchasing new safety equipment. This is extremely important because American mines simply don't have the best available equipment at this time. In fact, some of the equipment, I regret to say, is the most important--for example, oxygen. Rescue hasn't changed a whit since 1977. Other countries, such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, have much more advanced mining equipment than do we. That is not fair to American miners. We need to mine coal and have companies willing to do it. We need to be absolutely certain that miners are as safe as we can possibly make them.

Several types of safety equipment would be eligible under my amendment for the tax benefit. First, communications technology that enables miners to maintain constant contact with the ground above. That would seem to be easy; to wit, we can talk from the Moon to the Earth but we cannot talk from over ground 500 feet down or a thousand feet down to a miner who is trapped to take their vital signs and do all kinds of things so we can protect them and get them out safely.

I am absolutely confident that the technology for doing this exists. It is just that it hasn't been put into use. That is not fair. So there are several types, and I mentioned the contact with ground. Secondly, electronic tracking devices that enable an individual above ground to locate miners underground at all times.

Third, emergency breathing apparatuses, including devices carried by miners and additional oxygen supplies stored by the mine in tunnels off to the side of the mine as you go down the main shafts.

You are no doubt aware that Canada had a problem very recently. They had these sort of sheds, little houses that went behind that people could go in and be totally safe. In there was oxygen, food, and all kinds of things. Nobody was hurt or killed because they had equipment which we don't have. I think Congress needs to decide whether, with coal mining increasing in this country and with probably not much chance of doing anything major about oil, we ought to be protecting our miners so they can mine coal for us.

Finally, mine atmospheric monitoring equipment to measure the levels of carbon monoxide and methane and oxygen in the mine at all times. That is very important because often a rescue team, if it is in a mine, cannot proceed if the level of carbon monoxide, for example, is too high or if methane is too high and there is a chance of an explosion. Knowing the levels of all of those is important to be able to understand that from above ground.

In addition to investment in lifesaving technology, we need our mines to invest more in mine rescue teams. Experienced miners, specially trained to rescue their fellow workers, are essential in the event of an emergency.

I can remember when I was Governor, we used to have right outside my window, so to speak, multi-State competition between mine rescue teams from various States. Mine rescue operations are extraordinarily complex, extraordinarily precise, and they have to be taught and practiced, and they have to keep at it. So that it is in our interest that, unlike what happened at Sago where no mine rescue teams arrived for a long time because Sago did not have its own rescue team, being a relatively small mine, they do not have to wait. The result at Sago, as we all know, in part, is that 12 people did not live.

Of course, training and equipping a mine rescue team is expensive. Companies have not committed enough resources to having skilled rescue teams available at all times and during all shifts, if there is a multishift operation.

Therefore, the amendment I am proposing would provide a mine operator a tax credit of $10,000 for each miner that they have trained and equipped as a mine rescue team member. Somebody will say that is a lot of money. If a mine doesn't have a rescue team, then the chance--if there is an explosion--of safely getting them out of the mine diminishes enormously. To me, it is akin to the cost of doing business. Having said that, the people don't have it. I think we have to be able to ease them into it, to encourage them, incentivize them to do it--not make it permanent but incentivize them to make it permanent so they get going on that. It is my understanding that a credit of this size would offset approximately 20 percent of the cost of preparing a miner to be ready to rescue his colleagues. So it is not paying for the whole thing.

I believe we need to make our mines safer as soon as possible, so I am proposing that both of these tax incentives be available only for the next 3 years. We need coal mines that are improving their safety standards immediately, which also gives them sufficient time to find or develop the best equipment.

I know that in DOD, DARPA, for example, in research labs around the country--I had someone visit me yesterday with all kinds of ideas, and they are working on mine safety rescue equipment. There just has not been a push on the part of anybody--MSHA, the companies, us, whoever-- to get more modern equipment into the mines. If you are using the same oxygen rescue equipment that you were in 1977, we know that is inadequate.

Let me answer some skeptics who may be wondering why we need to provide tax breaks to companies to encourage them to take safety precautions they ought to be required to take. That is a very fair question, and I am sure it will come up.

I share the desire to mandate by, either Federal law or regulation, strict safety regulations on America's coal mines. I believe we owe coal miners the safest possible work environment, all

within the context of coal being the energy source of the future, not exclusively, but the energy source, the biggest one of the future.

That said, I believe we must also act in good faith with coal companies. This is not a punishment. This is about improving the situation. If we are asking them to make substantial new investments in specific technology and training, it is appropriate to offer tax relief to lessen the impact of those investments at least for a period of 3 years.

Following any kind of accident in a mine, the most important things are locating the miners underground--that is very hard to do now-- communicating with them--and that is hard to do now--making sure they have sufficient supplies of oxygen until they are rescued--and that is very hard to do now since the oxygen usually runs out after 1 hour--and having skilled and well-trained mine rescue teams quickly available.

These are worthy results. Sometimes people say: Can a mine afford it? The answer is yes. Look at the Sago mine in northern West Virginia. That is going to be closed for a long period of time. What they are losing in the way of their bottom line compared to what I am talking about here isn't even close. So I think it is in our interest to do this, and I really believe that.

Miners deserve to know that in the event of an accident that their employers have made the investments necessary for their safe return. The amendment I am proposing today will stimulate such investments.

In closing, I am very pleased to be working with my colleagues on the Finance Committee, Chairman Grassley and Senator Baucus, on this proposal. I am grateful for their cooperation and assistance as we try to make coal mines safer. And I am very hopeful that these investment incentives can be included in the tax bill before the Senate.

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

Mr. President, it is my honor today to join with my colleague Senator Byrd, who I am sure will be here very shortly. We are very proud to announce that we are, as an entire West Virginia delegation, introducing the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 2006.

The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster in West Virginia and across large parts of the country as we watched the damage and the pain and the crying and the anger because of a series of coal mine accidents that happened in West Virginia where 14 miners lost their lives and in the State of Kentucky where a miner lost his life. There is no real way of describing the sadness and the grief of being with families as they find out their coal-miner spouses are no longer alive.

Everybody understands that coal mining is very dangerous, but you go in every day with the hope that it will be all right. It is a way of life. People ask, Why do you go into coal mining? They go into coal mining to keep the lights of America on and they do it to earn a good wage.

What we have to do is make sure the legacy of these 15 miners who died--1

in Kentucky and 14 in West Virginia, 15 miners in all--is that we make sure this kind of tragedy never happens again.

It is amazing to be in a coal-mining community when tragedy hits. People pull together amazingly, in Kentucky very much like West Virginia in that respect, and there is a sense of family. One person's loss is every person's loss.

Obviously, we have the losses that come in Iraq and in wartime in general. But there is something about coal mining. When there is a death in coal mining, it is devastating to a community and it takes a long time to heal.

I would come to churches--the Freewill Baptist Church in Logan County, the Sago Baptist Church in Upshur County, one south and the other up north--and you learn spiritually and personally forever with people who are bound together forever because they have gone through something which is truly difficult.

I note that in the case of Kentucky, we even have evidence of a miner who was killed two years ago who was actually videotaping with his video camera things which he thought were not proper in that particular mine, as he was killed. He was still videotaping as he was killed.

Legislation is needed.

I note the presence on the floor of my distinguished senior colleague, Senator Byrd.

What we plan to do in the Senate and in the House--we in the Senate and our three Members in the House--is, in fact, to take the first step toward improving mine safety and doing it through legislation.

It is a sad thing to say, for the country and for all of us, where we have gone through a period of years where we haven't had large numbers of people killed in the mines, that we have been lulled into thinking that mining is not dangerous. That has been compounded by the fact that the obsession with oil which the President spoke about last night has been very real. What is going on overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places of danger across the world has generally tended to pull us away, I think maybe for 20 years, from a review of what coal mine safety legislation, rules, and regulation through MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Agency, ought to be. Things haven't changed a lot. The safety technology in the mines has not changed a lot. There is a bit of a lax attitude, and a little bit of indifference. This is the world we live in--the world of mining--and it is as it is, and it ever shall be. That kind of thinking we have to stop.

As a delegation, led by Senator Byrd, we are determined to do that. We are determined that the legacy of these 14 miners in West Virginia and the one in Kentucky will be that this kind of accident never takes place again. We do not want that to happen.

The irony is that coal, which has always been taken for granted by the American people, to my distress, is a full 31 percent--and it has been for years--of all of our energy use in America. People are always thinking about importing oil, and we do. That is a tremendous addition to our trade deficit, and it causes all kinds of other problems when we are dealing with very unstable countries--increasingly unstable countries. But all the while coal has been sitting there. We have a 250-year supply of coal in the United States of America. That can be substituted for much of that oil.

The coal industry is growing. The price of coal is going up. People are going to be opening new coal mines. I wouldn't say it is a hot industry in financial terms, but it is very close to it, which means there are going to be more mines opened. Therefore, more people will be getting into mining--some will be small, some will be larger. We have to make sure they will be mining safely and responsibly. That takes vigilance on our part, on the part of the Secretary of Labor, and on MSHA's part. That is why Senator Byrd, my senior Senator, will no doubt submit the bill.

But we want to call immediate attention to the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the Secretary of Labor because they have in their power right now the ability to cause to happen a number of the suggestions which we are making. They can simply do it. They have the rulemaking power to do that, but they have not done that.

What we are doing is looking at a few ways that the Mine Safety and Health Administration and also the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, can act aggressively to improve mine safety, as they can do without a single change in any law at all. In many cases, Congress has given them this authority. It is just a matter of the Secretary of Labor moving on these issues. It ought to ring loud and clear, and there ought to be results from that.

In our bill, we also instruct the Secretary to promulgate rules quickly to require a series of things: advanced communication and breathing apparatus, technologies that can be deployed in our mines.

This is something which has baffled Senator Byrd, myself, and our delegation for a long time. We have a lot of rules and regulations; regarding breathing apparatuses, for example; oxygen supplies, for example--which have not changed since 1977, or before. We have just gone through a period of years when we have not put the focus on coal mine safety. Now that is at an end. We have to have advanced communications and breathing apparatus technologies.

It has been said often--it will be said once again--that we could talk with Neil Armstrong on the Moon when he was there many years ago, but we can't talk with a coal miner in a two-way communications system who may be 1,000 or 2,000 feet underground. To say the technology for that doesn't exist is to say that America isn't America.

I have had in my office, as I am sure others have, numerous people in the last several days pouring out ideas they are working on or have developed. The families of the victims gave us many ideas of what could be done. We are a country of new technologies. We have simply declined to apply it to coal mine safety, and the coal mines have been a bit lax to take the initiative on that. This is something we are all going to have to do together. We have to demand that rescue teams be staffed and on site in every single mine.

There was a major problem, particularly at the Sago mine up north. But rescue teams have to be a part of an operation. If you are going to start a business, a rescue team within your workforce has to be a part of what you do--not simply wait for a rescue team 2 hours away to collect itself and then come. That is usually too late. It is amazing to me that that situation exists.

We have to also develop a schedule of fines for mining violations. They have to mean something. The average mine violation at Sago--there seem to be several hundred of them--all seems to be $60 or $270. That doesn't change behavior. That encourages a company to say, Look, we will pay because there is no real penalty on us.

Fines can be charged up to $60,000, and we are going to increase that. Mines can be shut down by Federal mine inspectors if they choose to do that. But for the most part they have not chosen to do that. The lesson has to sink in to be responsible as a coal mine or else you can't do it.

Another matter in our legislation is that we have to notify the MSHA immediately when there is an accident. That was not done in a couple of our cases. In one case, it took a very long period of time to notify the agency. That seems a small thing, but that is a huge thing, particularly because small mines today don't necessarily have their own rescue teams.

There have to be extra alerts that go out across the Federal and the State bureaucracy and within the mining community so that rescue teams can get to the spot as soon as possible.

So we want the Federal mine safety agency to make the health of miners its first and foremost priority.

As of the day that first problem happened at Sago with the death of so many miners, it has become my first priority and will stay that way until we get what we need in coal mine safety, working with the companies, with the Federal Government and, where necessary, to use legislation.

The enforcement of mine safety laws requires a set of penalties that reflects the seriousness. We cannot have a situation such as we had at Sago Mine--$60 or $270 fines with over 200 violations. They have to reflect the seriousness, and be proportional. They have to be larger and have impact. Companies cannot just say, I will go ahead and pay that, but I don't have to make any

change because I can afford to pay that; then I don't have to have people coming in and looking at what is going on in my mine as much.

MSHA has minimal penalties and that is the fault of all of us; but primarily MSHA should do its job. As part of MSHA's invigorated commitment to the safety of miners, we are going to seek to have in our legislation the agency enforce a longstanding rule which was canceled in 2004. It is a very serious rule and one that I will briefly explain. Mine operators have been using fresh air escapeways to house coal conveyer belts. What does that mean? The first thing we need to understand, mines are required to have fresh air escapeways. These are supposed to be free from potentially combustible material, combustible gases, and the possibility of fire. Where there is a beltway--which costs $100 million plus in some cases; it is a very large operation--a single friction could ignite a fire. That fire, then, can take off into the coal seams and cause terrible damage and destruction of human life.

Belt fires such as the one resulting in the deaths of the two brave West Virginians at the Alma mine in southern West Virginia are some of the most dangerous occurrences in coal mining in any form. The very least we can do to protect miners is keep the entrances to the mines-- where these miners risk their lives every day to provide the rest of the country with the energy--free of such avoidable hazard. That was the rule. That was the law for many years.

For reasons we can only guess, MSHA altered the enforcement practices to allow for entry coal belts in 2004. That is wrong. That is the lack of vigilance on the part of all who watch over mining.

Finally, our legislation calls for the creation of a position of miner ombudsman. People say, So what? There is a big ``so what.'' It is a fact that miners in some mines are afraid to report safety deficiencies. They are afraid to report certain matters because they think if they do they will get in trouble or get fired or their sister or brother will get fired from a coal mine. I am not making an accusation, but I heard a great deal of talk about that condition when I was in West Virginia for many days, along with my senior Senator, Senator Byrd. I heard that a great deal.

The miners have to have a voice in an overall Federal agency. That voice in the overall Federal agency--MSHA--has to be out of the political process, almost detached, in a sense, from MSHA itself. That is important because we have to provide people a place to report mine safety problems. They have to be able to do it anonymously and they have to be able to do it feeling safe about so doing.

My West Virginia colleague and I do not pretend to be doing a complete fix of mine safety legislation. We do believe our act is a first strong step on a path that Congress should have started down some time ago. It is immensely sad it took the deaths of 14 West Virginians and 1 Kentuckian to galvanize the emotion, anger, and determination one has to have when it comes to making sure the coal mines are safe.

Coal mines are a world within themselves. The taste of a coal mine, the smell of a coal mine, the brotherhood of a coal mine, the danger of a coal mine, these are things which are part of people's lives. Most people in West Virginia, most people across the United States of America, have never been down a coal mine because it is restricted and people cannot wander in to look around. Those who have oversight responsibility have to make sure they do their job.

I, for one, believe those who do represent the mining State need to take this responsibility, as do the companies, as do the operators at the ground level, and also the miners themselves. I have had a slew of ideas in the last several days. I am optimistic we can find technology--it may come out of DARPA or DOD. Remember in the first gulf war, the Marines, Air Force, Navy, and Army could not communicate with each other when they went into Kuwait. Their radio bands were all different. Everyone knows that story. That was bad. They fixed it. That is what we have in our coal mines. That has to be fixed.

Mine safety moved to the top of my legislative priority list the very day I heard of these tragedies. I commend this important legislation to my colleagues. I invite them to join Senator Byrd and myself in cosponsoring this legislation.

Mr. President, it is my honor today to join with my colleague Senator Byrd, who I am sure will be here very shortly. We are very proud to announce that we are, as an entire West Virginia delegation, introducing the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 2006.

The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster in West Virginia and across large parts of the country as we watched the damage and the pain and the crying and the anger because of a series of coal mine accidents that happened in West Virginia where 14 miners lost their lives and in the State of Kentucky where a miner lost his life. There is no real way of describing the sadness and the grief of being with families as they find out their coal-miner spouses are no longer alive.

Everybody understands that coal mining is very dangerous, but you go in every day with the hope that it will be all right. It is a way of life. People ask, Why do you go into coal mining? They go into coal mining to keep the lights of America on and they do it to earn a good wage.

What we have to do is make sure the legacy of these 15 miners who died--1

in Kentucky and 14 in West Virginia, 15 miners in all--is that we make sure this kind of tragedy never happens again.

It is amazing to be in a coal-mining community when tragedy hits. People pull together amazingly, in Kentucky very much like West Virginia in that respect, and there is a sense of family. One person's loss is every person's loss.

Obviously, we have the losses that come in Iraq and in wartime in general. But there is something about coal mining. When there is a death in coal mining, it is devastating to a community and it takes a long time to heal.

I would come to churches--the Freewill Baptist Church in Logan County, the Sago Baptist Church in Upshur County, one south and the other up north--and you learn spiritually and personally forever with people who are bound together forever because they have gone through something which is truly difficult.

I note that in the case of Kentucky, we even have evidence of a miner who was killed two years ago who was actually videotaping with his video camera things which he thought were not proper in that particular mine, as he was killed. He was still videotaping as he was killed.

Legislation is needed.

I note the presence on the floor of my distinguished senior colleague, Senator Byrd.

What we plan to do in the Senate and in the House--we in the Senate and our three Members in the House--is, in fact, to take the first step toward improving mine safety and doing it through legislation.

It is a sad thing to say, for the country and for all of us, where we have gone through a period of years where we haven't had large numbers of people killed in the mines, that we have been lulled into thinking that mining is not dangerous. That has been compounded by the fact that the obsession with oil which the President spoke about last night has been very real. What is going on overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places of danger across the world has generally tended to pull us away, I think maybe for 20 years, from a review of what coal mine safety legislation, rules, and regulation through MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Agency, ought to be. Things haven't changed a lot. The safety technology in the mines has not changed a lot. There is a bit of a lax attitude, and a little bit of indifference. This is the world we live in--the world of mining--and it is as it is, and it ever shall be. That kind of thinking we have to stop.

As a delegation, led by Senator Byrd, we are determined to do that. We are determined that the legacy of these 14 miners in West Virginia and the one in Kentucky will be that this kind of accident never takes place again. We do not want that to happen.

The irony is that coal, which has always been taken for granted by the American people, to my distress, is a full 31 percent--and it has been for years--of all of our energy use in America. People are always thinking about importing oil, and we do. That is a tremendous addition to our trade deficit, and it causes all kinds of other problems when we are dealing with very unstable countries--increasingly unstable countries. But all the while coal has been sitting there. We have a 250-year supply of coal in the United States of America. That can be substituted for much of that oil.

The coal industry is growing. The price of coal is going up. People are going to be opening new coal mines. I wouldn't say it is a hot industry in financial terms, but it is very close to it, which means there are going to be more mines opened. Therefore, more people will be getting into mining--some will be small, some will be larger. We have to make sure they will be mining safely and responsibly. That takes vigilance on our part, on the part of the Secretary of Labor, and on MSHA's part. That is why Senator Byrd, my senior Senator, will no doubt submit the bill.

But we want to call immediate attention to the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the Secretary of Labor because they have in their power right now the ability to cause to happen a number of the suggestions which we are making. They can simply do it. They have the rulemaking power to do that, but they have not done that.

What we are doing is looking at a few ways that the Mine Safety and Health Administration and also the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, can act aggressively to improve mine safety, as they can do without a single change in any law at all. In many cases, Congress has given them this authority. It is just a matter of the Secretary of Labor moving on these issues. It ought to ring loud and clear, and there ought to be results from that.

In our bill, we also instruct the Secretary to promulgate rules quickly to require a series of things: advanced communication and breathing apparatus, technologies that can be deployed in our mines.

This is something which has baffled Senator Byrd, myself, and our delegation for a long time. We have a lot of rules and regulations; regarding breathing apparatuses, for example; oxygen supplies, for example--which have not changed since 1977, or before. We have just gone through a period of years when we have not put the focus on coal mine safety. Now that is at an end. We have to have advanced communications and breathing apparatus technologies.

It has been said often--it will be said once again--that we could talk with Neil Armstrong on the Moon when he was there many years ago, but we can't talk with a coal miner in a two-way communications system who may be 1,000 or 2,000 feet underground. To say the technology for that doesn't exist is to say that America isn't America.

I have had in my office, as I am sure others have, numerous people in the last several days pouring out ideas they are working on or have developed. The families of the victims gave us many ideas of what could be done. We are a country of new technologies. We have simply declined to apply it to coal mine safety, and the coal mines have been a bit lax to take the initiative on that. This is something we are all going to have to do together. We have to demand that rescue teams be staffed and on site in every single mine.

There was a major problem, particularly at the Sago mine up north. But rescue teams have to be a part of an operation. If you are going to start a business, a rescue team within your workforce has to be a part of what you do--not simply wait for a rescue team 2 hours away to collect itself and then come. That is usually too late. It is amazing to me that that situation exists.

We have to also develop a schedule of fines for mining violations. They have to mean something. The average mine violation at Sago--there seem to be several hundred of them--all seems to be $60 or $270. That doesn't change behavior. That encourages a company to say, Look, we will pay because there is no real penalty on us.

Fines can be charged up to $60,000, and we are going to increase that. Mines can be shut down by Federal mine inspectors if they choose to do that. But for the most part they have not chosen to do that. The lesson has to sink in to be responsible as a coal mine or else you can't do it.

Another matter in our legislation is that we have to notify the MSHA immediately when there is an accident. That was not done in a couple of our cases. In one case, it took a very long period of time to notify the agency. That seems a small thing, but that is a huge thing, particularly because small mines today don't necessarily have their own rescue teams.

There have to be extra alerts that go out across the Federal and the State bureaucracy and within the mining community so that rescue teams can get to the spot as soon as possible.

So we want the Federal mine safety agency to make the health of miners its first and foremost priority.

As of the day that first problem happened at Sago with the death of so many miners, it has become my first priority and will stay that way until we get what we need in coal mine safety, working with the companies, with the Federal Government and, where necessary, to use legislation.

The enforcement of mine safety laws requires a set of penalties that reflects the seriousness. We cannot have a situation such as we had at Sago Mine--$60 or $270 fines with over 200 violations. They have to reflect the seriousness, and be proportional. They have to be larger and have impact. Companies cannot just say, I will go ahead and pay that, but I don't have to make any

change because I can afford to pay that; then I don't have to have people coming in and looking at what is going on in my mine as much.

MSHA has minimal penalties and that is the fault of all of us; but primarily MSHA should do its job. As part of MSHA's invigorated commitment to the safety of miners, we are going to seek to have in our legislation the agency enforce a longstanding rule which was canceled in 2004. It is a very serious rule and one that I will briefly explain. Mine operators have been using fresh air escapeways to house coal conveyer belts. What does that mean? The first thing we need to understand, mines are required to have fresh air escapeways. These are supposed to be free from potentially combustible material, combustible gases, and the possibility of fire. Where there is a beltway--which costs $100 million plus in some cases; it is a very large operation--a single friction could ignite a fire. That fire, then, can take off into the coal seams and cause terrible damage and destruction of human life.

Belt fires such as the one resulting in the deaths of the two brave West Virginians at the Alma mine in southern West Virginia are some of the most dangerous occurrences in coal mining in any form. The very least we can do to protect miners is keep the entrances to the mines-- where these miners risk their lives every day to provide the rest of the country with the energy--free of such avoidable hazard. That was the rule. That was the law for many years.

For reasons we can only guess, MSHA altered the enforcement practices to allow for entry coal belts in 2004. That is wrong. That is the lack of vigilance on the part of all who watch over mining.

Finally, our legislation calls for the creation of a position of miner ombudsman. People say, So what? There is a big ``so what.'' It is a fact that miners in some mines are afraid to report safety deficiencies. They are afraid to report certain matters because they think if they do they will get in trouble or get fired or their sister or brother will get fired from a coal mine. I am not making an accusation, but I heard a great deal of talk about that condition when I was in West Virginia for many days, along with my senior Senator, Senator Byrd. I heard that a great deal.

The miners have to have a voice in an overall Federal agency. That voice in the overall Federal agency--MSHA--has to be out of the political process, almost detached, in a sense, from MSHA itself. That is important because we have to provide people a place to report mine safety problems. They have to be able to do it anonymously and they have to be able to do it feeling safe about so doing.

My West Virginia colleague and I do not pretend to be doing a complete fix of mine safety legislation. We do believe our act is a first strong step on a path that Congress should have started down some time ago. It is immensely sad it took the deaths of 14 West Virginians and 1 Kentuckian to galvanize the emotion, anger, and determination one has to have when it comes to making sure the coal mines are safe.

Coal mines are a world within themselves. The taste of a coal mine, the smell of a coal mine, the brotherhood of a coal mine, the danger of a coal mine, these are things which are part of people's lives. Most people in West Virginia, most people across the United States of America, have never been down a coal mine because it is restricted and people cannot wander in to look around. Those who have oversight responsibility have to make sure they do their job.

I, for one, believe those who do represent the mining State need to take this responsibility, as do the companies, as do the operators at the ground level, and also the miners themselves. I have had a slew of ideas in the last several days. I am optimistic we can find technology--it may come out of DARPA or DOD. Remember in the first gulf war, the Marines, Air Force, Navy, and Army could not communicate with each other when they went into Kuwait. Their radio bands were all different. Everyone knows that story. That was bad. They fixed it. That is what we have in our coal mines. That has to be fixed.

Mine safety moved to the top of my legislative priority list the very day I heard of these tragedies. I commend this important legislation to my colleagues. I invite them to join Senator Byrd and myself in cosponsoring this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to share my thoughts and concerns about the President's nomination of Samuel Alito to be an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It goes without saying that the decision whether to confirm a nominee for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court is among the Senate's most serious and solemn constitutional obligations.

My ultimate test for whether to support a nominee to the Supreme Court rests with two questions: will the nominee protect the best interests of West Virginians and will the nominee uphold the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Americans that are set out in the Constitution and in our laws. It is a high standard, as it must be for a lifetime appointment to the highest Court in the land.

In the last few weeks and months, through careful consideration, I have attempted to answer those two questions. I have concluded that Judge Alito's judicial record, his writings, and his statements portray a man who will not do enough to stand up against power when the rights of average Americans are on the line and who will not do enough to stand up against the President when the checks and balances in our Constitution are on the line.

I will not support a filibuster because I see it as an attempt to delay his certain confirmation. But I will register my grave concerns about Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court by voting against confirmation when that final vote is before us.

My decision is the result of a long and deliberative process.

As my record plainly shows, I have never applied a partisan or ideological litmus test to nominees. George W. Bush was elected as a conservative President, and I have supported his conservative choices at every level. On the judiciary alone, I have voted to confirm 203 out of 212 judges nominated by President Bush. Just 4 months ago, I voted in support of Chief Justice John Roberts, a true conservative, because I concluded that he would consider fully the lives of average people, the lives of those in need and those whose voices often are not heard. I believed on balance that he would be his own man in the face of inevitable outside pressures.

In recent weeks and months, I have heard from hundreds of West Virginians through letters, telephone calls, and personal conversations. Many have expressed strong opposition to Judge Alito, and many have expressed strong support for him. I have weighed all of their views carefully.

I also have labored over Judge Alito's record--his early writings, his rulings, his speeches, and his Senate testimony--and I met personally with Judge Alito. I wanted to hear directly from him, in his own words, what kind of an Associate Justice he would be.

There is no question he is an intelligent man with a deep knowledge of our legal system. During our conversations, he was a gentleman in every sense of the word. But for me these important character traits are not enough to warrant elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I have concluded that although Judge Alito is a well-qualified jurist, I cannot in good conscience support a nominee whose core beliefs and judicial record exhibit simply too much deference to power at the expense of the individual.

Particularly in the committee hearings, when pressed on issues such as individual rights and Presidential powers, Judge Alito's answers troubled me--they were limited and perfunctory. I was left with a strong sense of his ability to recite and analyze the law as it stands but with very little sense of his appreciation for the principles and the real people behind those laws.

Unfortunately, Judge Alito's record does not allay those concerns. As a government lawyer, a Federal prosecutor, and a 15-year Federal judge on the Third Circuit, with lifetime tenure, Judge Alito has repeatedly sided against people with few or no resources. The average person up against a big corporation, an employer, or even

the government itself, all too often comes out on the short end of the stick in front of Judge Alito.

I am particularly troubled by one case, RNS Services v. Secretary of Labor. In RNS Services, Judge Alito argued, in a lone dissent, against protecting workers in a Pennsylvania coal plant by not enforcing the jurisdiction of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA. Judge Alito claimed that the coal processing plant was closer to a factory than a mine, and therefore should be governed by the more lenient Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, standards. Fortunately for the miners, the majority of judges in the case did not agree with Judge Alito, and MSHA's standards prevailed.

Outside the courtroom, Judge Alito has at various times in his career suggested, directly and indirectly, that he supports a disproportionately powerful President and executive branch. As a mid career government lawyer, his writings showed a solicitous deference to the executive branch and a willingness to undercut the constitutional authority of Congress. As recently as 2000, Judge Alito forcefully argued in support of a controversial theory known as the ``unitary executive'' which would allow the President to act in contravention of the laws passed by Congress in carrying out his duties.

As vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have developed an even greater appreciation for the wisdom of our Nation's Founders in creating a system of checks and balances among the judicial, executive and legislative branches of Government. The interaction between the President and the Congress on matters of national security, classified and unclassified, is incredibly important to our safety and our future. Today there is a serious legal and constitutional debate going on in our country about whether the President, who already has enormous inherent powers as the leader of our country, has expanded his executive reach beyond the bounds of the law and the Constitution. The fact is the President does not write the laws, nor is he charged with interpreting them--the Constitution is unequivocally clear that lawmaking resides with the Congress and interpretation resides with the courts--yet this President, on many fronts, is attempting to do both.

This alarming trend has been exacerbated by the fact that we have a single party controlling both the White House and the Congress, resulting in minimal congressional oversight of an overreaching executive branch.

The Supreme Court, in the coming months and years, will be forced to rule on any cases related to expansion of Executive power. This nominee will play a pivotal role in settling the legal questions of today and charting a course for the legal questions of our children's and grandchildren's generations.

These are core questions: What is the scope of presidential power under the Constitution? What is the appropriate balance between the President and the Congress? When must the constitutionally protected rights of average Americans--workers' rights, families' rights, and individuals' rights--prevail?

At the end of the day, I am left with the fear that Judge Alito brings to the Court a longstanding bias in favor of an all-powerful presidency and against West Virginians' basic needs and interests.

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

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

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

Mr. President, last week I came before this body to highlight the potentially harmful effects of budget reconciliation on our Nation's working families. I asked my colleagues to hold firm against the special interests in order to protect the Federal guarantee of Medicaid benefits for the 50 million Americans who depend on this vital program for health care. When the Medicaid motion to instruct conferees passed by a vote of 75 to 16, I thought the Senate was serious about preserving access to health coverage for children, pregnant women, the elderly, and disabled across our country.

However, my hope quickly faded when the budget reconciliation conference report was released earlier this week. Instead of providing more assistance to families in need, the reconciliation conference report includes even greater cuts than those passed in the House of Representatives to vital safety net programs like Medicaid.

Under this conference bill, the early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment, EPSDT, benefit, which provides children with access to necessary immunizations, checkups, and preventive services, is eliminated. This means that low-income children--no matter how poor--will no longer be guaranteed vision, hearing and dental screenings; coverage for eyeglasses; therapy services, medical equipment that will allow them to attend school; or any other Medicaid services. Without access to this comprehensive benefit, many children will not get the vital medical care they need and will develop medical conditions that could have been prevented.

The reconciliation language also begins to erode Federal laws protecting Medicaid recipients from burdensome cost-sharing. Under this bill, States would be allowed to index nominal cost sharing amounts by medical inflation, which grows at least twice as fast as wages. States would also be allowed to charge co-insurance up to four times higher than the 5 percent co-insurance allowed today. This means that Medicaid beneficiaries could pay as much as 20 percent of the cost of any Medicaid service--which for some would consume their entire monthly income. Such cost-sharing requirements are unacceptable for a safety- net program designed to help working families when times get tough.

This bill gives States the green light to vary benefit packages based on factors such as geography and disease. If enacted, Medicaid recipients will no longer have equal protection under the law. Instead, residents in rural areas of a State could receive fewer Medicaid benefits than those living in more populated, urban areas. Individuals with diseases that are expensive to treat may receive a narrower set of benefits than those with diseases that are less expensive to treat. And, if residents and diseases are treated differently in a State, then providers can also be reimbursed differently depending on their geographic location and the types of patients they treat. Such a haphazard benefit system will lead to more emergency room visits by beneficiaries and decreased provider participation in the Medicaid program. It would appear that, for some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the vote in favor of the motion to instruct conferees was nothing more than a procedural motion--more rhetoric than substance, more posturing than true concern--because many of the Medicaid provisions included in the budget reconciliation package got even worse after the Senate voted overwhelmingly in opposition to increased beneficiary cost-sharing, barriers to eligibility and enrollment, and any other provisions that would undermine the Federal guarantee of Medicaid coverage.

In all my time in the Senate, I cannot remember a time when we have considered such drastic cuts to safety-net programs that threaten to devastate working families. These are families who struggle to eat and pay their bills, let alone pay for much needed health care services; families of limited means who have done their best to contribute to a system that is now essentially turning its back on them. The cuts contained in this budget reconciliation conference report are reprehensible.

This country has a moral obligation to help our fellow Americans in their time of need. We should not offer billions of dollars in additional giveaways to the wealthiest Americans and special interests at the expense of working families already struggling to make ends meet.

I believe we can do better. Hard-working Americans deserve better; low-income children deserve better; the elderly, the disabled and parents who want to see their children go to college and succeed deserve better. We have a responsibility, Mr. President, and I would hope we would live up to that responsibility.

Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the distinguished Senator from North Dakota.

Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006

Mr. President, I have asked to address the Senate on a national security matter of great concern to me. I call my colleagues' attention to the Senate's inexplicable failure to pass the fiscal year 2006 Intelligence authorization bill.

The bill was approved and reported by the Intelligence Committee on September 29, and it has been available for Senate action since November 16. This legislation is too important to be allowed to languish in legislative limbo. That is where it is. I am at a loss to understand why the Senate cannot complete action before we adjourn on a matter of national security that is this important.

As I understand the current parliamentary situation, the Intelligence authorization bill cannot be brought up or be passed under unanimous consent because of Republican objection, and the majority leader has decided that it does not merit the minimal amount of floor time needed to approve the bill, which would pass quickly.

I am informed that one or more Republican Senators object to the inclusion of amendments offered by Democratic Senators even though Chairman Roberts has accepted those amendments--and those amendments were agreed to by the full committee. If there is opposition to these provisions, I urge the majority leader to allow us to bring up the bill, debate, and vote on the amendments. Our side is willing to agree to very short time agreements to each of the three amendments.

The unwillingness to consider this bill is more puzzling because of the bipartisan effort that has gone into the development of this bill.

The Republican objection is preventing us from considering this critical national security legislation. The Intelligence Committee is, after all, an exceedingly important committee which is burdened with heavy responsibilities and which needs to have an authorizing piece of legislation underneath it. I hope, whatever the objection is, the majority leader and Senator Roberts can find a way to overcome it before we finish our business for this session.

The recent revelations related to surveillance and intelligence collection within the United States and the lack of effective congressional oversight of that program make passage of this legislation even more critical. One of the important themes of the bill is the improvement of oversight, both within the intelligence community and by Congress itself. That would include the Intelligence Committee, which needs to be having intelligence oversight hearings on a number of matters, which it is not now doing. This theme is embodied in several sections of the legislation--in the classified annex and specifically amendments offered specifically by Senators Kennedy and Kerry.

In both the public text of our bill and the associated classified annex, the committee also has included language requiring the provision of information to the Intelligence Committees, specifically about something called detention and interrogation, which has a fair share of public attention. Additionally, the amendments offered by Senators Kennedy and Kerry, each of which has been agreed to, as I have indicated, by Chairman Roberts and the full committee, also will require additional information Congress needs in order to oversee detention and interrogation programs, something the Intelligence Committee should be doing.

The Kerry amendment, my colleagues will recall, was added to the Defense authorization bill without objection, only to be dropped in conference.

Finally, an amendment offered by Senator Kennedy and accepted by Chairman Roberts will require the Director of National Intelligence to provide the congressional Intelligence Committee all Presidential daily briefs, or portions of them, from the beginning of President Clinton's second term in January of 1997 until March 19, 2003, when our troops actually crossed into Iraq on that day, which refer to Iraq or otherwise address Iraq in any way, shape, or form. This information will fill an important gap in the Intelligence Committee's access to all intelligence available prior to the war in Iraq.

If we do not act on this legislation, it will be an unprecedented failure.

Since the Intelligence Committee was created, we have had an unblemished record of 27 years of completing work with this critical authorizing legislation. Never once have we failed. The annual Intelligence authorization bill has rightly been considered ``must pass'' legislation. That is exactly how we should view it.

I call upon the President to weigh in and break this impasse. The President has been critical of bipartisan concerns voiced about the PATRIOT Act conference report but has been curiously silent about the Republican roadblocks preventing passage of this critical piece of national security legislation.

If the Republican objection to the unanimous consent agreement cannot be overcome, I hope the majority leader will change his mind and allow the Senate to consider the bill under a short time agreement with votes on any issues in contention.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate go into a quorum and that the time be equally divided between both sides.

Mr. President, there are many provisions within this reconciliation conference report that are deeply troubling to me, but at this point, I want to focus my concerns on provisions that undermine the historic 1996 welfare reform bill. That bill changed the old broken welfare system into a new program that encouraged people to work their way into self-sufficiency.

In 1996, I was an active participant in the controversial but bipartisan negotiations to boldly change our outdated welfare system, known then as the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC. Under the old rules, parents were discouraged and penalized from trying to work. In 1996, after contentious but full bipartisan debate by the House and Senate, we passed a bold new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF.

The new rules encouraged and required parents to move from welfare to work, but there were incentives to help parents, and billions of new dollars in childcare so parents could work with the knowledge that their child had childcare. Such supports are essential so that parents can make a successful transition.

The historic reform of 1996 also made changes in the child support enforcement programs, and further enhancements were made in 1998 to improve child support enforcement. While progress has been made on both programs, the child support enforcement has been a real success story. In 1996, child support enforcement collected $12 billion. Thanks to the changes in welfare reform, child support enforcement is now collecting $21.9 billion. In the President's fiscal year 2006 budget, the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, rated the Federal child support enforcement programs among the highest, most efficient programs in all of the Federal Government.

Despite this record of success, the reconciliation conference cuts child support enforcement by $1.5 billion over the next 5 years and a $4.9 billion cut over the next 10 years. These cuts are outrageous because States use this funding to track down absent parents, establish legally enforceable child support orders, and collect and distribute child support owed to families. CBO has estimated that this loss in Federal child support funding will result in $2.9 billion in child support going uncollected over the next 5 years and $8.4 billion going uncollected over the next 10 years. The reality is that children and families will be shortchanged. How, in any way, does this lack of investment promote personal responsibility? The answer is that it does not--in fact, this provision actually undermines past reforms.

I want to express my appreciation to Chairman Grassley for his effort in forging a bipartisan welfare reform reauthorization bill during recent debates. In March, the Senate Finance Committee secured such consensus that it was able to move the TANF reauthorization package on a voice vote. On December 14, the Senate voted 64 to 27 on a motion by Senator Carper not to include TANF in reconciliation. This amendment was a clear sense of the Senate about the importance of investing in childcare as an essential support for families making the transition from welfare to work.

Despite this bipartisan discussion in the Senate, the welfare reform authorization has been sandwiched into a massive reconciliation conference report that we have been given only 10 hours to debate. We have 10 hours to debate on a whole host of issues, many of which, including welfare reforms, have serious problems that were not part of the original Senate bill.

Previous Republican proposals were designed to pressure the States to have at least 50 percent of their TANF families in work activities, but, under these earlier discussions, States would have 5 years to achieve these new, tougher standards. The reconciliation package that we are forced to vote on now would impose this new, tougher participation rate by 2007. And it gets even worse. Under the conference report, the Department of Health and Human Services will issue new regulations to re-define work activities and how States will be required to verify the hours and activities to avoid serious financial penalties. These new regulations will be issued in June of 2006, just a few months before new, tougher standards are imposed. Adding insult to injury, very little childcare money is provided--only $1 billion over 5 years. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the cost to States of this new bill would be $8.4 billion over the next 5 years, which is slightly more than the cost would have been under the House reconciliation bill. CBO projects that some States would not meet the new mandates and would face fiscal penalties as a consequence. This is not fair because it essentially sets up States to fail. It will not promote work and self-sufficiency among welfare parents. It will encourage States to push families off the welfare rolls.

West Virginia currently has a 27 percent participation rate. Under these new rules, it would have to reach 50 percent in 2007, and State officials do not even know, at this point, what the rules will be. In my own State of West Virginia, Gov. Joe Manchin has said, ``The proposed Federal funding cuts in TANF will greatly impact the families and children who depend upon the childcare, transportation assistance and welfare-to-work transitional periods. I urge Congress and the President to reconsider this action. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the individuals affected are those who are the neediest.'' I wholeheartedly agree with West Virginia Governor Manchin.

In addition to policy concerns raised by this conference report, the process has been equally unfair. The 774-page conference report on the reconciliation spending cut bill was filed in the House of Representatives at 1:12 a.m. on Monday, December 19. Four hours later,

after less than 40 minutes of debate on the measure, the House began the final vote on the reconciliation spending cut bill. Now the Senate has only 10 hours to debate this package with no ability to make changes.

This package is patently unfair to our children. It will hinder the effort to move parents from welfare to work. It will undermine efforts to promote personal responsibility and ensure that parents pay the child support they owe their children.

It is unfair to our States to change the rules on welfare reform. Even worse, they will be changed just months before States have to meet these new standards.

This reconciliation conference report turns its back on bipartisanship.

It turns its back on needy children and families.

It turns its back on personal responsibility.

It is the wrong approach to welfare reform, and it should be rejected along with the other cuts in reconciliation.

Mr. President, the massive devastation inflicted upon our southern States by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma reminded all Americans how important it is that the Federal Government be able to respond quickly and effectively when disaster strikes. We also learned from those tragedies that we must assist in ways few of us had imagined--for example, to meet the needs of evacuees who were dispersed far from the disaster.

Other events of the past few years, both here at home and abroad, have taught us that we must prepare for more than just natural disasters. Accidents, acts of terrorism, and pandemic illnesses also threaten us with death, injury, and destruction. And while we work to minimize the threats, we must assume that such disasters will really happen.

I have concluded that the President's current statuary authority to respond to disasters is not sufficient to meet the threats that we all now recognize as real, though once they were unimaginable. Today, I am introducing the Disaster Relief Act 2005 to modernize our disaster response capability for the 21st century.

One of the principal authorities we have given the President for disaster management is the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. This is the law that authorizes the President, at the request of a Governor, to declare an ``Emergency'' or a ``Major Disaster,'' which then enables various types of Federal assistance. Emergency is the lower level declaration. The President is given great latitude in the types of events that can be declared emergencies, but relief is generally limited to $5 million per declaration. A major disaster declaration allows much greater assistance, but can be made only for natural disasters or, from any cause, fire, flood, or explosion.

The Department of Homeland Security uses 15 disaster scenarios to guide planning for the types of catastrophes it has concluded threaten our country. Besides natural disasters, the list includes various types of terrorist attacks--chemical, biological, radiological, cyber--as well as major health disasters. Though the President could respond to any of these scenarios by issuing an Emergency declaration, only seven of the fifteen would currently qualify under the Stafford Act to be declared a major disaster.

This bill will modify the definition of a major disaster in the Stafford Act to direct the President to focus on the impacts of an event in determining whether to issue a declaration. It is indeed the suffering--deaths, injuries, destruction--and not the cause of that suffering, which should determine our response. Catastrophic events, foreseeable and yet unimagined, will be covered if the suffering exceeds the capacity of the State to respond.

Furthermore, under the Stafford Act it is not clear whether States affected indirectly by a disaster occurring elsewhere--for example, by receiving evacuees or by the spread of nuclear, toxic, or infectious agents--could receive a major disaster declaration. It became clear in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that meeting the needs of evacuees can be a difficult challenge. Four States received major disaster declarations following Katrina. Forty-four others received emergency declarations to assist evacuees, but not even Texas, which hosted over 200,000 evacuees, received a major disaster declaration to assist them. Even if it were possible to declare a major disaster in a State receiving evacuees, assistance to meet some of their needs--education, healthcare, long-term housing and resettlement--is not adequately authorized under the Stafford Act.

Being able to meet the needs of evacuees is an important issue for West Virginia. We hosted several hundred evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, just enough to understand the special needs of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods, have been moved to unfamiliar places without resources, have been separated from their families, and suffered in many other ways. A disaster in the Washington-Baltimore region, or in Pennsylvania or Ohio, could bring far more evacuees to West Virginia than we could assist with presently available resources.

This bill acknowledges the fact that the impacts of a major disaster can extend far beyond the location of the event, and enables the President to make major disaster declarations in affected States, wherever they may be located. Additional forms of assistance to evacuees, found necessary after hurricane Katrina--for education, healthcare, long-term housing, and resettlement--will be made available.

Several other aspects of the Stafford Act require our attention, and are addressed in the bill. Authorization for Predisaster Hazard Mitigation under Title II, set to expire at the end of this year, will be extended to 2010. The modest levels of direct assistance to individuals, though indexed to inflation, will be increased because of rapid increases in housing costs in recent years. The duration of assistance that can be provided by the Department of Defense, for the preservation of life and property, will be increased from 10 to 30 days, to meet needs following extreme disasters. It will be clarified that events occurring within the waters surrounding the United States are eligible for emergency and major disaster declarations, Efforts to recover costs of assistance when emergencies or major disasters are caused by gross negligence will be authorized. The process for appropriating funds for disaster relief will be improved. And other minor improvements will be made.

I ask my colleagues in the Senate to join me to pass this bill and improve our preparedness for disasters in the 21st century.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Earned Income Tax Credit Simplification Act. This legislation will greatly improve one of our Nation's most important antipoverty programs and streamline one of the most complicated sections of our income tax code. And I am extremely pleased that my good friend from Maine, Senator Olympia Snowe, has agreed to be an original cosponsor of this bill. I look forward to working with her, as members of the Senate Finance Committee, to enact this important tax simplification proposal.

In 2003, almost 21 million hard-working Americans benefited from the earned income tax credit, including 141,707 in my own State of West Virginia. Many of those serving in our Armed Forces benefit from the EITC. The EITC rewards hard work and helps these families make ends meet. However, the eligibility criteria for claiming the credit are so complicated that many people legitimately entitled to benefit from the credit do not even realize it. And unfortunately, too many erroneous claims occur. The tax credit should not be so complicated that cash- strapped families need the help of an accountant to file their taxes.

The Earned Income Tax Credit Simplification Act would make four important changes to the eligibility requirements of the credit. First, it would simplify the ``abandoned spouse'' rule so that custodial parents who are separated but not divorced would be able to claim the credit. Second, it would allow a taxpayer living in the same house with a qualifying child but not claiming that child for the EITC benefit to qualify for EITC benefits available to taxpayers without children. Third, the bill would eliminate the qualifying investment income test for EITC claimants. Finally, the bill would make sure that only immigrants who comply with all of the immigration rules would qualify for the EITC, preventing people who are not allowed to

work in the United States from claiming the credit.

These are commonsense reforms based on recommendations in the budget submitted to Congress by the Bush administration. I hope that they can be enacted quickly so that taxpayers whom Congress intended to help with the EITC will be able to claim the benefits without unnecessary and intimidating paperwork. I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this legislation.

Mr. President, the massive devastation inflicted upon our southern States by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma reminded all Americans how important it is that the Federal Government be able to respond quickly and effectively when disaster strikes. We also learned from those tragedies that we must assist in ways few of us had imagined--for example, to meet the needs of evacuees who were dispersed far from the disaster.

Other events of the past few years, both here at home and abroad, have taught us that we must prepare for more than just natural disasters. Accidents, acts of terrorism, and pandemic illnesses also threaten us with death, injury, and destruction. And while we work to minimize the threats, we must assume that such disasters will really happen.

I have concluded that the President's current statuary authority to respond to disasters is not sufficient to meet the threats that we all now recognize as real, though once they were unimaginable. Today, I am introducing the Disaster Relief Act 2005 to modernize our disaster response capability for the 21st century.

One of the principal authorities we have given the President for disaster management is the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. This is the law that authorizes the President, at the request of a Governor, to declare an ``Emergency'' or a ``Major Disaster,'' which then enables various types of Federal assistance. Emergency is the lower level declaration. The President is given great latitude in the types of events that can be declared emergencies, but relief is generally limited to $5 million per declaration. A major disaster declaration allows much greater assistance, but can be made only for natural disasters or, from any cause, fire, flood, or explosion.

The Department of Homeland Security uses 15 disaster scenarios to guide planning for the types of catastrophes it has concluded threaten our country. Besides natural disasters, the list includes various types of terrorist attacks--chemical, biological, radiological, cyber--as well as major health disasters. Though the President could respond to any of these scenarios by issuing an Emergency declaration, only seven of the fifteen would currently qualify under the Stafford Act to be declared a major disaster.

This bill will modify the definition of a major disaster in the Stafford Act to direct the President to focus on the impacts of an event in determining whether to issue a declaration. It is indeed the suffering--deaths, injuries, destruction--and not the cause of that suffering, which should determine our response. Catastrophic events, foreseeable and yet unimagined, will be covered if the suffering exceeds the capacity of the State to respond.

Furthermore, under the Stafford Act it is not clear whether States affected indirectly by a disaster occurring elsewhere--for example, by receiving evacuees or by the spread of nuclear, toxic, or infectious agents--could receive a major disaster declaration. It became clear in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that meeting the needs of evacuees can be a difficult challenge. Four States received major disaster declarations following Katrina. Forty-four others received emergency declarations to assist evacuees, but not even Texas, which hosted over 200,000 evacuees, received a major disaster declaration to assist them. Even if it were possible to declare a major disaster in a State receiving evacuees, assistance to meet some of their needs--education, healthcare, long-term housing and resettlement--is not adequately authorized under the Stafford Act.

Being able to meet the needs of evacuees is an important issue for West Virginia. We hosted several hundred evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, just enough to understand the special needs of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods, have been moved to unfamiliar places without resources, have been separated from their families, and suffered in many other ways. A disaster in the Washington-Baltimore region, or in Pennsylvania or Ohio, could bring far more evacuees to West Virginia than we could assist with presently available resources.

This bill acknowledges the fact that the impacts of a major disaster can extend far beyond the location of the event, and enables the President to make major disaster declarations in affected States, wherever they may be located. Additional forms of assistance to evacuees, found necessary after hurricane Katrina--for education, healthcare, long-term housing, and resettlement--will be made available.

Several other aspects of the Stafford Act require our attention, and are addressed in the bill. Authorization for Predisaster Hazard Mitigation under Title II, set to expire at the end of this year, will be extended to 2010. The modest levels of direct assistance to individuals, though indexed to inflation, will be increased because of rapid increases in housing costs in recent years. The duration of assistance that can be provided by the Department of Defense, for the preservation of life and property, will be increased from 10 to 30 days, to meet needs following extreme disasters. It will be clarified that events occurring within the waters surrounding the United States are eligible for emergency and major disaster declarations, Efforts to recover costs of assistance when emergencies or major disasters are caused by gross negligence will be authorized. The process for appropriating funds for disaster relief will be improved. And other minor improvements will be made.

I ask my colleagues in the Senate to join me to pass this bill and improve our preparedness for disasters in the 21st century.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Earned Income Tax Credit Simplification Act. This legislation will greatly improve one of our Nation's most important antipoverty programs and streamline one of the most complicated sections of our income tax code. And I am extremely pleased that my good friend from Maine, Senator Olympia Snowe, has agreed to be an original cosponsor of this bill. I look forward to working with her, as members of the Senate Finance Committee, to enact this important tax simplification proposal.

In 2003, almost 21 million hard-working Americans benefited from the earned income tax credit, including 141,707 in my own State of West Virginia. Many of those serving in our Armed Forces benefit from the EITC. The EITC rewards hard work and helps these families make ends meet. However, the eligibility criteria for claiming the credit are so complicated that many people legitimately entitled to benefit from the credit do not even realize it. And unfortunately, too many erroneous claims occur. The tax credit should not be so complicated that cash- strapped families need the help of an accountant to file their taxes.

The Earned Income Tax Credit Simplification Act would make four important changes to the eligibility requirements of the credit. First, it would simplify the ``abandoned spouse'' rule so that custodial parents who are separated but not divorced would be able to claim the credit. Second, it would allow a taxpayer living in the same house with a qualifying child but not claiming that child for the EITC benefit to qualify for EITC benefits available to taxpayers without children. Third, the bill would eliminate the qualifying investment income test for EITC claimants. Finally, the bill would make sure that only immigrants who comply with all of the immigration rules would qualify for the EITC, preventing people who are not allowed to

work in the United States from claiming the credit.

These are commonsense reforms based on recommendations in the budget submitted to Congress by the Bush administration. I hope that they can be enacted quickly so that taxpayers whom Congress intended to help with the EITC will be able to claim the benefits without unnecessary and intimidating paperwork. I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this legislation.

Mr. President, this budget is about choices. We in Congress can choose to protect Medicaid, the Federal safety net for over 50 million Americans, by supporting the Baucus motion to instruct.

Or we can turn our backs on the millions of working families who would otherwise be uninsured without the Federal guarantee of Medicaid benefits by giving States the green light to charge more in monthly premiums than are charged in monthly premiums under Medicare; by allowing Medicaid cost-sharing that can grow six times faster than wages; by permitting States to provide fewer Medicaid benefits to recipients in rural areas than those offered to recipients in urban areas; and by asking hospitals, pharmacists, and other health care providers to continue to participate in the Medicaid program even if they cannot cover their costs.

If the Senate recedes to the House on Medicaid, then we will begin to undo one of the most important social programs of our time. And people and health care providers in our respective States will suffer greatly. In West Virginia, nearly 20 percent of our State's population--over 350,000 people--depend on Medicaid for access to health care.

Not only is it unfair to consider such draconian changes to the Medicaid Program in the context of meeting an arbitrary budget number, it is also unwarranted.

Some of my colleagues have argued that Congress must reduce spending in Medicaid in order to decrease the Federal deficit. I would remind my colleagues that this budget does not decrease the Federal deficit. Instead, this budget could increase the Federal deficit by $10 to $20 billion over the next 5 years. And that is not even considering the cost of adding more tax cuts.

Even more important is the fact that there are other options on the table besides Medicaid that provide more than enough savings to meet the $10 billion budget target set by Congress. Reducing Medicare overpayments to HMOs saves nearly $12 billion over 5 years alone.

America has a moral obligation to take care of its most vulnerable citizens. Programs that help low-income working families improve their lot in life should be the last resort when it comes to balancing the budget.

Not supporting this motion to instruct fails our Nation's pregnant women, children, the elderly, and the disabled.

I urge my colleagues to support this motion to instruct. The quality of life of 50 million Americans depends, on it.

Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the fiscal course this Senate is pursuing. The legislation before us today will unnecessarily add $60 billion to our Nation's debt. But even more troubling is the insistence that reasonable tax cuts be passed using the reconciliation process. I think most Senators in this body believe that today's action is just the first step toward ultimately approving more tax cuts for wealthy investors. I hope that my colleagues will reject this scheme.

I appreciate the work of the chairman of the Finance Committee, who crafted a bill that includes only broadly supported tax cuts. Tax relief for rebuilding the hurricane-devastated gulf coast; extension and enhancement of the R&D tax credit and the welfare tax credits; limitations on the reach of the alternative minimum tax; and tax incentives for charitable giving are all policies that enjoy broad bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, though, this bill is not fiscally responsible. As the Democratic alternative demonstrates, it is possible to enact the popular tax cuts proposed here without adding $60 billion to the debt we pass down to our children and grandchildren. In an age of record deficits, Congress must choose its priorities. We could close tax loopholes. We could make it more difficult for companies to avoid taxation by moving their headquarters offshore. We could require oil companies to pay their fair share of taxes. We could close the tax gap by more aggressively enforcing our existing tax code.

These reasonable policies are included in the Democratic alternative, and I hope that all of my colleagues will support them to restore fiscal discipline in this Congress. And to anyone who believes the fallacy that ``deficits don't matter,'' I would point out that this year we will spend more money paying interest on our debt than providing health care to our most vulnerable citizens through Medicaid.

The budget reconciliation process, which allows for expedited consideration of legislation on the Senate floor, was created so that Congress could enact difficult policies in order to reduce our national deficits. Sadly, the process is now being abused to enact policies that worsen our deficit and are so narrowly supported that they cannot garner sufficient votes under normal Senate procedures.

Foremost among the current proposals that does not enjoy bipartisan support is, of course, the extension of tax breaks for capital gains and dividends. I recognize that the leadership has dropped those provisions from this bill. However, this Senator has absolutely no confidence that the intention of using the reconciliation process to pass those tax breaks has changed. Extending those tax breaks for even one additional year would cost $10 billion. And it is important to consider who will get that $10 billion instead of the federal treasury. Three quarters of the capital gains and dividend income is received by taxpayers making more than $200,000 per year.

In my State of West Virginia, fewer than 17 percent of taxpayers reported any dividend income; and fewer than 11 percent of taxpayers had any capital gains. Moreover, we ought to keep in mind that even without the extra tax breaks in 2009, people will pay at most 20 percent taxes on capital gains, which is a lower tax rate than we apply to many people's labor. I do not accept the argument that it is a national priority to extend these tax breaks to 2009.

The investor tax breaks simply do not compare favorably with the provisions of this bill. With the ever escalating costs of college and the increasing need for a highly educated population that can be globally competitive, it is appropriate to maintain the tax deduction for tuition and fees that made education more affordable for 3.6 million Americans in 2003, including almost 17,000 West Virginians. And as low-income working Americans struggle to save for their retirement, I am pleased to support the saver's credit which helped 5.4 million Americans in 2003, including more than 40,000 West Virginians.

The tuition deduction, the saver's cedit, and most of the other provisions in this bill enjoy broad bipartisan support. Congress can act before the end of this year, in a bipartisan fashion, to extend these important tax provisions, and offset the cost to the treasury.

I believe that many Senators on my side of the aisle would welcome an opportunity to support legislation providing relief to the gulf coast and extending the expiring tax provisions in a fiscally responsible way--but without the specter of a reconciliation process that is specifically intended to enact more tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens. I cannot support this bill, and I cannot condone a reconciliation process designed to limit the rights of the minority while increasing the deficit.