Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Clinton-Enzi amendment.

First, I ask unanimous consent that letters from the Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, AMVETS, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, all expressing their opposition to the Clinton- Enzi amendment, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, that was an excellent statement by the Senator from New Hampshire. I wish to go further with some of the issues about which he was talking.

Our Constitution specifically spells out only five instances where a supermajority is required and moving to consideration, and approval of the President's judicial nominees is not on that list. This list includes treaties, impeachment, expulsion of a Senator, overriding a Presidential veto, and adoption of a constitutional amendment.

The spirit of our Constitution should mean something. It is in defense of our Constitution that we are taking these 30 hours. It has been said we are wasting our time. Defending our Constitution is not wasting the Senate's time. It is critical to this Senate.

What the Senator from New Hampshire was just talking about--the Supreme Court nominees for whom he voted, even though they were different ideologically from him--if this process is allowed to continue, it is going to be 12, we know already, appellate nominees who are going to be blocked by filibuster--12 out of 41. If this is allowed to continue, we know next year it is going to be worse, and when the next Supreme Court nominee comes up, if it is Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Breyer or Rehnquist, those people would not be approved in the climate in the Senate today. Highly qualified people will not be able to make it on to the Supreme Court.

Do my colleagues know what that is going to do to the process? Good people are not even going to be part of the process. When the President calls them and says: I would like you to consider this, they are going to say: Go see somebody else.

The Judicial Conference is a nonpartisan entity that acts as the principal policymaking body for our court system, and it has declared 12 judicial emergencies on the circuit court of appeals. The President is doing his job by sending us the nominees. It is our time to do our job.

The Ninth Circuit, which serves my home State of Nevada, is the largest and busiest circuit court of appeals in this Nation and is also the most overturned court in the country. In 2001, it took 30 months in the Ninth Circuit for a case to go from original filing in the district court to the final decision on appeal. That is 5 months longer than the average court of appeals.

In the Ninth Circuit in the 1996-1997 session in the middle of the Clinton Presidency, the Supreme Court found it necessary to review 28 cases in the Ninth Circuit. Of those 28 cases, it overturned 27 of them. By the way, this was one-third of the Supreme Court's docket that year.

We know about some of the outrageous cases in the last year or two from the Supreme Court. Let me mention a couple of them. We know the Ninth Circuit is the one that is trying to overturn the Pledge of Allegiance, saying that God should not basically be part of our country or part of our Government, or the name ``God.''

The Senate took up a resolution which then-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle brought to the floor, and every Senator voted to condemn what the Ninth Circuit had done. This is the circuit to which Carolyn Kuhl is nominated. We need to get good people on the Ninth Circuit. It is absolutely critical for us to do that.

I feel passionately that we need to fix the process. We need to fix it for when the Democrats are back in power so that good people get an up-or-down vote. They shouldn't be blocked simply for ideology from getting an up-or-down vote. If a Senator disagrees with them, vote them down, but give them an up-or-down vote. A minority of Senators should not be able to block the process for judicial nominees as part of the advise and consent clause.

So let's work together. Let's reach across the aisle and say: Let's fix the process. Otherwise, as we go into the future, this tit for tat, this payback is going to continue to get worse and worse, and it is truly a threat to our constitutional Republic.

I close with this: We appeal to the other side. We are going to try to offer a resolution to fix what is going on here, and we encourage them to join us so this doesn't just get worse as the years go by.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent that I may ask the Senator from Washington a question while reserving my right to object.

Mr. President, in asking this question, is the Senator from Washington aware, back in 1993 when the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House the rate of unemployment was higher than it is today and that every Democrat in the House and the Senate and the President signed a bill to terminate the program when the unemployment rate

was higher? Is the Senator from Washington aware of that fact?

Mr. President, the fact is, when the Democrats were in control of all three bodies, the Democrats terminated the program of extending unemployment benefits at the Federal level. They terminated the program.

More people were unemployed at that time when they terminated the program. It is good enough today. The economy is recovering. It is producing jobs. Therefore, I object.

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

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

Madam President, this morning I rise to talk about what has been happening in this Chamber with regard to judicial nominations, and especially those nominations that have been put forward by the President with respect to the circuit courts.

The court of appeals is that branch in our Federal court system which is directly under the Supreme Court, an incredibly important place where a lot of judicial precedent is set.

We have had several judges being filibustered this year by the other side; just recently, Charles Pickering, a wonderful man with incredible qualifications, incredible political courage. With all the debate that happened about him and his qualifications--people can check the Congressional Record for it--but the bottom line is this man deserves an up-or-down vote. If he is granted an up-or-down vote, he would be approved because he was able to get 54 votes against 43 negative votes. Unfortunately, there is a minority in the Senate choosing to filibuster. That 54 votes should be enough to put him on the circuit court where he deserves to be.

I have no objection to people voting against judges. That is their right to do under the Constitution. But the Constitution specifically spells out only five instances where a supermajority is required in the Senate for approval, and moving to the consideration or the approval of the President's judicial nominees is not on that list.

Why is this debate so important to have on whether we should allow the Senate to filibuster judges or whether we should just have straight up-or-down votes on judges after a good amount of debate? If one side, meaning one political party, chooses to filibuster judges, the other side is going to be forced to filibuster. In other words, a precedent is set.

Someday the Democrats will get back in power in the White House and will be sending judges up to this body, and if they continue to filibuster the President's nominees, a precedent will be set, and our side will have no choice but to filibuster their judges. The reason is very simple: If they filibuster more conservative type judges, and we do not filibuster theirs, our court system will just go further and further to the left.

Politics and the judiciary--we are supposed to try to separate those as much as possible, even though it is impossible to completely separate them.

So, Madam President, I appeal to our colleagues on the other side that this obstructionism purely for political gain is a dangerous precedent to set in the Senate. We need to become statesmen in this body and do what is right for our Republic. This is really about the future of our Republic. Judges and the third branch of our Government have to have somewhat independence from the legislative branch and from the executive branch. It is critical, I believe, that we have a fair process going forward.

The system really is broken at this point. Another problem we are going to face in the future by staging this political battle on judges is that good people are not going to want to go through the nomination. Miguel Estrada is the perfect example. He was an extraordinary nominee who would have made an extraordinary judge and the ugliness this process has become resulted in him asking the President to withdraw his nomination. The toll of was too great on him and on his family. He could not take it anymore.

If we continue to drag more nominees through this political mess, it is going to be harder to get good people, the kind of people we want serving on the bench.

I make this appeal to my colleagues: This nonsense going on with filibustering circuit court judges needs to stop. I respect the fact that Senators want complete debate. We should have full debate on judges. But once they have their full debate, their complete investigation, questions are asked and answered, then we need an up-or- down vote, straight up-or-down vote. There is no place in the judicial nomination process for filibustering. If we do not correct this problem, and fix this broken process the future our judicial system will be hurt and it will be a great disservice to all Americans.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I will make a few comments about the underlying legislation, the Healthy Forest initiative, and give a perspective from another western state, the State of Nevada, my home State, and some personal experiences I have had in the last few years.

I saw a wonderful program on the Discovery channel about the history of forest fires in the United States. They went back a few hundred years and talked about the natural burning of the forests and how forest fires occurred. We had fairly catastrophic fires in the early 1900s that changed our attitude because a lot of people were killed in those fires. It changed the way we looked at forest fires. We decided to try to put forest fires out using various methods of fire suppression.

Over the last 100 or so years, in trying to put out all these forest fires, we have stopped the natural clearing of the underbrush. As humans have moved more into the forests with our development, even if we wanted to go back to allowing natural burns to occur, we could not do that because of the devastation that can occur such as we are seeing in California with people living so close to the natural environment.

There are some things we can do to manage our forests so when the fires do occur they happen in a more natural fashion. What we have been seeing in the last several years is they are not natural fires. They are catastrophic fires and they burn the entire forest. They literally sterilize the ground.

There is so much fuel that there are incredible temperatures. When the forest fires used to move through, they would pretty much burn the undergrowth. They would char the big trees, they would char the bark on them, but they would leave the crown of the forest alive. As the forest fires moved through and cleared the underbrush, it gave the forest a chance to revive, gave a chance for little seedlings to take root. It was a nice cleansing process for the forests.

Now that we have started putting all the forest fires out, we have a huge fuel buildup. Now when the forest fires burn through, they burn the underbrush and they burn the crowns of the forest. They basically wipe the entire forest out. It is an unnatural event that is happening today. We are losing endangered species. When you wipe out the whole forest you lose not only animal life, you lose incredible plant diversity as well. We end up with erosion because there is nothing to hold the ground when the rains come.

I have been in the West almost all of my life--mostly in Nevada, lived in Oregon, lived in California, lived in Colorado some, attending schools--and I have visited a lot of forests there. We have our family reunion up in Black Butte every summer. I was there during the huge forest fire Senator Smith was talking about earlier; that is still going on. We were there July 4 and that fire is still going on today. They are waiting for the snows to come to put that forest fire out.

In comparing the forests from the East to West, in the East there is much denser forest. That may be OK because of the amount of rain and the amount of moisture in the East. We do not get that kind of moisture in the West. My State, the State of Nevada, is the most arid State in the entire country. We have what are called ``desert forests'' that do not have a lot of undergrowth. That is where those forest fires are able to move through, clear out a little of the underbrush and leave the crowns pretty much intact.

What happens in the West versus the East, we get periods of drought. We are in about a 5-year drought right now in the West. We had 3 good years before that of rain. Before that was another 6-year drought. During those periods of drought you get the bark beetle Senator Murkowski was talking about in Alaska. We have that in our State, especially around Lake Tahoe. During the 6-year period of drought, the bark beetle devastated a lot of trees in the Lake Tahoe basin.

I was up there touring some of the Federal lands, some of the State lands, and saw the difference in our policies, State versus Federal. Comparing State versus Federal versus private lands, the least healthy forests are the Federal lands. That is what this underlying bill is trying to correct, the problems we see on Federal lands.

In the State lands, they are cleaning the underbrush. There is a lot of emotion generated by the groups participating in these projects. As a matter of fact, in one area where they were doing the thinning of the underbrush--it is not just underbrush, but they are clearing out the fir trees. The big Ponderosa pines are being choked out by the fir trees. A lot of fuel goes in there. The sunlight cannot get in so these pine trees can grow in the way they were intended to grow naturally. When they were going through and cleaning and clearing some of this out, they got a lot of complaints because it was near this very popular hiking trail up at Lake Tahoe. There were a lot of complaints and protests.

A year after the first area was cleared out, they saw the positive ecological results of that clearing. One result is that the aspen trees are coming back to that area. They were choked out by the fir trees. There is more biodiversity. If a fire now goes through, it will burn naturally instead of the catastrophic fires we have seen so much in the West. Six hundred thousand acres so far have burned in the State of California. That is a huge amount of land.

In 1999, in my State, 1.8 million acres burned. We have been lucky the last few years, but my State is ready to go again, just like most of the western States. It is not just the forest fires we worry about from these fires, like the almost 2 million acres we had in Nevada--and fires in California, Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, and on and on and on in the West--these forest fires are creating air pollution.

We just got calls, because the winds shifted in California, and the pollution from the fires is now coming to Nevada because the winds changed directions.

When the Oregon fires were blowing last year, the pollution from them came down into the State of Nevada. I was up at Lake Tahoe, and, boy, you could not even see. It was like we were in a horrible pollution day down in Southern California. It was so dense, the pollution was so bad, and the ash came down from these forest fires.

It is not just the forest health we are worried about, it is also our air's health. If people who care about air pollution want to do something, the No. 1 thing we could do is to make sure we have healthy forests into the future. Because if we do not have these devastating fires, we will not have as many acres burn per year and as much of that stuff going up into the air to cause pollution. These fires that are occurring are much worse than anything man is producing on an industrial basis. To protect our air, we should be doing this.

Protecting the environment, protecting property, and protecting people are not mutually exclusive. We can do all of them together if we have reasonable laws. That is really what this bill is about.

Two other areas I want to talk about quickly. One is in Carson City, and one is in Ely, NV--great initiatives on this urban interface with the forests that were going on. The one in Ely occurred on Federal lands. Everybody was together. Environmentalists locally were together with local governments and the Federal Government. Everybody was together on this initiative. They had it all worked out. The plan was in place, ready to go. One person from Idaho filed a protest. They didn't even live in our State--one person from Idaho. Almost 3 years later, we are still waiting to implement the plan, and a fire that comes through there would be devastating. One person from Idaho--that is what this bill is trying to fix, to make sure that one person cannot stop land managers from doing the right thing.

The other quick example is Carson City. It is not Federal lands. It is State lands, local lands. All the people who care about the environment worked together. They have a beautiful fire protection plan being implemented that is ecologically balanced. It is protecting the local communities as well as protecting the forests. That is the type of balanced thinking we need going forward so we protect people, we protect property, and we protect the environment all together.

I also want to express my condolences to all of those who have been impacted by the fires in California, especially those who have lost friends and family members. While this legislation will not help the people fighting forest fires today, it will hopefully prevent such fires from occurring in the future.

The Healthy Forest Initiative authorizes hazardous fuel reduction projects that are essential for the health and well-being of our Nation's forests. It focuses on specific at-risk areas that are at the greatest risk of wildland catastrophic fire, the kind that has devastated California, my State's neighbor. These kinds of fires are intense, they are unforgiving and they certainly don't discriminate as to what will lie in their destroying path. My heart goes out to those whose lives have been affected by catastrophic fire.

To reiterate, in my home State of Nevada, our worst fire year was 1999 when 1.8 million acres burned. Since then we have been fortunate compared to other States. But we know that it is only a matter of time before fires ravage our land again. Currently there are over 10.7 million acres that are at-risk for catastrophic wildfire in the State of Nevada. That's 10.7 million acres that need to be treated immediately. With the proper treatment, we can lessen the effects of the fires that will inevitably come. It is not a question of if fires occur, but a question of when.

Catastrophic fire occurs every year. This year California and Oregon have been hit; last year it was Colorado, Oregon and Arizona. In past years, New Mexico and one of our Nation's most treasured national parks, Yellowstone faced catastrophic fire. In 1999, when 1.8 million acres burned in Nevada, unfortunately, that was not a one-time

event. In the past 5 years, 3.3 million acres have burned in Nevada.

However, that being said, there are excellent tools available to the land managers of this country. Thinning densely wooded areas and cleaning out excess brush lessens the ability of fires to spread as fast, burn as hot, and consume as much as they already do. To carry out these projects, land managers must go through a rigorous assessment process. They must ensure that the public is able to participate in the process. And they must comply with current environmental statutes and forest plans. This is appropriate and necessary. It is a very lengthy and thorough process that all too often is railroaded by one dissenter. One extreme group will fight it through the administrative appeals, the courts and will do everything to kill a completely collaborative process.

A recent GAO report noted reported that the vast majority of appeals to fuels projects result in no change in the Forest Service's decision. Only 19 of the 180 appealed decisions were reversed, which means that the remaining 161 projects--89 percent of those appealed--were delayed unnecessarily. We say it time and again, but frivolous lawsuits which put these projects on hold are a threat to homes and people. More than half of the appealable decisions that were designed to protect communities from wildfire were appealed. During the review process, these communities remained under the threat of catastrophic wildfire. We do not have the time to provide extreme groups the luxury of thwarting sound management decisions. It has happened in my State, as I mentioned before, and it happens more and more every year.

That is why passing this amendment is so important. It expedites the approval process. It cuts through the bureaucratic red tape. It still ensures that administrative appeals and judicial review is available to the public. However, only individuals who have actively participated in the administrative appeal process can then challenge the final decision in the courts so these projects cannot be blindsided by those who refuse to participate in the full process.

I stood here a little over a year ago and called for this type of action. I was joined by so many of my colleagues in this body, and yet again nothing was done. Since that time we have seen millions of acres burn throughout the country. The Forest Service has estimated that 2.8 million acres have burn in 2003 alone and that does not count the millions of acres in California and the more than 1500 homes destroyed over the weekend, not to mention the deaths of those struggling to escape these deadly fires. I don't want this to happen to Nevada. I don't want this to happen in any State. I don't want to stand idly by and allow this kind of destruction to go any further. We need to do something and we need to do it now.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am in opposition to the Dorgan amendment to lift the Cuba travel ban.

Mr. President, a few months ago, Fidel Castro saw his opportunity to deal with his internal critics once and for all. Seventy-five dissidents and independent journalists were rounded up, tried in kangaroo courts, and given sentences as high as 28 years in prison--for a cumulative total of 1,454 years--simply for the crime of being independent journalists, or economists, or democracy advocates.

Castro's actions were so galling, so blatant, that even some of his most craven apologists expressed shock. The European Union which until then had been happy to make a tidy profit at the expense of Cubans, imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions on the Castro dictatorship. Newspapers changed their position on sanctions. For example, the Los Angeles Times wrote, ``After years of calling for liberalized relations with Cuba, this editorial page must now urge American policymakers to hit the brakes. Before Congress even thinks about loosening restrictions, it should demand that Castro free those rounded up and demonstrate that his nation is moving toward democracy and away from totalitarianism.''

Nothing has changed. Those dissidents are still rotting in Castro's jails.

Nonetheless, today, the majority of the United States could decide to ignore the pain and suffering of those 75 dissidents and turn the other way. They could decide to reward Castro by voting to lift the travel ban and let American dollars finance Castro's instruments of repression.

The appeasers keep saying that weakening the embargo by lifting the travel ban will hasten Castro's demise. Whenever they say this, I always ask: How?

The answer is always vague--something about how travel by Americans to Cuba will somehow transform Cuba and change Castro's ways. Well, I look at Cuba today and see a lot of European and Canadian tourists that have been going there for years--yet Cuba has not been transformed, and Castro has not changed one iota.

The fact is, American tourists cannot change Cuba any more than Europeans or Canadians or Latin Americans have--because in Cuba you cannot do business with individual Cubans--you have to do business with Castro.

Castro practices tourist apartheid. He sets aside hotels, beaches, stores, restaurants, and hospitals for foreigners. Cubans are not permitted in those places. Anyone who believes that Americans drinking mojitos while sunning themselves on the beaches of Varadero is going to liberate the Cuban people doesn't understand the nature of tyranny.

Tourists even fund Castro's security apparatus when they stay in hotels owned by foreign investors. In Cuba, when a foreign investor comes to town, they do not hire or pay Cuban workers directly--only the Castro regime can legally employ a Cuban citizen. They pay Castro in hard currency for each worker--often as much as $10,000 per employee. Castro then pays the workers in worthless Cuban pesos--the equivalent of $15 or $20 a month--and pockets the rest.

The result is that foreign businesses in Cuba are paying Castro hundreds of millions of dollars in direct cash subsidies--while the Cuban people get nothing. These foreign investors have effectively replaced the Soviet Union as the source of Castro's hard currency subsidies.

Under these circumstances, American travel to Cuba cannot liberate the Cuban people.

To the contrary, it would only help Castro prop up Cuba's teetering economy and perpetuate his dictatorship. Under these conditions, American dollars would do nothing to promote democracy or entrepreneurship of independence from the state. All it would do is directly subsidize the oppression of the Cuban people.

Fortunately, we have a President who is not going to allow that to happen--who will veto this bill if presented to him with a lifting of the travel ban.

One of these days Cuba will be free--and I want to be able to look the Cuban people in the eye, and say to them that not one dime of the money used to repress, imprison and torture them came from legal American investors. I want to be able to look them in the eye, and say our tourists did not come and rape their wives and daughters, who had to sell their bodies to foreign tourists to feed their families under Castro's regime. I want to be able to say that we did not subsidize their oppression.

The Cuban people will remember who supported them and who supported Fidel Castro. Mr. President, this Senator chooses to stand with the Cuban people, and to oppose the Dorgan amendment.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for yielding.

We just heard that what class action lawsuits are really about is the little guys in our system. That may have been the way it was intended, but unfortunately trial lawyers have abused this system where now--I am from the State of Nevada where we have these megabucks jackpots--what this system has become is the megabucks jackpots for the trial lawyers. It is not about the little guys anymore.

I have several examples I will cite to show exactly how out of control this system is. Between 1997 and the year 2000, American corporations reported a 300-percent increase in Federal class actions, and a 1,000-percent increase in State class actions filed against them. Class action lawsuits were conceived as an expeditious way for people with the same grievances to join in a common suit and seek justice in instances where it would be difficult to do so individually. Unfortunately, what has evolved now is a means for a select set of trial attorneys to abuse the class action litigation system and to seek absurd financial rewards. Whether or not these lawsuits are successful, the cost of these lawsuits hurts the very people the lawyers claim to protect, the consumer.

Oftentimes, the so-called clients of these class action attorneys end up with token awards in the form of coupons or rebates, while the attorneys pocket millions of dollars.

Just a few examples: In 1997, lawyers got nearly $2 million in fees and settlement with Cheerios over a food additive where there was no evidence any consumer had been injured. There was nearly $2,000 an hour charged for this case for personal injury lawyers. Consumers received a coupon for a free box of Cheerios. That is really protecting the consumer.

Southwestern Bell customers were told they would benefit from a class action lawsuit. Instead, they ended up with three optional phone services for 3 months or a $15 credit if they already subscribed to those services. The trial lawyers received $4.5 million in fees.

In a class action lawsuit against Chase Manhattan Bank--and this one is really good--a State court awarded the plaintiffs a multimillion- dollar judgment. The trial lawyers walked away with over $4 million in attorney's fees. Each plaintiff was awarded, get this, a settlement check of 33 cents. Since the plaintiffs had to claim their check by mail at the then-cost of a 34-cent stamp, the class action ``win'' for the consumer was a net loss of one penny.

It is obvious there is a need to reform our class action system. We need to take it where we have the best jurists in the Federal system.

A couple of years ago, one of the best trial attorneys in Las Vegas came to me. He actually makes his living doing these things. He said: If you want to reform the system, take it out of the State courts where you can just select the cheapest State that there is to sue, and take it where you have the most talented jurists in the Federal system. That way the legitimate lawsuits will go forward. Those cases where the consumer really does need protection will go forward, but we will get rid of a lot of the frivolous, outrageous lawsuits that are happening at the State court level.

So I urge that this Senate would proceed to the debate. If there are amendments, let us have the amendments, but let us at least proceed to the debate on reforming our broken class action system.

I thank the Senator for yielding me the time. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the first thing I want to address is: the other side has been talking about the health of the mother and that this bill includes a provision if the life of the mother is threatened. As far as the health of the mother is concerned, a select panel convened by the American Medical Association could not find any ``identified circumstance'' where a partial-birth abortion was the only appropriate alternative.

We have heard a lot of testimony from OB/GYNs and all kinds of medical experts that this procedure is never necessary. To argue that it is somehow medically necessary is a false argument. This procedure is so grotesque that when it is described, it makes people shudder. I once described this procedure when I spoke to some high school kids, and I used it as an example. I got complaints from the parents because we talked about such a gruesome procedure in a school. I can understand why they would be upset.

But people have to understand that this gruesome procedure is happening in the United States. What we are trying to do now in the Congress is to say

this is so outrageous that we need to ban it.

I am a health care professional and I cannot even imagine a doctor or a nurse being involved in one of these procedures, delivering the baby out of the birth canal up to about here, the neck--arms and legs moving, holding that little baby in their hand, feeling life in their hand, a little heartbeat--and voluntarily taking forceps and jabbing them into the back of the skull. The skull is too big to come out so they have to collapse the skull down, sucking out the contents of the skull--the brains, basically. The baby at that point can feel pain. It is documented. In fact, it feels pain more than a normal child that has inhibitory pain fibers. We are saying this is somehow humane for the child, and that is literally beyond me.

This procedure is completely, in my mind, indefensible; it is infanticide. I want to talk about abortion in general because the other side is saying this is just chipping away at the rights of abortion. I remember when President Clinton said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I think those were his terms. I was thinking to myself, safe, I can understand that; legal, from his perspective, I can understand that; but if you don't believe it is wrong, who cares whether it is rare?

If there is nothing wrong with abortion, why should it be rare? Who cares? If it is not a baby, if it is just a blob of tissue, like the other side says, who cares whether it happens all the time? Why do we care whether it is rare?

The reason even somebody like Bill Clinton says it should be rare is because there is something in our conscience that is telling us abortion is wrong. Eighty-six percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted today--86 percent. We have an incredible young man right out here who runs the elevators. His name is Jimmy. He has Down syndrome.

We have a great organization in Las Vegas called Opportunity Village which deals with a lot of people. It employs a lot of people, finds them a job, people with either congenital problems, whether Down syndrome or other problems, or whether they have had a brain injury. We are saying to those people: You don't have the right to live. We are saying to the Jimmys of the world: You know what, you aren't perfect, so you don't have the right to live. That is what abortion is about. Is it going to be difficult? Yes, but life isn't guaranteed to be easy.

Mr. President, we have to look at what we are becoming as a society. If we do not value human life to the point where it is OK to have little imperfections, what are we becoming as a society? Haven't we seen in history the societies that have tried to create the perfect race, how immoral that was? Isn't that what we are trying to do somewhat with abortions and some of the other new medical technologies that are coming out?

This is a very emotional issue, and I understand people who believe abortion should be legal. There are a lot of women who have had abortions, who have gone through incredible stress--post-abortion syndrome, as it is known. It is likened to post-traumatic stress syndrome. I feel badly, and I feel pain for those women and men who have been involved with abortions.

Sometimes as a defense mechanism, one tries to justify what one did. I think it is important for us to show compassion for those people who have been involved and it is important not to judge other people's motives. But at the same time, we have to look, as a country, at whether it is right or wrong. If it is a baby, it is wrong. It just is. If it is a baby, it is murder. If it is not a baby, if it is some tissue, like the other side says, that is exactly right, it should be legal. It should be absolutely legal, if it is just tissue. But if it is a human life, then that human life deserves to be defended. That innocent human life deserves all the protections of the law, whether they have Down syndrome, spina bifida, or any other congenital ailment. They deserve the same protection under our law any other ``normal'' healthy child has.

We have to look at ourselves as a society and what type of a society we want to have going into the future. America's greatness has been because we have had strong moral standards. This is the great moral problem of our day about which we have to do some soul-searching as a country, to be on our knees in prayer to figure out the right course of action. For me, it is clear.

I urge all of our colleagues to do a lot of soul-searching on this issue. I believe if you are honest, people will see the rights of a baby deserve to be protected.

I thank the manager of the bill and others who have been involved in this issue for the great work they have done. This is truly a fight worth doing and worth doing right.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the chief sponsor of the bill. It has been

a pleasure working with him and others in a bipartisan manner on this important amendment.

I understand there are deep feelings on both sides of this amendment. This is a fundamental, legitimate disagreement on policy: What is the best way to go forward for the United States, with the same goals in mind--that goal being that we have a stable Iraq in the future--that is in the interest of all Americans?

It is worth doing the $87 billion investment that the President has requested, the rebuilding of Iraq. All who support this amendment are in support of that concept because we think it is important to have a stable type of government, whatever that will be in Iraq, democracy or whatever they choose. It is important to have that for the stability of the region and for the spread of freedom and freedom-loving people, especially in that part of the world which up to this point has only known rule under dictatorship.

I will make a couple of points about the bill. Of around $20 billion--and I will use the round numbers--$5 billion was recognized for security needs for the Iraqi Government; in other words, money to train and get security forces and an army in place as quickly as possible. Everyone recognized that is in the direct interest of the United States because every person put in place, every Iraqi put in place, allows an American not to be in harm's way. So there is no question that everybody agreed that $5 billion should be in the form of a grant.

With other sponsors of the bill, we had a little disagreement on the next $5 billion. But basically around $5.2 billion is needed in the first 12 months. And working together, in a bipartisan fashion, we wanted to make sure the President had the maximum flexibility for that next $5 billion, so we decided to make that in a grant as well. We did not want to get caught up in any bureaucracies or any kinds of problems, so that Ambassador Bremer could go ahead, fund what he needs to fund right now, get everything started over the next 12 months, and get Iraq on the road to recovery.

Now, the next $10 billion is the part that we said we think is best to do in the form of a loan. First of all, that is not the money that is needed right away, so we have some time on that. But another point on this--and my colleague from Indiana said it well when he talked about we are not trying to undermine the President; we are actually trying to strengthen the President's hand.

Let me make a couple comments about the President and the administration in the job they have done in handling the war in Iraq and postwar Iraq.

I think the President and his administration, the Department of Defense, and, obviously, our military have performed in a spectacular manner. Have there been problems? Absolutely. There always are problems, and they have adjusted to the problems. They have handled an incredibly difficult situation. And especially the President has shown great leadership through the entire process. It is incredibly challenging in that part of the world to deal with different cultural problems than we are used to dealing with in this country.

So we are trying to strengthen the President's hand. And that is what many of us believe this amendment will do. When we are going out and we are asking other countries to put in grants, we are saying: We, the taxpayers of the United States, are putting up $10 billion in grants. But a lot of countries are also owed money, and so is the United States right now. We are owed money. We, the sponsors of this amendment, believe that Iraq would be best off going forward if they had no debt.

We believe the best way to ensure they will have no debt is if the President is able to go forward with a $10 billion loan from the United States and is able to look at those other countries and say: We gave $10 billion in grants; We have a $10 billion loan here; and we are willing to forgive that $10 billion loan if you will.

But why should the American taxpayer--when the oil starts producing revenue, when people start actually paying their power bills, when other things start generating revenues in Iraq, why should the American taxpayer not be paid back if the taxpayer in France, if the taxpayer in Germany, if the taxpayer in Russia--countries that were not willing to support us when we were doing what was right in the world--why should those taxpayers be paid back and not the taxpayers of America?

That is really the whole point of this, which is, if we can give the President the leverage, he can do the best job he can to try to provide Iraq going forward with as little debt as possible. But if these other countries will not forgive the debt, then the American taxpayer will have a chance to be paid back. And that is what the fundamental purpose of the language in the amendment really is.

I want to make just a couple of comments about some of these other countries in the world that are owed this money. Remember, we are loaning this money to a legitimate government in the future in Iraq. This is a legitimate, democratically elected government going forward, a free people going forward that the loan is going to.

Who did France, Germany, Russia, and others loan that money to? An illegitimate regime, the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. And the argument that they should be paid back for loaning a brutal dictator money, and the American people not paid back for loaning a legitimate free people money, is just very difficult to justify for this Senator. That is why this Senator is so strongly supportive of this amendment.

We hope this amendment is adopted. We think it has a good chance of being adopted tonight.

So I will close by saying that working across the aisle, doing what is right--and I have heard people say, you are just trying to pander to people back home. Frankly, I do not know how many people back home are even paying attention. On a night like tonight, I think most people are going to pay attention to the Red Sox and the Yankees and not to what we are doing here.

In a bipartisan fashion, we are just doing what we believe is right. And the people on the other side of this issue believe what they are doing is right. It is OK to fundamentally disagree. What I hope does not happen in this debate tonight is that we impugn each other's motives. There are true, fundamental differences of belief on the way we should go forward.

We are presenting one alternative that we believe strongly we should go forward with. So I hope the debate stays on a high ground, and let the votes fall where they may. That is the kind of debate we need in the Senate.

I thank the chief sponsor of this bill for yielding me time, and I yield the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. President, everything that the Senator from New Mexico asked, this amendment doesn't take away any of that. The full $20 billion stays within this amendment. The difference is, do we give it all in a grant and does that strengthen the President's hand or do we give half of it in a grant and half of it in a loan? We believe if you give half in a loan, the President's hand is strengthened on getting other countries that are owed money from the previous Saddam Hussein regime to forgive that debt. I make no apologies for the American people to say, if France, Germany, and Russia can be paid back, then we should be paid back. I hope all of the debt is forgiven. I think that is best for Iraq. But if the rest of the countries don't forgive their debt, then the American taxpayer should be paid back.

Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, we don't intend to stay in Iraq forever. And we don't intend to rebuild Iraq--that is a task for the Iraqi people.

Our exit strategy--the way to get our troops home--is to make sure that Iraq's economy can produce sufficient revenue to pay for its own reconstruction--so Iraq is not dependent on International assistance.

Our exit strategy is to help train Iraqi police, border patrol, and its armed forces and civil defense forces so Iraq is not dependent on foreign troops for its own security.

The President's request is designed to help Iraqis get on a path to self-reliance, so U.S. forces can come home, and so the U.S. taxpayer does not have to foot the bill for Iraq's reconstruction.

Unfortunately, it is going to be difficult to kick-start Iraq's economy--even with a generous U.S. aid package--because Iraq is saddled with an enormous amount of debt from Saddam Hussein's regime.

For example, according to the White House, the bi-lateral debt owed by Iraq includes:

$8.9 billion to Japan;

$6.9 billion to Russia;

$6 billion to France;

$4.8 billion to Germany;

$30-50 billion to Gulf countries;

$8.2 billion to Kuwait;

$18 billion to Non-Paris club countries like China, Korea, and Turkey.

Mr. President, I realize that none of the funds appropriated by this bill may be used to service a debt that is owed by Saddam Hussein's regime. So I am not worried that any of the $20 billion the President has requested for Iraq will directly end up in the pockets of the French.

But money is fungible. If we pass this bill, as it stands right now, a future Iraqi government could use new oil revenues to pay back France billions of dollars while accepting billions in U.S. foreign aid. After all, Iraq has already sold about $1.6 billion in oil exports since they resumed this summer.

Americans are a generous people. We are willing to make sacrifices.

But we are not going to spend our hard-earned tax dollars to bail out France--money France lent to Saddam Hussein.

My amendment is simple. It reduces the amount available for reconstruction in Iraq by the amount that is used to repay bilateral debts owed by Iraq. So for every dollar that goes to a country like France, a dollar is subtracted from the U.S. foreign aid package.

This is a commonsense way to make sure that U.S. funds are spent where they are needed--in Baghdad--instead of Paris, Moscow, or Berlin.

Mr. President, how much time remains before the vote?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to speak for 4 or 5 minutes.

I ask my colleague, Mr. President, is there a reason 4 minutes is a big deal?

Mr. President, I will take the remaining time.

I make a couple of comments. We call this a voucher bill, a scholarship bill, Pell grants for kids, GI bill for some of the most disadvantaged students in the District of Columbia. What we are talking about is the children. Are we going to leave children behind in arguably one of the worst school districts in America or are we going to allow them to at least have a chance, a couple of thousand of them, to have a chance they otherwise would not have? Not only that, can we show something that works? The current system in Washington, DC is not working. At least give the kids and their parents a chance. Instead of putting the bureaucracy first, put the children first.

Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, I thank the cosponsors of our legislation, especially my chief cosponsors, Senator Feinstein from California, Senator Dorgan, Senator McCain, and Senator DeWine, as well as the 47 original cosponsors. I thank them all for being original cosponsors.

The legislation, however, we are dealing with now is identical legislation sent over by the House because of a procedural matter. I am very excited that this legislation is going to be

passed in just a little over an hour from now, because I think this is very important legislation just for the peace of mind of a lot of the people at home.

People say, ``Have you heard about this from your constituents?'' A lot of people who don't follow politics are talking about this issue in the last couple of days. They have talked about it for years, but they have heard about it in the news. They are talking about it around the water cooler and they are talking about it wherever there is a coffee shop, wherever they are, because they want to make sure that on October 1, when the Do Not Call list is supposed to be starting to be enforced, that it actually happens.

There are over 50 million Americans, as was said, who have signed up for this service. I am hazarding a guess, but I would say in the coming months there are going to be tens of millions more who will sign up for this because so many people don't want to be bothered. As Senator Dorgan talked about, the people who don't mind being bothered--for them, they don't have to sign up for the Do Not Call list. If they want to continue to receive all those offers at home from telemarketers who are trying to sell a product--if people want to receive those calls at home--I don't, but a lot of people probably want them--it is their right to have that coming into their household. I know in our household we get bothered by this a lot, and you hate being rude to people when they call up on the telephone. Nobody likes to get a call during dinner. You happen to have the phone all the way across the room. You get up and you walk across the room, and all of a sudden you realize it is a telemarketer. You are a little irritated and you don't want to be mean, but at the same time you don't want to be bothered. This Do Not Call list stops that from happening because the penalties in the Do Not Call list legislation are such that these telemarketers are going to stop.

So it is, to me, very exciting that we are actually going to act very quickly after what I believe the judge did was wrong. But that is fine; the Senate and the House have quickly acted on this bill. We are going to make sure there is no question in the court's mind that this bill is authorized.

I will conclude with this, and I will yield 5 minutes to my friend from Montana. It is really summed up in the Jerry Seinfeld episode where a telemarketer calls him and he asks the telemarketer, ``Can I have your phone number?'' The telemarketer says, ``Why?'' Jerry says, ``Because I want to call you during dinnertime and bother you.'' Of course, the telemarketer doesn't want to do that. But that is how people feel. They want to call them and bug them to let them know how they feel. That is the way people feel all across America.

It is important that we pass this legislation, and it is great to see the bipartisan support for it.

I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Montana.

I ask unanimous consent Senator Don Nickles be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. President, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking a little more about this legislation. First of all, this chart that we have in back of us--this graphs the calls and online registering to the Do Not Call center. This started June 27, 2003, which is the far left side of the graph. In blue or purple there is the amount of e-mails that came in, the way the people registered on line.

In the middle is 1-888-382-1222, the telephone number. About 11 million came in there. In the yellow at the bottom which started in July, about 8.5 million people came in. Those were numbers that came in from the States.

There are over 31 million people just since June 27 who have registered online. So we see, for a total of a little over 50 million people, how rapidly people have signed up to say we do not want to receive telemarketing phone calls.

The key is people are saying we don't want to be bothered. Part of freedom, it seems to me, is the freedom from being bothered by people when you are in your own home. Telemarketers contend that, just as if they are sending mail, somebody who is sending mail to somebody's home, they have the right to call somebody in their home.

The American people are saying no; we don't want to receive those phone calls. Mail they can just glance at and throw away. They don't actually have to get on the telephone and speak to somebody. Telemarketers require somebody to pick up the phone. If it is ringing, you have to go because you don't want to miss an important phone call. Maybe your kids are out or something, you don't want to miss an important phone call, and it turns out to be a telemarketer.

Nowadays, because of answering machines, you have a situation where you come home and it says: Hi, this is Fred--or this is Lisa or whoever it is. Please give me a call my number is, and you don't know who it is.

Then you call the number back and you find out it is a telemarketer. So you have just now wasted the time listening to the message, and you have wasted the time making the telephone call.

So we have people stealing valuable time, and time is our most precious commodity. That is why so many people want to sign up for the Do Not Call list.

We want to remind people--and I think this is going to happen a lot-- that the telephone number is 1-888-382-1222. That is the number that people will be able to call, and can call today to sign up for when this goes into effect on October 1. They just call up, very simple, add their name, give them their telephone number, add it to the list.

If they want to register on line, it is on the World Wide Web, donotcall.gov. It is all small letters. They go on there, they sign up, put their telephone numbers in, and they are added to the list.

It is simple for people to do. I think the simplicity is why it has been so wildly successful up to this point.

On October 1, when it goes into effect, that is when people will start having some peace of mind at home. At a time where families need more time together, they need more time to talk, I think it is important, especially around dinnertime when there are so many distractions--that is a prime time for telemarketers to call, at dinner time. Families don't have enough time together as it is now. I think to have those distractions around dinnertime is even more disruptive of that important family time.

We need to encourage families to be together. This certainly will result in fewer interruptions around the dinner table. That is why I so strongly support the legislation and why I sponsored this legislation to repeal what the Federal judge did in Oklahoma.

I don't currently see anyone who wishes to speak. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.

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

Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Pryor be added as a cosponsor to S. 1655.

Mr. President, I rise to speak against the resolution that we have before us today. I will make a few points that are being overlooked in this debate. First, when the original ideas for this cap on percentage of media ownership were put into place, they were put into place because of the principle that we did not want a small group of people owning our airwaves to the point where they would be able to control thought, whether it is political thought or any other kinds of thought, in the United States. So when these were put into place, we had basically three networks.

When I was growing up, there virtually was no cable and everybody had over-the-air broadcast television. We had the three stations, and whatever were on those three stations is what one watched. We were lucky to have one or two, maybe three, radio stations, especially if we were not in a major media market.

The reality of today is that we not only have the over-the-air broadcast with the three networks, we also have Fox, UPN, and others, but we have systems whereby the vast majority of the homes in America can either get cable or some kind of a direct satellite TV system that has hundreds of stations which provide news, which provide entertainment, which provide all kinds of information.

In media markets, for instance, where I live in Las Vegas, NV, someone cannot turn the dial without getting a new radio station, both AM and FM. The choices are incredible. Other types of information we have coming into our household today include the Internet. Anybody can set up Web sites or news information-sharing sources. That is becoming a larger part of how people get their information.

Other than the major media outlets, there is the Drudge Report and other places on the Internet where people are getting information. The point is that there are so many more places for information to be had today than when these rules at 25-percent caps were initially put into place.

The other major point I make is that what we are talking about is potential viewership. Right now, the cap is set at 35 percent. It wants to be raised to 45 percent. I believe the FCC tinkered a little bit around the edges. This is not the tidal wave of change that people are talking about. This is a minor change in that it is potential viewership, it is how many homes can be reached. It is not how many people are watching a station at any one time. It is how much potential reach can one have into the home?

So we are not only saying it does not matter how many choices one has, it only matters how many homes can somebody potentially reach. It does not matter if somebody reaches 100 percent of the homes, as long as they have plenty of other choices. We should be making sure there are plenty of choices. When people choose which station they watch, they should be free to choose whatever stations they want.

We have also heard mention in this debate about cross-ownership with newspapers. One of the big complaints I hear about localism is that a lot of the TV stations today do not cover local politics. We know when there is cross-ownership there are more resources, especially in smaller media markets where necessarily TV stations or the newspapers do not have the kind of resources to put good reporters on the beat and they do not cover as much local politics. When there is cross- ownership, we see 50 percent more local news and public affairs programming, and an important thing is that local politics is covered. This is one of the big gripes I had in my last few campaigns, that the local TV stations--whether they are owned inside the State or outside the State, it was the same thing--didn't cover local politics enough.

I happen to be a Republican. In Las Vegas, NV, these two entities I am going to talk about lean more to the left. There is a TV station in cross-ownership with one of the newspapers in Las Vegas and, since they have been in existence, the coverage of local politics, not only by them but also by their competitors, has increased dramatically. I think that is good. That is more localism. There is cross-ownership there, but that is localism.

I think the precautions the FCC has put into place on cross- ownership, where you have to have a certain number of TV stations within a market if there is only one major newspaper, are the right kind of precautions to put in.

The point is, are we giving people choice? Where they choose to view is up to them. We should not be in the business of regulating what they watch, what they read, and who owns those, if we have enough choices in an area. I actually believe the FCC could have gone farther than they went. This is a very conservative move they have made today. If we are starting to be in the business of regulating how many people you can attract to your television stations, then we are starting to regulate whether you are getting too popular. That seems to be wrongheaded, in my opinion.

It seems to be right that if you have a couple of gas stations in an area, as long as you have choice among the gas stations, that is the important aspect. You don't want a monopoly saying this is the only gas station to which you can go. If we have 200 different gas stations, it doesn't matter whether Exxon reaches 100 percent of the cities in the United States. If there are 200 different gas stations in each one of the markets around the country, who cares? Because there would be competition to make sure Exxon is keeping its gas at the right price; otherwise, they would not be able to compete.

That is the same thing we have here. It really doesn't matter, in my opinion, whether ABC or NBC covers the entire United States. If there are 200 active choices just on television to be able to choose from, then let people choose where they are going to watch based on their remote control or based on how they flip channels. That seems to be the right kind of choices America should be all about.

We are in this fear. There are some on the right and there are some on the left who are afraid that either liberals or the conservatives are going to control too much of the media and control too much thought in one regard. Whichever side of the political spectrum people may have had a bad personal experience because in their area maybe the liberals controlled it or in another area maybe the conservatives controlled it. People complain about Fox News today; people complain about talk radio; you hear conservatives complaining about the major TV networks and all that. But as long as people have the choices of where they view, the market will determine where they get their information based on people choosing which stations they choose to watch.

That seems to me to be the American way. Let there be plenty of choices out there. Let freedom ring, basically, and then Americans will choose what the percentage of viewership is based on the choices they make.

In this Senator's opinion, this resolution before us today would go the exact opposite way of that we should be going. We should be liberalizing these rules so broadcast stations have a chance to compete. We are watching daily the quality of programming in our broadcast television go down because it is incredibly expensive to produce those shows today. So we are seeing more shows like ``Survivor,'' with these people on reality television shows that frankly don't cost a lot of money to produce because you don't have to pay the big actors. We want to reverse that trend, go the other way, and the way to do that is to liberalize the ownership rules.

I yield the floor.