Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum be equally divided between the parties, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise, first of all, to commend Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, Senator Grassley, and Senator Baucus on a piece of legislation that is important, and which I will vote for.

I am going to talk for a few minutes about some suggestions for the managers of this bill to think about as we get toward a final managers' amendment at the end of this debate because there are a couple technical changes that could make a significant difference.

But, first of all, I want to make sure one thing is said. We hear a lot about bailing out lenders and lenders being bad guys. Let me tell you something. The people who originated these loans loaned money that was raised on Wall Street by investment bankers and underwritten by Moody's and Standard & Poors. Moody's and Standard & Poors underwrote securities that were bought around the world by investors, that paid a high dividend but were on very risky subprime credit. That is where the fault lies--Moody's and Standard & Poors and on the investment banking community.

As a parenthetical suggestion, I hope Wall Street is listening because what is happening in the commodities market is the same guys doing the same thing again. If you look at the rapid price of all commodities, they are going up because of a huge influx in the commodities market. The only position-limited people in the commodities market are investment bankers. They are creating paper and they are trading paper and they are getting the Yale endowment fund, the Princeton endowment fund, and teachers' pension funds going into these as if they are investments, and they are not investments. They are a hedge in commodities.

So that is just a little early warning shot. If we will look closely at this, I think we can find the culprit to the subprime may actually be a significant contributor to what is going on in commodities.

But, again, to Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, Senator Baucus, and Senator Grassley, thank you very much for what is basically a fine piece of legislation. I urge you to look at the effective date of the tax credit that is included. As I read the bill, it includes the original dates from 2 months ago, which means the tax credit, when it goes into effect, will end at the end of April next year, which will be less than a year. May and June are the prime buying months in real estate. What we are trying to do is induce a decline in the inventory of houses on the market. I know it was not intended, but I think the managers should take a look at that.

Secondly, I know there is a difference between the House and the Senate with regard to the effective date over the GSE regulator for Freddie and Fannie. One side wants it immediate; one side wants it in 6 months. We do not need to have this bill go down because they cannot get their act together. So I hope they will work to find common ground on the effective date. On the FHA refinance program--Senator Casey is precisely correct. This is not a bailout for the lenders. This program allows for the refinancing of a troubled subprime loan whose payoff amount is more than the value of the house because of the decline in the marketplace. For it to be refinanced it requires the lender to take the hit between the amount owed and the market value. So the loss the lender is going to have to be recognize in a foreclosure will, in effect, have to be recognized in a refinance, but the homeowner stays in the house and the values in the neighborhood stabilize. We

are doing a good job, in my opinion, of putting an end to what is a desperate downward spiraling in the housing market which is affecting the economy because most Americans consider their equity their line of credit for their consumer spending. With that equity vanishing because of increased inventories, increased foreclosures, and increased vacant houses, we have a very big problem.

So I wish to commend Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby. Some of this is technical, but it needs to be said. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae saved the American housing market in the early 1990s when the savings and loans collapsed. There was no liquidity in America for mortgages. Had we not created those government-sponsored entities and allowed them to securitize mortgage paper and operate to provide the liquidity in the markets, there would be no mortgages for the American people, and we would have a disaster on our hands.

I appreciate the final language addressing two of the three concerns I had with the GSEs. No. 1, I am glad the House and Senate could agree on loan limits for both conforming and nonconforming jumbo loans. If we had not done that, we would have provided liquidity for mortgages that we didn't need to finance or refinance and not enough liquidity for mortgages that are needed in the marketplace, particularly in high-cost areas around the country.

Secondly, I appreciate the provision for the ability of Fannie Mae to portfolio jumbo loans because if they couldn't do that, there would be no liquidity. But I still question whether the language in the bill as it stands now directs more securitization and less portfolio. If you have too much securitization but don't have the opportunity for liquidity to be provided by letting these entities carry that on their balance sheet, then the effect is you say you are doing something, but, in fact, you don't provide liquidity. But I do appreciate very much the managers of the bill making those changes.

Lastly, with regard to the housing tax credit, I appreciate what Senator Grassley said, and I appreciate the kindness of Senator Dodd in the original debate by incorporating in the Senate bill substantially the amendment that I offered on the floor when this bill first came to the Congress. I was around in the real estate business back in 1974 when America had a similar crisis to the one we have today. The Congress of the United States passed a $2,000 tax credit to buyers who bought a standing vacant house in America. Within a year, we absorbed substantially all of the standing inventory in the country and revitalized the housing market, revitalized equities and values, and we came out of what was a very substantial real estate-induced recession.

I would have preferred some of the terms that I had in my amendment over some of the terms that the House changed them to with this tax credit, but it still accomplishes its purpose. It is a tax credit of $8,000 to a first-time homebuyer with income limits of $150,000 for a couple and $75,000 for an individual to go into the marketplace and buy and occupy--not as an investor but to occupy as an owner--standing inventory, new or resale, in the United States of America. That is going to be a big help to put a little fuel and energy and inertia behind a real estate market that is stagnant.

So I thank Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, Senator Grassley, Senator Baucus, and particularly the Finance Committee staff who were so cooperative in working on this concept. I think we are going to see it prove to make a marked difference. If that end date of April 30 is changed in the final amendment to the end of June of next year, we will incorporate 2 more months where it can have an incentive effect. It would not affect the scoring because the scoring was done as if it was done in a 12-month calendar year.

So to Chairman Dodd and to Ranking Member Shelby and Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley this is a very important piece of legislation. America has a serious problem. This doesn't bail anybody out, but it incentivizes buyers to come back to the marketplace. It provides liquidity to refinance loans that are underwater. It motivates, inspires, and provides liquidity in the marketplace through Freddie and Fannie that does not exist right now. Failure of the Congress to act, in my judgment, is going to cause us to have a protracted and devastating economic decline resting solely on the fact of the decline in the values of homes in America, the increase in the number of foreclosures, and the lack of liquidity in the lending market.

I encourage my colleagues to vote for this legislation. I hope the President will sign it. Again, I thank the Members of the Senate who worked so hard to provide good, substantial legislation to the housing market in the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, will my colleague from Connecticut yield?

The amendment we discussed earlier when I made my remarks regarding the effective dates on the tax credit is here. I do not think there is an objection. At some point in time, can I be recognized to call it up?

I thank the Senator.

Madam President, I wish to use this minute to set aside the pending amendment and call up----

Then, since I have had my say, I wish to defer my 1 minute to Senator Corker without calling up an amendment.

Mr. President, is the distinguished majority leader finished?

Mr. President, as a member of the Ethics Committee and in consideration for what may or may not happen, I am going to vote ``present'' so there will be no prejudice in any way, one way or another, in any decision that might have to later be made regarding the mortgage business and Countrywide in particular.

Motion to Refer

Madam President, I have listened intently for the last 2 weeks to the climate change debate and the energy debate, to Republican ideas and Democratic ideas, to Republican speeches and Democratic speeches--all about what is wrong. While we have talked, the crisis has grown astronomically.

In Georgia today, school systems looking to transport students this fall are wondering how they are going to be able to afford to run their schoolbus fleet because of the cost of diesel.

Back in Georgia, today in Marietta, our sheriff and our police chief are wondering how they are going to be able to patrol the streets with the budget they have for gas with that tremendous cost. They are doubling up officers. They are leaving cars idle in the motor pool.

Today workers are going to the pump, and they are filling up at $4 a gallon--a price that is unsustainable for them based on their wages and based on the cost of energy.

While we may make a lot of speeches, it is time for Republicans and Democrats alike in the Congress of the United States to put aside their partisan bias when it comes to energy.

I was a young man in the 1960s. A great U.S. President, John Kennedy, stood before the American people and the Congress, when America was confronting a great difficulty. We were falling behind in math, science, and technology. The Russians had already launched a satellite. They were on the way to developing a space program, and America was being left in the dust. President Kennedy stood before the Congress, and he declared the United States would launch a man to the Moon, land him, and bring him home safely before the end of the decade.

We did not know how to do that. But the President was bold in declaring it. The Congress put its partisan differences aside and funded NASA, funded reach; and 7\1/2\ years later, on July 31, 1969, the United States of America landed two men on the Moon and brought them back safely to Earth.

We are a great country, and we are at our best in a crisis. We have one today. Answers and solutions lie on both sides of the political spectrum. Enough, quite frankly, is enough. Republicans have to begin to embrace those things we said are not enough of a solution, such as renewables and conservation. They can help. They do not solve the problem, but they contribute to solving it. Democrats have to recognize we are sitting on a ham sandwich, starving to death, when we continue to keep our nuclear energy locked up and we do not expand and develop our nuclear program to generate safe, reliable, nonpolluting, carbon- free nuclear energy.

On the issue of exploration, it is possible to explore responsibly, develop the resources of our country, and contribute to our supply locally ourselves. It is important we have tax incentives for all forms of alternative energy--renewable energy such as wind and solar, future energy such as cellulosic-based ethanol, equalizing our incentives, making sure every megawatt hour is incentivized equally so we are putting all our solutions on the table.

This is not just a political problem; this is not just a pocketbook problem; this is an American problem. Have you ever thought about it for a second? Regardless of your opinion on global warming and climate change, it is in our best interest as a country to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce the production of carbon in the atmosphere. It is in our interest environmentally. It is in our interest geopolitically.

Right now, the United States of America is buying oil from three of our biggest competitors/sometimes adversaries--Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Ahmadinejad in Iran, and Vladimir Putin in Russia--paying prices of up to $139.26 a barrel for oil, the profit from which they turn around and buy our Treasury notes. They are buying equity in the United States of America with the very funds we are paying for their oil.

Yet we sit here and do not develop the resources we should be developing that we know of and we have here today: the shale oil in Colorado and Montana and North Dakota, a reserve that is estimated to be equal to the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. There are issues in Alaska with ANWR, but we can work them out. We can environmentally and safely explore. We did it 30 years ago with the pipeline in Alaska. We can do it again now. Off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and my State and States on the Atlantic coast, we can drill safely and securely. We can drill aesthetically pleasing, because if you drill outside of 50 miles, and in most cases 12, you are over the horizon so there is no damage to tourism. Yet you are extracting your own rich natural resource and supplanting those imports you would otherwise have to take from parts of the world you might not want to take from.

It is critical that we develop our resources. We all know that oil will run out one day and we all know we have to develop the technologies to replace it. We all know we need a bridge over the next 40 years as we develop those technologies to keep America running strong and vibrant and have our economy and our people prosperous. We are not going to do it with ever-spiraling prices of gasoline, heating, fuel oil, and petroleum. We can't do it. It is time we put our biases aside. It is time we stood and spoke as Americans. It is time we look toward every possible resource that is available to us and make a declaration just as John Kennedy did. If this President of the United States and this Congress join united to say we Americans are going to reduce our dependence on foreign and imported oil by 33 percent over the next decade and we are going to do it by unlocking those things that we refuse to explore--by developing our renewables, by incentivizing equitably all sources of energy that reduce our dependence on petroleum such as nuclear, wind, solar, synthetic fuels, and biodiesel--the world will immediately take notice and the speculators who were discussed so much two speakers ago will speculate in a hurry that America finally

woke up, the Congress finally decided to do something. They will know our insatiable desire for foreign oil is at an end, that we are looking toward an end game where we are energy independent. You know what happens when that happens: The price of oil begins to come down immediately.

The way you have an immediate impact on a spiraling and rapid increase in price is to have an immediate declaratory decision that you are going to do something about it and delineate those solutions you have and you know are doable. Surely a country that faced in the 1960s a challenge without the technology at the time to even know how to do what it said it was going to do can now today in 2008 make a declaration we are going to take our resources we are going to invest in them, we are going to incentivize them, and we are going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. If we do that, we will have the beginning of the end of the rapid spiral up in prices as well as a beginning of a new solution in the Senate of the United States. That is both sides of the issue coming together, finding the common ground that in the end benefits whom we serve: the people of the United States of America.

When I left Atlanta, GA, on the 4:20 flight to come to Washington on Monday, I came here recognizing that every day it is my responsibility to speak not for myself but for the people I represent. The people I represent are hurting. It is hurting our business. It is hurting education. It is hurting public safety. It is hurting the economy. We have to put aside our partisan differences, make a declaration of war on the spiraling cost of gas, develop the resources that we as America know we have, and say to the American people: This is the most deliberative body in the world, but it also has the potential to be the most decisive body in the world if we will only make up our mind to do it.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on May 21, 2008, the Senate passed by unanimous consent S. Res. 541, a resolution on Somalia introduced by Senator Feingold. As the new ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, I wholeheartedly support bringing about change in Somalia to allow for a viable government that will benefit the people of Somalia as well as the entire region.

The United States has a critical interest in establishing a secure and stable government and society in Somalia. I support the U.S. strategy in Somalia and believe that the only way to stabilize the country is through political reform, humanitarian assistance, deployment of African Union forces, and to keep terrorists from seeking refuge in Somalia. It is important that the Senate recognize that it is in the interest of the United States, as well as the entire region, that the sustainable peace in Somalia we seek create a government that does not threaten or seek to destabilize its neighbors or provide safe haven to known terrorists that are a threat to the U.S. and the Horn of Africa.

I also wish to emphasize that it is equally important that the Senate take great care in calling for a timeline for the withdrawal of Ethiopia's troops from Somalia. The resolution calls on Ethiopia to develop a timeline for the ``responsible'' withdrawal of its armed forces from Somalia. I believe Ethiopia to be in full agreement with this language and would like to withdraw its forces as soon as possible; however, a ``responsible withdrawal'' requires a replacement to maintain peace and stability and to stop terrorism. I would urge the African Union to continue sending peacekeeping forces to Somalia so that the Ethiopian forces can withdraw.

Furthermore, I strongly support all efforts that help convince Eritrea to play a constructive role in helping to bring about a stable Somalia. I urge the African Union, the United Nations and other peacekeeping groups in the region to pressure Eritrea to work with its regional partners to bring about peace and stability in Somalia.

Mr. President, last month, I was contacted by SFC John Cone and CPT David Schwartz, both forward deployed in Iraq at Tactical Psychological Operations headquarters. For each of these soldiers, this is their second deployment in support of the global war on terror. While both of these soldiers are dedicated and decorated servicemembers as well as public servants serving as civilian law enforcement officers at home, I want to honor in the Record of the Senate today their devoted and compassionate spouses back home.

Prior to their deployment in January 2008 with the 310th Tactical Psychological Operations Company, Detachment 1620 at Fort Gillem, their spouses, Kelly Cone and Lisa Schwartz, established a family readiness group to help support the deployed soldiers and their families back home. While Mrs. Cone and Mrs. Schwartz are both caring and devoted mothers at home with many other responsibilities, they took it upon themselves to create a Web page for their Family Readiness Group and began conducting regular information meetings and monthly ``coffee chat'' sessions with the families and spouses of the deployed soldiers.

These sessions not only kept the families inspired but also kept them informed regarding the details surrounding the deployment of their loved ones. Attendance has been high and the families receptive, each of the members providing input and assistance as needed. I was simply amazed to learn of all of their efforts and accomplishments in keeping the information channels and support networks fully functioning. For example, the Family Readiness Group recently mobilized to assist one of its members, a young woman who had gone into labor, and helped coordinate the redeployment of her husband from Iraq.

These two determined spouses did not stop with their Family Readiness Group efforts alone and have set about to aid in the establishment of a Family Readiness Group for the remainder of the 310th Company, set to deploy in the summer of 2009. They will host a Family Day in August to bring the new and old members together.

Mrs. Cone and Mrs. Schwartz serve as shining examples of today's Army spouses. Today's military spouses understand and seek to support their loved ones who have been called up and deployed into harm's way. It is my hope that the efforts of Kelly Cone and Lisa Schwartz will serve as a model for other families with deployed loved ones. It gives me a great deal of pleasure and it is a privilege to recognize on the Senate floor these dedicated and loving spouses for their outstanding efforts, patriotism, and selfless achievements.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to commend the Senate for assessing what is the most important issue confronting the United States of America today; that is, energy, its contribution to the environment, its costs, its availability, its future, and its impact on the economy.

I rise today to thank a number of people who have contributed to the body of knowledge I want to try to recite as best I can today: Michael Quiello, Caroline McLean, and Duncan Hill of my staff; Annie Caputo of the staff of the EPW; and three individuals back in Georgia, two alive today, one, unfortunately, who is deceased: Carl Knobloch, a distinguished man in our State of Georgia, who is probably the most ardent advocate for open and green space and the preservation of our environment of any one I know; Mr. Chris Sawyer, who is a distinguished lawyer, who represents many national organizations and many conservation organizations; and Mr. Bob Shearer. Bob passed away last year, but in the 1970s he had led the Georgia Power Company during the time it built the Plant Vogtle, a nuclear energy plant in Georgia that today provides affordable, reasonable, reliable, and inexpensive energy without emitting any carbon into the atmosphere.

Mr. President, I could not agree more with Senator Feinstein's remark that it is time for us to put all of the issues and all of the solutions on the table. It is time for us to talk about everything we need to do to improve our environment, make energy more affordable, and protect our economy.

I think it is ironic that the legislation that will be before us is a piece of legislation that leaves out two subjects that are critical to being accomplished in what the bill portends. First, it basically leaves out any provisions for nuclear energy or the expansion of electricity through nuclear power. Second, it gives no attention to the single way we know to sequester carbon today. It talks about carbon sequestration in a prospective way but does not talk about the single way we sequester carbon today, which happens to be through Mother Nature.

So for just a second I wish to talk about nuclear power, and I wish to talk about conservation and open and green space. Both are included in two amendments that at some point in time in the debate I hope to be able to offer.

First nuclear--and Senator Warner was kind enough to share with me an amendment he plans to offer on nuclear, which is a recitation of a number of facts that ironically I am going to recite in my remarks--and I commend him for doing that--the most important of which is that today in America, 73 percent of the noncarbon-emitting energy generated in this country is generated by nuclear. That 73 percent saves 700 million metric tons of carbon from going into the atmosphere.

You would think if you already know you are saving 700 million metric tons of carbon from going into the atmosphere and you know that 73 percent of your noncarbon-emitting energy is coming from nuclear, it would seem that if you want to reduce carbon emissions and carbon in the atmosphere, you would empower nuclear energy.

I think we should do that because regardless of your philosophy on global warming and climate change, carbon is making a difference, and it is in our geopolitical interest and it is in our environment's interest to reduce carbon--geopolitically because we buy less from Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Putin, where we get a majority of our oil today. That is the geopolitical issue, and that is good for us to do. Environmentally, they are not exactly sure at Greenland what all is happening, but they are sure the carbon isotopes and the ice borings are much higher today than they were 30 years ago, and that is the one change.

So it is important to reduce carbon. But to leave out the single way we know to do it best, to leave out the empowerment of nuclear energy, to talk about it only in terms of reference and not in terms of action is, to me, disappointing.

The amendment I will offer--which I offered in committee--does a number of things.

First of all, it provides incentives for nuclear energy in terms of a 10-percent investment tax credit for the production of a new nuclear powerplant. By the way, solar tax credits today are 30 percent. This is one-third of the tax credit for solar. But 10 percent is a good incentive, and these plants are huge investments. That is No. 1.

Second is accelerated depreciation or recovery of investment over 5 years. That is appropriate.

Third, loan guarantees--loan guarantees and standby help--for an industry that in the 1970s, when Government stalled it and investment dollars went away, absolutely almost went bankrupt trying to continue to build the plants that today emit carbon-free energy in the United States of America.

Those three provisions--the standby loan guarantee, the investment tax credit of 10 percent, and the 30 percent in terms of depreciation and the 5-year depreciation recovery--make perfectly good sense, incentivize nuclear, and reduce the emission of carbon into the atmosphere.

I have a chart I will put up. It is very interesting on these subsidies, by the way. There are a lot of antinuclear people who talk about how the Government should not subsidize nuclear. Well, we subsidize almost every form of energy. Today in America, $24.34 of every megawatt hour produced by solar is a tax incentive, a Federal subsidy. On wind, $23.37 is a Federal subsidy on every megawatt hour. For nuclear, it is $1.59. That is the level of subsidy. Ten times or really twelve times the nuclear subsidy is what you pay for solar and wind, which give you 27 percent of your carbon-free electric energy, while nuclear gives you 73 percent.

The bill also deals with empowering the workforce. When we evacuated nuclear energy generation in the 1970s, something else evacuated in America, and that was the construction of nuclear equipment, and that includes all the employees the industry would need in a revitalized industry. So we focus on that and talk about trying to bring that back to the United States of America and to empower our workforce so we can build safe, reliable nuclear energy plants in the 21st century.

I have a number of quotes from the following members, in public debate, when we debated this nuclear amendment in the EPW Committee. Senator Lautenberg, Senator Baucus, Senator Cardin, Senator Carper, Senator Warner, and Senator Lieberman all made comments endorsing and embracing the fact that nuclear is a part of the solution. I would ask today, if it is a part of the solution, why is it not a part of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill?

On conservation, for just a second. Carbon sequestration is something we need to perfect, and we do not know how to do it yet. We think we can find some caverns in the earth and we can sequester it there, but we are not quite sure. The technology is not there yet, nor is the cost, but we hope we can do it. But Mother Nature has been sequestering carbon for all time because that is the way the balance in our environment works. That is one of the issues.

So I have an amendment to propose which is a conservation easement tax credit amendment to incentivize the United States of America over the next 5 years through $25 billion in refundable tax credits to generate a fund to buy conservation easements in open and green space throughout the United States of America.

Since the founding of our country, 15 percent of our forest and open space and green space is gone forever to an impervious surface known as urban development. If that continues, then our own natural carbon sequestration system will be broken. So it is important, while we still have the open and green space, while we know where our wetlands are, where our rivers and waterways are, where our important ecosystem lands are, that we create a

mechanism for those lands to be protected, but not one where the Government goes and buys it--it costs you a lot of money to buy all this land--instead, to have a program where you create refundable tax credits, very much like the low- and moderate-income housing tax credits, $5 billion a year for 5 years, to be sold in the market, to raise the money for which you, in turn, allow 501(c)-qualified organizations, like the Trust for Public Land, the Conservancy, et cetera, the capital to go to out and, according to a statewide plan, buy conservation easements to protect in perpetuity those areas critical to our ecosystem and our country and, in fact, our environment.

It would seem to me that when you debate the most topical issue of the day, the most controversial issue of the day--the thing everybody wants to talk about--if you know there is only one way to sequester carbon, and that is through the natural process of nature--and protecting open and green space does that--and you know the only major supplier of carbon-free energy is nuclear, that you would make an investment in this act by seeing to it that you empower the future of the country to focus on conservation and nuclear and all the other sources available.

I am a Republican. I am not one who likes to throw partisanship out in any debate. I think you ought to win something on merit. But I think we and our party and the Democrats and their party need to look at this issue in a different perspective. A lot of us have our biases. It is time to put our biases aside. If there is a known solution out there where we can reduce carbon, expand our energy availability, and reduce costs, we ought to embrace it. Nothing should be off the table. Solar shouldn't, wind shouldn't, nuclear shouldn't, renewable shouldn't, biodiesel shouldn't; whatever it is, synthetic fuels, we should act now, and we should act boldly to see to it that while we work for the best interests of our environment, we work for the best interests of our citizens.

Our citizens today are paying more for gas and energy than they have ever paid before, and there is no end in sight. We have a debate today that if this bill passed in its form, it would raise that cost even more; by some estimates, $1.50 a gallon more. We are talking about serious business here. We need to be serious as Members of the Senate, as Members of the most deliberative body in the world, and make sure every option is on the table. For this Senator, that means expanding conservation easements for better sequestration of carbon naturally, and it means by reempowering the nuclear energy business to see to it that the one source of reliable, safe, carbonless energy that we know today in the United States is empowered for the 21st century.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished Senator's--may I address the distinguished Senator through the Chair?

Mr. President, I appreciate the generous comments of the Senator from Virginia and the work he has put into this, and I would publicly acknowledge that in the committee and privately. The Senator has stated eloquently to me his support for the concept of expanding and empowering nuclear energy.

I also understand what our block is: the blue slip. I referred in my closing remarks: We have to start putting our biases aside to allow the full debate to take place on what we are going to do to lower energy costs and reduce carbon. If we talk about nuclear being good but aren't willing to address it and somebody is going to blue-slip or put a hold or kill a bill simply because it has nuclear in it, then we are not serious, in my judgment, about reducing the cost of energy, reducing the amount of carbon or dealing with the problem ahead. I am not speaking to the distinguished Senator from Virginia because I know where his head and his heart are, and Senator Lieberman has expressed the same thing. But there are others--there are biases on both sides. We need to put our biases away and allow every viable alternative to be debated on the floor of the Senate and voted on. Up until the time we do that, we are wasting our time and, unfortunately, we are wasting a lot of our taxpayers' money who are paying exorbitant prices for the problem today.

I am delighted to yield.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman. I am aware some of the companies that are in the nuclear business have endorsed this, and let me say this--and if I stand to be corrected, I would appreciate the Senator correcting me. But those who are heavily invested in nuclear that are operating today are in support of this because they are going to sell their carbon credits to those who are not heavily invested in nuclear and are generating coal. That motivation is a motivation that is economic as much as anything else.

What I would like to see is for us to get everybody on a level playing field, where we have more nuclear and we have less coal and we have less gas and we have less oil-generating electricity. Then we will be better off. So this is a winners and losers game in terms of the carbon tax or the carbon credits. Those who have a low-carbon footprint are going to have credits to sell and those who have a high-carbon footprint who use coal or oil are going to have to pay a lot of money to buy it. That is why there are some biases in these industries that are for and against.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Warner. To Chairman Boxer, first of all, if I said--I very well could have--if I said I knew they weren't going to build more powerplants in the future, I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say was those nuclear companies that were the most supportive were the ones that were way ahead in the building of nuclear plants already generated far more carbonless energy because of that and were going to sell their credits--and I am a business guy; I think making money is a great deal--are going to sell their credits to those companies that are more coal- and carbon-producing friendly.

You are right, I didn't talk about the modeling. The modeling does project more plants in the first 42, 43 years of the life of the bill to 2050. However, I would submit to you, a modernized nuclear title would allow those plants to come on safely, more quickly, and could more quickly address the carbon issue than the way we are currently caught in this conundrum of the antinuclear versus the pronuclear, so we do nothing to empower an industry that we know generates 73 percent of our carbonless energy today.

But I thank the distinguished chairman for her patience, the distinguished Senator from Virginia for his contribution. I look forward to working with you in any way I can to hopefully move us forward.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Duncan Hill of my staff be allowed floor privileges for the remainder of this debate.

Mr. President, today I wish to honor in the Record of the Senate Laurel Zaks, an incredibly dedicated and universally beloved and respected civil servant who died on Friday, March 28, 2008. Laurel was a public health adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA, with more than 14 years international and domestic work experience as a nutritionist.

Laurel started her career in 1992 as a nutritionist in Bucharest, Romania, with the Free Romania Foundation cross-training staff in three orphanages with medical clinics in health and nutrition issues. She then took a position as a community developer in Pop Wuj, Quetzeltenango, Guatemala, teaching primary health prevention strategies. She returned to the United States in 1996 where she developed and communicated policy and legislative strategy on domestic hunger for Congress and lobbied Congress on nutrition programs involving welfare reform. While in Washington, she also served as a pediatric dietitian with the Children's National Medical Center working on initial and followup nutritional assessments of HIV/AIDS and gastrointestinal disease patients.

In 1997, Laurel joined the Peace Corps volunteering in Ecuador, where she used her training as a dietitian to work with the Ministry of Health and indigenous organizations to develop training materials promoting maternal and child health and prevention of infectious diseases. Next Laurel moved to the city, Santa Domingo de Los Colorados, to work at the Center for Malnourished Children and in local communities where she served as the nutritionist/health educator working in an interdisciplinary medical team. During the last 2\1/2\ years of her Peace Corps service, she was instrumental in helping to design a new $400,000 Children's Center for Nutrition Recuperation, which served an average of 40 families daily.

Laurel joined CDC in 2001, 1 week after finishing her Peace Corps tour in Ecuador. Her enthusiasm for making a difference in global health affected all who knew her. She worked in many areas of global health work at CDC, including planning for development of sustainable global public health management, planning for a global pandemic influenza outbreak, and serving as a team member traveling to Botswana in response to an outbreak of infant diarrhea and severe malnutrition. In 2007, she was part of a team honored for rapidly assisting 20 countries around the world to apply for pandemic influenza preparedness funds.

Laurel was an active member and leader in the Atlanta chapter of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. She gave countless hours to charitable organizations domestically and abroad, including the Manna Food Bank in North Carolina and as a charter member of the Ecuadorian Rivers Institute in Ecuador. She received various awards for her volunteer work and was bestowed the North Carolina Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service in 1994.

Just as she did with the Peace Corps, Laurel's work over 7 years at CDC left a legacy of healthier people around the world. She inspired her coworkers to make a difference in global health, and all who knew her were struck by her compassion and the lasting contributions she made to children living in poverty around the world.

Mr. President, I wish the record also to reflect I voted ``no'' on S.J. Res. 28.

Mr. President, I wish today to honor in the Record of the Senate a great educator in the State of Georgia. On June 30, 2008, Dr. Carl V. Patton will retire as president of Georgia State University after 16 years of outstanding service.

Dr. Patton has led Georgia State University in its transition from a commuter school into a vibrant research university that is home to more than 28,000 students representing every county in the State, every State in the Nation, and 160 countries.

Georgia State has grown into one of this Nation's leading urban research universities, reflecting Dr. Patton's vision for a partnership between Atlanta and the university. Instead of designing walls to keep the city and its urban ways separate from the campus, he has insisted that the university fully integrate its research, teaching and service mission into the fabric of the urban environment of its downtown Atlanta home.

As the university has grown physically, it has grown in stature as well. The College of Law, which was in its infancy when Dr. Patton became president in 1992, is now ranked within the top 100 law schools. The Andrew Young School of Public Policy, founded in 1996, has grown from an idea to an internationally recognized program that works in over 30 countries around the globe as well as at home in the areas of health care, environment, air quality, taxation, aging, education, child care, and diversity.

The J. Mack Robinson College of Business continues to rank among the best in both graduate and undergraduate offerings, with two programs ranked in the top 10 by US News and World Report. The College of Health and Human Sciences leads the country

in research on urban health issues such as HIV, health care shortages, criminal justice, social work and nutrition.

Georgia State's College of Arts and Sciences hosts one of only two bio-safety level 4 labs, which will move shortly into a new Science Park that this Congress has seen fit to support. The new Science Park promises to bring cutting-edge research in the bio and neurosciences and will facilitate the growth of bio-technology in Atlanta and beyond.

Finally, the College of Education is hard at work partnering with urban schools to provide a clinical, supervised method for training our future teachers to ensure the success and longevity of these new teacher careers and, most importantly, the long-term success of our children who live within our major urban centers.

Dr. Patton has lived his life in the way he hopes his students live theirs, tirelessly volunteering for service in his community through organizations such as Central Atlanta Progress, the Rotary and the Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation. However, his example and his hard work will not stop at retirement, as he plans to continue to live downtown and assist Georgia State in its future endeavors to raise capital and to expand its student body to tackle the tough issues of our times.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure and it is a privilege to recognize on the Senate floor the contributions of Dr. Carl V. Patton to higher education in Georgia. He has served Georgia State University, the city of Atlanta, the State of Georgia and the United States of America very well. Dr. Patton has earned the many happy years of retirement ahead of him.

Madam President, while the distinguished Senator from West Virginia is on the floor, I wish to, first of all, commend him for his efforts on behalf of aviation in the United States. I associate myself with his remarks about rural and underserved areas. I associate myself with all the remarks he made in support of our aviation system.

I am one of those people who are frustrated with our inability to deal right now with amendments. I understand a substitute was offered last night and the tree was filled so there are no germane amendments that were--the amendments that were filed yesterday are no longer germane; am I correct?

Madam President, in the hopeful event we can move forward, I wish to, for a minute, with the distinguished Senator, make him aware of an amendment I submitted yesterday but is not pending. It cannot be pending right now. I agree with the Senator entirely on the importance to the American economy of U.S. aviation. In the bill they put out, there is one element that was not addressed that I think should be.

On December 31 of this year, the United States providing terrorism insurance to the airlines sunsets. If it is, there will be no access to terrorism insurance by U.S. domestic carriers because the only private insurers that will offer terrorism insurance offer it with an advanced cancellation provision, which basically means if we went to a code level orange or a code level red, the insurance company in advance of a terrorist attack could actually cancel the insurance. So the aviation industry would be without insurance.

Our competition in Europe does not have that problem. They still have private insurance available for coverage of aviation terrorism. I submitted an amendment yesterday that would extend the date of December 31 of this year--which is the expiration date--to make it December 31, 2011, so airlines can continue to pay the U.S. Government for insurance against terrorism.

If my understandings are correct, those premiums totaled $160 million in the last year and are a revenue source to the United States of America, as it should be. We should not be providing it without cost.

So I would hope, when the meetings that are going on are concluded, and if

we can get back to the base bill and if amendments again become relevant, that the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, the Senator from Alaska, and the others who have worked so hard on this legislation will look favorably on an extension of terrorism insurance availability to domestic U.S. carriers.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I rise this afternoon to talk for a few minutes about health care in America--the cost of health care in America, the access to health care in America, and to talk prospectively about the first 4 years of the next President of the United States. It is pretty obvious, because of the complexity of health issues and because of a political campaign year, we are not going to get to a resolution this year.

It is obvious our country has a crisis. It is obvious we have to move forward. It is obvious to me that whoever the next President of the United States is, the very first thing they are going to have to tackle is affordable, accessible, and quality health care.

The health care issue is one that has a million angles to it. I am not going to talk about all those angles today. Secondly, I am not going to stand up here and tell my colleagues that I think I have all the answers. However, I do think it is time that all of us who have said: Well, I am not for government-provided health care--that is not good enough. If you are not for it, you have to be for something. You can't have the easy way out. There have been a lot of people who say: I don't want single-payer health care; I don't want the Government to do to health care what they did at the IRS, but I don't have any good ideas.

It is time we came up with some goods ideas. We are going to have to do what is maybe different and philosophically and politically challenging to Republicans and to Democrats. But first what we ought to do is look to successes around the country that have solved some of the cornerstone issues in terms of the costs of health care.

One of those is the cost of medical malpractice and what is commonly called tort reform. The minute a politician mentions tort reform, they get everybody's attention, but in particular, a trial lawyer's. I am not a trial lawyer basher. Some of my best friends are trial lawyers. I always tell people: Everybody hates lawyers, but they love their lawyer. When you need a lawyer, you want a good one. I wish to bring a perspective to the tort issue as it deals with medical malpractice to try and point out there have been solutions found--solutions that do not prohibit an injured person from being compensated for the damages that were caused to them, while at the same time quantifying and capping at a predictable amount for those actuaries the cost of what these runaway awards have been doing to us.

We have tried on the floor of the Senate, on more than one occasion, to address this, in part. We tried with legislation in the 109th Congress to limit or to cap noneconomic damages in OB/GYN cases. The reason we targeted OB/GYN and obstetrics cases was because they consistently have runaway insurance premiums; we consistently have problems in our States where there are not enough doctors to deliver the babies for families in our communities because there are not enough doctors who can afford the medical malpractice insurance as it rises.

Unfortunately, we never passed that in the Senate, although in two different amendments we tried. In my judgment, it would have helped with the situation. Today, I want to talk about a good example from my State of Georgia and about some things I think we can do in the Congress.

In 2005, our State Senate in Georgia passed a Senate Bill 3, by a vote of 39 to 15, and it went to the house and passed by a vote of 136 to 34. Obviously, it was bipartisan. We have had 2 years' experience with that bill. The experience has demonstrated what we had hoped it would: No injured person was aggrieved or denied coverage or recovery, but the cost of health care on medical malpractice became more predictable and rates stabilized.

The points in that bill that passed in Georgia are precisely the points we ought to look at in terms of the Federal court system. Point No. 1, eliminate joint and several liability in a medical malpractice case. For those who may not know what that is, it means if somebody is injured, or alleges they have been injured, and they file suit against the person who injured them, in the normal course of our litigious society, they also sue everybody else who is even remotely related to that particular situation. I was a real estate broker in Georgia. If we sold a new house to a family and the first time it rained after they moved in the basement leaked, they sued the builder, but they sued me, too, so they had a wide sweep to try to recover. I understand that. There are times when joint and several is appropriate, because sometimes more than one party in an injured class situation is involved in the injury and should be held accountable. But to summarily make joint and several apply without any conditions is wrong.

What we put in the Georgia law was that the plaintiff must identify a single defendant in the suit, unless he proved clearly and convincingly that the hospital or the physician and others in the system were also negligent. That is not unreasonable. We want to make sure that if somebody is injured by a doctor, they can recover. But then to hold the hospital, or the hospital authority, or the county health authority liable, when they were not part of the procedure, we don't think that is right. That is one of the reasons you have a tremendous cost of malpractice insurance.

Second, to strengthen expert witnesses, who are critical in any court situation where you are trying to prove damages. But experts ought to be experts. For example, if you have a traumatic brain injury, the expert testifying on behalf of the plaintiff and the expert testifying on behalf of the defense ought to both have neurological training. It is not right for a dentist, who happens to be an MD, to testify in a neurological case. So by putting in requirements in terms of witnesses, you establish a situation where you have clear, responsible testimony, and you cannot use a ``quasi'' person to give you irresponsible testimony.

Third, limit liability for emergency department physicians and personnel. I want to talk about this for a minute. Talking about Georgia again, we have

Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, one of the largest public hospitals in the United States. It was on the verge 6 months ago of closing because almost everybody who goes there is indigent or a nonpaying customer. They may be on Medicare or Medicaid, but in every accident that happens on the freeway system there, they take the injured to that trauma center. It is the largest burn center in the Southeast. Grady Memorial Hospital is losing so much money that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The community has come together, with volunteer citizens such as Pete Corell and Tom Bell in our city, who deserve tremendous credit. They created a nonprofit organization to take over the organization of the hospital and raise capital, and I believe we are going to save that great trauma center and that great hospital.

Frankly, they operate under terrible circumstances in that trauma center. To have the type of liability in a trauma center that people want to hold you accountable for today with medical malpractice liability, with no Good Samaritan laws for those people isn't right. If somebody is brought in after a tragic wreck and there are not qualified exceptions for a physician to treat that person, you are never going to have the type of immediate response care that you need. You don't have the time to practice defensive medicine in a trauma situation, which, by the way, I will get to defensive medicine next. It is one of the contributing causes to the cost of health care. Defensive medicine is practiced primarily because of the court system.

I had a problem a few years ago. I went to the doctor and they said, well--they gave me this and it didn't work, so they gave me that and it didn't work. So they gave me a full-body CT scan. I had a swallowing problem. I wondered why they did a full-body CT scan. He said he wanted to be sure he had done everything he could. He had to practice defensive medicine, when a scan from the chest up would have been fine. That is one of the reasons you have runaway malpractice awards and the litigious nature of our society. It is a skewed system and you have costs running through the roof.

We need to elevate the burden of proof from the ``preponderance of the evidence'' to ``clear and convincing evidence.'' We did that in Georgia 2 years ago. I don't know about you, but if I am accused of something, I don't want somebody to decide because the preponderance of the evidence said I was wrong; I want it to be clear and convincing. That is the way it ought to be, in terms of medical malpractice as well.

Then the real hot potato--the one everybody goes ballistic on--is talking about capping noneconomic damages. Georgia did something unique. They capped noneconomic damages at $350,000. That is the pain and suffering. Noneconomic means if you were injured, all the costs of that injury, the costs of the treatment and the corrective treatment, and all the economic losses you have, you get all of that. Noneconomic is when they add on another penalty to the guilty person for the pain and suffering. Georgia capped it at $350,000. They gave an overall cap of $1.050 million, allowing the judge to lift the $350,000 if the evidence in the court case proved a higher damage was necessary. That is the point I want to address in the Federal court law.

I have three children. My second son, Kevin, in 1998 was in a terrible automobile accident in rural Georgia. He was on a camping trip with a 16-year-old buddy. They were going down a country road in Greene County, 2 a.m. in the morning--which is another subject I will get to as a father later on--and a deer crossed the road. A deer will stop in the headlights. The deer took off. My son was a passenger, and the driver decided to follow the deer rather than the road, hit a ditch, and my son went through the front windshield. He had four operations. He had to get grafts, bone marrow treatments, and he had internal infections. He has more metal in his right leg than I have in my automobile. The doctors put him back together. Making the case about litigation, I have to tell you that was a case where my son was hurt and there was negligence. I was angry. In Georgia, we have something called no-fault insurance, which means you have $15,000 in coverage, which covered the emergency room, and there is no more coverage. Everybody is on their own. But we had obvious negligence. In that case, fortunately, the young man who was driving, who was negligent--his father, although he had minimum coverage for the accident, had a general liability policy. He said: My son was wrong and your son is going through terrible pain. Let's sit down and go to my insurance company and negotiate, through a professional arbitrator, what is the right general liability award for your son. We did that. We negotiated it and used an index of nationally approved negotiators, in terms of what damage would have been right. We agreed to it and my son still has that reserve in case he has further complications from the damage done. No liability responsibility, but a cost that was appropriate for the injury, rather than gained through a court case and a litigious action.

It is my personal opinion that we should cap noneconomic damages in the Federal court and medical malpractice in the following way: Change the current law. The current law allows a judge to reduce the amount of the award if he doesn't think it was right. The judge can reduce it. I think we ought to cap liability on medical malpractice at a million dollars for the noneconomic damages, but then say the judge can lift that cap if the evidence in court proves gross negligence. That changes the dynamics of litigation. Instead of suing and going for big bucks because you can, you will realize that the burden of proof is to justify the big bucks based on your circumstances and the facts of the case, and you don't intimidate people into negotiating high settlements. Instead, you put the burden on clear and convincing evidence, which, in my case, as I have said, is the only way to go.

Medical malpractice is certainly not the only cause of the higher costs of health care in America. Solving medical malpractice costs doesn't address all of the other factors, but it is a component part. I am willing to sit with others and talk about all those other things we beat our gums about but never do anything about that are components of the cost of health care.

I will talk about what we need to do in terms of Medicare eligibility. When somebody signs up for Medicare when they are 65 years old--you are supposed to go in 90 days before your 65th birthday; I am getting close, so I am looking at these things--I think you ought to be required to execute a durable power of attorney when you become eligible. Eighty percent of the cost of health care to me, to you, and to anybody else happens in the last 60 days of life. More often than not, people are not in a condition to make a decision for themselves. Because of laws, and because we are a compassionate nation, the physician will keep you alive as long as he can. If you had a chance, you might rather say if I am being hydrated and given nutrition but will never become conscious again, I give the doctors the authority to make the appropriate medical decision. The money that would save is in the ``gazillions'' of dollars--if there is such a number. It would help us to manage that cost.

Secondly, we need accountability on the part of the American policyholders, and wellness and disease management. My second son's father-in-law is a Swede. He came to America and now lives here full time. He bought a medical insurance policy independently, because he is retired. About 6 months ago, he called me and we went out to dinner. He ordered a salad, broccoli, and asparagus, and he didn't put any sugar in his tea. I said: What are you doing? What kind of a diet are you on? He said: It is my health insurance, not my diet. My policy will go up to $500 a month if I don't get my cholesterol below 200. His vital signs are a component of health care and, if he wasn't taking care of himself, he would pay a higher premium for the benefits he needed. We need to look at disease management and wellness and accountability.

I came to the floor to talk about what is going to be the biggest issue in the first term of the next President, the biggest crisis. If I am fortunate enough to win reelection in 2010, the Nation's Medicare system is going to be broke before I leave the Senate. This is not an issue we need to talk about in the future. The time is now. It is time for good men and women of both political parties to put all of the issues on

the table and not just talk about what they are not for but start talking about the solutions that can make a difference in the quality, accessibility, affordability, and health care for the people of the United States of America.

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

Mr. President, I ask that I be recognized for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts makes an eloquent and passionate statement, but everyone within the sound of my voice needs to understand something. This debate today is not about allowing, favoring, or supporting discrimination. It is about preserving the Civil Rights Act to which the distinguished Senator just referred, because the Civil Rights Act stated clearly that if a complaint was filed, it needed to be filed within 180 days of the act of discrimination, or as, as current EEOC practice allows, 180 days from the date which a reasonable person should have known.

Let's make sure everyone understands all this. Since 1964, 44 years ago, that has been the provision in the statute. No one is trying to keep that from happening.

Secondly, everybody needs to understand this: It is very important to people, regardless of whether they are a woman, a man, a Methodist, African American, Latino, whatever, if they are discriminated against, we need to make sure there is timely evidence so the handling of these claims can be completed thoroughly and completely.

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act changes the civil rights law provisions from 180 days from the time a discriminatory act was made or a reasonable person should have known they had been discriminated against to 180 days from any ``economic effect.'' This means that someone can work for a company for 30 years, go on retirement and pension, get a pension check, declare the 180 days just started, and file a complaint from 30 years ago.

We are about having integrity in the system so we have timely complaints, we have timely evidence, and the parties who are there can quickly be remedied.

I would like my staff to put up a chart because I would like to review the history of the Ledbetter case.

In 1982, Mrs. Ledbetter filed a complaint for sexual harassment against her supervisor. That complaint was settled between her and the company, Goodyear, in a timely fashion, and she was satisfied.

In 1992, Mrs. Ledbetter, under testimony, testified that she became aware she was being paid less than her peers, but she filed no complaint.

In 1993, she did not file a complaint.

In 1994, she did not file a complaint.

In 1995, Mrs. Ledbetter said:

I told him at that time that I knew definitely that they

were all making a thousand at least more per month than I was

and that I would like to get in line.

But she did not file a complaint.

In 1996, she did not file a complaint.

In 1997, she did not file a complaint.

And then on July 21, 1998, a complaint was filed, shortly after her supervisor died. That is the reason for the statute of limitations on the complaint to begin with--to ensure you have contemporary and timely information and the parties who might have committed the act of discrimination are alive and can be held accountable.

No less than Justice John Paul Stevens, the first time this particular provision of statute of limitations was taken to the Court, in a 7-to-2 decision in 1977 said the following:

A discrimination act which has not made the basis for a

time charge is merely an unfortunate event in history which

has no present legal consequence.

Some will argue--and I am sure Senator Kennedy will--about hidden, or concealed, discrimination, whereby a person might not become aware they are being victimized. Essentially, you can rope-a-dope someone and fool them. Current EEOC practice clearly states that it is 180 days from the time a reasonable person should have known or would have known they were discriminated against.

It is very important for us to understand that we have a case, the Ledbetter case, where the individual testified under oath in deposition that she was aware she was being underpaid and did not file. We also have a person in 1982, a decade before the alleged act, who did file a case for sex discrimination. So it was not ignorance of the system, ignorance of the law, or ignorance of the court; it was violation of the time provided.

Just to make sure the record is clear, in a deposition of Mrs. Ledbetter on July 18, 2000:

Question: So you had this conversation with Mike Tucker

about the 1995 evaluation. You told him then that you wanted

to try to get your pay more in line with your peers?

Mrs. Ledbetter: That is correct.

Question: How did you know that your peers were earning

more?

Mrs. Ledbetter: Different people I worked for along the way

had always told me my pay was extremely low.

Again in a deposition later on:

Question: And so you knew in 1992 that you were paid less

than your peers.

Mrs. Ledbetter: Yes, sir.

Mr. President, I abhor discrimination. I share the reverence of the quote of Martin Luther King, a citizen of my home State, quoted by Senator Kennedy, that we all yearn for the day that a man will be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. We respect that today. That is why the Civil Rights Act we discuss today was passed. That is why, when they passed the Civil Rights Act, Congress put in a standard of 180 days from the date of discrimination to ensure the evidence was there, the supervisors were there. That way an aggrieved person could take action to remedy quickly this situation could. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act changes that to a distant time in the future when people could have passed away, records could have been destroyed, and the ability to prove the allegation would be impossible.

I submit, in an environment in 2008 in the United States of America where equity, nondiscrimination, and freedom are available to all Americans, that it is this timeliness is important so that anybody who is injured and anybody who is aggrieved gets a swift and just action in the courts of the United States of America.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I yield myself 30 seconds.

The distinguished Senator from Massachusetts referred to restoring the law to pre-2002. The Supreme Court, in 1977, through John Paul Stevens' majority opinion, 7 to 2; 1980 and 1986, in all three of those rulings they upheld the 180-day provision of the Civil Rights Act of the United States of America. That was the law prior to Ledbetter, and that is what the court reaffirmed in Ledbetter.

Mr. President, I yield up to 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi.

Mr. President, I owe the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts an answer to the rhetorical questions he has asked. Everybody within the sound of my voice should understand we are not debating whether anybody in here believes in discrimination. We have voted over and over in this body for 44 years. We have the Equal Pay Act, as the Senator had on his chart there. That passed the Senate on voice vote. That is not the issue. The issue in this case is the tolling provisions of the 1967 Civil Rights Act, Title VII, which dealt with discrimination in wages based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. I will debate what tolling period is appropriate, but I am not going to stand here and allow this to be described as a debate over one side being for discrimination and another being against it. We are for the timely reporting of claimants and the ability of people to be remedied expeditiously if they have been discriminated against.

How much time is left on our side?

I yield the distinguished Senator from Utah, Senator Hatch, 11 minutes.

How much time remains on our side?

I yield myself the remainder of the time.

Madam President, with all due respect to the Senator from Illinois, as was said earlier, in this case, in each and every year from 1992 to 1997, Ms. Ledbetter testified that she knew she was being discriminated against but didn't file a claim.

Secondly, this is not about restoring the Civil Rights Act to its state before Ledbetter was decided last year. This is about amending title VII of the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 in terms of its statute of limitations.

The fact is that every one of us in this body is for precisely the same thing: Discrimination against no one for race, sex, color, creed, national origin; equal pay for everyone. As the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts showed in his chart, we have over and over again reaffirmed this. This is not about the issue of discrimination. This is about the rule of law, the Civil Rights Act as it was passed in 1964 and amended in 1967, and its statute of limitations that has been upheld by the Supreme Court--not once, not twice, not three times, but four separate opinions in 1977, 1980, 1989, and 2002. Ledbetter simply reaffirmed these cases.

If we have a problem, let's address it in committee. Let's fix it after open debate. Let's not eviscerate the committee process and bring a flawed bill to the floor of the Senate.

I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed and yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I wish to honor in the Record the 25th anniversary of the Georgian Club, the first suburban city club in metropolitan Atlanta.

The citizens of Cobb County immediately embraced the Georgian Club when it first opened its doors on April 19, 1983. I was proud to be a founding board member and I am proud to serve as chairman of the board of directors today.

With its breathtaking view of the Atlanta skyline, the Georgian Club offers unparalleled service, fine dining, and a relaxed atmosphere. Its consistently high standards ensure an enjoyable experience every time.

Many great leaders of Georgia have graced the halls of the Georgian Club, including my predecessor here in the U.S. Senate, Zell Miller, my colleague, Senator Saxby Chambliss, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and President Jimmy Carter.

The Georgian Club is the vision of Jim Rhoden who has contributed to Cobb County and Georgia in countless civic and charitable ways.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure and it is a privilege to recognize in the U.S. Senate the 25th anniversary of the Georgian Club. The Georgian Club is a wonderful asset to our community and I congratulate this fine establishment on its well-deserved success.