Floor Statements

Mr. President, I recognize and pay tribute to the United Nations on the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary.

During this week in 1945, fifty countries came together to found the United Nations, a body created to advance two momentous goals: a world free from war, and one in which the basic rights of citizens are respected in all countries. Over the last 6 decades, with the help of the UN, we have at least avoided the scourge of another world war. And we have seen the advancement of democracy and human rights around the world, as well as the provision of shelter, basic education, and critical healthcare to millions that would otherwise have gone without.

Today, while the broad goals of the UN remain the same, global threats and challenges are drastically different. Internal conflict, terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, religious hatreds, natural disasters, and disease pose great hardships and risks to all people, regardless of country of origin, and require, more than ever, coordinated international responses. By harnessing the resources and collective expertise of its 191 member states, the United Nations has the ability to address these concerns in ways that no single nation can on its own.

We in the United States owe the UN our profound gratitude for the assistance that has been provided to victims of Hurricane Katrina on our gulf coast. Within days of the disaster, the United Nations launched a campaign to coordinate relief assistance with federal efforts. UN agencies have distributed life-saving supplies, are supporting the surveillance work of the Centers for Disease Control, and are assisting in evacuee registration and tracking of missing children.

Day in and day out, we see evidence of the critical work that the United Nations undertakes around the world. The organization continues to lead humanitarian relief efforts in the wake of last year's tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and has launched an emergency response to the devastating earthquake in Pakistan. Through UNAIDS, the organization coordinates a comprehensive global response to the fight against HIV/AIDS, working to halt and reverse the epidemic by 2015. The UN women's fund, UNIFEM, supports women's empowerment and gender equality, in particular through supporting local initiatives to end violence against women. The UN Development Program is supporting democratic governance projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Haiti and over 150 countries worldwide. Inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have uncovered violations by Iran and North Korea, and the agency's safeguards have assured the world that other countries are not diverting nuclear material from their peaceful nuclear power programs.

Finally, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, extends protection and life saving assistance to some 19 million refugees and other vulnerable persons. In May 2005, I had the opportunity to visit the Oure Cassoni refugee camp along the Chad-Sudan border, and was incredibly impressed with UNHCR's work in providing direly needed food, shelter, and education services for nearly 25,000 refugees. The agency's aid staff is working tirelessly to serve this large population, and I witnessed extraordinary dedication and professionalism.

For 60 years, the United Nations has been on the front lines leading humanitarian stabilization efforts under conditions and in situations that are the worst of the worst. Now the organization is focused on another critical task: reforming itself. Many, including Secretary General Annan, have recognized that the UN must change the way it does business if it is to maintain the support of its members and effectively address the challenges that the global community will face in the future.

This reordering and restructuring is needed, significant, and moving forward. To highlight a few items, as a result of the support demonstrated at the UN Summit last month, member states are working to create a Human Rights Council to replace the defunct Human Rights Commission, in order to more effectively advance the rights and freedoms that continue to be denied to far too many. The establishment of a Peace Building Commission will make the UN, and the world, better equipped to prevent post-conflict countries from relapsing into violence, reducing the conditions that breed terrorism. And the dozens of personnel, management and budget reforms that have been proposed and endorsed by member states will make the organization more efficient in the important work it does.

Now, as the United Nations moves into the next chapter of its history, it is imperative that this momentum for change continues. Implementing these reforms is the responsibility of the member states. The United States can playa critical leadership role in securing their support, and their action. The future effectiveness of the United Nations lies in the balance, and I have every expectation that the member states can and will deliver. I encourage the Members of this chamber to fully support the efforts that are underway at the United Nations.

Article One of the United Nations Charter states that the purposes of the organization are to maintain international peace and security; address international social, economic and cultural problems; and to promote fundamental human rights and freedoms. Today, although tremendous progress has been made, we still need the UN to advance these goals. Therefore, I congratulate and thank the United Nations, its current personnel and staff, as well as those who have served in the past, for all that it has done to advance peace, security and freedom around the world, and for all that it must do in the years ahead to realize the vision of its founders.

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. President, may I proceed for 7 or 8 minutes as in morning business between now and the time Senator Hatch comes at 2:30?

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, today, in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, President Bush gave a vivid and, I believe, compelling description of the threat to America and to

freedom from radical Islamic fundamentalism. He made, in my view, a powerful case for what is at stake for every American.

Simply put, the radical fundamentalists seek to kill our citizens in great numbers, to disrupt our economy, and to reshape the international order. They would take the world backwards, replacing freedom with fear and hope with hatred. If they were to acquire a nuclear weapon, the threat they would pose to America would be literally existential.

The President said it well. The President is right that we cannot and will not retreat. We will defend ourselves and defeat the enemies of freedom and progress. But in order to know where we are going to go from here, we have to understand, in my view, how we got to this point in the fight. Unfortunately, the many fundamental mistakes this administration has made over the past 4 years have dug us into a hole that is making it harder for us to get out.

First, the administration took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and diverted our attention and resources to Iraq prematurely. As a result, while we made progress in Afghanistan, violence in Afghanistan is now worse than it has been since the war, and the Taliban, al-Qaida, and the warlords are, once again, on the move in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, we have captured some al-Qaida leaders, but many others have risen to take their place, and the terrorist threat has literally metastasized to many other countries. Around the world, terrorist attacks are on the rise, not decline.

Second, this administration turned unilateral military preemption from the option it has always been into a one-size-fits-all doctrine in the war on terror. We forgot that the power of our example is as important as the example of our power, that our ideas and our ideals are among our greatest assets. We forgot to draw on the totality of America's strength in order to be able to deal with the hearts and minds of 1.2 billion Muslims around the world.

Third, once we decided to focus on Iraq, we went to war too soon. We went without the rest of the world, and we went under false premises.

This administration told us we would be greeted with open arms, that we had enough troops to stabilize the country, that Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction. They were wrong on each of these counts and many more.

The result is a terrible irony. Iraq now risks becoming what it was not before the war: a haven for the very radical Islamic fundamentalists who would do us such harm.

But today the President of the United States seemed to recognize some of this self-inflicted damage. That is a good thing, and I applaud him for it. He said: ``the terrorists have now set their sights on Iraq''-- finally acknowledging that they did not before the war.

He said that in the broader fight against the radical fundamentalists and in Iraq itself, we can't succeed alone, that we need partners-- finally acknowledging what many of us on both sides of the aisle have been saying for years.

He implied that while our military might is essential, it is not sufficient--finally acknowledging that we can and must call on the totality of America's strength, including our economic and political might and the power of our example.

He said that the fight for freedom is long term and that democracy can't be imposed by force--finally acknowledging that we can't simply topple tyrants and leave, that we have to work day in and day out to support moderates and modernizers and build the institutions of democracy.

And he said that much more sacrifice will be required--finally acknowledging the difficulty of the challenge and the burden every American must bear.

So the President said some very important things today. But there are also a lot of things he did not say that leaves me, and I suspect many others, feeling frustrated. He told us broadly what we have to do, but he said virtually nothing about how he plans to go about doing it and what the American people can expect.

Consider what he said, and what he did not say, on Iraq.

Yes, we have to train Iraqi forces, as he said. But we still do not know how many of those forces must be capable of operating on their own or with minimal U.S. support before we can begin to reduce our military presence in Iraq. And we do not have any idea when those numbers might be reached.

Yes, we have to support the creation of a strong Iraqi political system that enjoys legitimacy with all the major groups, as the President said. But we still do not know what the plan is to overcome deep Sunni hostility to the constitution and to reconcile the growing sectarian differences that threaten to divide Iraq, not unite it.

Yes, we have to engage the international community to stabilize Iraq, as the President has said. But we still do not know what concrete actions the administration is taking to do just that. We still do not know why it will not organize a contact group of leading nations to show a united international front. We still do not know the plans for getting Iraq's neighbors to act responsibly, as we did in the Balkans and in Afghanistan.

Yes, we have to continue to help the Iraqis rebuild, as the President said. But we still do not know what the administration is going to do to actually deliver more electricity, to clean up the sewage, to get the oil flowing.

My colleagues remember, right after we went in, Mr. Bremer laid out a game plan. He said: By August we will have X number of megawatts and pump Y numbers of barrels of oil; and by December we will have--and there were goals. If you notice, we have not heard a thing, not a single thing about any of that. We have no idea what the administration's timetables or goals are, other than generically to help them rebuild.

What do we need to do to turn the tide on delivering basic services? And when can we expect them to succeed? Because in each of these areas, Iraqis today, as I speak, are worse off than they were before the war.

The President today was eloquent, and he was determined. But eloquence and determination, although necessary, are not sufficient.

The American people need--and our troops deserve--a clear plan for the way forward in Iraq, which has now become the central front in the war against radical Islamic fundamentalism.

As I have said many times before, the American people need this administration to speak openly and forthrightly about its plan for success in Iraq, for no foreign policy can be sustained--as we are noticing by the numbers--without the informed consent of the American people. They must be informed.

The American people also need--and our troops deserve--not the assertion that we finally have a comprehensive strategy in the fight against the fundamentalists but a detailed explanation of what that strategy is and the steps the administration is taking to build it.

It is precisely because all of us recognize what is at stake for our generation and those who follow that we will continue to speak out and insist that our Government act not only with determination but with effectiveness, not only with conviction but with wisdom.

Finally, though I continue to have differences with the President about how he has gone about prosecuting the war on terror--and I have spoken out as forcefully as I know how--let our enemies make no mistake--make no mistake at all--Americans are united in the struggle for freedom. We stand together in our determination with the President to fight the forces of tyranny and terrorism. In this right, America will prevail.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

No, I am fine. I thank the Senator.

Amendment No. 1896, as Further Modified

Mr. President, last night, the Senate passed by unanimous consent the Biden-Hatch--Specter Violence Against Women Act of 2005, S. 1197. It is a testament to the underlying goals of this legislation that this legislation was unanimously passed and garnered 57 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. I would like to thank Chairman Specter for his unyielding efforts to get this bill passed, and I would like to thank Senator Hatch for his longstanding support for this effort. The act expired on September 30. The House has passed its legislation, so it is imperative that we get the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 to conference and to the President's desk immediately.

The Violence Against Women Act of 2005 makes many critical improvements to the original act that we passed over 10 years ago. Many in this Chamber are well aware that I consider the Violence. Against Women Act the single most significant legislation that I have crafted during my 32-year tenure in the Senate. Indeed, the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 was the beginning of a historic commitment to women and children victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault. Our Nation has been rewarded for this commitment. Since the act's passage in 1994, domestic violence has dropped by almost 50 percent, incidents of rape are down by 60 percent, and the number of wowen killed by an abusive husband or boyfriend is down by 22 percent. Today, more than half of all rape victims are stepping forward to report the crime. And since we passed the act in 1994 over a million women have found justice in our courtrooms and obtained domestic violence protective orders.

``This is a dramatic change from 10 years ago. Back then, violence in the household was treated as a ``family matter'' rather than a criminal justice issue. Because we took action, the criminal justice system is much better equipped to handle domestic violence, and it is treated for what it is, criminal. The goal of the legislation passed is to usher the Violence Against Women Act into the 21st century. With this legislation we attempt to look beyond the immediate crisis and takes steps to not only punish offenders, but to also do more to help victims get their lives back on track, and prevent domestic violence and sexual assault from occurring in the first place.

This bill is truly a cooperative effort. As Senator Hatch, Senator Specter and I drafted this bill, we listened closely to suggestions from both sides of the aisle, and we listened carefully to the input from those with wide ranging opinions on how to combat this problem. In particular, we listened to those who are on the front lines fighting to end violence, such as police officers, emergency room nurses, victim advocates, shelter directors, and prosecutors. Based upon these discussions, we made targeted improvements to existing grant programs and we tightened up the criminal laws.

The groups that assisted with drafting this bill included the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, Legal Momentum, the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, the National Center for Victims for Crime, the American Bar Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Council on Family and Juvenile Court Judges, the National Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association and many others. I would personally like to thank them for the work that they do each and every day to make our Nation a better, safer place for its citizens.

No doubt, the bill that we have passed today is ambitious. We have made tremendous strides in treating domestic violence and sexual assaults as public crimes over the past 10 years. We have helped ensure that offenders were held accountable, and we created coordinated community responses to help victims. The Violence Against Women Act of 2005 will help us look beyond the immediate crisis and provide long- term solutions for victims, and we will redouble our prevention efforts. This is why we included important efforts to ease the housing crisis for victims fleeing their homes, included efforts to engage boys and men to prevent domestic violence from occurring in the first place, enlisted the healthcare community in identifying and treating victims, and to help stop the cycle of abuse suffered by immigrant women and provided tough new regulations for international marriage brokers to ensure that they provide foreign brides with information related to the background of their potential husband and their rights if they are abused.

Despite all of the strong points of this legislation, it could be made better. In particular, I had hoped that provisions from Senator Murray's Security and Financial Empowerment Act, SAFE, would have remained in the bill. This amendment would provide some fundamental economic protections for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Just as the Family Medical Leave Act protects individuals caring for a sick loved one, the SAFE Act would allow domestic violence victims to take time off from work to appear in court cases and other judicial proceedings without jeopardizing their employment at a time they need it the most. The SAFE Act is important legislation, and I believe that there is bi-partisan support for it. Unfortunately, we were not able to reach a consensus on this amendment and, as a result, it is not part of this final bill. It is my hope that the Senate will revisit this issue soon, and I look forward to working with Senator Murray in this effort.

One of the primary concerns expressed about the bill is that it simply costs too much. This is certainly understandable given our Nation's financial situation right now, but I have always said that the safety of the American people is the single most important responsibility for Federal, State, and local governments. And, while money doesn't solve every problem, there are very few, if any, efforts related to preventing violence and fighting crime that can be solved without money. As such, it is simply a fact that this effort will continue to cost money. I would argue that the results over the past 10 years show that this has been money well spent, and I hope that the Congress will continue to fund these efforts. In fact, there is evidence that we have received a net return on this investment. A 2002 university study found that money spent to reduce domestic violence saved nearly ten times the potential costs through the years of 1995 and 2000. During that time, the Federal Government spent $1.6 billion for the act's programs and, as a result, we avoided spending an estimated $14.8 billion on medical, legal and other victimization costs that arise from domestic violence. On an individual level, the bill costs roughly $15.50 per woman in the United States and saves an estimated $159 per woman. This evidence suggests that our success in ending family violence cannot be signal to reduce funding, rather, it is a call to continue to do more. We simply can't afford to lose the gains that we have made. We have found a winning combination, and we need to stick with it.

The Senate's action today demonstrates that eradicating violence against women is truly a shared goals, one that is held by Democrats and Republicans, one that is upheld by men and women, and one that is desired by both Government and by the private sector. I would like to thank my colleagues of the Senate for their support of this important legislation. In particular, I want to thank Senator Hatch, a long- standing champion on this issue. Since 1990, Senator Hatch and I have worked together to end family violence in this country, so it is no great surprise that once again he worked side-by-side with us to craft today's bill. I am also deeply indebted to Senator Kennedy for his unwavering commitment to battered immigrant women and his work on the bill's immigration provisions. I also thank Senator Leahy who has long- supported the Violence Against Women Act and, in particular, has worked on the rural programs and transitional housing provisions. Finally, I want to thank my very good friend from Pennsylvania for his commitment and leadership on this bill. It is a pleasure to work with Senator Specter, and I want to thank him for expeditiously moving this legislation through the Judiciary Committee and through today's action by the Senate. I look forward to working in the future with all of my colleagues to ensure that we continue to strive to the important goals of the Violence

Against Women Act of 2005. This effort will require a bi-partisan commitment.

Again, I am thankful to Senators Reid and Frist for their work on seeing that bill is passed and to all of my colleagues who unanimously supported the Violence Against Women Act of 2005.

Mr. President, in accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill, H.R. 2863, the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, the following amendment: Amendment no. 1999.

(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of Amendments.'')

Mr. President, because the Violence Against Women Act authorization expires today, it is necessary that we pass legislation to reauthorize this bill immediately. As a result, the Senate does not have an opportunity to debate and vote on all the amendments that Senators may wish to offer to this bill.

One such amendment that the Senator from Oklahoma, Dr. Coburn, had intended to offer would address the issue of HIV and sexual assault and seek greater testing for HIV disease among sexual assault defendants.

I would ask the Senator from Oklahoma, who is a practicing physician, to comment on the merits of this proposal and why it is so important.

Yes, that is correct.

Mr. President, I am pleased to support and cosponsor Senator Harkin's amendment aimed at enhancing our capability to combat an avian flu pandemic. This amendment provides absolutely crucial funding for key items that will clearly be needed to fight off this menace: a substantial stockpile of the only antiviral medication effective against H5N1 flu; expansion of the ability of our State and

local public health departments, which are the first line of defense against flu, to meet the threat; increased global surveillance for dangerous pathogens to pick up the first signs of a spreading epidemic, a priority issue that Senator Frist and I have worked on for several years; improving our country's infrastructure for vaccine manufacture, which is sorely deficient; and money for communication and outreach, so we can have everybody prepared and on the same page.

We are all concerned about preparation for bioterrorist attacks. Smallpox, anthrax, plague, and other pathogens may be coming down the road at some point. But the public health experts tell us that H5N1 avian flu has already started down the road. It is not in the U.S. yet, and the scientists don't know when it might get here, but it is heading in our direction. The avian flu virus is spreading throughout Asia, carried by migratory waterfowl with a worldwide reach. The virus is continuously changing and adapting, heading toward the human-to-human transmission capability that could trigger a pandemic.

And we do know from the first 100 human cases, which have been limited so far to Southeast Asia, that this stuff is really lethal, with a case-fatality rate approaching 50 percent. By contrast, the deadly 1918 Spanish flu that killed millions of people had a case- fatality rate of only 2 percent. We're talking about a threat to this Nation as big as any we have faced.

Fortunately, we have a good idea of the measures we need to take to mitigate the impact of avian flu. But these measures cost money and have a significant lag time before they can be put in place. Many of these measures require resources only available in foreign countries. We don't know how much time we have got, and we have got to get moving on this right now. We really can't wait weeks and months for the ``right'' appropriation bill, for some ``advisory committee'' to finish its work, or for the completion of a ``comprehensive'' antiterror plan. The responsible, prudent move is to act now, to start putting in place the countermeasures that we know will work if implemented in time. The old philosopher who said that ``an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'' may not have known anything about RNA viruses, but that advice would seem quite applicable to our current situation.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Farmers Market Promotion Program

Mr. President, over the course of this entire month we are celebrating National Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery Month, a time when we focus on the benefits of substance abuse treatment and highlight the hope of recovery for those in the grasp of drug and alcohol addiction. And today, September 20, we are focusing on the men and women who help guide people to recovery as we recognize National Addiction Counselor's Day. These professionals are unsung heroes who deserve our recognition, respect, and gratitude.

It is an unfortunate reality that substance abuse and addiction are pervasive in our country. Last year, over 19 million Americans used illicit drugs, 55 million had engaged in binge drinking, and over 16 million were considered heavy drinkers. These are staggering statistics. We have all known someone a family member, friend, or coworker who has or has had a drug or alcohol problem. Many of us have even spent time trying to convince a loved one to seek treatment, confident that a good treatment center and a qualified health professional would be able to restore hope to our loved one and help them into recovery.

Left untreated, addiction is a devastating disease which has far- reaching consequences. It exacerbates social ills including crime, disease, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and a wide range of family problems. It costs society billions each year in health care costs, lost productivity, and property damage. It also costs lives and causes immeasurable amounts of grief and pain. But there is hope: drug and alcohol abuse are treatable problems. Addiction is a chronic relapsing disease and, as with other chronic relapsing diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and asthma, there may not be a cure but there are a number of treatments to control the disease. That means that addicts are not sentenced to living their lives out of control; they can seek treatment with an addiction counselor or other health professional and take charge of their futures.

The people who treat this destructive disease are a dedicated, knowledgeable group of professionals who have committed themselves to a noble cause. They are a critical part of our Nation's health care system. Today there are countless sober individuals living happy, productive lives only because, in a moment-of-truth, a counselor was there and made the difference. Not only do these counselors assist in recovery but in prevention and intervention as well. Through training and experience, addiction professionals can help turn a life around and often even save it. And for the friends and family of a person struggling with addiction, counselors are an answer to a prayer, guiding their loved one to a life in recovery.

I ask all of my colleagues to join me today in recognizing the priceless contributions of addiction counselors, and giving them our gratitude. Their work to restore hope to shattered lives and broken families is invaluable. I applaud their work and hope that on National Addiction Counselor's Day they know how much they are respected and appreciated.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, let me begin by asking unanimous consent that Senator Landrieu be added as a cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. President, we are decimating the COPS program. Chairman Sensenbrenner, in the House, is no fan of the program. He asked for a study to be done by GAO. It concluded: Use of the COPS grants resulted in less crime, use of COPS grants resulted in more community policing, use of COPS grants resulted in more officers on the streets. This is a time when we need more officers on the streets, not fewer officers on the streets.

The idea we are going to deal with natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks by using special forces soldiers and not cops on the street seems to me to be a little silly. We need more cops on the streets.

There are 8,000 applications pending. The bill would allow for 25 of those applications to be filled. This is a mistake.

One of my colleagues--it may be the chairman of the committee; I am not sure--said we have to prove we can end a program. Why do we end a program that is working, and working so well, in the interests of the country?

My time is probably up. I thank my friend from New Hampshire for the courtesy of allowing me to take a few minutes to speak to my amendment.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 402 of House Concurrent Resolution 95, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2006, I move to waive section 402 of that concurrent resolution for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, are we still in morning business?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be laid aside so that I may send an amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, I have a number of points to make today. The bottom line of what I am proposing is an amendment to the Commerce- Justice-Science appropriations bill relating to law enforcement and COPS. The bottom line is--and I will explain this briefly--No. 1, I propose adding $1.019 billion to assist local law enforcement, support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and deal with some aspects of the impact of the hurricane on local law enforcement.

No. 2, this amendment contains $1 billion for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, the so-called COPS Program. It provides $700 million for hiring local officers, and it provides $300 million for interoperable communications equipment for local agencies. If you ever need any evidence of the fact that we need that equipment and need more of it, I think Katrina has demonstrated that, unfortunately, fairly well.

It also contains $10 million for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help find and reunite children displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and it has $9 million to support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault impacted by what happened during this crisis.

It sounds like a lot of money--and it is a lot of money--but we have made a serious mistake relating to our domestic security, our homeland security, and our need to deal with the looming threats that flow from not only national disasters we are facing now--and I hope we don't face another like this--but the terrors spoken about by my friend from Missouri.

In 2002, we were aiding local law enforcement collectively by $2.4 billion a year. Although there has been some correction made, this administration proposed cutting that direct aid to local law enforcement down to $168 million. I find that mind-boggling. I find that as misplaced and misunderstood a representation as I do cutting money for levees and cutting money for the Corps of Engineers, as we have done the last 4 years. This is an attempt to not restore all but restore part of the assistance we provided for local law enforcement in the past.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina has revealed the best and the worst about our great Nation. It has revealed a great economic divide that exists among our citizens, while it demonstrated as well the capacity of the majority of our citizens to be compassionate and even heroic during times of great need. It also exposed the demons of some who will use any opportunity to prey on the weak.

The hurricane also demonstrated the best and the worst in our Government. It is clear by all accounts that the Federal response was insufficient, and we will be discussing that in the coming days, weeks, and months to hopefully address the concerns so that, God forbid, faced with this or an attack, we would not go through the same degree of incompetence that seems to have been spread across the governmental front.

It also demonstrates clearly to me we have to do more to support State and local law enforcement officials. These men and women, in my opinion, demonstrated the best the Government had to offer, as opposed to the sudden incompetence we have seen. The men and women in Biloxi, New Orleans, and other police departments in the region have been working 24 hours a day. Many of them have lost their homes, and their families have been displaced. They have been working with limited food and water.

Many of them do not even have the facilities to take a shower and use a restroom. Lieutenant Bennelli of the New Orleans Police Department stated:

I spent a year in Vietnam. The ordeal that these officials

have gone through has been as trying as the time I spent in

Vietnam.

For everyone who argues that--and I hear this a lot around here these days--local law enforcement is a local problem, they should take a look at what is happening in the Gulf States. I know many of my colleagues-- and I respect my colleagues who have this view, but they are into this devolution of Government stuff, the new paradigm they like to talk about. They talk about the new paradigm in foreign policy. They talk about a new paradigm in local law enforcement in terms of devolution of Government. Translated, that means the only thing the Federal Government should do is those things which no State can do. Or put another way, if the State can do any of what is required to meet the needs of their citizens, only the State should do it.

From men and women on this floor who are equally as adamant about fighting crime as I have been in my years, they are saying they support eliminating the COPS Program. Why? They say it is not the business of the Federal Government. The Federal Government should not be involved in local law enforcement.

Well, I like to point out that 60 percent of all the crimes committed in America relate to drugs, abuse of drugs, the sale of drugs, illicit drugs. Is that a State responsibility or does not that stuff come across the border? Does not that stuff come from the Andes? Does not that stuff come from Afghanistan? Does not that stuff come from abroad? We can have the best police department, the most significant--and I think we have the best law enforcement agencies in the Nation in the State of Delaware, and you cannot stop the drugs coming down from Aramingo Avenue in Philadelphia. They cross State lines. So I respectfully suggest to the devolution-of-Government guys that Federal responsibility exists as it relates to local crime and local law enforcement.

I would like to point out another thing. God forbid we have an attack. Let us assume--and it was not, but let us assume some divers were planting explosives to blow up the levees along the Mississippi as opposed to Lake Pontchartrain, which by the way is a lot higher. Who is going to find them? Is it going to be some brave special

forces officer in night vision goggles watching this happen and they are going to capture them or is it going to be my son who is now in the National Guard down in Gulfport, MS, patrolling the streets? Is he the one going to be doing that? No, it is going to be a local cop.

Who is going to find the guy or the woman or the terrorist who is going to try to put sarin gas into the Houston Astrodome or a giant shopping mall? It is going to be some cop coming from Dunkin' Donuts riding behind the facility catching someone in a dumpster.

I do not know what we are thinking about here. Cutting local law enforcement moneys? Forget Katrina, which only makes the point more starkly, but forget it for a moment. What are we doing? We had a great President named Reagan who said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Guess what. Nobody has argued the COPS Program has not succeeded. No one has argued it has failed. A former Attorney General said, when it was time to eliminate it, I think the word he used was miraculous, it has been a miraculous program.

Let us cut it? Let us eliminate it?

I would make the suggestion that law enforcement is not purely a local problem. Look at what is happening in the Gulf States right now. Law enforcement is a national concern and requires a national response and a national commitment. Local communities need robust police departments. They need superior communication technology and equipment. I know my friends in the Commerce Committee know more about the spectrum fight, which I will not get into now, than most do, but the idea that there is not sufficient spectrum available to our first responders because the broadcast industry is unwilling to commit to the deal they made is beyond me.

Local communities are the ones that not only affect the overall security of the country but the day-to-day lives of their citizens by reducing crime. This also helps local governments be better at responding in periods of crisis. What could be more important to the national priority than the safety of our citizens?

We simply have not been doing right by our States and local government partners over the past few years. Throughout the 1990s we allocated billions of dollars to hire local law enforcement, provided them with the technology they needed. We all know the story. Reduce crime each year for 8 consecutive years and we are still reaping the benefits of those successes as crime rates still go down.

I would like to point out one other simple fact. Having chaired the Judiciary Committee or been its ranking member for I think 17 years and being on that committee for 30 years, to the best of my knowledge, there is no other time in American history when the cadre of those in their crime-committing years, meaning young people between the ages of 14 and 25, have increased and violent crime has gone down. This program has worked because the States have made it work. We reduced crime, as I said, 8 years in a row. But we did more than reduce crime by this legislation we have cut so drastically. We also demonstrated a commitment to local agencies. We increased their capacity to respond to any situations of the local communities.

In this year's budget, we have allocated only $2 million to hire police officers. This amount will hire approximately 25 officers throughout the Nation, hardly a ringing endorsement of our local agencies. Right now, the COPS office has pending applications to hire 8,000 local officers left unfilled due to lack of funds. The amendment I am offering today would provide $700 million to immediately fill these needs with special emphasis on filling the needs of those agencies in the devastated regions. The New Orleans Police Department in particular will need special assistance. If this funding is allocated to the COPS office, it should work with those agencies first.

We also know that network capabilities of agencies in the area have been destroyed. We need to help them get those networks back on line so they can continue to do their job. My amendment would add $300 million to the current allocation of $37 million, which is all that has been allocated. It would add $300 million to help agencies in the gulf coast get up and running again. The COPS office has had an overtime program to help local agencies pay overtime. We all understand the need to assist local agencies that have been working around the clock, but based on conversations with the Louisiana Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriffs Association, it is my understanding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be reimbursing local agencies for those costs. Because of this understanding, we have not included additional assistance for overtime in this amendment.

Finally, we include $19 million for children who have been displaced and to support the domestic violence shelters that have been destroyed. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reported that over 1,000 children have been displaced by this storm--that means they are not with their parents or guardians--and in this amendment we provide $10 million for that effort.

We also provide $9 million to support domestic violence victims impacted by the storms. We all heard of the reports of sexual assaults in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and we will support those victims who have not been moved to new shelters.

In addition, this funding will support the shelters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that have been impacted and will help support shelters in adjoining States that have been called upon to do much more in the coming months.

I think all of my colleagues have heard me say that I believe there is not a more important responsibility in Government than the safety of its citizens. It comes before their health, before their education, before everything. There are no civil liberties, there are no opportunities if one is not able to be safe on the street. Without safety and security, nothing else matters. Our local law enforcement agencies are there every day fighting crime and responding to emergencies. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated quite starkly the way we rely on them. The Federal support for these officers has been on a steady decline, as I said at the outset, the past few years. We need to reverse that trend. This amendment will help us get back on track.

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on the Craig amendment No. 1644 to S. 397, I was unavoidably absent. Had I been present I would have voted ``no'' on the Craig amendment.

Mr. President, for over 3 years, we have heard that our most important national security priority is to ``keep the world's deadliest weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people.'' One of the best ways to do that is to secure the world's stocks of fissile material and to destroy such material that is no longer needed for the nuclear weapons programs of the five accepted nuclear weapons states.

The Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also known as the Nunn- Lugar program, is an important mechanism for achieving this vital objective.

For over a dozen years, Nunn-Lugar has funded the destruction of Russian long-range ballistic missiles, nuclear warheads, and chemical weapons, as well as improved security for Russia's nuclear and chemical weapons. This program has furthered Russian compliance with bilateral and multilateral arms control treaties, and it has done so with great transparency. In short, Nunn-Lugar has been a consistent contributor to our national security.

Experts report, however, that since 9/11, the pace of Nunn-Lugar activities has fallen off. Fewer arms are being destroyed and there has been a major delay in activities due to disagreements with Russia over access to activities and liability protection for contractors associated with the program.

Another major impediment to Nunn-Lugar activities has been the need either to meet onerous certification requirements or to prepare an annual report justifying Presidential waivers of those certification requirements. This is a needless waste of resources.

Worse yet, the certification and waiver requirements often lead to gaps of several months in the flow of funds to Nunn-Lugar projects. Those projects are not undertaken out of the goodness of our hearts; rather, they are designed

to improve our national security by lessening the risk that rogues or terrorists will acquire weapons of mass destruction.

So, what is the point of requiring onerous certifications or waiver reports? The only effect of those requirements is to slow the process of improving our national security.

The truth is that the certification requirements were imposed by people who questioned the wisdom of Nunn-Lugar in the first place. And I cannot believe that anybody could doubt the usefulness of Nunn-Lugar today, given its proven record of achieving U.S. objectives.

If we are serious, then, about ``keeping the world's deadliest weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people,'' the time has come to pursue that goal more efficiently.

In particular, the time has come to stop putting roadblocks in the way of the Nunn-Lugar program, as we use that program to secure and destroy weapons of mass destruction that might otherwise fall into ``most dangerous'' hands.

The Lugar-Levin amendment will clear a major roadblock from the path to national security. I urge all my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I call up amendment No. 1301.

Mr. President, I know we are about to vote at 2:30 on two amendments. I wanted this to be the pending business. I will lay this aside until after the successive votes we are about to have. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, an important part of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy is the continuing effort to deter other countries from testing a nuclear weapon. It is often said that a country could build a relatively simple nuclear weapon, like the bomb exploded at Hiroshima, and use it with confidence even though it has not tested the device. That does not hold true, however, for more complex designs; and military commanders are loath to rely upon any weapon that has not been tested.

One major way to deter countries from conducting nuclear weapons tests is to ensure that such a test would be detected. That's because most countries, as signers of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the CTBT, are bound to refrain from acts that would undermine the object and purpose of that treaty, even though it has yet to enter into force. In addition, nearly all nuclear weapons states, including some that are not parties to the CTBT, have proclaimed unilateral moratoria on nuclear weapons tests.

Thus, there are both legal and political barriers to openly testing nuclear weapons.

How can we make it more likely that a covert nuclear weapons test would be detected and identified? One way is through U.S. and allied data collection, including the fine seismic network put together by the Air Force Technical Applications Center, or AFTAC. I support and applaud the work of AFTAC, which is truly a center of excellence. But AFTAC cannot and does not do everything; not every country will cooperate with the United States in the nuclear detection mission; and when we use AFTAC, we pay the full bill.

AFTAC's work is supplemented importantly by the International Monitoring System, or IMS, that is being set up by the Preparatory Commission for the CTBT Organization, the CTBTO PrepCom. The worldwide seismic network of the IMS will include sites in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere that cannot be duplicated through U.S. or bilateral arrangements. It will also combine long-distance, low-frequency, or teleseismic, coverage with high-frequency, regional seismic data that many experts believe will do a better job of detecting a ``decoupled'' explosion that uses an existing cavity to resist detection.

The IMS will marshal four different types of data--not only seismic, but also hydroacoustic, infrasound, and airborne radionuclide emissions--collected at 321 sites, mostly seismic arrays. The use of multiple methodologies will make it more difficult for a country to evade detection, as it gets very difficult to design a test that avoids detection by all four means. And the rest of the world is paying more than three quarters of the cost of this robust monitoring system.

Finally, while national technical means may include very sensitive intelligence information, the IMS will provide data that can be used openly for diplomatic or enforcement purposes. That will greatly ease the pressure on U.S. intelligence to expose sensitive sources or methods in order to further U.S. foreign policy objectives.

The administration rightly supports the IMS and has funded the U.S. share of IMS expenses for several years. Secretary of State Rice confirmed the administration's support for this program earlier this year, in response to a question for the record that I asked after she testified on the foreign affairs budget.

In addition, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Mr. Joseph, has assured the Foreign Relations Committee that funding the IMS is fully consistent with the administration's position on the CTBT, which it has said that the United States will not join, even though it is a signatory to the treaty. While I wish that the administration were of a different mind on the CTBT itself, I think they are absolutely correct in their view that the IMS serves our national security interests even if this country never ratifies the CTBT.

Unfortunately, the Office of Management and Budget imposed a severe cut on this budget item, reducing the State Department's request from $22,000,000 to $14,350,000. The Secretary of State assured the Foreign Relations Committee that the State Department is committed to finding the extra funds, even if they have to be obtained in the fiscal year 2007 budget. That's no way to run a railroad, however, and it could be difficult to get over $30 million next year to make up for the shortfall. It would be far better to find some of that extra money now and not put the United States so far in arrears.

I propose, therefore, that an extra $5 million be made available for the U.S. contribution to the CTBTO PrepCom. I am joined in this amendment by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, my good friend Senator Lugar of Indiana, which I very much appreciate. The additional funds will make it much more likely that the United States will find the money to pay its full assessment for IMS and will help keep the world from becoming a much more dangerous place.

Staff to Senators McConnell and Leahy have kindly worked with us on this amendment and identified the budget for economic support funds as an area in which a $5 million cut could be absorbed with less harm to our national security than we would risk by failing to fund the IMS in a timely manner. I understand that the managers of this bill are prepared to accept our amendment and can cover the difference in first- year outlays that will result. I am most grateful for their cooperation.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the following question and answer.

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

Mr. President, I am told that the time has been running against the 15 minutes, and I may have less than that. But if I run out of time, I have been authorized to maybe take as much as 5 minutes off of Leader Reid's time. Hopefully, I will not get to that point.

I rise today to support the Byrd rail security amendment. I know even though the Presiding Officer is new to this body he is aware I have been like a broken record for the past 4 years about rail security. When I look at the clerk, she probably thinks: Here he goes again because I have been talking about this so much since 9/11.

Quite frankly, we have an abysmal record, an irresponsible record, dealing with rail security. For the longest time, we had trouble in 2002, 2003, 2004, up until 2005, getting any traction. We have passed serious rail security bills, including Amtrak, in the past under the leadership of Senator McCain, and Senator Hollings, who was my seatmate for years, who is now gone. The McCain-Hollings-Biden amendment that was passed called for $1.2 billion. We even passed a $1.7 billion amendment. The House and the President seem--I do not know what it is. I just do not get it. I thought that maybe this time around my colleagues in this body would understand that, as my dad, God love him, used to say before he died, if everything is equally important nothing is important.

There are priorities. How there could be anything from a tax cut to even an education program that could take priority over dealing with our homeland security is beyond my comprehension. I do not get it. But obviously we are not prepared to do what I was prepared to introduce, and did introduce the beginning of the week, to add $1.1 billion for rail security, which would have brought the total number for rail security up to $1.2 billion, which was in the bill we passed last time around which would have provided $670 million to deal with security in tunnels and the places where cataclysmic events could take place--$65 million, $4 million immediately to Amtrak to go out and buy canine patrols, put more cops on, put in cameras and detectors, secure the switching stations, and all the things that lend themselves to providing for a catastrophe. The bottom line is I do not have the votes to get that done.

So I joined with Senator Byrd, who has been a leader in this area, in my sincere hope that $265 million for rail security in this amendment, which is one-fourth of the amount passed in the Rail Security Act of 2004 last October, will actually pass.

The positive piece is that although it does not give us a straight line to deal with the long-term security interests of rail, it would give them enough money and all the money they could reasonably spend in 1 year to be able to begin to upgrade our system.

The tragedy in London has focused the Congress and the Nation on rail security again this week, but quite frankly I learned from Madrid. I thought Madrid would be a wake-up call. I thought after Madrid people would say: Hey, Biden, you are right, man. We have a real problem with rail. We should really do something about this.

Nothing, nothing, nothing happened. Now, our closest ally and friend maybe gives us a different perspective on the floor. The Madrid attacks should have done it, but they did not. Our negligence to this point has been inexcusable.

Many of us have been talking about this for years. The bottom line is that nearly 4 years after September 11, over 1 year after Madrid, our rail system is as vulnerable as it was 4 years ago.

I met earlier this week in my office with the head of Amtrak security and all of his attendant folks. I cannot reveal publicly everything I learned, but it is quite alarming. Let me talk about a few things I can reveal. Critics argue that we cannot protect, for example--there are 22,000 miles of rail in this country, and critics say: Joe, you cannot protect all 22,000 miles.

That is a little bit like saying we cannot protect the airlines. We should not have air traffic controllers because we get baggage put in the holds that are not inspected? Now, is there anybody on the floor saying that?

Right now one gets on a plane and the baggage that is put in the hold is not inspected thoroughly like the baggage that is carried on. But is anyone

saying we should not spend the money on TSA to inspect the people going through the gates? Of course not. Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

The fact that we cannot do everything does not mean we do not do anything. That has been the mantra with regard to rail.

As I said, the argument is 22,000 miles cannot be protected, but guess what. We can prevent a Madrid or a London-style attack in the United States. We can make our rail system much safer and reduce the chance of attack because we understand that the terrorists want spectacular, cataclysmic attacks with large body counts in this Nation. Because we know that, we can narrow our focus to critical areas such as stations and tunnels, areas that security experts and common sense, as well as the CIA, tells us are the most vulnerable.

When I first did this 4 years ago, people said, oh, my God; do not point out that the Baltimore Tunnel was built in 1869, has no ventilation, no lighting, no escape, no way out. You are going to alert the terrorists. The terrorists know this. They know all the vulnerabilities. The problem is the American public does not know. So there is not enough pressure put on all of us here to make the right decision.

For example, every day over one-half million people pass through New York's Penn Station. This morning there were more people sitting in an aluminum tube below New York City--aluminum tube meaning a train car-- than in a half dozen full 747 aircraft. Tell me what happens when sarin gas is released there. Tell me what happens when there are a series of explosions that far underground. Tell me what happens if anything remotely approaching a chemical weapon is used. There is no ventilation.

Riding in New York City today in the tunnels one will see construction going on, as it should, with these great big things that look like jet engines being put up in the ceiling. That is ventilation, exhaust. So, if something goes off in the tunnel, 2 people or 20 people die, not 200 or 2,000.

Do you know what the single most visited facility in all of Washington, DC, is? It is 2 blocks down the street. I walk to it every night: Union Station. More people visit Union Station than any other facility in Washington, DC.

Go down there with me, Mr. President, and get on a train with me, as I do every night, and stand on the last car as you ride out of the station. Look; tell me if you identify a single camera. Tell me if you identify any barbed wire fencing around the switching devices. Tell me whether you see any security. Tell me whether you see any guards.

There are a half-million people going through the station at Penn Station, and do you know how many police officers are on duty at any one time there? Twelve. There are 12 in New York, 5 in Union Station.

As I said, if you walk over there with me right now, you will find no real police presence, no fencing, inadequate security cameras, all of which anybody with common sense would say made no sense.

For some reason, there is an animus toward Amtrak in Washington. I kind of figured it out, actually. I think a lot of folks here think that it is a back-door way of funding Amtrak. Otherwise, I can't understand why you wouldn't do this, after the billions we spend on airlines, as we should. I am not talking about Amtrak subsidies here; I am talking about protecting American lives.

In addition to the 64,000 daily riders on Amtrak, there are 23 locations where Amtrak facilities, stations and rails, overlap with transit facilities. In the Northeast corridor, Maryland Area Regional Commuter, has 400,000 daily commuters that utilize Amtrak--400,000 daily commuters on MARC that utilize Amtrak facilities. They walk in the station, get in a car, and it gets on an Amtrak track.

My friend from Rhode Island can tell me more about the transit systems in Rhode Island, and New York Transit, and Long Island Transit, and Connecticut Transit--et cetera. They all use Amtrak facilities.

Amtrak can only pay a starting salary of $31,000 to its police officers, and I cannot pay them more than $38,000, no matter how long they have been there, and they have a 10-percent vacancy rate on the force right now. Most of these positions are in New York and Washington where they need them most, but very little anyplace else. As I stated, in an amendment I proposed to add $1.1 billion for rail security, but the Byrd amendment only comes up with some $240 million right off the bat. We can use it. We can use it desperately. It is my understanding the Committee on Commerce and Transportation is going to mark up a comprehensive rail bill again next week, but we cannot wait for that. We need this $200-plus million right now. The $265 million in the Byrd amendment will provide urgent funding for Amtrak, including 200 additional police officers, 40 additional canine patrols, and improved fencing, lighting, and basic cameras--just basic block-and-tackle equipment that, if we have them, we can save thousands of lives.

The London bombers were identified by an expansive system of closed- circuit television in the London Metro. They have roughly 6,000 high- quality cameras there. We don't have anywhere near that capacity. We need that capacity.

Another area that needs attention is the transportation of hazardous chemicals. We have already voted this down before but, God, we should rethink this. The Naval Research Laboratory was asked what would happen in an attack on a traditional 90-ton chemical tanker. If you look at a train at a railroad crossing, you see the freight rail go by and you see these tankers--not containers, tankers; the whole car is one unit. You see them go. They are about 90 tons.

A 90-ton chlorine gas tanker, having an IED like those that explode in the streets of Baghdad placed under it on a track or under the tanker, exploding in a metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, will kill up to 100,000 Americans. Do you hear me now? One chlorine tanker exploding in a metropolitan area will kill 100,000 Americans. And we have trouble getting Homeland Security to come up with a plan to force these kinds of tankers to circumvent the population areas? Because it costs more money? It costs business more to do that. It costs more in the products we will buy. My Lord, what are we doing?

I might add to my friends in the Congress, when you leave Union Station and you head south to Richmond, you go under tunnels. Do you know what the tunnel goes under? Straight under the Supreme Court and under the House Office Building. If you explode a chlorine tanker underground, under that, you implode the Congress, you implode the office building called the Supreme Court.

If you want to make a statement--again, these are the IEDs, the roadside bombs that are killing our brave soldiers every day in up- armored humvees. There is no camera to detect anybody walking through those tunnels. There is no security. And we sit here like darned fools and say, No, that costs money. That is going to cost us money.

I understand the procedural restrictions will prevent us from considering that bill today, but I think this is a critical issue, one we simply have to address. I am going to be pushing this legislation until the cows come home.

After Madrid and London, we simply have run out of excuses not to act. This Byrd amendment does not solve every problem, but it goes a long way toward dealing with the beginning attempt to prevent catastrophic damage to American infrastructure and American lives. We will never be able to stop someone placing a bomb on a track somewhere along the 22,000 miles of track we have. We will only be lucky, one in three or one in ten times, with a dog getting someone who walks on a train with dynamite or K-2 strapped to their body or carried in their knapsack.

But to use that as an excuse to do virtually nothing, or to use it as an excuse that this breaks the budget--give me a break. We are breaking the budget on the inheritance tax. We are breaking the budget on an additional tax break for the superwealthy. We are breaking the budget on so many less worthy expenditures than homeland security.

There is much more to say, but I know my colleagues, over the last 5 years, are tired of hearing me say it.

I have a prayer, a literal prayer, that I never have the occasion to walk on

this Senate floor and say: We should have done this and we failed.

For God's sake, you guys and women who are going to vote on this, think about it in terms of how will you explain to the American people if something tragic and preventable happens after having voted against measures that, if put in place 4 years ago or put in place now, had a reasonable prospect of preventing it? That is a question I think you have to ask yourself.

I will end where I began, with my dad. My dad used to say:

Champ, if everything is equally important to you, nothing

is important to you.

Every hard decision we make is about priorities. I ask the rhetorical question: What priority is higher than the public safety of the American people in the face of a demonstrable threat that isn't going away?

I yield the floor. I see my friend from Maryland is on the floor.

If the Senator will yield for a comment, the Senator, who lives in Baltimore and has commuted to Baltimore every day for the last 20-some years--more than that, from when he was in the House--he will remember that there was a fire in an automobile tunnel going into Baltimore Inner Harbor a couple of years ago. It shut down all of Baltimore in the harbor region.

Just that fire. Even if there were not a terrorist threat, the idea that we are continuing to have, in and out and under the Baltimore harbor, this antiquated, 150-year-old tunnel, without any reasonable upgrade, is mind-boggling.

If the Senator will yield, I compliment the Senator from Maryland. This is not a mutual admiration society, but he has jurisdiction in the Banking Committee over surface rail, intracity rail, and he has taken care of this amendment. I realize he wanted to reach out further and take Amtrak into this, but he does not have that jurisdiction.

I know.

That is my point.

But the Senator wanted to do it, and he could not jurisdictionally do it. That is why I appreciate his support for the Byrd amendment as well. That is the only place we could pick up a piece of Amtrak.

I see my friend from New York. There are a million people in Penn Station today--more people, as I said--sitting at rush hour in an aluminum tube underneath New York City than a half dozen full 747s, and we are doing nothing about it.

I thank the Senator from Maryland. He has done a great job. And I thank Senator Shelby. I hope we can move it.

Mr. President, not that long ago, for the average American, our world was not a threatening place. Not long ago, there was little reason for the average American to feel anxious about the future. The United States was the only superpower; our economy was enjoying record growth and job creation.

Those things are no longer true. The rise of terrorism, the war in Iraq, international economic competition from new sources like China and India, as well as increased economic insecurity here at home-- together these forces have cost us a lot of our optimism, a lot of our self-confidence.

We are a people whose birthright is a belief in a better future, a belief in our ability to control our own fate, at home and abroad. That is our national character. But these days, our character is being tested.

Even in the best of times, trade legislation has been a touchy subject. These days, it can be among the most contentious issues we confront. Our trade deals carry the freight of our insecurities, economic and otherwise.

They carry our worries about our place in international competition, about job security, about losing our grip on our standard of living. There are real reasons that Americans are worried these days. Studies by the Federal Reserve and others confirm that income mobility--the opportunity for children to do better in life than their parents is declining, approaching the levels of more static, developing economies.

Without poring over statistics, Americans can see that happening. The reality of self-determination, the fact of social mobility, has been the foundation of our optimism. When the facts change, when the pace of mobility slows, it shows. Instead of a generation or two between poverty and a solid middle class living, today it can take five or six generations.

We have yet to produce one single new job since this administration came into office. Not one. Whomever you blame or however you explain it, that is a fact that registers in the lives of Americans. Not since the Great Depression has it taken so long to replace lost jobs.

That is why long-term unemployment--over half a year looking for a job--is the lot of over a million and a half Americans.

These conditions keep wages low, falling behind the cost of living. Real wages are falling at a rate we haven't seen in 14 years.

Into these tough times comes the word that 2 billion new workers, in China and India, to take the two biggest examples, are now competing with Americans for new jobs created in the global economy.

These workers are highly motivated--the poverty they are rising from, the pace of growth they can see in their cities, is a powerful incentive. Their governments are increasingly sophisticated about attracting investment and expertise from here and around the world to fuel their national economic strategies.

With these troubling trends, Americans are in no mood to accept text book platitudes about the benefits of free trade. They want to see some of the gains come home.

I am personally convinced that trade is in fact not only ultimately good for us, but inevitable. Standing at our shores, commanding the tides of trade to retreat, is not a plan for our Nation's economic future.

We fought and won a Cold War in the last century a war against a totalitarian economic ideology, to protect and project American values of political and economic freedom in the world.

Now is not the time to doubt those values. They are still the right values for us, and the right values for the citizens of other nations. Free men and women, freely exchanging goods and ideas, innovating, creating. That is the world we fought for, that is the evidence of our success.

And what is the alternative? Do we expect to close our ports to products Americans want to buy? Can we expect to successfully block American companies from seeking profitable investments overseas?

In today's world, American leadership is a reality. We cannot lead the world in the search for security but at the same time retreat economically. Trade can help cement peaceful ties, raise living standards, give desperate people hope and put idle hands to work. Trade must be part of our security strategy, or that strategy will not succeed.

If there is to be a better world ahead of us, wealthier, healthier, freer--and I

am certain that there is--then expanding international trade will be part of it. I don't think you can envision that world without expanding trade ties, expanding economic integration.

But there is no free lunch. This world comes at a cost. It comes at the cost of predictability, at the cost of stability. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called capitalism a process of creative destruction. And that it is.

The telephone replaced the telegraph, the automobile replaced the horse, supermarkets replaced mom-and-pop grocery stores. Our farms are mechanized; our manufacturing is robotized; our information is computerized. With every new idea, with every new invention, an old product, an old technology, and the jobs they sustained, are left behind.

Our Nation has become wealthy riding the waves of innovation, opportunity, efficiency, and economic growth. That, in part, is the American way.

But another part of the American way is our shared commitment to each other. With every wave of change, from agrarian nation to manufacturing power, to the world's richest economy, we have created the institutions to cope with the human costs of economic change. Child labor laws, minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, these are evidence of our values. And we have Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance--all ways to share the costs and spread the burdens of a churning economy.

Most fundamentally, we have established the rights of working men and women to bargain collectively for their wages and working conditions: these things are also the American way.

When it is done right, trade makes us more efficient and more productive. With the economic gains from trade we can afford to take care of those whose jobs are lost as the new ones are created.

There is a human logic to this, a logic that says the men and women, and their families and communities, who are displaced by economic change are not to blame for their fate. They should not shoulder alone the costs of change while others reap the benefits.

There is an economic logic, as well--by compensating some for bearing the cost of change, we keep innovation and opportunity expanding for everyone.

And finally there is a political logic. When we all know that we are not alone, that there are resources we can draw on in tough times, we don't have to fight change. Without that assurance, in our open political system, those who bear the cost of change and innovation will--understandably--resist it.

If trade is ultimately good for our economy as a whole, we must make sure that it is good for American workers and their families, too.

This trade deal does not do that, and that is why I cannot support it.

I said 2 years ago that I was concerned about the lack of effective enforcement provisions for the labor standards in the Chile and Singapore trade deals, and the precedent that might set for the CAFTA negotiations. What we now call the ``Jordan standard,'' that treats labor provisions on the same terms as intellectual property and commercial provisions, allows for effective enforcement when a party fails to live up to its labor rights commitments. That effective enforcement standard is part of the Jordan Free Trade Agreement, now in effect.

But instead of building on that success, CAFTA comes to us today without that effective means of enforcement.

At a time when the political support for trade is shaky at best, with American families justifiably anxious about the volatility and insecurity just below the surface of our economy, why would we roll back the standards for labor protections in our trade deals?

It just doesn't make any sense.

I notice that there is a lot of new language in this trade agreement about labor rights in the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic. That shows that our negotiators are getting the message about how important those provisions are to the political support we need for trade.

But instead of providing labor standards with the same level of effective enforcement that American businesses will get for their concerns, this deal leaves labor a second-class citizen.

But it is not just the specific terms of this trade deal that concern me today. If we are going to compete in today's global economy, we need a plan to protect American living standards and a plan to keep our Nation the most competitive on Earth.

We need a good defense, but we need a good offense, too.

We need a strong trade adjustment assistance program, and we need the will to enforce it. We need to make sure that health insurance, pensions, and other basic benefits are protected and portable in a changing world.

I think we should consider a real wage insurance policy that addresses not just the jobs lost by trade--in reality, trade is a small part of the churning in our economy--but any job loss that could put a family's standard of living at risk.

If we do it right--and right now we just have a small pilot program out there--wage insurance could provide real help to families in transition from one job to another and keep our labor markets open and dynamic.

But important as those kinds of protections can be, they are just playing defense. Right now, I don't see a plan for an offense, a plan for us to take on the rising competition from around the world, a plan to make American working men and women the winners.

That is going to take investments in education, in research, and in new technologies. That is going to take a commitment to making our workforce the most productive in the world, giving them the tools and the skills they need to compete. That is going to take a plan to create a new generation of good-paying jobs.

On the education front, Bill Gates has told us that our high school graduates are not up to the standards his company needs. Newt Gingrich has called the administration's lack of investment in basic research, and I quote, ``unilateral disarmament'' in the face of international competition. Those are not partisan attacks. Those are warnings we cannot ignore.

Because we don't have an adequate defense for the families who are affected by economic change, because we don't have an effective offense to win in a globalizing economy, I cannot lend my support to this trade deal. It sends the wrong message, it sets the wrong example.

The CAFTA countries themselves are no more than 1 percent of our trade. In many ways, they are not the issue here. I believe it will be good for our country if these nations can enter our markets. It will make those economies stronger, make them better neighbors, and open markets for the products made by American workers.

But only if the deal is done right. Only if we have the protections in place that can truly lift human rights, labor, and environmental standards there, and build the protections for American workers and producers here.

So I will vote against CAFTA not because I oppose trade but because I support smart trade, trade that works for American families, trade that is good for both sides.

I am afraid that more trade agreements along these lines will weaken domestic support for expanding trade. We need the full, informed consent of American citizens for trade, we need a trade agenda Americans can support, and we need to a plan to defend our standard of living here and to compete to win in the global economy.

We need to win the support of American working families for expanded trade, and restore their faith in our ability to win. Until then, trade deals like this one will just add to their worries.