Floor Statements

Mr. President, I express my support for repealing the Medicare physician fee cut. The issue of reimbursements for physicians who treat Medicare patients has been an ongoing battle. Currently, these reimbursements are inadequate and inefficiently paid through a bureaucratic system. Some physicians have been even been forced to refuse Medicare recipients due to these inappropriate reimbursement levels. With so many Medicare recipients who need medical services in South Carolina, the situation with low reimbursements poses a challenge to both physicians and patients.

I have supported updating and increasing the reimbursements physicians receive under the Medicare program. The schedule of fee cuts for these reimbursements has been temporarily suspended due to the actions of Congress. I supported legislation to repeal physician fee cuts for both fiscal year 2002 and 2003. However, in October 2003, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, reported that the physician fee cut for 2004 would be 4.5 percent. This necessitates a further repeal to ensure this fee cut does not move forward.

While annual repeals of the physician fee cuts are vital, I also support a substantive change to the reimbursement calculations so physicians are not held in limbo each year regarding their fee updates. I am hopeful that Congress will address this issue in a comprehensive manner.

Since I support legislative action to make sure this cut is repealed and to ensure future repeals are dealt with effectively, I am exceedingly concerned that the most current repeal in the Medicare physician fee cut is contained within the mammoth Medicare prescription drug bill. This blocks me voting solely on the merit of the repeal.

I have many reasons a to why I plan to oppose the Medicare prescription drug bill conference report. None of my reasons are concerns with the Medicare physician fee cut repeal. Rather, my opposition stems from the lack of real cost containment of the program, exclusion of true Medicare reform, the weakening of the premium support issue, the treatment of ``dual eligibles'' coverage, and other issues related to oncology drugs, durable medical equipment, DME, and local pharmacies.

It frustrates me that this latest repeal is in a bill with literally dozens of other Medicare provisions in a $400 billion dollar bill. While I cannot support the Medicare prescription drug bill, I will continue to support the repeal of next year's Medicare physician fee cut and addressing the ongoing issue of fee cuts in a comprehensive manner. I am hopeful that our leadership will give us a vehicle for a straight up or down vote on this issue.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Chad Littleton, a Congressional Fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of the Senate's consideration of this bill.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

The Senator from Virginia made a good point. There are a lot of people confused, and the Senator put me in that category. I sat here and listened to this debate.

Is it true that the main difference between the example they are using and our problem is that these two people are on the court?

Just very briefly. I thank the Senator for yielding.

I never thought in a 30-hour debate you would have to fight to get something to say. We may want to extend this thing.

It has been good to hear everybody's perspective about what has gone on in the past. I am really more worried about the future. I am new to the Senate. This is my first year here. I do not know who shot John 5 years ago or 10 years ago, and who is still mad about what happened during Clinton, Bush 1, or George Washington. That is not my concern.

My concern is I am in the Senate at a time when I know that if this continues, we are going to destroy the judicial nominating process as I have understood it to be since law school. We are going to drive good men and women from wanting to serve because the nominees who are being filibustered--I have been on the Judiciary Committee--have had a hatchet job done on them. They have had an opinion here and a dissenting opinion there taken out of context. They are all well qualified by the American Bar Association. They all come highly recommended by the people who know them best.

For one of the nominees, they used a letter he and his wife wrote to his diocese about Christian marriage. Mr. Pryor from Arkansas was asked about whether or not he chose to take his kids to Disney World during Gay Pride Day. You are asking people questions I feel are unbelievably uncomfortable asking anybody as to whether they are qualified to be a judge.

This process is broken. The past has its abuses on both sides, but this process is broken. There is no precedent for what is going on here.

I may be wrong, and if I am wrong somebody correct me, but it is my understanding, in the history of this country, over 200 and something years of following the Constitution, we have never had an occasion where somebody came out of the Judiciary Committee, was voted out of the committee, and was unable to get a vote on the floor, until now.

If that is the case, then we are doing something different that is really bad, in my opinion, because it will be answered in kind down the road. If this is successful, to expect the Republican Party to sit on the sidelines if there is a Democratic President and not answer in kind is probably too optimistic.

If that happens, you are taking the Senate in a death spiral of where 40 people, 41 people, answering to special interest groups, are going to hijack the Constitution. This is a big deal. This is wrong and it needs to stop. It has never happened before. It should not happen now. Whatever problems we have had in the past with judges, you have taken it to a new level that will destroy the ability to follow the Constitution, and you will take politics to a level that it has never been before in a rule-of-law nation and we will all suffer greatly.

Thank you, Mr. President.

As we go into the 1 o'clock hour, Jimmy Buffett says it is 5 o'clock somewhere. But it is 1 o'clock here. We will try to reorient ourselves as to what was going on in the last hour. It is kind of an update, a CNN headline update.

The last hour was pretty interesting, I thought. We had examples used by our friends on the Democratic side to say basically that what we Republicans have done in the past we complain about now. I reiterate, as far as I am concerned, the past is the past, and I am more worried about the future. I have been here a year and all I have known since I have been here is fussing and fighting about everything, particularly judges. It has not been too pleasant to be on the Judiciary Committee because a lot of good men and women have had a hatchet job done on their professional qualifications and who they are as people, to not be allowed to be voted on. There have been a lot of manufactured reasons.

But as I understand, from having listened to the debate the last hour, the idea of holding a judge has been used as an example of an abuse, that holds have been put on judges, which is apparently a process in the Senate to deny somebody from going through the committee process, or to go forward.

The example Senator Schumer used was two judges: Paez and Berzon. I hope I have their names right. They were two judges who were appointed by President Clinton, and I think Senator Smith from New Hampshire tried to block their nominations, put a hold on it. There was a real contention about what was going on with those two judges. But the curious thing to me was there was an intervention in those cases, in those two nominations by the Republican leadership, as I understand it, that basically brought to a close the process of blocking those judges from having a vote after they came out of committee.

To me, that illustrates that in the past, when efforts were tried or were being used to basically hijack the constitutional requirement of a majority vote, once the nominee was presented to the Senate, there has been intervention to right the ship.

Since I have been here, the only intervention I have seen is to shut down what has been going on for 200-some years. Now, it is like a cricket match. It is 168 to 4. It is 168 to 16. Cricket goes on for 3 days. It is pretty interesting for the first hour or 2, but 3 days later I kind of get blurry-eyed watching cricket--the same way here with these numbers.

The point is, there never has been in the history of the country a situation where somebody was reported out of the Judiciary Committee to come to the floor of the Senate to be voted on as a judicial nominee, that they were not eventually voted on--until now. There have been cloture motions made, but they were always made to bring about a vote.

There has been a concerted effort by the Democratic leadership to block judicial nominees in an unprecedented

way. That is why we are all here tonight. Not only is it unprecedented, it is very dangerous. The reason I think it is dangerous is because it effectively changes the constitutional standard.

I am going to read, since we have 30 minutes here, where the Constitution talks about a supermajority vote: The ``Concurrence of two thirds'' of either the House or the Senate is required to ``expel a Member'' of Congress.

That is kind of self-serving. But we do not want to throw each other out until we get two-thirds of our colleagues to agree we should be thrown out. So that is a real check on us keeping our jobs.

Also: ``And no Person shall be convicted'' by the Senate in an impeachment trial ``without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present,'' according to article I, section 3.

I have a little experience with that article. That is a very high standard to achieve. And it should be a high standard to achieve. Can you imagine what would happen if, by Senate rule, we changed the impeachment standards so the President of the United States could be impeached by a majority vote?

I am sure the Supreme Court would not allow that to happen. I am sure there would be a great outcry by the public if we, in a partisan fashion, changed the way you impeach a President because we did not like that person or their agenda. There would be a huge outcry in the country because we would have subverted the Constitution.

That is exactly what is going on here in reverse. Instead of a two- thirds requirement to confirm a judge, like we have to throw somebody out of the House or the Senate, or to impeach the President, or to ratify a treaty--why two-thirds to ratify a treaty? The Founding Fathers were worried about a President making a deal with some foreign power that was not in the best interests of the country, so you had a high standard to ratify. You had a check over Presidential power.

They give the power in the Constitution for the President to veto legislation coming out of these bodies, to make sure we do not get off track. The only way we can override a Presidential veto is the two- thirds vote.

There was a lot of thought going into supermajority votes. It was not just by accident that the Constitution has six or seven provisions that require a majority vote, and I would argue strongly it is not by accident that the majority vote requirement applying to judges was put there on purpose.

Our job, as I see it, is not to say what we would do if we were President. Our job, as the Constitution lays out for us, is to advise and consent by a majority vote to make sure the President--whoever he or she might be--is not sending over their brother-in-law or sister-in- law or unqualified people.

What we have done this year, different from other years, is we have taken our political differences and our desire to make the court go one way versus the other and we have hijacked the Constitution for political reasons.

Our friends on the other side of the aisle lost badly in 2002. There was an article right after the election where the conference came together and started inventorying: Why did we lose? There was a strain of thought on the Democratic side that they lost because they were too accommodating to the President, and the Democratic base was deflated; that you are working with them too much on taxes, you are helping him with homeland security, that you are doing this and that with President Bush. One thing you might want to do to fight back--and this is in the article; and I do not have it with me--is to go after his judges.

Well, that certainly gets people fired up. Republican and Democratic base voters very much follow issues such as this: who the President may pick for the Supreme Court, who the President may pick for the Federal bench.

I am asking, in all sincerity, that somehow we find a way out of the box that we are in. Because I have been in the Senate for a year--I do not know how much longer I will be here but I do understand what is going to happen down the road.

If this is successful--and why they pick people, I really do not know. I have been on the Judiciary Committee. They do not do this to everyone. But they pick certain people for court of appeals jobs right below the Supreme Court and they will pick a few out of the herd, and they will start saying awful things about them--I will talk about that in a moment--and they will wind up, after they come out of committee, not getting an up-or-down vote in the Senate--for the first time in history. I will talk about this later when I have more time.

There are dozens of quotes by Democratic Senators saying it is really an abuse of the Senate's power not to allow somebody to be voted on up or down. They were right then. They were talking about a situation in President Clinton's term where they thought the Republicans were denying people a chance to go through committee and they were latching on to the constitutional provision of a majority vote, the advise and consent vote, saying: The high road for the Senate to take is if you do not like these people, if you do not like their philosophy, and if you do not think they are qualified, vote against them, but do not change the constitutional standard because it would be bad for the country.

That way of thinking has been replaced. I think the reason it has been replaced is because the political moment is so hot. We are a divided nation. The year 2000 was a very close election. In 2002, there was a change in the Senate's makeup. It is 51 to 49. And we are being consumed by the political moment.

I can tell my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and my Republican colleagues, that if we keep up this practice, it will do long-term damage to this country.

The one thing I like most about America is it is a rule-of-law nation. Instead of having to go in the parking lot and fight people, you have a court to go to. There is a way in this country for the weak to make the strong answer; and that is called the courtroom. The people you put in the courtroom are important. We have constitutionally, in the Federal system, given that power to the President. We, by majority vote, say yes or no to that nominee.

What we have done is politicize this process in an unprecedented way, in a dangerous way. If you don't think down the road it will be answered in kind by the Republican Party, I think you are very naive. I hope I will have the courage not to go down that road as an individual Senator.

But the animosity being generated by this practice is red hot among both bases, and it will be almost impossible, in my opinion, for this not to become the norm. Payback is hell. That is a phrase with which we are all familiar. Payback, when you are messing with the Constitution, is dangerous. Political payback has to have boundaries. When you are messing with the constitutional standard about judges, I think you have gone too far.

The question is, is this really a filibuster?

It is obvious that it is a filibuster in terms of these nominees because they have come out of committee and they cannot get a vote because our Democratic colleagues, behind their leadership, have united, with a few breaking away, to deny a vote. We have had hours of debate on all these nominees. They cannot come to the floor for an up- or-down vote. The Democratic Party has changed its whole opinion about whether that is a good or bad idea, and they have adopted a practice that no one has done before in the history of the country.

But we are having a hard time. It is 1:15 in the morning and we cannot get the other side to admit that their filibuster going on here is different than anything that has happened before.

I used to be a prosecutor, and the old saying was: Follow the money. If you want to know what happened in the criminal enterprise, follow the money.

Well, let me tell you about an e-mail that was sent by a good friend of mine. Senator Corzine is a very nice person. His job is to retake the majority for the Democratic Party. He is in charge of the Democratic Senatorial Committee. Senator Allen, who sits right next to me, is in charge of the Republican Senatorial Committee. Their jobs are to go out and recruit candidates and raise money so the party will be effective in taking over the majority, if you are a Democrat, or retaining it, if you are a Republican.

Here is what an e-mail said about what is going on right now:

Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort. By

mounting filibusters against the Bush administration's most

radical nominees, Senate Democrats have led the effort to

save our courts.

November 3, 2003, it was an e-mail to donors from Senator Corzine. I would argue that when he said they are engaging in ``an unprecedented effort . . . mounting filibusters against the Bush administration's most radical nominees'' that he was not tricking people, that he was telling them: We are up here fighting by using the filibuster.

One of two things are true: The e-mail is accurate, which I think it is, and it is designed to get people to send in money; or he is tricking people and he ought to give their money back. Because if you listen to our Democratic friends on the other side, this e-mail is wrong, and these people deserve a refund. They are raising money on the idea that they are filibustering Bush's nominees. That is the best evidence of what has gone on here. They are trying to get people to open up their wallets to give their money because they are doing something that is unprecedented. What is that something? We are ``filibuster[ing] against the Bush administration's most radical nominees.''

There are a bunch of quotes out there. Senator Boxer:

Frankly, from my perspective, if people are off the charts

on the right wing, I am not going to vote for them. I will

not filibuster them.

February 26, 2003.

One of the people being filibustered comes from California, Justice Brown.

Let me tell you a little bit about her, and then I will yield to my friend from Georgia.

Justice Brown sits on the California Supreme Court. She has been there since May of 1996. In California, people get to vote on who they want to be on the court. She received 76 percent of the vote in her last election.

Now, the last time I checked, California is not a hotbed of Republican conservatives. I do not know why we lose so badly; and we do. We have lost almost every national election in California since Ronald Reagan. But she received 76 percent of the vote from people who live in her State.

A little more about her: She is the daughter of a sharecropper, born in Greenville, AL. She attended segregated schools. I grew up in South Carolina. The first African American I ever went to school with, I was in the 6th grade--not something to be proud of but a fact. She preceded me.

She has an academic record that if she were your daughter you would be unbelievably proud. She received a BA in economics from California State, her JD from the UCLA School of Law. She received an honorary degree from Pepperdine University. She has authored more majority opinions for the California Supreme Court than any other justice.

This is how nasty this has gotten. This is a cartoon from something called ``The Black Commentator,'' September 4, 2003. This person is a racial stereotype. Your eyes can tell you better than I can. It says: ``Welcome to the Federal bench, Ms. Clarence . . . I mean, Ms. Rogers Brown. You'll fit right in.'' And the people clapping are a caricature of Justice Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice.

This is what people are having to go through. This is the way they are being characterized and being attacked. I think it is a low for the Senate. I am very sorry that she had to go through it, but she is being filibustered after having come out of committee.

If you don't like Justice Brown, then you can vote against Justice Brown, but you don't have the right to take the Constitution and turn it upside down for petty politics, and that is exactly what is going on here.

I can tell my friends on the other side, if they think we are not going to fight back, they are dead wrong. They are going to have a fight on their hands as long as this goes on, and at the end of the day, the loser is going to be the American people if we don't find a way out of this mess because 40 people are a lot easier to gather up than 50 when it comes to politics. Sixty is really hard to get.

What is going to happen if this continues is that we are going to have special interest groups, whether it is environmentally driven, abortion driven, gun driven--there is a group for everything out there--that is going to be upset with a particular nominee, and they are going to try to get 40 Senators to jump on their side.

The people being empowered from this practice are special interest groups, and the big loser is the average, everyday American. The big loser is the 76 percent of the people who voted for Justice Brown.

I yield to my friend and colleague from Georgia to talk about another abuse that exists in California.

I thank the Senator from Mississippi for yielding.

How much time remains?

I think it would be appropriate now to compliment Senator Lott. During his time as majority leader, he ran into a very dicey situation with judges. There was a lot of emotion on both sides. He was able to manage the system so that the people would get the vote the Constitution requires.

After having witnessed this debate for the last day or so, I can understand how hard that must have been. It must have taken a lot of effort, a lot of courage. He had to tell people no who did not want to hear no. The country is better off by Senator Lott allowing these people to have a vote up or down. If we do not fix this situation before the Senate, and it becomes part of the institutional way of doing business, then the consequences to the public are very dire.

The first thing that is going to happen, in my opinion, is we are going to get good men and women who are watching this, maybe one day aspiring to be judges, to say: Why in the world would I put myself through this? You are called all kinds of bad names. They take everything you have written or said or thought about saying, and they cut and paste it and try to create mental images of who you are that are totally contradictory to your life's work, are contradictory to what the ABA says about you as a professional, are contradictory to what your friends and the people who have practiced with you say about you. So it is not a very pleasant thing.

The Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, with whom I have very much enjoyed working on other matters, had a chart talking about 168 to 4. The 168 were apples; the 4 were lemons. Now we are down to calling people lemons. These are real people and they have one thing in common. It is not four that are going to be filibustered, it is well over a dozen before it is over with. The one thing these four have in common right now--and that is not including Justice Brown and Judge Kuhl, who will be filibustered; they cannot get a vote either--is that they are the first in the history of the country.

We could literally put everybody in a phone booth who has been voted out of the Judiciary Committee by a majority vote but has never received a vote on the Senate floor. This 168 to 4 is a joke. The four people in question are the only ones in the history of the country to come out of the Judiciary Committee and never get to be voted upon. That is very dangerous because if that is the way we react to people who come out of the Judiciary Committee, if we start letting 40, 41 Senators dictate the advise and consent role, then we have really taken a turn for the worst because the Constitution says the Senate will advise and consent to the Presidential nominations.

Who does the advising and consenting? A majority of us or a minority of us? For 200-plus years, we have done it one way. But on the watch of Senator Daschle, with whom I have also enjoyed working, we have taken a very big turn for the worst.

We are in political and constitutional quicksand. The harder we try to get out of it, the deeper we go. If my colleagues do not believe it will be answered in kind down the road if there is ever a Democratic President, as Senator Lott talked about, then I think we are all naive.

What I hate the most is I have been in the Senate for a year, and the abuses of the past I am sure are real. I have never put a hold on any judge for any reason. I am worried about the future. I think my job as a new Member of the Senate is to talk about the consequences of this action for the future.

I do not want to serve in the Senate in its darkest days. Right now, we are writing every day we speak one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Senate. Good people are being put through the wringer unnecessarily. If my colleagues do not think they are good people and they really think they are lemons, the Constitution gives my colleagues a way to object to them, and that is vote.

My colleagues can be on record forever saying, this is a lemon, this person should never be able to be on the bench; but they do not have the right to take the Constitution and turn it upside down for their own political gain and their own political desires. That, my colleagues do not have the right to do.

Money was mentioned. They were talking about the phones ringing over at the Republican Senatorial Committee because our base is excited we are fighting back and this is a fundraising opportunity. Well, people are raising money off this event and it pretty much stinks, on both sides, but that is the moment in which we find ourselves.

Let me read an e-mail that was sent out on November 3 by Senator Corzine, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. His job is to fire up his donors to give money so the Democratic Party can recapture the Senate. There was a great deal of lambasting the Republican Party about writing fundraising letters about this event, and that we are doing this to

fire up our base, and that we are doing this to raise money.

Let me read what Senator Corzine told his Democratic contributors:

Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort. . .

.

We are well into the 30 hours and we cannot get an agreement as to whether or not this is unprecedented. I can assure my colleagues that he is not lying in the e-mail, that this is not false advertising. If it is false advertising, people ought to get their money back.

It is unprecedented, and the word ``unprecedented'' is underlined for a reason. No one has ever done this before. He was not lying when he put it in an e-mail to open up people's wallets. Unprecedented by doing what?

By mounting filibusters against the Bush administration's

most radical nominees.

Let's break that statement down. It is unprecedented, but my colleagues on the other side will not admit it is. Filibustering, exactly what my colleagues on the other side are doing, against the Bush administration's radical nominees because of their ideology. That is something that is very dangerous, too.

One of the nominees was asked the question why he and his wife chose not to take their two daughters to Disney World during Gay Pride Day. Nobody should be asked about that. They are trying to ask that question to have a mental construction that this person somehow is not going to be fair to people based on sexual orientation.

The Mississippi situation is the worst of them all, in my opinion, of trying to change an image of who somebody really is. In 1967, Judge Pickering, who has been a Federal judge for a dozen years, well qualified by the ABA, well respected in the State of Mississippi, was a young prosecutor--an elected position--who chose to testify against the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, not the fast track to get ahead in 1967. It was radical in the right way.

In 1967, they integrated public schools in Mississippi, as they did in South Carolina. I was in the sixth grade. I could remember going back to school and seeing five Black kids come to my class for the first time in my life. As an adult, a 48-year-old man, I now realize how their parents must have felt, to send their kids into a very uncertain, unchanging situation, but they sent their kids to public schools to make it better. I respect those parents because a lot of people quit, on both sides.

In 1967, Judge Pickering chose to send his children to public schools when White flight was the phenomenon of that county. We will see a photograph of a lot of Black kids with very few White kids in 1967 Mississippi public schools, and those White kids are Judge Pickering's kids. That was the right thing to do.

These people are not lemons, but if my colleagues do not like them, vote against them. My colleagues do not have the right to change the Constitution for the political moment.

Mr. President, we got to the bewitching hour. It is midnight. I am going to enjoy the evening the best I can because I have a chance to engage with two of my colleagues. I don't know how long it will last, but I really enjoy the give and take of dealing with Senator Schumer. It may come to surprise people, we actually have been working on a couple of things. We had some successes in the past and we will have some in the future. I believe with a great deal of certainty, if the shoe were on the other foot, if my party were engaged in filibustering nominees of a Democratic President, that Senator Schumer would be right out here fighting for his cause. Senator Corzine and I are getting to know each other. We will have all night to get to know each other. I have enjoyed working with him, also.

This is unusual for the Senate. I don't know if this has ever been done before. I hope it is not necessary to do again. But here we are. We are here at midnight. We are talking about whether or not there is a filibuster. Has there ever been one in the past? Who shot John? Who has been the meanest and the baddest in the past?

I guess what I am trying to focus on for the next few minutes is, What about the future? I guess that is my biggest concern. We have had all kinds of charts about how nominees were treated in the past. I have been here a year. Since I have been here, it has been like pulling teeth to get certain people on the floor for a vote. But that is OK. The process is what it is. The Constitution says what it says and we will all have our chance to express what we think is right versus what we think is wrong.

This is a big deal. It is a big deal for the Senate. There are a lot of other issues that need to be talked about. Sure, Iraq is certainly one of them, people out there in harm's way. We have 9 million people unemployed. I am the first to admit there are a lot of issues in this country that need to be talked about and addressed.

But this is one of them. One of the reasons Senator Corzine has not had too many calls is Americans are able to walk around with a pretty secure feeling that the system works. I think it is a blessing we are not nervous every day about whether or not you can go to court because we expect, if we have a problem, a legal problem, there will be a place to go to get it resolved. That is just part of our mindset. We don't worry a whole lot about that and I think that is great.

But, really, that is a luxury. There are a lot of countries in this world where there is no venue to go to settle disputes. You have to go by force or violence, or you have nobody to help you out when you are down.

We have a pretty good legal system. God knows it needs to be fixed in some respects, but the idea of a rule of law nation caring about how you appoint judges is a big deal. Imagine if you had a system where it would be almost impossible to confirm somebody who had an actual belief or opinion. What you would find is there would be a lot of vacancies and there would be a backlog of cases. The things we assumed were always there for us would no longer be there. So this really is a big deal.

If you believe in a system where the weak can hold the strong accountable, then you ought to be listening to this debate because only in a rule of law nation, a courtroom, is that possible, because in a political environment the strong always win over the weak. In a confrontation of resources, the strong always win over the weak.

But America is a little bit different. You can hold anybody accountable. You can have your day in court. Even the President of the United States can be sued by an average, everyday person, if the President of the United States is claimed to have violated their rights.

That is a big deal. That is something worth fighting for. Some people believe that is worth dying for.

Now, that is very much at risk. The way we do business with our legal system is very much at risk. Because you can put up all the charts you want to put up and you can play all the number games you want to play, but the truth is, and I challenge someone to prove me wrong, that this is the first time in the history of our Nation that nominees have come out of the Judiciary Committee with a majority vote and have been blocked by a filibuster from being voted up or down. This is unprecedented. This is dangerous. We find ourselves in political and constitutional quicksand.

Of all the conflicts we have had in this Nation, of all the fights between the Republican and Democratic Parties, of all the likes and dislikes that

have happened politically, no one before has chosen to go down this road. The road our friends on the other side have chosen to go down really is the road to oblivion, in terms of trying to get good men and women to be willing to serve their country as a judge.

My friend and colleague, Senator Coleman from Minnesota, is new to the Senate like myself. The strength of this Nation is people with accents have a chance to get ahead in life. I am the first person in my family to go to college. My dad was a World War II veteran and came out of the war and started his own business and married my mom and neither one of them finished high school. But they impressed upon me and my sister the value of an education. Because of the good, sound, strong public school system of which we partook, I was able to do things I never dreamed of doing. Now I find myself in the Senate.

I am a lawyer. If you can't take a joke, you should not be a lawyer, because there is a lot of lawyer jokes out there. But I have always enjoyed the role of being an attorney because I like representing people and I like representing causes. The law to me was not just a job; it was a passion.

The ultimate ascendancy for somebody in the law is to become a judge. You will make less money but you will get authority and respect, and you will have a chance to mold the law. To many people that is much more important than money.

To me it is a shame, if you are willing to apply for the job, that you have to be treated so poorly as these four people we are talking about have been treated. But make no mistake about it, they are not four people; there are going to be at least a dozen in the next couple of weeks. They are being treated differently than anybody in the history of the Nation. They are having some very hard things said about them and all they want to do, and all they are willing to do, is to serve their country in the Federal judiciary.

Our friends on the other side have pulled out a chart, 168 to 4, with an illustration: 168 apples represented those people who were allowed to go forward. The Senator who had the chart said, I like apples, so I picked apples to represent the 168. And the four, well they were called lemons. I thought that was pretty cute at the time. But the more I thought about it, that is really not fair. If you don't like these people, if you disagree with their philosophy, if you disagree with their view of the world, you have a chance to express it. You have a chance to vote them up or vote them down. But I don't think it helps anybody to label them as lemons. We are going to have a long talk about the people they have labeled as lemons. Between now and 9 o'clock in the morning, we are going to have a long talk, eventually, about the individual nominees.

You can decide whether or not you will vote for them. You can kind of be a Senator for a day, if you would like. That would be an exercise that would be interesting for those who want to watch. If you don't like them, you can vote against them in the Senate. But I think you have an obligation to vote them up or down.

As I talk about these individuals I will tell you why I am willing to vote yes. I don't expect anyone on the other side, or my side, to vote because of my reasoning. I do expect the people at home, in South Carolina, to be able to judge me and hold me accountable for my reasoning. I will tell you, with a deep sense of pride, that I think the four people who have been called lemons are very fine Americans and deserve more respect than they have gotten.

The thing I like most about serving with my colleague, Senator Coleman from Minnesota, is that his race was one of the most watched and unusual races in the Nation. It was full of triumph and tragedy. His opponent, Senator Wellstone, who I knew fairly well and certainly respected for his strong beliefs, tragically died right before the election. Senator Coleman ran against former Vice President Mondale.

The thing that impressed me most about his race, as I watched the debate, was the sincerity he had when it came time to present the reason he wanted to be a Senator for the people of Minnesota, along the lines of: I would like to go to Washington and do something. I watch you from afar and you seem to be fussing and fighting about everything. People are hurting out here and I would like to be a Senator who could go to Washington and work across the aisle and actually do something.

Tonight, at almost quarter after midnight, I would argue to the people who may be listening in Minnesota that your Senator is doing something. It is not what he envisioned. It is not what he hoped for. It is not what I hoped for. I hoped to be home right now. And we passed some legislation long overdue. But I argue the Senator from Minnesota is doing something that needs to be done; that is, standing up for his beliefs and his view of the Constitution.

I am confident that over time this exercise will be judged well in history. When there is an accounting in this period of the Senate, it will be one of the darker periods of the Senate and my hope is it will be a period that will not have lasted long. Because the future is why I am here. The future is why I and Senator Coleman ran. We have a lot of problems with Social Security and Medicare and a budget and a war to fight and many obstacles facing this country. We are dying to get on with it. We really do want to help win this war on terrorism and make the economy better and stronger and fix the retirement problem the Nation faces.

We didn't ask for this. But it came our way. It happened on our watch. I think this may be one of the most important things we will ever do as Senators.

With that, I will yield to my good friend, Senator Coleman from Minnesota, and let him know in my opinion that he is doing something that is very important to the country by participating in this debate.

I thank the Senator. The Senator did an excellent job of trying to put into perspective what we are trying to do. Senator Reid from Nevada has left. If anybody deserves a break, he does. A couple of days ago, he spent about 8 hours-plus on the floor trying to prevent some legislation from coming forward that he thought was inappropriate. He was committed to making sure that the activity of the Senate did not go forward. He used his right as a Senator to speak. I applaud him for that. I don't agree with him, but the worst thing I think I can say about Senator Reid is that sometimes I disagree with him. He is a very nice man. I have enjoyed getting to know him over the years and serving with him. I appreciate the nice things he said about me.

The point is that we disagree on this, and I don't question his motivation. I just question the judgment of what we are doing here. He described the United States problems in very graphic terms. God knows we have problems in this country, but I think it was used to try to illustrate or trivialize what we are doing tonight. If we have all these problems, why are we talking about this? I don't think it is healthy to trivialize the constitutional process of nominating judges. Whatever problems we have in this country--and there are a lot of them--none are going to be made better by hijacking the Constitution. If you expect us to just lay down and forget about it, then you have mistaken who we are. If you feel strong enough to stand up for 8 hours to stop something from happening, God bless you; if you think other people are not going to do the same, you have made a huge mistake. We are going to talk until 9 o'clock and do other things.

I announced today that if this doesn't change, I am going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether or not the tactics of the minority have violated the Constitution, because I believe they have. If you are into numbers, I can tell you this. In the past 11 Presidents, on their judicial nominees confirmed versus those filibustered, we have had 2,372 people confirmed. We have not had one person filibustered. Now we have 4, and in just a couple weeks we are going to have a dozen. Some things were said. If nothing changes, nothing will change.

I can stand here, talk until I am blue in the face, and I have no illusions about my ability to change anybody's vote on the other side. I feel a real need to let history know, and my constituents back in South Carolina know, I think this is a lousy thing that is going on. I think this is a change for the worse, that you are taking the country down a road no other group has ever taken it in the Senate. You are doing it for political reasons you believe are just, but I think history is going to judge you poorly. I think it is going to be one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Senate. You have started something you can't stop, and most likely we will answer in kind down the road and you have taken 200 years of history and thrown it in a ditch. That is a big deal.

There are a lot of problems in this country, but you are about to create one that is very bad. You are adding to that list of problems the fact the Constitution has been changed in a way I think is illegal. Certainly it violates the traditions of the Senate. And we have to deal with it and we are going to deal with it. We are going to talk about it and we are going to try to get you to vote and we are not going to let this go.

I am going to ask the Supreme Court to look at this case that is going on before the Senate and see if the filibuster, requiring 60 votes, violates the terms of the Constitution because the Constitution requires a simple majority vote to confirm a judge sent over by the President.

Since we are going to have about 8 hours, I will save some of the time to talk about the history of the constitutional debate that went into that clause, why they picked a majority versus a two-thirds requirement that you have for ratifying treaties and impeaching the President. There is absolutely a rhyme and a reason for everything in this document.

There is no rhyme or reason for what is going on now, other than politics of the moment.

If you listen to Senator Reid, you would want to leave the country. I mean it is an assessment of the problems of the country, given to try to trivialize our objection to the Constitution being changed in an improper way. But it also is a distortion of who we are as Americans, because Americans, given all of our problems, are still the most hopeful people in the world. After listening to this rendition you would just wonder why everybody is not moving to Canada or Mexico.

We are not leaving the country. Other people are trying to get into our country. One of the biggest problems we have that he did not talk about is illegal immigration. People are literally risking their lives to get to be part of the American dream.

I would rather focus on some of the positive aspects of our country, one of them being a courtroom available to everybody and anybody, regardless of your status in life, where you can go have your day in court, and that requires a judge. Judges are picked by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The advice and consent clause for the Senate has never meant a minority telling the President what to do. It has always meant a vote on the nominee with a majority being required to put you on the bench, until now.

Let's talk a little bit about some of these people, the four names. But there are many more affected by this than just four. This is the America I like to talk about, and relish.

Justice Brown: Janice Rogers Brown is one of the four who is being filibustered. She sits on the California Supreme Court. Senator Schumer said she is out of the mainstream. She is not of the temperament and the thought process, in his opinion, that makes her a mainstream person, so she would do harm to the country if she served as a judge.

President Bush disagrees with Senator Schumer because he chose her to go on the court of appeals. Senator Schumer has an obligation under the Constitution to give his advice and give his consent and eventually vote. He doesn't have the right, in my opinion, to band together with 39 other Senators and bring us to a screeching halt. No one has ever done that before. It is called a filibuster. The number of filibusters in the last 11 Presidencies is zero up until now.

Let me tell you a little bit about Justice Brown. No. 1, she lives in California and she got 76 percent of the vote. In California you get to vote on a judge. You get to decide. You, as a citizen, get to vote to retain a judge once they become a judge. You actually get to express yourself. I am going to go out on a limb here and say no rightwing nut is going to get 76 percent of the vote in California. I am going to stand firmly behind that statement. I don't believe 76 percent of the electorate in California would vote for somebody described as Senator Schumer has described this lady. I believe 76 percent of the people in California see Judge Brown like the President sees Judge Brown. This whole argument that she is somehow out of the mainstream just does not pass the smell test because the people of California get to vote on Justice Brown.

We finally got a Republican Governor of California. Arnold is an interesting figure, Governor Schwartzenegger is a larger-than-life figure--literally. But I don't think anybody would ever accuse him of being a rightwing nut. California's political makeup is such that the person described by Senator Schumer

would never, ever make it. This is just one example of the cut-and- paste job on all four of these judges, with more to follow.

Let's talk about the America she came from. Only in this country can you do what Senator Coleman and myself have done. I grew up in a pool hall restaurant--beer joint is probably a more accurate term--and made it to the Senate. I am very proud of my parents. They worked hard. They are small business people. I feel I am the luckiest person in the world.

She is the daughter of a sharecropper. She was not born in California; she was born in Greenville, AL in 1949. She attended segregated schools. I attended segregated schools up until I was in the sixth grade. I was born in 1955.

I can remember, I think it was the sixth grade--about 1967, somewhere along that period of time--showing up and for the first time in my life having African-American students attend my class. It all worked well back home where I lived. In other parts of the State it was more dramatic. In Alabama it was more dramatic. This is the State where George Wallace stood in front of the door of the University of Alabama and said, No, you are not coming here if you are an African American. It took the Alabama National Guard, federalized by President Kennedy, to open that door.

That is where she grew up. She talked about listening to her grandmother's stories about the NAACP lawyer Fred Gray, who defended Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, and her experiences as a child of the South, and that motivated her to become a lawyer.

Senator Schumer said she is not very good on affirmative action. Maybe her view of affirmative action is not what Senator Schumer's view is, but I would argue if she was somehow in the right ditch on affirmative action, 76 percent of the people in California wouldn't have voted for her and somebody would have informed them otherwise.

This lady's story is compelling. She moved to Sacramento when she was a teenager. She got a BA in economics from California State in Sacramento in 1974, her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law in 1977. She received an honorary doctor of law degree from Pepperdine University Law School, Catholic University of America School of Law, and Southwestern University School of law.

Prior to more than 8 years as judge in the State courts, she served from 1991 to 1994 as the legal affairs secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson, another known rightwing crazy person, where she provided legal advice on litigation, legislation, and policy matters. From 1987 to 1990 she served as deputy secretary and general counsel for the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, where she supervised the State banking, real estate, corporations, thrift, and insurance departments.

She was deputy attorney general in the Office of the California Attorney General. She began her career as a legislative counsel of the California legislature and more will come about Justice Brown.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Lautenberg for his services to this country. Serving in World War II is a big deal no matter your rank. My dad was a corporal, too. If you think it is a waste of time, have your say. This is a huge deal. The Democratic leadership and the members of the Democratic Party have set in motion something I don't know how to stop. I had a chart that says in the last 11 Presidencies we had 2,372 people confirmed and not one person filibustered. You decided to do something different. It bothers me as much as our response bothers you. The people being filibustered are very qualified people, in my opinion, and you certainly have your right to disagree.

I don't believe the Constitution gives the minority of the Senate the right to advise and consent. We have 214 years of history where the advice and consent clause has been the Senate speaking as a majority. What hurts the most about the filibusters, which are unprecedented and are harmful to the country, is every nominee that is being filibustered by our friends on the other side has enough votes to become a judge. Literally a minority of Senators have taken it upon themselves for the first time in the history of the country to make sure a majority of the Senate cannot vote to confirm a judge by using a rule of the Senate.

I would like the Supreme Court to hear that case because I don't know of any other way to make this go forward.

Chances are the Supreme Court may very well say this is not something we decide because you are the Senate. We are the Court. These rules are your rules. They may well say that, but I feel a need to push this as far as you can to get an answer and try to move on and have a better future.

The future of the Senate when it comes to judges is going to be lousy. We have four filibusters going on with another seven or eight to come. But if we behave with each other like this, we will have hundreds before long. As time marches on, we will have a lot of people caught in this vise.

Senator Coleman from Minnesota made a great point, I thought. Justice Ginsburg would not have a prayer because she has a liberal view of the law and a lot of people on this side voted against her. But they voted and she won the day. Justice Scalia is vilified by the left. He would never have a shot. A lot of people on the Democrat side voted against him. But he won the day and he is sitting on the Court. That is the strength of the Nation. When you have someone like Ginsburg and Scalia in a room having to talk to each other trying to find a way to move forward in terms of judges, it is going to be very disappointing because good people are not going to put themselves through this.

Justice Brown will be filibustered just as sure as I am standing here. She is an African American who sits on the Supreme Court of California. She has authored more majority opinions in California than any other justice. I gave a rundown a while ago about her story coming from a sharecropper family in Greenville, AL, going all the way to the Supreme Court in California, getting 76 percent of the vote in her last election. And you have to vote on judges in California. My argument is that no one would get 76 percent of the vote in California if they were the rightwing ideologue that the other side is describing.

I am not here to convince Members that I am right. I am here to set the record straight in terms of why I believe President Bush picked a good person. If you disagree, vote against her. Don't allow the Constitution to be changed in the way you are doing because you are putting the country in constitutional and political quicksand. Members will regret it down the road. I know the country will regret it.

Now, there is politics going on here. I will put a human face on this. Justice Brown has had a pretty rough time of it in committee. She has been very successful with her career in California. She has been successful in every endeavor she has engaged in, serving in a variety of capacities to the point that people want to promote her and the three-fourths of the citizens of her State think she has done a great job. But she comes to the Senate and she runs into a buzz saw because she is conservative. Apparently that is a crime.

This is a cartoon by the Black Commentator, a paper. The first amendment allows people to talk about public figures. This is just a little bit of what it is like to be in the environment our friends on the other side have created. This cartoon has ``Welcome to the Federal Bench, Ms. Clarence, I mean, Ms. Rogers Brown. You'll fit right in.''

And it is a caricature of President Bush and a racial stereotype, an offensive drawing, of Miss Brown. The people in the choir are clapping, as Justice Clarence Thomas--a very distorted picture which is offensive, I think--Colin Powell, African American, Secretary of State, a great general and somebody I admire, and Condoleezza Rice, our national security adviser, another African American who I think will help us do a good job in Iraq. This has been a miserable experience for this lady. I am very sorry she has had to go through this.

Over 50 percent of the Senate will vote for her when the cloture vote comes. Pickering, Owens, Pryor, all have received over 50 votes but we cannot get to passage because the filibuster rule requires us to get 60 votes. Therein is my problem. The Constitution does not require 60 votes to confirm a judge. There are several places where two-thirds are required. The Constitution says you will advise and consent by majority vote in the Senate.

They are using a procedural device, the Democratic Party is in this case, to block a vote on what I think are well-qualified people. No one else in the history of the country has done this before, Republican or Democrat. This is the first time someone has come out of the Judiciary Committee with a majority vote who cannot receive an up-or-down vote. There are four of them with a bunch more to come.

I give no apology for wanting to try to do something about this because, as sure as we are all here tonight, there will be a Democratic President come later on and that person will make a recommendation to this body, a nomination to this body, and if we do not change the way this trend is going, it will be a miserable experience. We will get bogged down and we will never be able to move forward as the Constitution has envisioned. This has worked well for 214 years. This is not time to change it.

Senator Lautenberg was right, there is a political dynamic going on here. I am sure Republicans have been abusive in the past in terms of the way the judges have been treated. I have heard a lot about that. Like Senator Coleman, I am new to the Senate. I would rather not perpetuate that problem. I would like to be someone who solved that problem.

We have some quotes from the past that I will read quickly. Senator Leahy, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said in 1998: I stated over and over again on this floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge--that is a way of keeping a judge coming through the committee--that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported, that I felt the Senate should do its duty. If we don't like somebody the President nominates, vote him or her down.

Very wise advice. We are not doing that at all. I don't know why we changed but we have.

Senator Leahy, 1998: I cannot recall a judicial nomination being successfully filibustered. I do recall earlier this year when the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee and I noted how improper it would be to filibuster a judicial nomination.

I will read before the night is over many statements in the past where our Democratic colleagues were absolutely against the idea of doing anything other than giving a person an up-or-down vote. That has changed in an unhealthy way.

E-mails were talked about before. Let me read an e-mail that I think says a lot. This came from Senator Corzine, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, November 3, 2003, not very long ago, and it was sent out to raise money. I am sure we have sent e- mails and letters saying: Help us. The Democrats are destroying all of President Bush's nominations. That is the political environment we have gotten ourselves into. Like Senator Coleman, I would rather not perpetuate this. I would like to end it and move on and get it right.

Based on the prior statements of Senator Leahy and others that we will read later on, they have changed for some reason. Now they are going into the past and saying, we are doing this because you did that. Where does this end? The truth is, no one has done what they are doing now. That is just a fact.

From the e-mail:

Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort.

I will stop right there. I think that is a true statement. I don't believe Senator Corzine is misleading the donor population. I think he is trying to tell them, folks, we are doing something nobody else has done before. This is unprecedented. You need to pay attention. You need to look at your Democratic Senators, pay attention to what we are doing, because we are taking a step no one has ever taken before. What is that step?

By mounting filibusters against the Bush Administration's

most radical nominees, Senate Democrats have led the effort

to save our courts.

This e-mail is designed, quite simply, to let people in the Democratic Party know that the Senate Democrats have done something different, something unprecedented, and they are filibustering the President's nominees because they are radical. You cannot send this e- mail out to collect money and spend 32 hours denying you are filibustering anybody. You are filibustering judges in an unprecedented way.

And they are the Bush administration's nominees. The question is whether or not they are radical.

If you think they are radical, vote against them. I don't believe Justice Brown is radical. I don't think 76 percent of the people in California who have voted would have voted for her if she was radical. I think the attacks against her have been radical. But that is just my opinion.

This e-mail clearly establishes the fact that the Democratic Party has made a calculated effort in the Senate wing of the Democratic Party to do something different, to stand up against President Bush. They are blinded by the political moment. If we continue down this road, there will be more e-mails such as this on both sides of the aisle and it will be a disaster for the Constitution.

There are men and women serving in Iraq. There are people putting their lives at stake for this country. God bless them. We all did take an oath. They have their opinion and I have my opinion about what the oath means. But it will not withstand the filibustering of these nominees. It would be irresponsible on my part, given what I believe my oath is, to just let this go and make like it is no big deal because I think this is a huge deal.

I yield to the Senator from Minnesota.

I thank the Senator for yielding. I think he did a very good job of trying to explain the best we can that this has never been done before, that this is truly a new era for the Senate. We are filibustering judges who have been reported out of the Judiciary Committee for the first time in the history of the country. That fact will never go away. It has never happened before. Abe Fortas was not a partisan filibuster. Republicans and Democrats thought the man was not qualified to be chief judge because of some ethics complaints, and the President withdrew it. But you had Republicans and Democrats banding together trying to send a message to the President that they did not think this person was promotable. They had 4 days of debate. It was not a filibuster. It wound up being a bipartisan effort to come together to send a message to the President.

There is nothing bipartisan about this other than the fact that every nominee who is being filibustered has Republican and Democratic support to sit on the bench in a majority fashion. That is the problem here, that if all of these people who are being filibustered had their day on the floor, an up-or-down vote, they would be judges and they would have Democratic votes. One of them has 55, we believe, because 55 people have voted to allow a vote on the floor. That is important.

These people would be judges, just like the two Senator Lott intervened on. The two Democrats who were being opposed by some Members of the Republican Party, Senator Lott stepped in and stopped it. He filed a cloture motion and it passed overwhelmingly to end debate, and they are sitting on the bench today. Good for him. I am glad he did it.

I want to be fair, too, to Senator Corzine. There is nothing wrong with people talking about issues before the Senate in trying to get money sent to the parties. Both parties do that. I have never suggested that Senator Corzine has done anything wrong. I am just trying to put in perspective what this debate truly is all about, because when you are out there talking to your base about what you are doing that can be a pretty good evidence of what is in your heart and what you mean to do.

Now I have the whole document. This chart is an excerpt from a November 3 fundraising e-mail sent out by Senator Corzine, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It says:

Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort . .

. By mounting filibusters against the Bush administration's

most radical nominees, Senate Democrats have led the effort

to save our courts.

I have been saying for days now that this e-mail indicates that they view this to be an unprecedented effort by Democratic colleagues and the unprecedented effort is mounting filibusters. But this dot, dot, dot, now I have the whole e-mail and I do want to be fair. I do not think it has changed a thing. Having looked at the e-mail, I think it reinforces my point.

This is what the actual paragraph says in full:

Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort to

protect the rights of all Americans by keeping our courts

fair and impartial. By mounting filibusters . . .

I think a fair reading, a fair interpretation of the English language, is that the unprecedented effort refers to the filibusters. They are throwing in some nice language about being fair in there. Nothing has changed.

This was an e-mail sent out to try to tell Democrats that we are up here fighting Bush in an unprecedented way by filibustering his judges because we think they are radical. This e-mail is about a particular judge, and I am going to read the whole thing. This is the way it is entitled:

Senate Democrats protect our courts again. Dear Erin,

Senate Democrats have stopped another judicial extremist who

wants nothing more than to turn back the clock on fifty years

of progress on civil liberties. Reproductive freedom, equal

opportunity, and corporate accountability again.

What a lousy person that is--that is me stating.

After being defeated under a Democratic controlled Senate,

controversial judicial nominee Charles Pickering was defeated

again on Thursday by Democrats in the Senate.

For the first time in history, a President of the United

States re-nominated a judicial nominee that the committee had

already voted down but the Senate Democrats stopped the Bush

Administration in its tracks.

That is true. When the Democrats had control of the Senate, Judge Pickering was voted down on a party-line vote. The President has a right to resubmit the nominee. I am very glad he did because this time he came out of committee on a party-line vote.

We just have a different view of whether or not this man is a racist, because there is no other way to interpret what this e-mail is saying about this man.

Continuing:

Despite the administration's desire to ignore the

Constitution's rule of advice and consent, Senate Democrats

are holding Republicans accountable.

Why must the Democrats continue their fight against Charles

Pickering?

While in law school, Mr. Pickering wrote an article

suggesting ways the State of Mississippi could better enforce

its ban on interracial marriage.

As a State senator in the 1970's, Mr. Pickering worked to

repeal important provisions of the Voter Rights Act.

In 1994, he went out of his way to seek a more lenient

sentence for a convicted cross-burner.

They have described somebody who is not what you would want to have on the bench. There is no other way to say it other than this e-mail is directly and indirectly suggesting Charles Pickering is racially motivated. What a horrible thing to say about somebody if it is not true.

Once defeated when Democrats had a majority in the Senate,

President Bush nominated Charles Pickering for a second time

after the 2002 elections and now two successful filibusters

launched by Senate Democrats have kept him off the bench!

The Bush Administration is devoted to using the courts to

its political advantage. Time and again, this administration

has nominated ultra-conservative candidates who are zealously

devoted to advancing corporate interests, taking away

reproductive freedom, smashing the wall of separation between

church and state, and dismantling equal opportunity.

But the Administration has got a big problem: Senate

Democrats. Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented

effort to protect the rights of all Americans by keeping our

courts fair and impartial. By mounting filibusters against

the Bush Administration's most radical nominees, Senate

Democrats have led the effort to save our courts.

Help the Senate Democrats keep fighting. Support the DSCC

efforts to help elect more Democrats to the Senate--and keep

the proven leaders we have. Help the DSCC send a message to

the Bush Administration--Senate Democrats will NOT rubber

stamp extremist judicial candidates. Help us fight to

maintain judicial integrity by sending more Democrats to the

United States Senate in 2004.

That is the e-mail in its entirety. Now the accusations in that e- mail are strong, they are direct, and I think vicious. Judge Pickering, according to this e-mail, is someone who wanted to keep the interracial marriage statute alive when he was in law school by writing law school papers in support of this. He went out of his way in 1994 to make a sentence more lenient for a convicted cross burner.

The only thing a rational person would receive from that litany is Judge Pickering is friendly to a cross burner. If that is true, he should never have been a judge for 30 seconds. If the other things are true, it was a huge mistake to ever advance this man forward.

But here is the problem I have with believing what is in this e-mail. Number one, I have met the man. I have talked to him. I served in the House with his son, Chip, who is one of the nicest, brightest young men I have ever met. This e-mail describes him as a very intolerant, racially insensitive person. But I can tell you without a doubt from personal experience he did a great job as a father because his son is anything but racially intolerant. His son is a wonderful young man.

If that e-mail is true, then you explain to me how the American Bar Association could give him the highest rating possible, well qualified. Did they miss this racial past? Or do they condone it? How about this, maybe this is a cut-and-paste job and they didn't buy it. He graduated first in his class; 99.5 percent of the cases were affirmed or not appealed. His reversal rate is below the national average, two times lower than the average district judge in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has never had a voting rights case appealed or reversed. He has never had a formal discrimination case reversed in 170 cases and is endorsed by the current president and 17 past presidents of the Mississippi State bar. Maybe they are all racist, too. He is endorsed by all major newspapers in Mississippi. He is endorsed by all statewide elected Democrats and the chairman of the Mississippi legislative black caucus. He was endorsed by former Democratic Governor William Winter, Bill Waller, former Democratic lieutenant governor, and the list goes on and on and on.

Other people object, but I assure my colleagues this e-mail is a distortion of this man. Here is the Judge Pickering I have come to know. In 1967 when Mississippi was red hot and racial tensions were very high in the South, particularly in Mississippi, he served as an elected county prosecutor. He was asked to testify against the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. He took the stand against the Imperial Wizard successfully but lost his job. He was not in the mainstream; he was swimming upstream.

In 1967, when schools were integrated in Mississippi--and I have told the story about integration in South Carolina--he chose to keep his children in public schools at a time when White flight was the dominant way of dealing with the problem in that part of Mississippi. You will see class photos in that era of a lot of African-American children and a smattering of White kids. Among those White families, White kids, were Judge Pickering's kids.

He chose at a time, when others did not in large numbers, to try to make Mississippi better. He has been head of the Mississippi Baptist Association. He has been on the Federal bench for a dozen years, rated well qualified by the American Bar Association.

Of all the events that have occurred in the Senate since I have been here, this one bothers me the most because southern White males are very open to the accusation that we are racially insensitive, due mostly to the way the South has conducted itself.

When I grew up, my family had a restaurant and African Americans came to get their food and to buy a beer and they had to leave because there was no mixing of the races until I was in high school. That is not something to be proud of. Judge Pickering was part of the solution.

What they are trying to cast this man as being is unfair to him; it is unfair to his family. If you believe it to be so, you can vote against him. But he is the best example of how sick the Senate has become.

Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge Senator Pryor's commitment to moving this process forward. He did write a letter a while back trying to find a way to better handle the problems we are having with judges. I think he has a very good heart about this. I respect him as a person. He has truly become a friend.

With that kind of attitude, maybe we will find a way out of this down the road. Right now, unfortunately, we are stuck in the quicksand, not mud. The more we fight each other, the deeper into it we get. The atmosphere in the Senate right now about judges I think has taken a turn for the worse.

There are probably many things one can point to in the past on the Republican side. I am not here to defend the past. I am here to talk about the future, and we have to deal with the present. Here is what about the present bothers me the most.

There is an effort to filibuster judges in a way that has never occurred before in the history of the country. I think it is very unhealthy and constitutionally impermissible and will only be answered in kind. We are going to set the future course of the Senate down a road where it will be hard to get good men and women to apply. Let me tell you why I think they will not apply.

I read a fundraising e-mail that concerned Charles Pickering. As one can tell when I spoke, it bothered me greatly what they are trying to do to Judge Pickering because I come from the South. I know how easy it is to be associated with the sins of the past, to be, for lack of a better word, sometimes stereotyped. Here are the accusations in the e- mail:

Why must the Democrats continue their fight against Charles

Pickering? While in law school, Mr. Pickering wrote an

article suggesting ways Mississippi can better enforce its

ban on interracial marriage.

That statement clearly tries to make the reader believe this is a person who has supported interracial marriage bans and is racially insensitive. I ask the country to look at it in these terms. He was unanimously confirmed by this body 12 years ago. Not one person objected. I can't believe the whole body was asleep at the switch and this law school article was not known. He didn't advocate the ban on interracial marriage. It was under attack, and he wrote a scholarly dissertation about it.

If you believe what the statement says, the entire Senate either didn't know about this or ignored it because the entire Senate unanimously approved Judge Pickering 12 years ago, long after he got out of law school, to sit on the Federal bench as a district court judge.

The second point:

As a State senator in the 1970s, Mr. Pickering worked to

repeal important provisions of the Voter Rights Act.

The reader of this e-mail who is being asked to give money to help Democrats fight President Bush's nominees--what is the message you are trying to convey to the reader of this e-mail? That yet again in the 1970s this same person, while holding public office in Mississippi was working to undermine laws that protected African Americans in the State of Mississippi. There is no other fair interpretation of why that is in this e-mail and trying to cast him in that light.

Again, it is beyond my understanding and real belief, if that were true, if this man used his office in Mississippi in 1960 to undermine the Voting Rights Act, that this body 12 years ago would have unanimously approved him to be a district court judge.

I believe these two statements were designed to emotionally charge the reader and to unfairly label Judge Pickering in a way that is not deserved and flies in the face of the fact that the Senate confirmed him unanimously 12 years ago.

The last point:

In 1994, he went out of his way to seek a more lenient

sentence for a convicted cross burner.

My colleague from Minnesota very eloquently spoke about that case. I am on the Judiciary Committee. When I heard that accusation, it really did pique my interest. I wondered what was going on because none of us want a judge who is going to be sympathetic to such a horrible crime.

Here is what actually happened. There were three defendants, not two--three defendants. The ringleader and the second oldest man, I believe, received a probationary sentence. The youngest of the three was charged with a crime of arson.

What this judge did is he looked at the way the prosecutor handled three defendants, and he said: That is not fair. You are letting two of the worst guys go and impounding the youngest guy.

That is what I want a judge to do. I want a judge to make sure the people who come before his court are treated in an apportioned manner.

The third person, the youngest one, was given a speech and a lecture by Judge Pickering about the act of cross burning that should make us all very proud. The youngest defendant went to jail, but his sentence was adjusted in light of what happened to the other two people who basically got away with it because the prosecutor did a deal I don't understand myself.

I do understand why Judge Pickering wanted to adjust the sentence, but if you listened to the words and read the transcript, he didn't go out of his way to do anything other than to make the sentences apportioned. He went out of his way to let the defendant know what a sleazy person he was by engaging in this activity, but he brought balance to the people before him.

The reason I keep talking about this situation and Justice Brown is I am trying to let the record reflect for future review that I believe very sincerely these judicial nominees are having a tremendous hatchet job done on their lives. They are trying to make up reasons to justify a filibuster, and there is no good reason to have a filibuster.

Senator Pryor is a very fairminded person. If he disagrees with me about Judge Pickering or anybody else, that is just life; he is right. All I am asking him and other Senators to do is to follow the Constitution, and the advice and consent clause for the entire history of the country when it comes to judges has been interpreted in a manner that the majority of the Senate will advise and consent, not a minority.

What is happening to these four people--and we will talk more about the others--is very unhealthy for the country. The reason I say that is they are taking statements and articles, speeches, and letters to their church out of context, and liberal special interest groups are trying to oppose conservatives coming on the bench in an unfair way.

These four individuals' lives have been distorted. That is what bothers me the most. If you don't like their philosophy, vote them up, vote them down, just vote, is the saying. If we continue what we are doing today into the future, no reasonable person is going to feel good about wanting to go on to the Federal bench given what is happening to these people, and that will be a huge loss to the country.

The process we are engaged in today has no upside; it only has downsides, and the downsides I think are extremely dire for the country. Not only are you going to drive good people away because nobody is going to want to go through this--and I assure you it will be answered in kind, and that is sad because I know politics.

The other downside is special interest groups, liberal or conservative, are going to have more power than they deserve over individual lives because all they need to do is get 41 votes.

Special interest politics is part of our political landscape. The Constitution has checks and balances against each branch. One of the checks and balances I like the most about the way the judicial nominating process works is if a majority of us feel a person is qualified, they get to sit on the bench.

Please, let's not as a group empower special interest groups to the point that 41 of us can stop somebody from sitting on the bench because we will have rewritten the Constitution, not only in its letter but its spirit.

I end with this. Federalist Paper No. 66 has the following comment:

It will be the Office of the President to nominate and,

with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint. There

will, of course, be no exertion of choice on the part of the

Senate. They may defeat one choice of the executive and

oblige him to make another, but they cannot themselves

choose. They can only gratify or reject the choice of the

President.

For the sake of the future of law in this country, for the sake of the future of the Senate, let's not let a small group make it impossible for good people to serve.

I yield the rest of the time to my good friend from Kansas, whom I have known since I have been in politics at the Federal level, Senator Brownback.

Well, to the best I can, to the Senator from Pennsylvania, for the last year--this is my first year--I have seen a trend that seems to be getting worse and worse. I can assure you, as the Senator from Pennsylvania has indicated, that for every liberal special interest group there is a conservative special interest group that feels just as passionately as the People for the American Way.

The Senator is absolutely right. I have been trying to say this all night. We are in political quicksand. You have put us in a place we have never gone before, and the more we fight and the more we fuss, the quicksand takes you deeper and deeper, quicker and quicker.

The truth is, the Senate will never be the same if this stands because the Senator from Pennsylvania is exactly right. There will be so much pressure on people on our side to stand up against anybody who is perceived to be liberal--not just whether or not they can follow the law, but they may have written an article when they were in law school. They maybe made a speech somewhere about the philosophy of life. And it will be seized upon, it will be touted, and it will be shouted, and 41 of us may buy into that.

The advise and consent clause has stood the test of time. But the formula that you are imposing upon the Senate is a formula for disaster, and a big loser. Who loses? It is average, everyday people who will be shut out because of special interest politics on the left and the right. The real big loser is somebody who loves the law who wants to be a judge but has said: I am not going to put myself and my family through that.

So Senator Santorum is exactly right.

There will be no turning back, and this will destroy us over time in terms of the rule of law.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

For something that is a waste of time, it

has been hard as heck to get to say anything around here because everybody is so fired up about talking, which I think is good. We have been in almost 39 hours, and if Senators get 15 minutes to express themselves they are lucky, which I think is a testament to how important this is to people.

I am very proud of what the Senator from Pennsylvania has tried to tell the body about what the future will be like. The Senator from Minnesota and the Senator from Georgia, my two good friends, my classmates, we were not here during a lot of these problems of the past. We are worried about the future.

I want to very quickly respond to my good friend from Illinois. Here is what I am willing to do--and I do not know who the Capitol Hill policeman was, God bless him for serving--I am willing to stand by a poll of all the cops in America and see whether they think appointing a judge is a big deal. It is my belief that most cops in America have had experiences in court that they really would like us to pick judges wisely. As a prosecutor, I can assure my colleagues who the judge is matters. I can assure my colleagues that most police officers do watch how the court operates, and they are concerned about the quality of judges because many of them have made cases risking their lives only to see it bounced.

So I totally disagree that this police officer is speaking for the mainstream of cops. Cops care about judges.

The Washington Post--I am not a great fan of the editorial page, but I read the Washington Post about what they think is going on here today. On February 5, 2003, the Washington Post said this filibustering of judges--Miguel Estrada--is really not a good thing. A world in which filibusters serve as an active instrument of nomination politics is not one either party should want.

Well, the extreme Senator from Pennsylvania shares the same views as the Washington Post, which begins to bother me a little bit. Maybe he should be a little more extreme. But what he is saying is what the Post said back in February. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out because I figured it out. I am not a rocket scientist.

This is about manufactured controversies. Judge Pickering, oh, this is no big deal. Why are the Senate Democrats sending out urgent e-mails saying send us money, my God, the country is about to blow up because the Bush administration is devoted to using the courts to its political advantage? If that does not get your blood boiling, what would? It would scare me if I got a memo from somebody who is a responsible member of the Senate Democratic leadership saying, send money quickly. The Bush people are taking over the courts, and they are going to put a guy on the court named Charles Pickering. While he was in law school, he wrote an article about making sure the ban on interracial marriage in Mississippi was not stricken down.

As a State senator in the 1970s, Pickering worked to repeal the important provisions of the Voter Rights Act. That ought to scare you to death if you believe in racial harmony and justice.

This e-mail is totally in contradiction of what has been said on the Senate floor. The e-mail says that Senate Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort. If you have listened to everybody for the last 33 hours, this is just business as usual. The e-mail is the best evidence of what is going on over there. They have picked a few judges, for whatever reason. They have manufactured controversies about who these people are, and they are ruining their lives.

Judge Pickering was approved by this body 12 years ago. I would daresay this body would not have unanimously put him on the district court as a Federal judge if they believed he was writing articles supporting interracial marriage bans and that while he was a State senator he actively undermined the rights of African Americans in Mississippi. That makes no sense. That means this place is totally asleep and worthless when it comes to screening, or they are manufacturing controversies about this judge.

Judge Pickering was voted well qualified, the highest rating one can get from the American Bar Association. I am convinced that the ABA is not putting people on the bench well qualified if they believe they are a bunch of racists. It goes on and on with all four of these people, and it soon will become 12. That is why I am so upset.

Special interest groups who do not live in Mississippi have declared war on the basic essence of who Charles Pickering is, defying all of the evidence out there by people who know him the best and what he has done with his life. That is a sad state. That will lead to chaos, and the Senator from Pennsylvania is absolutely right. You are going to have people applying for these jobs in the future who will have never uttered a word about anything because if they say anything that may get a liberal or a conservative special interest group mad at them, they will come and knock their head off. That is why we are here at 10 minutes after 7 and you have to really watch it to make sure you do not deny your colleagues a chance to speak because contrary to what they say over there, this is a big deal to everybody, and, my God, it ought to be. If it gets to be where it is not a big deal to how a judge is appointed and nominated, and whether you follow the Constitution, our problems with the economy pale in comparison with our problems as a nation. When politics enters the judicial arena and the judicial arena just becomes another form of politics, then we have drifted far astray from where our forefathers wanted us to be.

I will yield to my colleague from Missouri.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. It has been a real pleasure to talk with him throughout the night. It has been a great debate. For something considered a waste of time, so many Senators have participated. It has not been a waste of your time or the country's time. We have a good record the people can look upon and make a decision about what we are doing here in this Senate.

If I had to boil it down to what all this means to me, which I have to do between now and a quarter after, here is what I think is the down side of what we are doing in the Senate: Special interest politics is being given a green light to go after people they may disagree with because they think the nominee doesn't share their philosophy or political persuasion.

You are giving them a green light to manufacture controversies, to go after people in a personal way, and we are going to rue the day we did that. The left is doing it today. The right will do it tomorrow. We are unleashing special interest forces. We should be deterring them. Right now we are emboldening them, and the country will be worse for the wear.

There are people at the end of the process. We are talking about individuals. Miguel Estrada has claimed to be outside the mainstream. All I can tell you is that the Washington Post on February 5, 2003, not exactly a right-wing rag, said:

Estrada is well qualified for the bench. This should not be

a tough case for confirmation. Democrats who disagree should

vote against him.

I think that pretty well sums up the idea that he can't be that far out of the mainstream or the Washington Post would not have said that about him.

If you disagree with me and think he is out of the mainstream, vote against him. Please don't continue the process of filibustering people because we are going to change the Senate forever, for the worst, and the future nominees to come, whatever they said in law school, whatever letter they may have written to their wife, whatever decision they made about going on a trip, if they said something that offends the left or offends the right, people are going to come after them like gangbusters, knock their heads off, and you are going to keep good men and women from wanting to serve. That is going to happen, sure as I am standing here. It will be a great tragedy. Please let's turn this around.

Judge Brown will be No. 5. She sits on the Supreme Court of California. She is objected to. She is out of the mainstream allegedly. I would argue that 76 percent of the voters in California are not right-wing zealots, and that anybody who can get 76 percent of the vote in California has to have some sort of moderation about them. She has written the majority of the court's opinions. She is respected by her peers. You wouldn't get 76 percent of the vote in California if you were out of the mainstream in any real way.

Justice Owen from Texas, No. 1 in everything. She serves on the State supreme court. She received 84 percent of the vote. The only people left who didn't vote for her are probably the extreme people. I would argue that 84 percent of the people who chose to vote in Texas is probably our best evidence about who she is and the way she conducts herself.

Pryor: If you read in the paper today, the attorney general of Alabama has just successfully removed the chief justice of Alabama. It was his job to bring the case to the grievance committee in the State of Alabama, and the reason the chief justice was removed was that he defied a Federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments out of a courtroom in Alabama.

Whatever you want to say about Attorney General Pryor being out of the mainstream, let me tell you that the Ten Commandments are popular in Alabama. He chose the less traveled route for a politician. He chose to enforce the law against a rogue judge who is pandering to the political moment. He followed his constitutional duty, and I bet you he agrees the Ten Commandments have a right to be displayed, but he said: It is not about me; it is about the law.

Yes.

Senator Leahy said in 1998:

[I]f we don't like somebody the President nominates, vote

him or her down or up.

He was right then. I am very afraid that we are opening the darkest chapter in the history of the Senate when it comes to judges. I don't want to be a part of it. I reject the past. I embrace a better future. Please, for God's sake, let's not continue to do this because we will all regret it.

I rise today to commend an initiative recently launched by the National Association of Broadcasters and its local radio and television station members.

With more than 140,000 military personnel stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world, the resources needed to take care of our troops and their families are strained. As an Air Force reservist, I have seen firsthand the financial and emotional difficulties that many families face when a family member is on an extended deployment.

Of course, the military takes care of its own. But, as the war on terror continues and needs escalate, the military cannot do it alone. To respond to this growing need, the four military aid societies have joined together to create a single umbrella organization: the Armed Forces Relief Trust.

In support of this new relief organization, local commercial radio and television stations are airing radio and television public service announcements, asking viewers and listeners to contribute to the Trust. The over-the-air broadcast medium continues to be the most effective way to rapidly disseminate information to the public. Last year, the four military emergency assistance programs disbursed more than $109 million in interest-free loans and grants to more than 145,000 individuals and families in need. With the help of America's local radio and television stations, I am convinced that the Trust will be able to assist even more military families.

I applaud the efforts of local broadcasters to support the families of those who defend us every day.

Mr. President I rise to ask the bill's manager, Senator McConnell, about a provision in the Fiscal Year 2004 foreign operations bill of particular importance to me. This appropriations bill provides $100 million for water conservation, $1.5 million of which the committee report sets aside for Water Missions International for its safe water supply and wastewater treatment projects for several regional hospitals in Honduras. Water Missions is a faith-based South Carolina organization that delivers potable water engineering systems to towns and villages in developing countries around the world. I ask Senator McConnell if he is familiar with Water Missions International and this important demonstration project.

If I may raise one more issue, I am concerned that United States Agency for International Development, USAID, has at times not followed report recommendations made by the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. Is it the manager's intention that USAID follow the recommendation in the report?

I thank Senator McConnell for his support of Water Missions and its inclusion as an USAID project.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize this month as ``National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.'' This special month is meant to bring awareness to the continued prevalence of breast cancer and the importance of using early detection techniques to help reduce the number of women and men who lose their battle against breast cancer each year.

This year it is estimated that more than 200,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed. Through the use of early detection, many of these cases will be successfully diagnosed and treated before the cancer spreads. However, breast cancer will also claim close to 40,000 victims in this year alone.

To promote early detection of breast cancer, National Mammography Day is celebrated each October as a part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This year, on October 17, many radiologists provided free or discounted mammograms in an effort to encourage more women to take part in this important screening. Mammography is an important tool to help detect breast cancer while it is still highly treatable.

Unfortunately, not all women have easy access to mammograms either because they are uninsured or their health insurance does not cover this service. Further aggravating this issue is the low reimbursement of mammograms by Medicare, and the fact that not enough assistance is available to train and recruit more radiologists to perform this vital screening. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Assure Access to Mammography Act of 2003. This legislation increases the Medicare reimbursement for mammograms and helps in the recruitment of radiologists to perform mammograms. I am hopeful that it will be enacted soon.

Hardly a family or group of friends has not been affected by breast cancer in some way. Events such as the annual ``Race for the Cure'' in support of breast cancer prove that there is widespread support for finding further treatment options and cures for this disease. I encourage those who are interested to visit the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month website to learn more at www.nbcam.org.

Mr. President, I will be brief. I wish to speak about class actions and echo what my friend from Alabama said. I have tried very hard during my time being a legislator at the State and Federal level to make sure when legal reform is accomplished it is done so in a balanced way.

I am not a big fan--I think many of my colleagues know this--of the Federal Government taking over State legal systems. If you can do it at home, it is better to do it at home. I am not a big fan of deciding what is fair before the jury meets. We have honest differences on some of those issues.

Having said all that, there is a huge need for legal reform. I cannot tell you one system in America that really doesn't need to be reformed, the legal system included. My friend from Alabama is absolutely right. What we are trying to do today is correct an abuse. The Constitution, as he read to us, envisioned a dynamic where we would have two people from different States and we would not want to put one person in the other person's backyard. The Constitution has survived so long and so well, and it spoke to that and said: Let's take that into Federal court, a neutral side.

As the diversity clause of the Constitution has been interpreted, it requires complete diversity of all plaintiffs and all defendants. About 100 years later, maybe 200 years later--I don't know when class action lawsuits came into being--there is another way of suing people. It has its place in our society to bring a bunch of people affected by a similar event in different places to try as a unit rather than doing hundreds or thousands of individual cases. But this class action concept flies in the face of why the Constitution speaks about diversity.

My friend from Alabama is exactly right. It is being abused. We have a situation where you may have many plaintiffs throughout the country with a single defendant, and it allows people to go into an area that is equivalent to home cooking. It really destroys the purpose of the diversity provisions in the Constitution. What we are trying to do is correct that. There are no damage limitations. There are no limitations on anybody making a claim at all. If you buy the idea this is unfair, then you buy the idea that the Federal court is unfair; that you can't get a good hearing by a Federal judge. I think that is absolutely wrong.

Justice Rehnquist has a problem on his hands. He has a lot of cases. He has a lot of overworked judges, and I am going to get to that in a minute. I have a way to help Justice Rehnquist. There are a bunch of people who need to help him, and I will talk about that in a moment.

Yes.

Mr. President, I am more informed than when I began this debate. That is good for me and good for the public. I did not know that. It makes a lot of sense. I find it a little odd that people would be opposed to the level that was being portrayed.

The idea that we should not do this in Federal court, I think we can accommodate it. I am all for having more Federal judges, and we will talk about that in just a moment, but the bottom line, and the reason I am voting for this particular legislation is I think it corrects an abuse. It gets us back to the constitutional model that everyone envisioned where if you have a diversity--and this is what class action is all about, bringing a lot of people together from disparate places and groups to try it at one time, in a place that is convenient to everybody and in a logical way, that one would want a fair forum. I think Senator Feinstein's amendment was perfect. If there are two- thirds of the plaintiffs in any one State, it stays in State court. If there are half the people in one State, the judge can decide whether to remove it. If less than a third are in a particular State, then it goes to Federal court. To me, that is a perfect compromise. It makes a lot of sense.

I have no problem voting for this because we are correcting abuses. This is one way to reform our State legal system.

Let me give a quick statement about home cooking. I am sure, as the Presiding Officer said, in Tennessee people will treat you fairly. I am sure that is true in Alabama, and in South Carolina I am sure that is true. But there are places that one does need to know who they are up in front of. I can remember very well one of the first cases I had as a young lawyer getting out of law school. It involved a speeding ticket of a friend of mine. We were going to go to magistrate's court. I was going to be Perry Mason, and we were going to make this great injustice right.

The highway patrolman was getting ready to testify and he said: Hello. And then he said: How are you doing, uncle?

So the judge was the uncle of the police officer. That struck me as not being quite right, and I said: Your Honor, nothing personal, but do you mind if we have a jury trial?

He said: Well, Lord, no.

He called his wife out, the aunt of the police officer, and she called up some of the cousins and we had a jury trial.

The point is, that was not a good experience. Part of it is true and part of it is embellished, but I do not want anybody to go into a situation, businesspeople or otherwise, where they believe they are being dragged to a place that is unfair, and that is what is going on.

There is a group of plaintiffs attorneys out there and they have a right to use the law to their benefit, and they are using it very cleverly to their benefit but in a way that is unfair and is hurting our economy. I am glad and proud to support this reform measure because I believe it does more good than harm, and that is what we in the Senate are all up here to do.

I ask unanimous consent to go into morning business or speak as if I was in morning business.

I am trying to change subjects. May I make an inquiry to the Presiding Officer? Can I speak about Mr. Pryor's nomination as a judge now? Is that appropriate?

Mr. President, I am liking these rules.

Nomination of William Pryor

When we are speaking about judges and whether or not we need judges, we

really do. There is a backlog in this country in certain courts, and one of the people being nominated by President Bush is William Pryor from Alabama. He has been nominated to a seat that has been declared a judicial emergency by the Judicial Conference of the United States.

All I can say about this case is that my friend from Alabama should be very proud of the nominee who has been put forward by President Bush. Bill Pryor is the attorney general of Alabama. That is a political job, and ofttimes the hardest thing for lawyers to do is to be a good lawyer when politics are involved because the thing I love most about the law is that it is a place to go to where polling does not matter and where the popular cause does not always win out.

Sometimes the unpopular cause has its day and would win in a forum it could never win otherwise. Our Founding Fathers were brilliant in creating a system where popularity meant a lot in the area that we live, but a courtroom is a place where it should be quiet, and there are good men and women who are listening to the facts of one's case and no matter whether someone is rich, poor, regardless of their background, it is a place they can go to be listened to, where maybe the crowd would not listen to them. That is what I love so much about the law. It is a place where people who could not get a fair shake in the popularity world of politics could get a fair shake where people would actually listen to their individual claim, where the unpopular may have its day.

When one is attorney general, they get elected by their people, but they are also required to enforce the law, and the concept of the law is to give people who are not popular their day in court. What I am looking for in a judicial nominee is someone who can be very passionate about life's issues and questions but can also be very fair. President Bush has done us a great favor to send Bill Pryor forward. I have met him. I have talked to him. He is the kind of young man I think most of us would want our child to grow up to be, the son we would love to have. He is academically qualified, rated by the American Bar Association as extremely qualified. People from all walks of life who know him like him. If my colleagues met him, they would find he is a charming young man. He seems to be somebody who is sure of who he is and what he believes.

A lot of this filibustering that is going on now has behind it the issue of abortion. Special interest politics is very strong in America, and it has its place. Groups need to ban together and speak out about things they have in common. I think our job as Senators, when it comes time to look at judges, is not to judge somebody on whether they are just pro-choice or pro-life. I am a pro-life person, and I agree with Bill Pryor. He is a very passionate man. He is a very honest man about his pro-life beliefs.

There will come a day when there will be a Democratic President and maybe I will be in the Senate and that Democratic President may send up a pro-choice person. I think my job is to see whether or not they can take their beliefs on that issue and put them aside when it comes time to be a judge.

All I can say about Bill Pryor is that when he was attorney general he had the obligation to review a statute that the State of Alabama passed--the Senator may correct me if I am wrong--about partial-birth abortion, something we just did today. This is an emotional area. People are very emotional about partial-birth abortion. We are evenly divided on early-stage abortions, abortions in the early stages of pregnancy. It is about 50/50. But when it gets to the seventh, eighth, and ninth month, about 75 to 80 percent of Americans say we should not be having abortions on unborn children at that stage in pregnancy unless the mother's life is at stake.

We had about 60 Senators today vote for that. For 8 years now, we have been voting on that concept. So it is an extremely popular concept. A lot of people buy into it who are not strictly pro-life. There are some pro-choice people today who voted to ban partial-birth abortion. So that is an issue that has a lot of emotion and a lot of momentum behind it.

He read the statute and he issued an opinion that had to make him the skunk of the garden party. He issued an opinion that said: I read the statute and I do not think it will meet constitutional muster.

If anyone has talked to him at all, they know he is a very serious, pro-life person. So I argue to my colleagues, this is exactly the kind of young man or woman they would be looking for to promote, to be able to take the politically popular event, put a good legal analysis on the event, and make a decision that is not going to sell well. That is exactly what I am looking for in somebody to be a judge, and the Senators from Alabama should be very proud they have sent a very noble person forward.

There are other examples of doing things that just are tough. My State of South Carolina had in our constitution for the longest time a ban on interracial marriage. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how that all came about. Those of us in the South who have grown up in the South have had tremendous struggles to be fair to African-American citizens. There is a legacy there that no one should be proud of, but things are getting better, thank God. When we look into the past--and it is in other parts of the country, but it is particularly true in the South--when that is put into a State constitution, one can only imagine the passion that went into placing something like that in the constitution.

Well, now, later on in life, all of us realize that is unfair, that should never happen, but who wants to be the person to step forward and get that argument started all over again because it really was never used?

Well, Bill Pryor, as attorney general, had the courage to tell everyone, whether they agreed with him or not, that there is no place in our constitution for this kind of prohibition, and he led a charge to get rid of it, something I think tells a lot about the young man.

The bottom line is, we are going to have a lot of time to talk about Bill Pryor because there is a movement to keep him from being on the Federal bench, a movement that is driven by politics, a movement that, if it continues, will change over 200 years of how the Senate and the executive branch work.

The worst thing we could do, in my opinion, is to take the political disagreements we have in the early part of the 21st century and change the constitutional process, probably forever, the consequence being that good young men and women such as Bill Pryor can't become judges because a few special interest groups don't like them.

If Bill Pryor can't be a Federal judge, given his academic background, the way he has lived his life, and the qualifications he brings to the job, then America is hurting because we have let politics get into the judicial process in an unhealthy way.

There will be many more days and many more hours to talk about this. I look forward to talking to anybody who will listen about why I believe so strongly that we should allow the nomination of this young man to be voted on on the Senate floor--he has come out of committee-- and why he would make a fine Federal judge.

I, again, let the Senator from Alabama know I am sorry that he and his colleagues from Alabama have to go through this. I am sorry for Mr. Pryor's family, that they have to go through this. But there will be some fighting back going on. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you continue to do this, inevitably here is what will happen.

The next time there is a Democratic President there will be special interest pressure placed on our party over here on the Republican side to do exactly the same thing to some other nominee who may be equally qualified. The next thing you know, we are going to have a situation where good men and women will not put themselves through this. They are going to say it is not worth it.

One of the things that came up in the hearing about Bill Pryor was that he and his wife were going to take their daughters, I believe, to Disney World. Disney World had Gay Pride Day that day, and they made a decision not to go on that particular day.

It is uncomfortable for me to talk about that. I imagine it is very uncomfortable for Bill Pryor to have to talk about things like that. That has no

place in the evaluation process, because what is the purpose of that? ``Yes, we got you now. You must hate gay people because you and your wife decided not to go to Disney World on a particular day.''

His answer was: It was a family decision that my wife and myself made. But I promise you that if anybody comes before me as a judge, that I will honestly and fairly deal with him.

We are getting into areas of people's personal beliefs and family decisions that are unhealthy, that will drive good men and women away if that is what you are going to have to put up with to try to serve your country.

The bottom line is, we are going to have some fussing and fighting about what is right for Bill Pryor and others, but if we don't wake up we are going to ruin 200 years of history that has worked and we are going to drive good men and women away from wanting to serve their country as a judge and all of us lose then.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, in 2 minutes it is hard to respond the way the Vice President deserves to be defended. I tell every Member this: I am preparing a memo on the statement on ``Meet the Press'' with the Vice President, his relationship with Halliburton, his financial disclosure form, what he did in 1998, what he did in 2000, and what he did in 2002.

Vote however you like. I am going to join sides with most of my Democratic friends in a minute and oppose the Vice President and the President on something very important to them. This amendment is political slander. This amendment has as its basis untruth and is factually incorrect. In 1998, the Vice President chose a deferred compensation package that was irrevocable. He couldn't change his mind. He insured that package with a private insurance policy because the Office of Government Ethics told him that is what everybody does, and he was exempt from going to the Office of Government Ethics.

I will ask unanimous consent to introduce the Vice President's financial disclosure form. He went above and beyond the call of duty. He has no financial interest in Halliburton. You are trying to accuse him of being a liar. Your facts are wrong. This is manipulation. This is politics at its worse. Please, look at what you are doing before you vote here. The Vice President doesn't deserve this, and I am going to send you a memo with what I believe to be the true facts, and we are going to get to the bottom of this.

Mr. President, do I have 30 seconds?

If you wonder what he did with the stock options, he assigned them all to charities. Look at the facts before you vote because the facts do not sustain these allegations. The allegations are off base. I promise you, I will send you a memo. Please look before you vote. I move to table.

Mr. President, probably by the end of the week, if things stay the way they have been, unfortunately we will have some injured troops and maybe some will lose their lives.

There is a resolve by the American people and this body to stay the course. If anybody has looked at what we have done in a reasonable, rational manner--and that is all I ask the world to do--they will see great resolve on our part. The biggest contribution we have made to the Iraqi people has nothing to do with money. It is the 350, somewhere in that number, growing by the day, young men and women. That is our biggest contribution. We have spent a lot of money, a billion dollars a week, to try to transform a country from tyranny to civility, and the middle is chaos. We are making great improvements. That is an honest statement.

Having been to Iraq, one can see the resolve in the soldiers' eyes. I dare say there may be some men and women in the Armed Forces who are so decent that they would say: Give the Iraqi people money, we do not want to be paid back. That is the strength of our country.

We are in it for the long haul. There is more dying to come. There is more money to be spent. If we try to build up the infrastructure in the next months to come, chances are it will be attacked because we have not secured the country yet. To expect it to be secured in 6 months is impossible, because the Iraqi Army and all the bad people who are in it have gone into the civilian population.

Senator McConnell is right; they are not just killing Americans. They are killing people who are trying to transform the country into democracy.

People may say, oh, this loan proves they were over there for our oil. I cannot tell my colleagues how much it bothers me to hear that because my colleagues know it is not true and I know it is not true. Nobody in a rational thought process would send 350 people and climbing to their death, spend $70 billion and climbing, to make a $10 billion loan that may never be collected.

So people can say what they want to say. If our country gives in to that way of thinking, and if we are swayed by people who hate us to begin with and we change our policy based on people who are never going to be with us, we will never get this right.

My hope is that the Iraqi people who see our soldiers on the ground, see the schools being opened and built, and the hospitals being repaired would be the first to reject this kind of reasoning, because God knows we are not there to take anything they have. We are there to help them, but we are also there to help us.

Why did we go to war? Why did we pick people from South Carolina, California, and all the places in between to go to a foreign land and risk their lives and have some die? To make sure that Saddam Hussein could do no more damage to the region or us than he has already done.

President Bush has shown great leadership. He has said that the 21st century will not be ruled or dictated by terrorists, dictators, and murderers. He is absolutely right. God bless him for his resolve.

This amendment puts $10 billion on the table, unencumbered, to spend however you would like. This chart shows from $95 billion to $153 billion of debt incurred to Saddam Hussein. The reason I am so passionate about this, I do not want to give in to a great lie. We cannot buy our way out of this problem. We cannot take $10 billion of taxpayer money and people are losing their jobs to buy our way out of a great lie.

It would be terrible if the people of this country, who have sacrificed so much, wound up not getting a dime back for doing a good thing, and all they invested in Iraq to produce profit and money went to pay the people back who kept Saddam Hussein in power. That is unacceptable to me, and that is the scenario we are charting. Please do not do that. It would be bad for everyone. It would not make the world safer.

How much time do I have remaining, Mr. President?

Mr. President, I am new to the Senate. This has been a terrific debate in the best traditions of the Senate. I come to this conclusion after having listened to people I admire and respect, such as our leader, the President, the Vice President, and Secretary Powell. I asked myself: Who are you to disagree?

I thought about it, and I came to this conclusion. I do disagree. I know they are genuine in their beliefs, but I just do not believe we are being unfair to the people of Iraq. We have lost 332 lives liberating Iraq. We are spending $1 billion a week, and all we are asking for is once the country gets something going--we are going to build schools and hospitals, we are going to do great things for the Iraqi people--but once the oil refineries are fixed, because that is what makes the money, and once we do other things to get you back in business, consider helping us because we are deep in debt. We borrowed every penny of this $87 billion. And I would vote tomorrow to borrow more money to make our country safe.

We have one of the highest deficits in our Nation's history because our economy has turned down. But we have to win this war. The only way we will lose this war--here is where I am tonight--is if the American people leave. It is very hard for me to go home and explain how you have to give $20 billion to a country that is sitting on $1 trillion worth of oil and the net result of this policy we are pursuing is the people who died to liberate Iraq are going to be left holding the bag, and the only people who will get paid back are the people who lent money to Saddam Hussein. If we follow that policy, people will leave us because it is not fair to the taxpayer. We need to make sure we don't divide ourselves here at home.

This is very important, not just for international politics but for domestic politics.

The French and the Germans voted today for a resolution, but in the same breath they said they would send no troops and no money.

We are pretty much alone for a while. Let us stay together and not ask more of the American people. It would be unfair to ask.

I really do love my country. We give $15 billion in aid to Africa and we don't want a penny back. We are giving $10 billion in grants, and we don't want a penny back. But if we are going to build your infrastructure to make you prosperous, help us because we are in debt. And if other countries will do the right thing, we will even forgive that.

The biggest thing we have done for Iraq is give our young men and women, and more are going to die. That is a fact.

Tonight is important. We need to stay together and look at the American taxpayer, and say, Yes, you can be helped too. Don't feel guilty to ask for some of your money back, because you have given and you have given, and there is more to give.

Please vote for this amendment for the sake of the American people.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 1905 be called.

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

Madam President, this is a sense-of- the-Senate amendment. I think it is very important, as we deal with the Iraqi situation, for us to address as many issues as we can about the nature of how this is going to unfold. The President has asked for $87 billion. I am glad to support the funding. Most of it, two-thirds of it, I guess, goes to the men and women in uniform to make sure they have the assets necessary to protect themselves and do their job.

This resolution speaks to the idea of when the mission is complete, and this resolution addresses the French position. The French have proposed as recently as September 16 that within a month--a matter of 1 month and no later than 2--all authority be turned over to the Iraqi people and that the umbrella we have today cease to exist.

Not only is this irresponsible but the Coalition Provisional Authority ruling the country is a necessary entity until we can get a constitution written, voted on, and a government elected. But if we did what the French are suggesting, we would take a country that has been brutalized and raped--literally and figuratively--with Saddam Hussein still on the loose, and basically say, Here.

I think that would not only be a disservice to the Iraqi people but it would undermine the reason we went to war to begin with; that is, to take tyranny and turn it into stability.

This sense-of-the-Senate resolution says in no uncertain terms that it would be irresponsible to follow the French proposition--to turn back over to the Iraqi people the country while it is still in transition. In going from tyranny to stability, there will be a certain amount of chaos.

We are training the Iraqi police. We are training the army. They are having elections at the local level. There are a lot of good things going on. Schools are now open. Schools used to house weapons. Now they are housing kids. No young girl has to worry about being taken out of school and taken to one of Saddam's sons because she strikes his eye.

Iraq is a better place. But the French position of just leaving and turning it over within 30 days would undo the recent accomplishments. It is irresponsible.

I think it would be in order for the Senate to speak on this matter. The United Nations rejected an amendment that set a hard and fast deadline in terms of when control will be given to the Iraqi people. This makes good sense. Let us give them a chance to write a constitution, give them a chance to ratify a constitution, give

them a chance to have a national election, get some infrastructure in place, and allow the rule of law to be in place. Then, at the appropriate time, we will be glad when it comes time to leave Iraq. Most Americans who have family members in the military can't wait for that day to come. We can't wait to be able to bring our troops back home.

Having said that, most Americans understand that if you leave before the job is done, the problems will come back to haunt you. After September 11, the easy way out is no longer the right way--to shoot a missile or two and say, Boy, did we deal with that group which led to 9/11.

There are people who are infiltrating Iraq who are trying to destabilize the efforts of the Iraqi people to become a free democracy. There are people in the region who hate the idea that Iraq may be a free country with a democratic system. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people and fight those forces, not only for the good of the Iraqi people but for our own security.

This resolution I think is very appropriately timed. The United Nations has rejected the hard and fast deadline. This resolution basically says we are going to stay until the country is stable, we are going to stay until the job is done.

Having said that--by making that statement--it means more Americans are going to die. The forces in Iraq are small in terms of the population as a whole, but they are committed to creating chaos.

It breaks my heart--and every Member of this body and all Americans-- to have a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine lost in this conflict. But just as surely as I speak, losses will come and more money will be spent. The day has not yet arrived when we can, in good faith and good conscience, turn all matters over to the Iraqi people. They need help. They need money. They need assistance. They need our support. But we need to do it for ourselves. If we cut and run, and if we take the French position to get out of there before the infrastructure is in place, we will take one form of tyranny and replace it with another. It is an irresponsible position.

I hope this body in a unanimous fashion will agree with the proposition that we should not leave Iraq until the job is done--until a constitution is written and ratified, until a government has been elected and the people have a chance to have a secure environment for their new nation that is emerging out of the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime.

I ask my colleagues to support this resolution saying we will not leave until the job is done. Leaving in the next month is irresponsible. Reject the French position because the French position is irresponsible and undermines our national security.

Mr. President, I hope this sense-of- the-Senate resolution will pass unanimously.

The purpose of this resolution is to try to put in perspective what has been achieved by Operation Iraqi Freedom. We have suffered greatly in this country. The Iraqi people have suffered. We have lost soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. We have spent a lot of money, but I argue that we are much more secure as a nation; that there is one less dictator in the world to help terrorists; and that dispensing with Saddam Hussein's regime has been of particular benefit to our Nation, the region, and the world.

But there is one nation where this has made a dramatic difference. That is the State of Israel. This resolution says in very simple and strong terms that disposing of the Saddam Hussein government has made the State of Israel a more secure place. Why do we say that? During Saddam Hussein's period of ruling, he paid suicide bombers, homicide bombers, in Palestine money, and families of suicide and homicide bombers, to go in and kill innocent Israeli citizens. So when he left, there is one less person to fund people who are trying to destroy peace.

Israel and the Palestinian people deserve to live side by side in peace with two independent states. Saddam Hussein was providing money to people, the Arab Liberation Front, whose goal was to put Israel in the sea.

There is an element of people in that region who don't want to make peace with Israel. They want to destroy the State of Israel. Saddam Hussein made that possibility more likely by providing aid and comfort and money. So when we took Saddam Hussein out, we made Israel more secure. That is a good thing. I hope the Senate will join in unanimous support of that concept.

The government under Saddam Hussein gave money to the master mind of the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. The government of Saddam Hussein launched 39 Scud missile attacks against the State of Israel. People debate, should we have done it? Was it worth it? I argue strongly that it was worth it, not only for us but for the State of Israel. The men and women who have died to replace Saddam Hussein have died to make the world more secure. It is heartbreaking to lose soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, but one of the reasons we have a military is to protect ourselves and our allies.

Every now and then in history people such as Saddam Hussein crop up. If they are left alone, innocent people die unnecessarily. If they are left alone, the forces of evil become stronger.

I admire our President who chose to stand up to Saddam Hussein. For over 12 years he has violated every effort to rein him in. Force was necessary. Force was costly. But the benefits of that force have made the region safer, made the Iraqi people free for the first time in decades, and made the State of Israel a more secure place to live. Israel has been a good ally. I would ask all of my colleagues, if at all possible, to legitimize Operation Iraqi Freedom in terms of making Israel more secure because to say otherwise would be an untruth. Let it be said that the men and women who sacrificed to make the Iraqi people free have sacrificed in a way to make people in Israel and our own country safer, more secure, and their hopes and dreams maybe will be realized.

I ask for the yeas and nays. Senator McConnell would like to speak on the measure, and I ask unanimous consent to make him a cosponsor of the amendment.

If I may, Senator McConnell would like to speak. He is here. You are right. I am sorry about the scheduling problem. I ask the body to let Senator McConnell speak for whatever time he needs on the amendment.

Yes, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes for the Senator from Kentucky so he may speak on this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, it is a pleasure to return to this great institution at a time when we are debating a truly significant issue for the future of our Nation.

The fundamental question to me is what should be our standard in resolving the myriad of questions which surround the President's request for $87 billion in occupation and reconstruction expense in Iraq.

My answer to that question is that we should test each of these proposals against the standards of: Will this give us an honorable and an expeditious exit from Iraq? Will this contribute to our ability to leave Iraq, to take American troops out of the quagmire and the killing field which Iraq has become, but to do so with honor?

We basically have two options that are presently available to us as to how to reach that objective. One is the go-it-alone approach; that we will conduct the occupation and the reconstruction essentially alone, without significant allies. Second is that we should internationalize the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. We should do this by increasing the control of Iraqis who have the confidence of their country men and women by involving other countries in the shared burden and responsibility of the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and we should be sensitive to the international presence that we are setting by our action.

Why do I believe providing these reconstruction dollars through a loan rather than through a direct grant would more likely achieve the goal of internationalization and, therefore, the goal of an honorable and expeditious exit from Iraq?

First, it will maintain American domestic support, or at least it will serve as a brake on what I sense is the increasing loss of American domestic support for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. We all can read the polls and see what the American people feel about this $87 billion request. They dislike it in overwhelming numbers, but there is even more than what you can state statistically. There is what you can feel intuitively.

I sense all across the country an increasing question of what are we doing in Iraq? Why are we in a situation where one American is killed and 10 Americans are maimed every day, where we are spending $1 billion every week? What is our exit strategy?

I believe this approach of providing that at least a part of these expenditures will be repaid to the American taxpayers will help to build some foundation under what now appears to be a straight tunnel toward the loss of public support.

Second, this would not further add to the national debt. We have basically three choices as to who is going to pay for this war. The first choice is our generation. We are in the war for what we consider to be important national security reasons. If that is the case, we ought to be prepared to pay for it, not ask future generations to pay for it. But last week the Senate rejected the Biden amendment which would have

caused our generation to pay for our occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. So that is off the table.

The second is, we are going to ask our grandchildren to pay for this occupation and reconstruction. If we do this, we are engaged in a sharp break with tradition and precedent.

Let me just state these numbers. The Marshall plan started in 1948. The public debt of the U.S. Government in 1948 was $216 billion. Four years later, as the Marshall plan was coming to a close, but the United States was at war in Korea, in 1952, the public debt of the United States was $214 billion. So we actually reduced the public debt of the United States during the period of the Marshall plan and the early phases of the Korean war. We are not following that precedent today. We are saying we are going to put all of these additional expenses into the most enormous annual deficits the United States has ever seen.

Finally, we should do this because it will require Iraqis pay for the reconstruction and have a substantial amount of control over the reconstruction. One of the characteristics that made the Marshall plan so successful was that while we provided funds--and incidentally, on a $1-to-$1 matching basis, not a 100-percent to 0-percent basis, as is being proposed here--we provided funds on that basis and then let the leadership of the individual countries, whether it was our allies, such as France, or enemies, such as Germany, make the judgments as to what they believed the priorities should be for the use of those funds. Here we are unilaterally deciding by action of our administration and our Congress what the priorities should be.

Finally, in another domain, I think this sets a dangerous precedent for our relations with other countries. In this same legislation, we are providing a relatively small grant to Afghanistan, both for security and for reconstruction. I think that is defensible. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Afghanistan is a country which is key to a victory on terrorism. But now we apply exactly the same standards to the country which sits on the second largest oil reserve on this planet and a country which, in my judgment, was not a legitimate part of the war on terror until we made it a part of the war on terror by the war itself.

We also have Mexico. In the 1990s, Mexico was in very difficult financial status. There were some who speculated it might even go into bankruptcy. We came to Mexico's financial support. How did we do it? We did it by collateralizing the future oil revenue of Mexico to pay what we had advanced to give them greater fiscal solidity during a time of great instability. How do we tell the Mexicans that when we were lending money to them, a country which in natural resources is considerably less endowed than Iraq, we are going to give it to Iraq as a straight grant but for Mexico it was a loan with their oil revenue as the collateral for repayment?

The question that is asked all over this country is, Why can we rebuild the roads, the bridges, the schools, the electric grid of Iraq, but we cannot do it in the United States? Why can we do it as a grant to one of the richest countries in terms of petroleum in the world, which will never be repaid to help us rebuild our own bridges, roads, and schools? This represents a key turning point, in my judgment, for the beginning of the 21st century. Will Iraq be the Germany of the 1950s or will it be the Vietnam of the 1970s in terms of the United States?

I believe voting for reasonable burden sharing between Iraq and the United States, and other proposals that will share the burden on a more international basis, will be a key to answering that question.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1816.

Mr. President, I will try to be brief.

We have a great team defending America right now. That team is made up of active-duty members who have made a decision to serve 4 years or maybe have a career in the military. But that team is supplemented by the Guard and Reserves. There are 224,000 Guard and Reserve members called up to active duty and, working together, they are doing a great job defending our freedom. It is time to look anew at the role the Guard and Reserves play.

I say to Senator Daschle, I want to publicly thank him for making this possible because he has been great to work with, and Senator DeWine. I think we have been a pretty good team here on the floor. We disagree on a lot, and there will be a lot of fussing and fighting before this bill is over with, but that is the American way. It is OK to express our differences. It is great to be able to tell people you disagree. There are a lot of countries where there are not many ways to express your disagreements. But one of the things we have done tonight, and I think in the spirit of the country, is to come together to support our men and women who serve.

So why do we need this? One-fourth of the Guard and Reserves are on active duty now, with more to come. We need to acknowledge the obvious. They will be asked to do more, not less, over the coming months and years. Why? The cold war model of having tanks in the Fulda Gap and a large nuclear deterrent force standing up against the former Soviet Union, that war, thank goodness, is in the history books for the most part.

The new war, the war on terrorism, has a totally different dynamic. The Guard and Reserves, which were tangential, to be honest with you, in the cold war are in the forefront of this war on terrorism. Most of your military police are guards and reservists. Seventy-five percent of the aircrews flying C-130s--and I know our Presiding Officer knows this because we took nine trips in the theater of Afghanistan and Iraq. Eight of the crews are Guard crews, one is a Reserve crew. Seventy-five percent of the people flying C-130s are Guard and Reserves. Fifty-five percent of the people flying airlift to get the supplies and resources into the region to protect our troops and help them survive are reservists. Almost 90 percent of the intelligence service for the Army is in the Reserves, 90 percent is civil affairs Reserves. It is growing by leaps and bounds.

What we are trying to do tonight is provide a better benefit package than they have had before because we are going to ask so much of the Guard and Reserves.

Senator Stevens made this possible. We have passed two bills by 80- plus votes, but there is no money behind it. For all those who follow the Senate, they know who is in charge of the money. Senator Stevens made this possible because we are putting money behind the bill.

What does that mean? It is no longer talk. Twenty percent--2 out of 10 people--who are Guard and Reserves are without health care. This bill immediately will allow them to have health care year round. They will pay a premium like a retiree would pay, but they will have health care by being a member of the Guard or Reserves.

We need to do more, and we will. The problem of a Guard or Reserve family goes like this: If you are called up to active duty for a year, you go into the military health care system called TRICARE. If you have health care in the private sector, most times--almost all the time-- your physician network is replaced. You go from the private health care sector to the military health care sector. And when you get deactivated, you change, and there is no continuity of health care. Thirty percent of the people called to active duty were unable to be deployed because of health care problems.

We are not done yet. There is more to do. It is my goal, my hope, my dream, for the Guard and Reserve forces that if you will join, and you will participate, and you will help defend America as a guard or reservist, we will offer you full-time health care. You pay a premium, but you and your family will be taken care of in the health care area. I think it is the least we could do. I think it is what we should do. And tonight is a huge step forward.

I thank all of the Senators who made it possible. The fussing, the fighting yet to come on this bill is part of America. But let it be said at about 8:50 at night, Republicans and Democrats came together to help Guard and Reserve members. When you are in a war, they do not ask you if you are a Republican or a Democrat. They are asking you to do your job. So I am honored to be part of this effort.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hagel and Senator Allen be added as cosponsors.

I thank the Chair.

With that, I yield the floor.

I want to add one thing. There was an article in USA Today yesterday: ``Army Reserve Fears Troop Exodus.'' The Army National Guard is 15,000 below its recruiting goal. ``Soldiers are `stressed' on yearlong deployments.'' I really honestly believe that this benefit made available will help retention and recruitment because the problems with these deployments are coming down the road. The further we can get ahead of this by beefing up the benefit package, the better America will be.

I ask unanimous consent to print the article to which I referred in the Record.