Floor Statements

Mr. President, earlier today, as a member of the Senate Rules Committee, I participated in a markup of legislation that purports to regulate the so-called 527 organizations. What started out as campaign finance reform legislation in the view of many, both Democrats and Republicans, in this body, unfortunately, turned, through the amendment procedure and the markup, into a very different kind of legislation.

I commend Senator Lott, chairman of the Rules Committee. He was eminently fair throughout and gave each one of us an opportunity to present our amendments to be fully considered and voted upon. But one amendment that was introduced at the very outset, that was voted favorably upon by all members of the majority caucus as well as I believe one or two Democrats, but not nearly enough to carry the legislation, drastically shifted the bill to one that opens vast new opportunities for political action committees, special interests, to increase their contributions and for Members of Congress, Members of the Senate to direct those moneys to other political campaigns.

Specifically, the amendment that was adopted increased the contributions allowed to political action committees from $5,000 to $7,500. That is a 50-percent increase.

The amendment increased the amount of money that political action committees could contribute to national political parties from $15,000 to $25,000. That is a 67-percent increase. And it eliminated the restrictions on trade associations soliciting member companies for those contributions without prior approval of those companies as well as limitations on the number of times each year they could be solicited.

Most egregious, the amendment that was adopted allows Members of Congress to transfer unlimited amounts of money from their leadership political action committees to national parties and to the political committees that are established and maintained by a national political party which includes such enterprises as the Democratic and Republican senatorial campaign committees, congressional campaign committees, and other subdivisions and political committees of the national parties that are used to directly attack Members of Congress for their reelections or to assist challengers or to assist incumbents.

It opened the door widely, broadly, in allowing Members of Congress to use their positions of power and influence to solicit these contributions from special interests on a year-round, round-the-clock basis and then turn those moneys over in unlimited amounts to all of these other political activities.

So at the same time this legislation purported to restrict the ability of individuals to make these kinds of large expenditures on behalf of political causes and candidates, it threw the door wide open for special interest groups to do exactly what they said they were prohibiting. It is a terrible step in the wrong direction. It is evidence, again, of why allowing incumbents to be involved in so-called election law regarding their own self-interest is akin to giving a blowtorch to a pyromaniac. They simply cannot resist the abuses that are available to them.

I urge my colleagues to look at this legislation cautiously as it proceeds to the Senate floor. It is a step in the wrong direction. I regret the action taken today.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Washington for her leadership on this very important amendment. I share her dismay and astonishment that the other side doesn't recognize this is an emergency. It is an emergency in Minnesota and to the Minneapolis veterans hospital, which has been designated as one of the primary recipients of those returning home injured in the war in Iraq, and which does not have the money even to meet the needs of veterans already in Minnesota, much less the additional demand.

It seems to me incredible that anybody can say they support our troops, as we all do, but then when they come home injured, wounded, even maimed, we are not going to provide them with the resources necessary and everything they need to resume healthy and normal lives.

This is a fundamental question of priorities for this body and for the administration. If we don't believe that sending soldiers to Iraq constitutes an emergency, if we don't believe that supplying them and equipping them, as we will vote to do--as I have supported every time and will again here--constitutes an emergency outside of the normal budget processes, but this instance now where we talk about providing health care to those most in need, in the most emergency-type situations of their lives imaginable, that this is not an emergency expenditure that should be approved unanimously by this body, then I frankly don't see how we can say with any integrity that we support our troops.

We support our troops in Iraq and now we need to support them when they return home. This amendment of the Senator from Washington will accomplish that. I would be astonished if anyone in this body would oppose it.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

The Senator knows this is an emergency supplemental, so it is not subject to the normal budget process. In my 4-plus years here, I have not witnessed another occasion where a budget point of order has been raised against any part of the emergency supplemental appropriations. Is the Senator aware of this happening before, or are veterans being singled out in this instance?

We are talking about an $82 billion supplemental here that the Senator has amended, which fits within the President's request--or most of it does. It is a small part of this, and it is the least we should be doing on behalf of veterans.

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

Mr. President, I rise to discuss an amendment that I have filed and will offer formally. It is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that calls for the United Nations to give full nation membership status to Israel.

Unfortunately, and wrongly, Israel has not been granted the full status that other 190-nation members enjoy, ever since it became a nation state in 1948 and formally became a member of the United Nations in 1949. For over 50 years, until the year 2000, Israel was the only member state that was consistently denied admission into a regional group.

Even now, it is still limited to the Western European and others group in New York but not in Geneva and elsewhere. As a result, for example, Israel cannot participate in the voting for the composition of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, nor can an Israeli judge serve on that court. Yet the court is called upon, and was recently, by other nations and the General Assembly to pass judgment on the actions of Israel to protect its national borders and to secure the lives and the safety of its citizens.

Also, as a result of the denial of full status, Israel is not allowed to participate in United Nations conferences on human rights, racism, and other issues held in world locations, which is particularly important since some of those conferences unfairly discriminate against Israel in their consideration of issues they do not consider to the same extent or at all as they affect other member nation states.

My amendment says it is the sense of Congress that President Bush should direct the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations to seek an immediate end to the persistent and deplorable inequality that is experienced by Israel in the United Nations; that Israel should be afforded the benefits of full membership in Western European and other groups in the United Nations to achieve that full participation, and that the U.S. Secretary of State should report to Congress on a regular basis on the actions of the administration to encourage Israel's full acceptance by other member states in the United Nations. Obviously this law and those requirements would apply equally to future administrations of our Government as well.

It is ironic because the United Nations created the State of Israel back in 1948, and yet it has been the body where some of the most anti- Semitic and discriminatory attacks against the democratically elected Government of the people of Israel have taken place. There have been some improvements. There have been recognitions most recently by Secretary Kofi Annan of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias historically in the United Nations. Some progress has been made, but some is not full progress or acceptance, and some is not enough.

The United Nations was founded upon the principle that all member nations of the world, all of which may be engaged to some or another extent in practices or activities that other nations may disagree with, are equal members there for the purpose of resolving the differences among nations and among the peoples of the world peacefully, equitably, and hopefully in the ultimate best interests of all concerned. So by denying this great nation, a democratic government and the people of Israel, the full rights of citizenship in that world body runs contrary to the founding principles and the purpose of the United Nations. It is destructive to the attempt to resolve the differences in the Middle East peacefully, equitably, and hopefully permanently for the benefit of all concerned.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to offer my heartfelt congratulations to the College of St. Catherine, in St. Paul, MN, on the celebration of its centennial year. St. Catherine is our country's largest Catholic college for women. Its numerous academic achievements would be impressive for a college of any size, but for an institution with fewer than 5,000 students, such accomplishments are downright spectacular.

Since its founding 100 years ago, the College of St. Catherine has expanded its student body from high school and lower division college students to include associate, bachelor's and graduate degree candidates in more than 60 fields. In 1937, St. Catherine became the first Catholic college to be awarded a chapter of the national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa.

Today, the College of St. Catherine continues to distinguish itself as a leading institution for women's education. Its ``Women of Substance'' series features lectures and performances of theatre, music, and dance by female speakers and artists from around the world. In the classroom, the college's new ``Centers for Excellence'' focus on the role of women in such diverse fields as public policy, spirituality, and health.

Annually, the College of St. Catherine graduates more nurses than any other college or university in Minnesota. It is second only to the much larger University of Minnesota in the number of public school teachers it has educated and placed in the State's capital city of St. Paul.

Along with all of the Minnesotans whose lives have benefited from the talents, professionalism, and leadership of St. Catherine's outstanding graduates, I would like to say thank you. The College of St. Catherine's commitment to the highest standards of academic excellence and social responsibility have enriched the lives of its students and its State's citizens for a century. I congratulate the faculty, staff, alumnae, and students of the College of St. Catherine on their 100 years of excellence. I know that they will continue their great tradition for the next 100 years.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 202 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I thank my cosponsors, Senators Durbin, Mikulski, Lieberman, Stabenow, and Akaka. My amendment would increase the Federal share of funding for special education to the level of 40 percent of the cost that was promised when IDEA was established almost 30 years ago. Despite the increases that President Bush has proposed and that this Congress has enacted in the last 4 years, that Federal share is still less than half of what was promised back then. My colleagues have before them as a part of the letter that I submitted what the difference is for their respective States. For Minnesota, it is about $250 million. That money would be badly needed and best used by our local school districts.

As a result of the shortfall in Minnesota, and I suspect other States, funds that are supposed to go to regular education get shifted over to cover the shortfall for special education, meaning the quality of education for all of our students goes down.

I ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to Ms. Declan Cashman who tomorrow marks her 20th year of service in the Senate.

Declan began her career in the Senate back in 1985 as a legislative secretary for my distinguished friend, Senator Dave Durenberger of Minnesota. She was promoted to positions on the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Today, she serves as my executive assistant, where she is invaluable to me and so many others on my staff. I do not sign a letter without first asking, ``Has Declan looked at this?''

Despite her busy work schedule, Declan has many creative pursuits. She is both a lover of the theater and a talented actress herself. Recently, she has performed at Washington's Studio Theater, the Chevy Chase Players, and the Silver Spring stage.

Declan is an inspiration to the young men and women who come to work in Washington every year. Every morning, she is the first to arrive in my office, where she proceeds to scour her hometown Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post's Style section, and Page Six, over a cup of black coffee. As her coworkers arrive, she enthusiastically shares the best stories with them.

On behalf of her Senate coworkers over the past 20 years and the thousands of constituents she has assisted, I thank Declan for her dedication and excellent public service. I hope that she will grace my office with her presence for the next 2 years. Then someone else will be my fortunate successor.

Mr. President, this legislation is entitled ``The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act.'' Unfortunately, there is actually very little consumer protection in it.

My amendment would add some much needed consumer protections to the bill and end one of the principal abuses that drives people into bankruptcy--exorbitant interest rates.

My amendment would limit the maximum annual interest rate that could be charged to any consumer by any creditor to 30 percent. Thirty percent is still a very high interest rate--far too high, in my view.

Inflation is currently running around 2 percent. The interest rate on 3-month Treasury bills is 2.75 percent. The prime lending rate is 5.5 percent. So 30 percent is exorbitantly high, but it is much less than the 384 percent that is being charged by money centers in Minnesota, or the 535-percent annual interest rate charged by centers in Wisconsin, or the 1,095-percent interest rate being charged by the County Bank of Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. That is not just predatory lending, that is ``terroristic'' lending.

My amendment would apply to any rate of interest charged by any creditor to any borrower for any purpose. However, it would not preempt any State,

local, or private restriction that imposes a lower rate of interest.

For example, 21 States, which include my home State of Minnesota, cap interest rates for credit cards. Minnesota's ceiling is 18 percent. That would still apply. Yet when money centers operate in Minnesota at 384 percent interest, that limit would be 30 percent.

Again, under my amendment, whenever a creditor is limited to a lower interest rate, that lower rate would apply. Whenever there is no interest cap, or wherever that cap is higher than this amendment's 30- percent limit, then this 30-percent annual interest rate would apply.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It has the support of the Consumer Federation of America, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, and the U.S. PIRG.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 31 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I salute my colleague, Senator Kennedy, for his powerful and heroic statements today on behalf of the people of America who do not have the time or the money to come to Washington or hire expensive lobbyists to press their causes in the Senate. He has championed their concerns for decades now.

I am very proud to have been a member of his caucus a short while ago, listening to him speak the truth about this legislation, which is a totally one-sided assault on real Americans, the folks we see out there in our States who cannot be here because they are working, because they have earned a decent living, a middle-income living, but they are not getting rich, and they are not taking advantage of programs, but they have suffered the kind of personal misfortunes Senator Kennedy, Senator Durbin, and others have described--serious injuries, illnesses to themselves, to their spouses, or to their children. But they do not have health coverage, or they actually find out now they have health coverage, but the gaps in that coverage are so large or the copayments are so high they run up debts they cannot afford.

We can talk about people who lost their jobs and often, therefore, their health coverage, which means they have added economic misfortune on to a health crisis. They are the targets of this legislation, the victims of this legislation. It is self-entitled the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. If this bill is a consumer protection act, believe me, the consumers of America are in very serious trouble. This is a Credit Card Company Protection Act. The poor credit card companies of America are the innocent victims, we are being told, if we believe what we are hearing from the other side, of some supposed massive consumer fraud when, in fact, in the 8 years since this legislation was first introduced, the number of credit card solicitations in this country has doubled to 5 billion a year. Between 1993 and 2000, the amount of credit extended to people in this country grew from $77 billion to almost $3 trillion.

During the 8 years of the existence of this legislation, the bankruptcy filings in America have increased by 17 percent, and the credit card company profits have increased by 163 percent, from $11.5 billion to over $30 billion in profits last year. Does that seem like an industry that is facing a financial crisis or is being taken advantage of by people who are trying to get out from under their responsibilities? Not at all. In fact, the opposite. In fact, the opposite is that the credit card companies are taking advantage of Americans, not the other way around.

Some courts around the country have demanded that the credit card companies disclose the amount that remains to be repaid from what was actually borrowed and how much are the fees, the penalties, and the interest rates they are charging. It turns out that with the interest rates conventionally charged and the terms and conditions that are written into these agreements, many of the credit card companies are actually billing two times or more than the amount that is actually borrowed or remains to be paid. Often now it is higher than that.

Here is a form of a loan operation in my home State of Minnesota called Money Centers. Their slogan is: ``We make it easy.'' They make it easy all right. Their annual interest charge is 384 percent. But that is a bargain compared to Check and Go in Wisconsin. Their annual interest charge is 535 percent. Both of them combined do not equal the interest rate that is charged by the County Bank of Rehoboth Beach, DE, whose annual interest rate is 1,095 percent of annual interest charged on the amount that is borrowed. Now that is real abuse. That goes way beyond what we call predatory lending. That is ``terroristic'' lending. Yet this bill before us does nothing about those lenders' abuses that drive far more people into bankruptcy than what we are hearing about from the other side today.

This legislation does nothing about hospitals and other health care providers who charge uninsured patients much more than they charge their insured patients, or those covered by programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and then turn around and charge exorbitant interest rates on top of on bills of tens of thousands of dollars to the very people they are supposed to be helping who cannot possibly afford, with moderate incomes, to repay those kinds of costs.

That overcharge for the uninsured is why an overnight stay at a Virginia hospital costs $6,000 if someone is on Medicaid, but it costs $29,000 if it is Paul Shipman who had a heart attack and is uninsured. That is why a woman named Rose Schaffer, who is now being harassed by a hospital collection unit after she suffered a heart attack, said:

The hospital saved my life, but now they are trying to kill

me.

This bill also does nothing about the abuses of bankruptcy laws that allow large corporations to declare bankruptcy, dump their pensions and their retiree health benefits, and then emerge from bankruptcy and leave thousands of innocent victims. I met with some of them just this last week in my State of Minnesota. It is heartbreaking. It makes you want to cry, and then it makes you so angry at the injustice that has occurred to good, hard-working men and women who have worked all their lives, played by the rules, did everything they are supposed to do, did their part, helped build these companies, and now they are retired and the companies go into bankruptcy, such as mining companies. As one of the workers said: A company gets the mine, and we get the shaft. The company comes out of bankruptcy court proceedings and it is profitable again, having left behind its pension obligations and its health obligations to retirees--people who are betrayed, abandoned, and left destitute with no recourse whatsoever.

Those are the terrible and huge abuses of bankruptcy laws that are destroying lives in Minnesota and across this country and are leaving American taxpayers with billions of dollars of unfunded pension obligations that they are going to have to pay rather than the companies that incurred them. This legislation before us does nothing about addressing those abuses.

A spokesperson for the distinguished chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the author of this legislation, Senator Grassley, said on behalf of Senator Grassley, when he recently reintroduced the legislation:

People who have the ability to repay some or all of their

debts should not be able to use bankruptcy as a financial

planning tool so they get out of paying their debts scot-free

while honest Americans who play by the rules have to foot the

bill.

I do not think any of us would disagree with that; I certainly would not. Then I see these companies using bankruptcy law as a financial planning tool, as a corporate car wash where they can go through and clean their ledgers of these obligations to workers and retirees and come out, reestablish profitability, and these men and women, good Americans, are left behind with nothing.

Again, that is an injustice enough by itself, but the other result is the taxpayers pay the bill. This bill does nothing about that. So my amendment actually adds a real consumer protection clause to the bill that otherwise does not deserve the name. It would limit the maximum annual interest that could be charged by anyone, any lender, to 30 percent.

Now, that tells us how bad things are in this country, that a 30- percent interest charge would actually be a reduction. Right now inflation has been running less than 2 percent annually. The

current rate for a 3-month Treasury bill is 2.75 percent. The prime lending rate is 5\1/2\ percent. Thirty percent as a ceiling of what could be charged annually is still consumer abuse, but it is a lot better than 384 percent or 1,095 percent or 1,095 percent. So that is what this amendment would do. It would set a limit of the annual interest rate that could be charged by any lender to 30 percent.

If somebody believes it is not profitable for them to lend money, for whatever reasons, liability, likelihood of repayment, whatever else, that it is not profitable at a 30-percent annual interest, I say it is not a wise loan for the lender and it is not a wise loan for the borrower.

We have too many people in this country who are taking advantage of others and charging these astronomical, shameful, disgraceful, and they ought to be illegal, rates of interest and taking advantage of those people, driving them deeper into debt, many of those that my colleagues have cited as being the culprits in this situation, the nonhealth care borrowers who are running up these credit card debts.

If someone is paying 384-percent interest a year, they are going to run up that debt very fast. If someone is paying 1,095-percent interest on anything they have borrowed, believe me, anybody in this country is going to be needing to file for bankruptcy very fast. This bill does not even mention those abuses.

This amendment would put a real consumer protection clause into this bill and for that reason, as well as basic justice, we should do what this body is supposed to do, which is to stand up and protect Americans. I urge my colleagues to give it their support.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today because my friends in the Minnesota Republican Party have started a petition online urging me to support President Bush's proposal to strengthen Social Security. I want to take this opportunity to assure the people of Minnesota that I would like to strengthen Social Security just as much as anyone else, and if President Bush or anyone presents a proposal that would actually strengthen Social Security, would protect its ability to pay its promised benefits to present and future retirees and other beneficiaries and also create opportunities to provide additional benefits, I will certainly support it.

I have not yet seen a proposal, including that from the President, that would improve upon the present system while continuing its current benefits.

For all the President's fine talk about helping Social Security's financial future, his current fiscal policies, the ones that are in effect right now, are seriously hurting Social Security's future finances and also weakening the financial strength of the entire Federal Government.

It is a mystery to me why the President is so alarmed by the crisis that he says will occur when Social Security starts running deficits at variously said times, such as 2018, 2028, or 2042, when the rest of the Federal Government's budget, everything else besides Social Security, is running enormous deficits for this year, last year, and for every year projected in the future under his proposed budget.

Last year's on-budget deficit was $567 billion. A deficit of $588 billion is expected for the current fiscal year, 2005, and almost $2.5 trillion more in deficits are projected over the following 5 years under the President's proposed budget. That is the real financial crisis the

Federal Government is in right now, running huge operating deficits, by far the worst in our Nation's history, requiring massive Federal borrowing to finance them, adding over $1 trillion to the national debt over the last 3 years, and another $2 trillion over the next 5 years, with no end in sight.

No wonder the nonpartisan Concord Coalition, a Government watchdog organization founded by former New Hampshire Republican Senator Warren Rudman and businessman Warren Buffett, has called the President's fiscal policies the most reckless in our Nation's history.

In fiscal year 2000, which is the last full fiscal year under President Clinton's terms in office, the Federal Government ran surpluses in both its Social Security and on-budget funds. The Office of Management and Budget just a month after President Bush took office in 2001 projected surpluses in both of those major Government funds for each of the next 10 years. President Bush and the majority in Congress turned those surpluses into oceans of red ink by cutting taxes and increasing spending in each of the last 4 years. We also had 9/11. We have undertaken two wars. We went through a recession. There are certainly other factors.

In the midst of those, cutting taxes excessively was a primary contributor to these record deficits, and continuing those policies will only extend those deficits into the future. Yet that is what is being proposed again for this year's budget, next year, and the next. In fact, the proponents want to make future deficits even worse by making those previous tax cuts permanent, which would pile up trillions more in public debt which must be paid off, with interest, by today's children, teenagers, and young workers, the very people President Bush tells us will not have Social Security when they retire.

Unfortunately, with his current policies they will not have a country when they retire. The so-called ownership society will be the owe-the- ship society.

The second financial disaster that is happening in this country right now is that Social Security's current surpluses are being spent to pay for other Federal programs. Remember the Social Security lockbox that President Clinton established so Congress would not spend the annual Social Security surpluses but, instead, would invest it in ways that would truly strengthen the program for its future? Well, in 2000, Presidential candidate George W. Bush promised to protect that lockbox. Guess what. It is unlocked and it is empty.

Last year's $155 billion surplus is gone. The previous year's $160 billion surplus is gone. This year's $162 billion surplus is going, and the next 5 years' surpluses in the Social Security trust fund, which would total over $1 trillion, will also be gone under the President's proposed budget. They are gone to cover and to help continue part of those much larger deficits in the Federal Government's current operations. So that instead of cash or other investments, the Social Security trust fund is left with IOUs from the main Federal fund that borrowed them.

President Bush is correct when he says that when those IOUs must be repaid with interest to enable Social Security to meet its future obligations some date in the future, those additional payments will require additional Federal revenues from either higher taxes, less spending, or more Federal borrowing. If the President is right, if Social Security or even the entire Federal Government then faces a drastic financial meltdown, a bankruptcy, because workers and businesses at that time cannot afford those additional tax burdens, so the Federal Government cannot meet its obligations, whether to Social Security or to other Government programs and services, it will be a disaster that his fiscal policies have created, and that Congress through support or complicity created and made even worse, more severe, by the current deficit spending which the President proposes to continue doing right now, while at the same time he is talking about Social Security's long-term future.

As long as the current fiscal follies continue, whatever anyone says about doing whatever to Social Security years from now, as Shakespeare's McBeth said, is ``full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.''

All of these Senate speeches, all of those Presidential forums, all the millions of dollars of industry advertising, all sound and fury, signifies nothing, except signifying the financial greed that has driven the current fiscal policy and the political cowardice that is allowing it to continue.

What is needed right now, as my sons would say, is to get real, to stop all the speeches, forums, and advertising about what might or might not happen many years into the future and act on what is happening right now. It is very damaging to our country right now, and it is even more damaging to our country's future unless we act right now, this year, to stop it.

Acting right and acting now will take a lot of political courage. The President's budget shows a little but not nearly enough. It reduces spending by some $20 billion next year. That leaves another $560 billion to go in order to balance the Federal operating budget and leave the Social Security surplus in its lockbox--in other words, just to restore us to the level of fiscal responsibility that President Clinton left. That is a lot of political courage. It would require a major truth telling to the American people about how we got into this fiscal mess and how we are going to get out of it, starting right now, with no gimmicks, no games, just straight, honest accounting to balance the Federal budget without spending the Social Security money; to protect Social Security's surpluses and use them only for Social Security; to stop borrowing for current spending and adding that to the increasing national debt and then to start to pay down that debt.

If the President and the Congress are really serious about strengthening Social Security's future, that is what we must do now, and that is the best that we can do now. Straightening out the current budget mess and putting the Federal Government back on a responsible and sustainable course of balanced operating budgets and accumulating Social Security surpluses is a real action plan. Everything else is just posturing and pretending. Because sound Federal fiscal policy now contributes to future economic growth, it increases the likelihood that Social Security, as it is currently structured, will be able to pay its promised benefits with future revenues and income for many decades to come.

Because Social Security's financial future is not cast in stone, there is nothing preordained that will happen at some future date. Social Security's finances will depend upon the future growth in the U.S. economy. The Social Security trustees make this very clear in their annual report by making three long-range projections based on different assumptions about the country's future economic growth. Their intermediate forecast is the one many people cite, incorrectly, as what will happen to Social Security. That projection assumes that growth in the U.S. economy over the next 75 years will be less than two-thirds of the past 40 years.

In the last 40 years in this country, real GDP grew at 3.3 percent a year. The trustees' intermediate forecast projects real GDP growth of 2.9 percent from 2004 to 2013 but then only 1.8 percent from 2015 to 2080.

Another one of the trustees' forecasts assumes real GDP growth of 3.4 percent per year over the next decade and then 2.6 percent per year from 2015 to 2080. That still is less on average than the 3.3 percent over the last 40 years. Yet with that rate of growth the Social Security trust fund's annual income is more than enough to pay for all promised benefits beyond the year 2080, the last year in the current report.

Social Security, under that growth scenario, runs an annual surplus every year into the indefinite future. In fact, in the last year in the projection, 2080, it would have income of $4.2 trillion, make promised payments of $3.5 trillion, leaving a surplus in that one year of $700 billion, which would add to its assets that would end that year at almost $18 trillion. That is not bankruptcy, that is prosperity.

What we need to do right now to assure not just Social Security's future solvency but its future prosperity is to keep the U.S. economy healthy and growing. The best help we can give to the future of Social Security is a sound fiscal policy right now of balanced operating budgets and minimal Federal spending. On the other hand, the worst

that we could do to jeopardize Social Security's future solvency and to necessitate the kind of drastic across-the-board cuts in future retirement benefits that are in the President's proposal is to continue the current fiscal policy of deficits and more deficits, to continue the proposal of making the tax cuts for the rich permanent, abolishing the estate tax, cutting capital gains, eliminating or reducing the tax on dividends, as if the rich are not rich enough already in this country and the superrich are not superrich enough. And, if the truth be known, most of them already pay far less than their fair share in taxes and many pay no U.S. taxes at all.

To continue the tax giveaway frenzies and the fiscal follies of the last 4 years is to doom Social Security's future and this country's economic future. To borrow more and more money from the rest of the world and spend the Social Security surpluses so the rich don't have to pay their share of taxes is, as the Concord Coalition said, ``reckless fiscal policy.'' It is also destructive social policy, and it is the wrong public policy--wrong for the future of Social Security and wrong for the future of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I salute my two colleagues, Senator McConnell and Senator Bond, for their leadership in this very important area, along with Senator Dodd. They spearheaded the improvements that were made to our election, registration, and voting procedures in the aftermath of the 2000 election difficulties. Clearly, the experience over last November's election shows that we have more work before us that has to be bipartisan. They have shown strong leadership, combined with others, and I look forward to being part of that as a member of the Senate Rules Committee. Senator Lott, the chairman of that committee, will hold hearings in the very near future on this and other proposals. I believe it is imperative that we get that process underway so, as Senator Bond knows, every American knows they have the right to vote, and vote expeditiously, and every one of those votes is going to be counted.

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

Mr. President, I salute my two colleagues, Senator McConnell and Senator Bond, for their leadership in this very important area, along with Senator Dodd. They spearheaded the improvements that were made to our election, registration, and voting procedures in the aftermath of the 2000 election difficulties. Clearly, the experience over last November's election shows that we have more work before us that has to be bipartisan. They have shown strong leadership, combined with others, and I look forward to being part of that as a member of the Senate Rules Committee. Senator Lott, the chairman of that committee, will hold hearings in the very near future on this and other proposals. I believe it is imperative that we get that process underway so, as Senator Bond knows, every American knows they have the right to vote, and vote expeditiously, and every one of those votes is going to be counted.

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

Reserving the right to object.

I ask the chairman, does he intend, then, to proceed now, and is it the understanding that this side will have the next speaker, and I will follow that individual?

Mr. President, I highly respect the distinguished chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been noted with his own stellar examples of bipartisanship, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. But I must say I have to respond to his remarks about those of us who oppose Judge Gonzales as being engaged in nothing other than political partisanship. I suggest that term could be applied to those who support these nominees because they are of the same political party as the President as much as they could be applied to those of us who are on the other side of the aisle.

If the Founders of this country did not intend for the Senate to exercise an independent judgment about the nominees to these high offices, such as Attorney General and Secretary of State, they would not have provided for a separate Senate confirmation of the President's nominees.

These individuals are not employees of the President, even though they are

nominated by him and serve as members of his Cabinet and serve at his pleasure, as are his employees in the White House, who are not subject to Senate confirmation. These men and women become public officials who represent the United States of America within our country, before the Supreme Court, as Secretary of State in the seats of government around the world. They have to meet an American standard, and it is that standard that each of us has the independent responsibility to apply according to our own best judgments, but one the Constitution clearly intends we should apply independent of the President's judgment and independent, one would hope, of our own respective political parties.

I think ultimately, in the light of this debate, it is for the American people to decide whether this nominee, or any of the President's nominees, meet the standards for those who will represent this Nation in the highest public offices in the land.

I rise today to oppose the nomination of Judge Gonzales to be our Nation's next Attorney General, and I cite, as have other colleagues, the key role that he played in what is certainly one of the darkest disclosures about this administration: Its secret decisions to disregard the principles of the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war who Judge Gonzales and others conveniently renamed ``enemy combatants.''

This role and its consequences were described in graphic detail in a recent Sunday New York Times review of a couple of books, including the International Commission of the Red Cross's documents regarding the abuse of prisoners in Iraq by American service men and women. I would like to quote to some extent from the New York Times report because it expresses both the severe consequences of the decisions that were made in which Judge Gonzales, unfortunately, played a key role as White House Counsel.

The reviewer cites part of the memorandum that the President approved that was written by Judge Gonzales in that role which states:

As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall

continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent

appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a

manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.

The article reporter goes on to say:

Notice the qualifications. The president wants to stay not

within the letter of the law, but within its broad

principles, and in the last resort, ``military necessity''

can overrule all of it. According to his legal counsel at the

time, Alberto R. Gonzales, the President's warmaking powers

gave him ultimate constitutional authority to ignore any

relevant laws in the conduct of the conflict. Sticking to the

Geneva Convention was the exclusive prerogative of one man,

George W. Bush; and he could, if he wished, make exceptions.

As Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee argues in another memo, ``Any effort to apply Section 2340A in a manner that interferes with the President's direction of such core war matters as the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants thus would be unconstitutional. (Section 2340A refers to the United States law that incorporates the international Convention Against Torture.)

Bybee asserted that the president was within his legal

rights to permit his military surrogates to inflict ``cruel,

inhuman or degrading'' treatment on prisoners without

violating strictures against torture. For an act of abuse to

be considered torture, the abuser must be inflicting pain

``of such a high level intensity that the pain is difficult

for the subject to endure.'' If the abuser is doing this to

get information and not merely for sadistic enjoyment, then

``even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result

from his actions,'' he's not guilty of torture. Threatening

to kill a prisoner is not torture; ``the threat must indicate

that the death is `imminent.' '' Beating prisoners is not

torture either. Bybee argues that a case of kicking an inmate

in the stomach with military boots while the prisoner is in a

kneeling position does not by itself rise to the level of

torture.

Bybee even suggests that full-fledged torture of inmates

might be legal because it could be construed as ``self-

defense,'' on the grounds that ``the threat of an impending

terrorist attack threatens the lives of hundreds if not

thousands of American citizens.'' By that reasoning, torture

could be justified almost anywhere on the battlefield of the

war on terror. Only the president's discretion forbade it.

These guidelines were formally repudiated by the

administration the week before Gonzales's appearance before

the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation as attorney

general.

In this context, Secretary Rumsfeld's decision to take the

gloves off in Guantanamo for six weeks makes more sense. The

use of dogs to intimidate prisoners and the use of nudity for

humiliation were now allowed. Although abuse was specifically

employed in only two cases before Rumsfeld rescinded the

order, practical precedents had been set; and the broader

mixed message sent from the White House clearly reached

commanders in the field. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, in

charge of the Iraq counterinsurgency, also sent out several

conflicting memos with regard to the treatment of prisoners--

memos that only added to the confusion as to what was

permitted and what wasn't. When the general in charge of

Guantanamo was sent to Abu Ghraib to help intelligence

gathering, the ``migration'' of techniques (the term used in

the Pentagon's Schlesinger Report) from those reserved for

extreme cases in the leadership of Al Qaeda to thousands of

Iraqi civilians, most of whom, according to the intelligence

sources, were innocent of any crime at all, was complete.

Again, there is no evidence of anyone at a high level

directly mandating torture or abuse, except in the two cases

at Gitmo. But there is growing evidence recently uncovered by

the ACLU . . . that authorities in the FBI and elsewhere were

aware of abuses and did little to prevent or stop them.

Then there were the vast loopholes placed in the White House torture memos, the precedents at Guantanamo, the winks and nods from Washington, and the pressure of an Iraqi insurgency that few knew how to restrain. It was a combustible mix.

The article continues:

What's notable about the incidents of torture and abuse is

first, their common features, and second, their geographical

reach. No one has any reason to believe any longer that these

incidents were restricted to one prison near Baghdad. They

were everywhere from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Baghdad,

Basra, Ramadi and Tikrit and, for all we know, in any number

of hidden jails affecting ``ghost detainees'' kept from the

purview of the Red Cross.

I will might add that is in direct contradiction to what we have been told, those of us like myself who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who have been told repeatedly by this administration's representatives, and by military leaders, that these abuses were restricted to one prison, Abu Ghraib, in Iraq. I commend Senator Warner, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who has done his utmost, by holding these hearings and pressing the military and pressing the administration, to bring the full scope of what occurred there to public light through those hearings. To have sat through all those, as I have, and now hear that contradicted directly by the facts as they become known is greatly distressing and confirms my own unfortunately necessary judgment that this administration has not been candid with this Congress or with the American people about the conduct of the war in Iraq in this and other very important respects.

Going back to the New York Times article, they, meaning the abuses of prisoners in Iraq:

were committed by the Marines, the Army, the Military Police,

Navy Seals, reservists, Special Forces and on and on. The use

of hooding was ubiquitous; the same goes for forced nudity,

sexual humiliation and brutal beatings; there are examples of

rape and electric shocks. Many of the abuses seem

specifically tailored to humiliate Arabs and Muslims, where

horror at being exposed in public is a deep cultural

artifact.

An e-mail message recovered by Danner from a captain in

military intelligence in August 2003. . . . In the message,

he asked for advice from other intelligence officers on which

illegal techniques work best: a ``wish list'' for

interrogators. Then he wrote: ``The gloves are coming off

gentlemen regarding these detainees, Col. Boltz has made it

clear that we want these individuals broken.''

The article continues:

How do you break these people? According to the I.C.R.C.,

one prisoner ``alleged that he had been hooded and cuffed

with flexicuffs, threatened to be tortured and killed,

urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, force-

fed a baseball which was tied into the mouth using a scarf

and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days.

Interrogators would allegedly take turns ill-treating him.

When he said he would complain to the I.C.R.C. he was

allegedly beaten more. An I.C.R.C. medical examination

revealed hematoma in the lower back, blood in urine, sensory

loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with

flexicuffs, and a broken rib.''

That is only one of several incidents of that kind of horrible abuse this article contains. It continues:

And the damage done was intensified by President Bush's

refusal to discipline those who helped make this happen. A

president who truly recognized the moral and strategic

calamity of this failure would have fired everyone

responsible. But the vice president's response to criticism

of the defense secretary in the wake of Abu Ghraib was to

say, ``Get off his back.'' In fact, those with real

responsibility for the disaster were rewarded. Rumsfeld was

kept on for the second term, while the man who warned against

ignoring the Geneva Conventions, Colin Powell, was seemingly

nudged out. The man who wrote a legal opinion maximizing the

kind of brutal treatment that the United States could legally

defend, Jay S. Bybee, was subsequently rewarded with a

nomination to a federal Court of Appeals. General Sanchez and

Gen. John P. Abizaid remain in their posts. Alberto R.

Gonzales, who wrote memos that validated the decision to

grant Geneva status to inmates solely at the president's

discretion, is now nominated to the highest law enforcement

job in the country: attorney general. The man who paved the

way for the torture of prisoners is to be entrusted with

safeguarding the civil rights of Americans. It is astonishing

he has been nominated, and even more astonishing that he will

almost certainly be confirmed.

I conclude my citation of that article. The abuses it describes are terrible, however limited in number they may be. Obviously almost all of our American service men and women serving so heroically in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world were not involved in those abuses. In fact, they paid the price for them. They become the targets of relatives and friends of those abuse victims who swear revenge. Our troops are placed at greater risk if, God forbid, they are captured, because we cannot demand that their captors practice standards of humane treatment which we do not practice ourselves.

But there is something that runs even deeper here and that is even more dangerous to our democracy. It is Judge Gonzales's advice that ``the President's warmaking powers gave him ultimate constitutional authority to ignore any relevant law in the conduct of the conflict.''

This is, I suspect, only the tip of the iceberg. Early in the administration's campaign, in the fall of 2002, to stampede Congress and scare the American people into the Iraq war, the White House stated their legal view that the President didn't actually need congressional authorization to invade Iraq. Members of this body on the other side of the aisle were instrumental in persuading him nevertheless to seek that authority.

Secretary Rumsfeld's legal advisers have reportedly reinterpreted existing law to permit him to set up his own CIA-type operations without informing Congress. They reinterpreted another law, purportedly to authorize military counterterrorist commando units to operate within the United States. Who knows how many other laws this administration's legal advisers have reinterpreted or decided that the President or others can ignore entirely, reinterpret or ignore without informing Congress, without informing the American people?

The Attorney General of the United States is entrusted to uphold the laws of this Nation and to apply them consistently and fairly to every American citizen, whether he agrees with them, whether they are convenient, whether the President or anyone else tells him otherwise. He cannot reinterpret them or ignore them or instruct the President or anyone else that they can reinterpret or ignore them. Change them? Yes, through the public process prescribed by the Constitution, by our Constitution: by an act of Congress signed into law by the President himself, reviewed if necessary by the judiciary. No exclusions and no exceptions, not for this President or any President; not for this administration or any administration, whether Republican, Democrat, or anything else. There are no special circumstances. There is no election mandate for secretly ignoring or reinterpreting laws of this Nation, or acting contrary to the rule of those laws or in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

Unfortunately, there is tragic precedent in this country's proud history for the demise of administrations who deviated from the rule of law, who considered themselves above the law or beyond the law or justified in reinterpreting or ignoring the law. Their hubris did great damage to themselves and they did great damage to our country.

They occurred more often than not during second terms, even after receiving that most special of electoral mandates: reelection. What a profound affirmation of the public trust, the most sacred political trust we have in this country: reelection of the President of the United States of America.

For the next 4 years, this President is our President. He is my President. I pray that he succeeds. Where he succeeds, our country succeeds. If he fulfills that sacred trust inferred upon him by the American people, the faith of all Americans in their Government is fulfilled.

We can have policy disagreements here in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, and with the administration. This is what a great Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle, called the ``noise of democracy.'' They were intended by this country's Founders, who designed our system of government to allow them, to address them, and resolve them, publicly, lawfully, and constitutionally. When those principles are followed publicly, lawfully and constitutionally, our Nation is strengthened. When they are not, our Nation is almost always weakened, regardless of what those leaders intended at the time.

I respectfully urge this administration to stop reinterpreting and ignoring existing laws and to stop ignoring and misleading Congress and the American people and to nominate an Attorney General who will not advise it, not hide it, and not condone it. That Attorney General I will gladly vote to confirm; this nominee, I will not.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, First let me thank my colleagues, Senator Boxer and Senator Durbin for making available this time for me to address the Senate regarding this nomination. I rise today to oppose the nomination of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. I do so because she misled me

about the situation in Iraq before and after the congressional resolution in October of 2002 authorizing that war, a resolution that I opposed. She misled other Members of Congress about the situation in Iraq, Members who have said they would have opposed that resolution if they had been told the truth, and she misled the people of Minnesota and Americans everywhere about the situation in Iraq before and after that war began.

It is a war in which 1,372 American soldiers have lost their lives, and over 10,000 have been wounded--many of them maimed for life. Thousands more have been scarred emotionally and physically. All of those families and thousands of other American families whose loved ones are now serving in Iraq are suffering serious financial and family hardships, and must wonder and worry every day and night for a year or longer whether their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are still alive, will stay alive, and wonder when they will be coming home. For many, the answer is: Not soon.

I read in today's Washington Post that the Army is planning to keep its current troop strength in Iraq at 120,000 for at least 2 more years. I did not learn that information as a Member of Congress. I did not learn it as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee where I regularly attend public hearings, classified meetings, and top secret briefings. I did not learn it from the U.S. military command in Iraq with whom I met in Baghdad last month. I read it in the Washington Post, just as I read last weekend that the Secretary of Defense has created his own new espionage arm by ``reinterpreting an existing law,'' without informing most, if any, Members of Congress and by reportedly ``reprogramming funds appropriated for other purposes;'' just as I learned last weekend by reading the New York Times that the Administration is exploring a reinterpretation of the law to allow secret U.S. commando units to operate in this country.

I also learned of official reports documenting horrible abuses of prisoners, innocent civilians as well as enemy combatants, at numerous locations in countries besides the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which directly contradicts assurances we have been given repeatedly by administration officials in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

I might as well skip all the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings and meetings and top secret briefings and just read the papers--and thank goodness for a free and vigilant press to ferret out the truth and to report the truth, because we cannot get the truth from this administration.

Sadly, the attitude of too many of my colleagues across the aisle is: Our President, regardless whether he is wrong, wrong, or wrong, they defend him, they protect him, and they allow his top administration officials to get away with lying. Lying to Congress, lying to our committees, and lying to the American people. It is wrong. It is immoral. It is un-American. And it has to stop.

It stops by not promoting top administration officials who engage in the practice, who have been instrumental in deceiving Congress and the American people and, regrettably, that includes Dr. Rice.

Dr. Rice, in a television interview on September 8, 2002, as the administration was launching its campaign to scare the American people and stampede Congress about Saddam Hussein's supposedly urgent threat to our national security, shrewdly invoked the ultimate threat, that he possessed or would soon possess nuclear weapons. She said that day:

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Soon thereafter she and other top administration officials cited intercepted aluminum tubes as definite proof that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program underway. Dr. Rice stated publicly at the time the tubes:

. . . are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,

centrifuge programs.

In late September of 2002, shortly before we in Congress were to vote on the Iraq war resolution, Dr. Rice invited me, along with I believe five of my Senate colleagues, to the White House where we were briefed by her and then-CIA Director George Tenet. That briefing was classified. What I was shown and told conformed to Dr. Rice's public statements, with no qualification whatsoever. Now, of course, we have been told, after an exhaustive search for 18 months by over 1,400 United States weapons inspectors, that Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear weapons development program underway and that he apparently possessed no weapons of mass destruction of any kind. We have also been told that in the fall of 2002, right at the time of my meeting in the White House, right at the time of the Senate and the House's votes on the Iraq war resolution, the top nuclear experts at the U.S. Department of Energy and officials in other Federal agencies were disagreeing strongly with Dr. Rice's claim that those aluminum tubes could only have been intended for use in developing nuclear weapons materials.

That expert dissent and honest disagreement--a different point of view--was not communicated to me then nor was it brought to me later. I received no phone call or letter saying: Senator Dayton just wanted to correct a mis-impression that I unintentionally gave you at that meeting. I now have information that contradicts what we were told then. I still believe in my own views but I want you to be aware of others before you cast the most important vote of your Senate career or even a call or communication after that vote was cast. There was nothing.

When Senator Boxer rightly pressed Dr. Rice on this point in the Foreign Relations confirmation hearing, there was no admission even then of any mistake. In fact, she replied: ``I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you, very much.''

There is a saying that we judge ourselves by our intentions; others judge it by our actions.

I don't know what Dr. Rice's intentions were, but I do have direct experience with her actions. There was no slight misunderstanding, or a slip, or even a mistake that was limited to one meeting. This was a public statement made repeatedly by Dr. Rice and similar words by Vice President Cheney and even by President Bush as part of an all-out campaign, which continues even today, to mobilize public support and maintain public support for the invasion of Iraq and for continuing war there regardless of what the facts were then, or are now, and it has been done by misrepresenting those facts, by distorting the facts, by withholding the facts, by hiding the truth, by hiding the truth in matters of life and death, of war and peace, that profoundly affect our national security, our international reputation, and our future well- being--and will for many years to come.

I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity. But I really do not like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is un-American, and it is dangerous. It is very dangerous, and it is occurring far too frequently in this administration.

This Congress, this Senate must demand that it stop now. My vote against this nomination is my statement that this administration's lying must stop now. I urge my colleagues to join me in this demand, Democrat, Republicans, Independents. All of us first and foremost are Americans. We must be told the truth--for us to govern our country and to preserve our world. That is why we must vote against this nomination.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. president, I rise today to offer my heartfelt congratulations to the College of St. Catherine, in St. Paul, MN, on the celebration of its centennial year. St. Catherine is our country's largest Catholic college for women. Its numerous academic achievements would be impressive for a college of any size, but for an institution with fewer then 5,000 students, such accomplishments are downright spectacular.

Since its founding 100 years ago, the College of St. Catherine has expanded its student body from high school and lower division college students to include associate, bachelor's and graduate degree candidates in more than 60 fields. In 1937, St. Catherine became the first Catholic college to be awarded a chapter of the national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa.

Today, the College of St. Catherine continues to distinguish itself as a leading institution for women's education. Its Women of Substance series features lectures and performances of theater, music, and dance by female speakers and artists from around the world. In the classroom, the college's new Centers for Excellence focus on the role of women in such diverse fields as public policy, spirituality, and health.

Annually, the College of St. Catherine graduates more nurses than any other college or university in Minnesota. It is second only to the much larger University of Minnesota in the number of public school teachers it has educated and placed in the State's capital city of St. Paul.

Along with all of the Minnesotans whose lives have benefited from the talents, professionalism, and leadership of St. Catherine's outstanding graduates, I would like to say thank you. The College of St. Catherine's commitment to the highest standards of academic excellence and social responsibility have enriched the lives of its students and its state's citizens for a century. I congratulate the faculty, staff, alumnae, and students of the College of St. Catherine on their 100 years of excellence. I know that they will continue their great tradition for the next 100 years.