Floor Statements

Mr. President, I understand Senator Byrd is preparing to offer his amendment. I ask for the Senator's consent to speak for 3 minutes on a different subject before he begins.

Mr. President, we just had a very vigorous and I think enlightening discussion about liquefied natural gas plants and the situation our country is in, about the desperate--and that is not too strong a word--the desperate need we have for additional gas in the Nation. We had a very good debate about how we were going to provide this additional gas. The technology, which has just been established in the last few years, allows us to drill for gas in places all over the world, convert it to a liquid, transport it to our shores, turn it back into a gas, and turn on our lights, provide our energy, and help our economy move forward.

I thought the debate was excellent and in great detail. As usual, Senator Feinstein presented her position beautifully. We received letters from the Governors. Of course, our leaders, the two Senators from New Mexico, also stated their positions very clearly and the vote has taken place. Regardless whether the Domenici position prevailed, which it did in this case, or if the Feinstein position had been agreed to, we still have the situation of having four liquefied natural gas plants in the Nation today, only four. The largest one is in Louisiana. We are getting ready to bring in what some estimate are as many as 40 or 50 of these new plants. They have to go somewhere.

I hope as this debate goes on, we can make the wisest decisions about the siting of these plants regarding their safety for our communities, their safety for the environment, and a revenue-sharing provision that would allow the communities that do host these liquefied natural gas plants to share some of the revenues because of the impacts that will occur. One way or another, there will either be security impacts or some environmental impacts--some impacts that the communities that do not bear this responsibility will now bear. This is particularly appropriate because this gas is not going to be used by the borough or the county or the parish in which it is sited; it is going to be used by the whole Nation.

I am going to have an amendment. It is going to be a sense-of-the- Senate amendment to get a study underway to see how these revenues could be shared appropriately with the 50 or 60 or 70 sites that are going to be determined in our country--whether they are in West Virginia, whether they are in Louisiana, whether they are in Massachusetts or California. Our communities deserve to have some funding to help with these impacts.

I thank the Senator from West Virginia for his graciousness in allowing me to speak, and I put the Senate on notice that this amendment will be coming later this afternoon.

Mr. President, could I ask the Senator from Virginia to yield a moment of his time?

I ask unanimous consent for a moment.

I thank my colleague from Virginia. This has been a very good debate. I understand the feelings of the Senators from Florida and New Jersey. They have very strong feelings they have expressed, and some ideas have been laid out to consider.

I understand this amendment will probably not be voted on, but I compliment the Senator from Virginia for his foresight and understanding that we have to increase the supply of gas, particularly oil and gas in this Nation.

All of the conservation measures are in this bill and all those we could add when it goes to conference are not going to add up to enough conservation to get us out of the bind we are in.

While we want to be sensitive to the individual States, we also have an obligation to the Nation. The Senator from Virginia has raised that issue.

He is correct. We will be back sometime next year or the following year debating this issue and trying to come up with some way we can open up opportunities where we can, and maybe perhaps keep them closed in other places. Pretending this will go away, pretending the prices will come down, is jeopardizing the economic vitality of

our Nation. Regardless of the position of Mississippi or Louisiana, the national issue demands we come up with solutions.

I thank the Senator from Virginia for his foresight and his comments in this regard.

Mr. President, I understand, according to the unanimous consent agreement, I now have 10 minutes to speak in opposition to the amendment.

Thank you, Mr. President. I will take all 7 minutes 15 seconds to talk about this important amendment.

I do so much respect a lot of what has been said on the floor of the Senate by my colleagues from Florida and New Jersey about their feelings about offshore drilling. Of course, we have different feelings about that in Louisiana, and our experience leads us to different conclusions. But that is not really the subject of this amendment, which is why I have come to the floor to speak in opposition to this amendment.

This is not a drilling amendment. This is a security amendment. This is a good stewardship amendment. This is a commonsense amendment. The people of the United States--all 240-plus million people who live in this Nation--depend on us--us right here--to give them good information about their country, about their land, about their water, about their oceans, about their resources. They depend on us to tell them the truth, not to hide things from them, not to pretend we have things when we do not or say we do not have things when we do.

That is all the amendment the Senators from New Mexico--both Senators, the chairman and the ranking member--have put in the underlying bill, with support from Democrats and Republicans, with a good vote from Republicans and Democrats on the committee, to put in this bill simply a direction for our agency, the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior, to do an inventory so the American public can understand how much oil, how much gas, how many other resources we might have on the Outer Continental Shelf.

No. 1, this is not a small piece of land or territory. It is 200 miles basically out from our coast, a ring around the Nation. If you took the OCS, which is 1.67 billion acres of land, and laid it over the map of the United States, it would be from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. It is a huge asset owned not by the Senators, not by the House of Representatives, not by the Governors, it is owned by the American people. They have a right to know what resources are there for them should they need them, should they want to use them as good stewards--not as exploiters, not as destroyers, but as good stewards.

We are engaged in a war. We have had a strike against this Nation from terrorists who have all sorts of vile intentions against our Nation.

The price of oil is at $58 a barrel this week. Gas is at a record high. We do not know when or if there will be another terrorist attack, but in the event there is some problem--more problems than we have today because we have some, obviously--when the country may have to draw on resources on the Outer Continental Shelf--it may either be because of an emergency or because of economic necessity--we most certainly would like to know what is there so we can make a good decision. That is basically all this underlying bill does.

So I know my colleagues have different views about drilling and where drilling should be and whether we should drill, but this is not the amendment. This is not the attack point. You would want to talk about drilling when we get to it. This is about an inventory, a resource assessment of what is owned by the American people for their deliberate thought about what should be done either now or in the short-term future or in the long-term future of this Nation.

I urge all of us to vote against this amendment that would strip out this commonsense approach to letting the American people know what they own so they can make, and we all can make, good decisions about whether to use those resources, when to use those resources, or decide never to tap into those resources. But those good, commonsense decisions cannot even be made unless we know what we have.

The good leadership of both Senators from New Mexico is leading us to give the American people a full accounting. I come to the Senate floor this morning to say that I strongly support this underlying measure, and I thank them for their leadership. I urge my colleagues on the Democratic side, as well as my Republican colleagues, to hold to this commonsense inventory of our Outer Continental Shelf.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following data be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield back the floor but reserve my time.

Mr. President, may I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 seconds as in morning business while we are waiting?

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from New Mexico and Arizona. I thank my colleague from New Mexico for moving this Energy bill forward and making such progress.

(The remarks of Ms. Landrieu and Ms. Stabenow are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. President, I thought I would take a moment to acknowledge that here with us today around the Capitol are hundreds of young advocates for a cure for juvenile diabetes. There are three young women who came to my office a few moments ago: Dominique Legaux, Liz Kramm, and Laura Rutledge. I would like to take this opportunity to submit their letters for the Record. All of these letters call on us to focus on the challenges before so many of our young people with juvenile diabetes and call on us to explore the possibility of stem cell research on their behalf.

I thank the chairman. I ask unanimous consent these letters be printed in the Record.

For one moment, yes.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Michigan. I yield the floor.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to make a few brief remarks about the overall Energy bill that is before us, about some of the strong points in this bill and how we might be able to improve upon it.

I would like to briefly mention, along the lines of the discussion that just ensued, importing oil and the challenges that brings to our Nation. I will submit a few documents for the Record and discuss generally the situation that we have in Louisiana. Of course, I will not be offering any amendment at this time but just discussing something I know we will be talking more about as this debate ensues.

While I understand the amendment before us is quite an aggressive amendment--and at this time, I have not made a final decision about it--I would like to say something positive about the amendment.

One of the points I like about this approach, while it is very aggressive because it is similar to an approach that Senator Alexander and I took 2 years ago on the Energy bill, is the flexibility that it provides to the country to try to make smart strategic choices about how savings can occur and smart strategic choices about lessening our dependence on foreign oil.

Coming from an oil-producing State, I can say that the people in Louisiana who produce oil and gas right here at home would like to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil.

The question is--and I think the chairman raises a very excellent point, and it is a real question--can we do that this fast, this aggressively, and maintain our economic position? We may or may not. But I want to say that anything we can do to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, while we recognize that we are just about to open to the imports of natural gas because we virtually have no choice--we have to because we cannot step up domestic production fast enough to meet the demands because China, because India, because our industries--chemical, petrochemical, agriculture, and others--are demanding more natural gas. We are about ready to bring in natural gas, where in some ways, while I support that, it will compound the problem of dependency.

It really is a dilemma. I say to the Senator from Washington that I think the flexibility of her proposal is very important, and the fact that this amendment does not say we have to conserve, we could, in fact, produce more domestic oil and gas which I happen to think would be a great idea. I know the chairman and the ranking member support more domestic drilling of oil and gas.

I want to say a word about that for a moment. We do not do anything the same way today that we did in the 1930s. Our telephones do not work the same way. We did not even have computers in the 1930s. Everything has changed. Technology for the large part has made everything better. Some people might argue with that statement, but the efficiency, the convenience, the ability to clean up our environment--everything has been made better in large measure by technology.

The oil and gas industry is not what it once was when the men and women who started it were paddling in a pirogue, a canoe--that is what we call a pirogue in Louisiana. A pirogue is a canoe--in the marsh pumping the oil out of the ground by hand and digging with shovels and crude instruments. This industry resembles more of the space industry today. It is run by computer. It is highly technical.

The environmental advances are absolutely astonishing. I have taken the chairman down to Louisiana. He has seen this with his own eyes. The wells, where they are situated, the offshore platforms, I believe, would make any American proud, even Americans who belong to the California Sierra Club. I absolutely believe they would be proud if they could see the development of this oil and gas industry. In fact, one of the majors told me--and I do not have any reason to doubt them because I think independent studies have shown this--that in the Gulf of Mexico last year, in the entire Gulf of Mexico, that oil company collected three barrels--three barrels--of spilled oil from its operations, and it has billions of dollars invested.

That is how good we have gotten. Guess what. We are the best in the world. Instead of bellyaching, we should be proud of that. We should say thank goodness for that old American ingenuity. We did not do it very well in the 1930s, and we did not do it well in the 1940s, but one good thing about America is we never stop trying to be better. It separates us from so many places in the world.

Coming from an oil and gas State, I would be the happiest person in the world if we could stop importing oil, drill it at home and explore new places that are appropriate. Some places may need to be off-limits but not everyplace.

There is a place that is not off-limits and we are proud of, and that is south Louisiana and the work that we have contributed to this country. I am going to show my colleagues this chart because this is where all of the drilling off the coast of our country occurs: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We have been producing oil and gas and sending $5 billion annually to the Treasury in taxes every year. Yes, there have been some environmental impacts which I am going to talk about in a moment, but they have been minor compared to the wealth that this industry has created not just for this region but for the entire Nation.

Does anybody remember we have gone through an industrial revolution? Does anybody remember that everybody moved off the farms and went to the cities? How do people think the cities got lit? It did not wave a magic wand and the lights came on. We have been producing and digging from coal, oil, and gas. So if anybody wants to say that, oh, well, we just do not have to do that any more, heck, the whole country was built on this contribution. People from Louisiana are darn proud of it.

Instead of everybody coming to the floor and saying how we do not care about our land and we do not care about our trees and we do not care about our coast and we do not have anything beautiful to preserve, not only do the people of Louisiana love our land and love our water, we survive on it and in it more than anybody in America. We swim more. We eat more fish. We spend more time in boats. We recreate more on the water than probably anyplace maybe except for a very few. Not only wealthy people get to the water, everybody lives by the water. In some places, one has to have a $5-million house before they can touch the water. In Louisiana, there are people who live in a house not worth $25,000, but they have a gorgeous marsh land behind their house, and those kids go fishing.

So I do not like to hear anybody come to this floor and say that we do not treasure our land in Louisiana. We are going to continue to produce oil and gas. We are going to continue to be proud of it, and we are going to continue to tell the story, whether anybody wants to believe us or not, that this can be done in a very safe environmental way. Why? Because we have good regulation; two, we have courts that enforce the regulation; three, we have all kinds of agencies--some would argue too many--that make sure that all of these companies are doing what they are supposed to do.

We have a free press, which means a lot because if somebody is doing something wrong, there is nothing I can do or the Senator from New Mexico can do to try to stop them from reporting it. So they can report anything they want. There is open information. I wish they would really tell people what is actually happening.

The point I want to make in just a moment is that we are going to continue to do drilling. I appreciate all the good work of my colleagues to try to

give more revenues to the State. We get a little bit, but because we are generating so much and helping everybody so much--let me just use this. I wanted to thank my colleagues for their interest in helping us, but this makes my point even better. When the Senator from Washington said she wants us to be more like Brazil, I am going to learn a little bit more about what Brazil has done because I am not quite sure of the details, but I will tell my colleagues about 11 States in the United States and what they have done. Those States are Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Wyoming. Eleven States out of fifty are the only States in the United States that produce more energy than they consume.

Let me say that again. There are only 11 States in the United States of America that produce more energy than they consume. So if anybody wants to give Brazil an award, please give these 11 States an award first because we have already done that. We produce oil and gas. We are net exporters of energy--well, we produce oil, gas, coal, nuclear. We can produce energy from a lot of different ways. This is not just oil and gas production. This includes nuclear. This is from the Energy Information Agency, our own agency, not from Louisiana or Senator Landrieu. This is the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Information Agency. This includes nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wood, wind, waste, solar, oil, natural gas, and coal.

As the chairman from New Mexico will say, his goal is to increase the choices of all of these so that more States can begin producing something. If my colleagues do not want to drill for oil, then drill for gas. If they do not want to do that, put in a nuclear powerplant. If they do not want to do that, put in some wind turbines. If they do not want to do that, dam up some of their rivers and use hydro. Some people will do that; some people will not. But for heaven's sakes, do something. Do something. If they want to mine for coal, we have given them a lot of money in this bill and they can clean the coal. It can be burned and used efficiently. Put in solar panels. Go get waste from the agricultural areas of their State. That is the whole point of this bill.

We have 39 States that need to make some decisions about what they are going to produce to be free because 11 of us have already figured it out.

I do not know these other States as well as I know my State, but in addition to being a net exporter of energy, I will also tell the country that Louisiana probably has the most petrochemical plants per capita than any State in the Union. Those products that are produced in my State are not consumed by my State alone.

We make these products and send them all over the country and the world. So not only are we producing enough energy for every single person in Louisiana--the 4.5 million of us--and what we need, but we are also fueling every plant, every LNG facility, every petrochemical facility, supplying so much for the Nation and still exporting because people in Louisiana kind of believe in good old-fashioned ``do your part'' kind of work.

We also conserve. I am so tired of people saying, oh, the Senator from Louisiana and the people from Louisiana, all they do is waste fuel. I do not have the document, but I am going to submit for the record--I am going to take the last 10 years--the efficiencies that Louisiana, through our industry, has achieved. Yes, some of them have been mandated by this body and they had no choice and they had to do it, but some of it is voluntary. We have tried to be more efficient as well and, of course, we have produced this energy.

Let me just point out three or four States that are at the top of this list. Actually, I am probably going to do five States.

The States that consume more energy than they produce are California at the top of the list, New York second, Ohio third, Florida fourth, and Michigan fifth.

Let me point out one other thing, because you will say, Why isn't Texas on the green list. I want to find where Texas is--here it is, 25. Texas is not a net exporter, but it is close. The reason it is not is because, of course, it is a big State, a huge State--20-plus million people, and they also have so much industry that they supply energy for, that helps us all, they don't quite make it. But I have to say Texas is doing a great deal. Perhaps they could do more.

But the rest of these you can understand. Maybe Hawaii is too small. Hawaii is not very big, but they are doing a whole heck of a lot better than California.

I want to be clear about who is doing what, who is not, and where we need to go and try to help everybody make the choices that work for their State but that also work for the country. It has to happen.

I will stop for a moment on that issue and move to something else.

I am happy to.

Right.

Right.

I thank the chairman, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, because he is absolutely correct. I share his frustration. All I can say is as we proceed, we will continue to talk about these issues and educate the American people. People are afraid. They tend to be afraid if they are not sure of the facts. Sometimes people get the facts all confused.

But as I hope people understand, as I keep speaking the truth on this and people understand there are ways you can do this drilling, particularly for natural gas, that are safe for the environment, that meet every environmental standard we have today, and actually meet the clean air standards set out in our own act, we can most certainly explore these opportunities and continue to work on this bill. I thank the Senator for his comments, for his interest and his knowledge of the subject. I can only say I will continue to try to tell the story, and as the American people learn more about it, perhaps some of the fear will dissipate, reason will prevail, and we can begin to understand that here at home we have places on our shores and off our shores that we can tap into and minimize our dependency on foreign oil and foreign gas.

For the short term, this bill, and with the support of most of these Senators, will begin importing natural gas. We have policies in this bill to allow that to happen. It is quite ironic we are setting out in a bill to import more natural gas, and we will not take opportunities to drill for more on our shores. Again, this is a work in progress.

Let me share another part of the story that is not just about energy production. It is the great contribution our coast makes to Louisiana. There is the gold coast, the rocky coast, the cliff coast. We are the working coast. We are proud of it. We are the largest and most productive expanse of coastal wetlands in North America. It is the seventh largest delta on Earth. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds of the United States. As I said, it is one of the most productive environments in America.

In addition to the energy production I talked about which is right off this shore--and we have 20,000 miles of pipeline that can wrap around the country 10 times, 2,000 miles each way, miles of pipeline that send oil and gas to Chicago, California and to Washington and New York--in addition to the energy we produce for the Nation, through this Mississippi River, we drain the mountains in the West and all throughout the Nation; we also have a great nursery for one of the greatest flyways in the world for millions of waterfowl and migratory songbirds.

It also is a nursery for the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is produced because this marsh does not exist anywhere else in the coastal United States. Again, it is an unusually large delta created by the Mississippi River. It is unique.

In addition to the energy contributions this delta makes, in addition to the drainage we contribute by our location for the Nation, in addition to the great flyways for migratory birds that this provides, and the nursery for all the gulf coast fish and species, it also serves as a protection for the two million people that live below I-10. This is the main interstate that runs in the southern part of the United States. It goes all the way through Mississippi, to Florida, and all the way through Texas and west. This I-12/I-10 corridor is one of the busiest in the Nation for many reasons. It is a great north-south trade Route.

Below this interstate, basically two million people live in Louisiana. As the map shows, this land is all marsh and low-lying wetlands. The people that live here are in some jeopardy. They are in some danger if this marsh would erode and go away as storms--whether they are hurricanes, floods, or rising tides--continue to pound our shore. That, unfortunately, is exactly what is happening today.

Yet this wetland that supplies all of this energy, seafood and other environmental benefits to the Nation, we are losing a football field every 30 minutes. We are losing 25,000 square miles every year. In the last 50 years, we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island.

The red on this map indicates a loss of wetland. This is not caused by oil and gas and by fisheries. It is exacerbated by pipeline construction and some exploration, but it is caused primarily by the channelization of the Mississippi River. This river, for all the things I have said it is used for, you could argue the most important thing it is used for, for the Nation, is the commerce--500 tons of cargo, the largest port system in the world. When my friends from the Midwest-- whether it is Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, or

Senator Dorgan and others--want to get grain and corn out of the States they represent, there is not a whole lot of ways to get it out except by barge. It comes down the Mississippi River.

We are happy for the trade and the traffic. But this river was levied to keep the water in, to create this major port system for the Nation, and as a result, over decades, the river cannot overflow itself, and it then cannot replenish the marsh. That is what is causing the staggering loss of these wetlands. Then, on top of that--which is probably 85 percent of the loss of wetlands, say our scientists who have been studying this for many years, the last two decades in particular--when the oil and gas industry came in and some canals had to be put in for the drilling, it exacerbated it by allowing the saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to come into this water. We call it brackish. It is part salt and part fresh. It comes into the marsh and kills the marsh grass. The salt is toxic to that particular marsh grass. The marsh grass fades away, and before you know it, you are in open water.

I have friends that have fished down here for years and old timers I talk to. It is getting scary because it is not even people that are that old any more who are saying: When I was a kid, you could stand right here in Terrebonne Bay and look out for miles and see land. I took my little boy down there last week, the same place I used to fish when I was a kid, and there is no land left.

Senator, what is happening? Where is it going? It is eroding. I have been here for 8 years trying to get this Congress--Senator Breaux joined me, Senator Vitter now joins this effort--to try to get this Senate and this Congress to understand that this delta is not only precious to Louisiana--it is not even Louisiana's wetlands, it is America's wetlands--it deserves our attention.

Since we contribute so much toward waterborne commerce, so much to the energy infrastructure and independence of this Nation, we serve as a nursery for the fisheries industry, for the whole gulf coast of Mexico, we serve as a flyway for migratory birds which support a whole emerging and growing ecotourism industry that affects everyone in a positive way, surely we can get a few little dollars to help us save our coast.

We are only one hurricane away. We had a terrible season last season. We had five or six major storms. Luckily, they did not hit directly. Unfortunately, our friends in Mississippi and Mobile were hit. None of us along the gulf coast like to get hit. We are in great sympathy and empathy with each other because we know what a major hurricane will do. My people are sitting ducks. It is getting worse and worse. We can save our coast. But we need to use some of the moneys we can get to invest and to do this and we can make progress.

The Senator from Washington would like to wrap up on her amendment, and so let me conclude in a few moments. I thank the Senator for her courtesy and time.

This is a very precious wetland to Louisiana and to America. It is something that can be saved, must be saved and, if saved, cannot only contribute so much to Louisiana but to the Nation.

This issue is not as clearcut as some would like to believe. As I said, I like some parts of the amendment of the Senator from Washington. She has been a tremendous contributor on the Energy bill and a tremendous voice for conservation. What I do like about her amendment is its flexibility. What I do like about her amendment is the opportunity to produce more domestically so we do not have to get it from somebody else, particularly a somebody who does not share our values, who does not have America's best interests at heart. So I agree with that approach. Again, it may be too aggressive for us. But the Senate will decide if that is the case.

But I want to say from a State that is producing--and we are going to continue to produce; we are happy to produce--there are some coastal impacts associated with it. But even if we were not doing any production off the coast of Louisiana, this loss of wetlands would still be occurring because of the channelization of the Mississippi River done by the Corps of Engineers, at our request, on behalf of the Nation. It is time we get some help and some support for fixing this wetland.

I thank the Senator for her patience and her courtesies, and I wish her the best of luck as we continue to work on our bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 140th anniversary on this upcoming Sunday of Major General Gordon Granger and his Union soldiers' arrival in Galveston, TX. On that day in 1865, these troops brought with them the news that the war had ended and that the enslaved peoples were henceforth free. Since its origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as African American Emancipation Day, or Juneteenth, is the oldest known celebration of slavery's end.

It took two and a half years from the time that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect for the news of freedom to arrive in Texas. That it took 2 years for African Americans to learn that the war was over, and that they were now free seems absurd in our information age. Yet, despite the transformation made in our society by computers, networks and the internet, there are still gaps in the information accessible to African Americans around this country. The bill that I introduce today attempts to address one of them.

Mr. President, it is a very human instinct for people to want to understand who they are from the lense of who are their ancestors and where they are from. The very commercially successful, and critically acclaimed television series ``Roots'' was a seminal event in this nation's interest in genealogy. Yet while people across the nation were inspired by Alex Haley's tale to understand their own family history, African Americans trying to do the same confronted unique challenges. Unfortunately, African Americans who attempt to trace their genealogy encounter huge hurdles in reclaiming the usual documentary history that allows most Americans to piece together their heritage. For this reason, I am proposing the Servitude and Emancipation Archival Research Clearing House, SEARCH, Act of 2005. This bill establishes a national database within the National Archives and Records Administration, NARA, housing various documents that would assist those in search of a history that, because of slavery, is almost impossible to find in the most ordinary registers and census records.

Traditionally, someone researching their genealogy would try looking up wills and land deeds; however, enslaved African Americans were prohibited from owning property. In fact, African Americans, must frequently rely on the records of slave owners--most of which are in private hands--in hope that they had kept records containing birth and death information. Even if records do exist, many African Americans in the past did not have formal last names, thus compounding the difficulty of tracing their lives. The omission of surnames also precludes use of the most popular and major source of genealogical research, the United States Census. Furthermore, letters, diaries, and other first-person records used by most genealogical researchers are scarcely available for slaves, owing to the fact that they could not legally learn to read or write.

We may think that after 1865, African Americans could begin using traditional genealogical records like voter registrations and school records. However, African Americans did not immediately begin to participate in many of the privileges of citizenship, including voting and attending school. Discrimination meant that African Americans were barred from sitting on juries or owning businesses. Segregation meant segregated neighborhoods, schools, churches, clubs, and fraternal organizations, and thus segregated societies maintained segregated records. For example, some telephone directories in South Carolina did not include African Americans in the regular alphabetical listing, but rather at the end of the book. An African American must maneuver these distinctive nuances in order to conduct proper genealogical research. In my own State of Louisiana, descendants of the 9th Cavalry Regiment and 25th Infantry Regiment, known as the Buffalo Soldiers, would have to know to look in the index of United States Colored Troops since there is no mention of them in the index of State Military Regiments.

Abraham Lincoln said, ``A man who cares nothing about his past can care little about his future.'' By providing $5 million for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to establish and maintain a national database, the SEARCH Act has the potential to significantly reduce the time and painstaking efforts of those African Americans who truly care about their American past to contribute to the American future. This bill also seeks to authorize $5 million for States, colleges, and universities to preserve, catalogue, and index records locally.

In a democracy, records matter. The mission of NARA is to ensure that anyone can have access to the records that matter to them. The SEARCH Act of 2005 seeks to fulfill that mission by helping African Americans navigate genealogical research sources and negotiate the unique challenges that confront them in this process. No longer should any American have to wait to learn information, which in itself can offer such freedom.

I hope my colleagues will join me in celebrating the 140th anniversary of Juneteenth by passing this measure. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 140th anniversary on this upcoming Sunday of Major General Gordon Granger and his Union soldiers' arrival in Galveston, TX. On that day in 1865, these troops brought with them the news that the war had ended and that the enslaved peoples were henceforth free. Since its origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as African American Emancipation Day, or Juneteenth, is the oldest known celebration of slavery's end.

It took two and a half years from the time that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect for the news of freedom to arrive in Texas. That it took 2 years for African Americans to learn that the war was over, and that they were now free seems absurd in our information age. Yet, despite the transformation made in our society by computers, networks and the internet, there are still gaps in the information accessible to African Americans around this country. The bill that I introduce today attempts to address one of them.

Mr. President, it is a very human instinct for people to want to understand who they are from the lense of who are their ancestors and where they are from. The very commercially successful, and critically acclaimed television series ``Roots'' was a seminal event in this nation's interest in genealogy. Yet while people across the nation were inspired by Alex Haley's tale to understand their own family history, African Americans trying to do the same confronted unique challenges. Unfortunately, African Americans who attempt to trace their genealogy encounter huge hurdles in reclaiming the usual documentary history that allows most Americans to piece together their heritage. For this reason, I am proposing the Servitude and Emancipation Archival Research Clearing House, SEARCH, Act of 2005. This bill establishes a national database within the National Archives and Records Administration, NARA, housing various documents that would assist those in search of a history that, because of slavery, is almost impossible to find in the most ordinary registers and census records.

Traditionally, someone researching their genealogy would try looking up wills and land deeds; however, enslaved African Americans were prohibited from owning property. In fact, African Americans, must frequently rely on the records of slave owners--most of which are in private hands--in hope that they had kept records containing birth and death information. Even if records do exist, many African Americans in the past did not have formal last names, thus compounding the difficulty of tracing their lives. The omission of surnames also precludes use of the most popular and major source of genealogical research, the United States Census. Furthermore, letters, diaries, and other first-person records used by most genealogical researchers are scarcely available for slaves, owing to the fact that they could not legally learn to read or write.

We may think that after 1865, African Americans could begin using traditional genealogical records like voter registrations and school records. However, African Americans did not immediately begin to participate in many of the privileges of citizenship, including voting and attending school. Discrimination meant that African Americans were barred from sitting on juries or owning businesses. Segregation meant segregated neighborhoods, schools, churches, clubs, and fraternal organizations, and thus segregated societies maintained segregated records. For example, some telephone directories in South Carolina did not include African Americans in the regular alphabetical listing, but rather at the end of the book. An African American must maneuver these distinctive nuances in order to conduct proper genealogical research. In my own State of Louisiana, descendants of the 9th Cavalry Regiment and 25th Infantry Regiment, known as the Buffalo Soldiers, would have to know to look in the index of United States Colored Troops since there is no mention of them in the index of State Military Regiments.

Abraham Lincoln said, ``A man who cares nothing about his past can care little about his future.'' By providing $5 million for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to establish and maintain a national database, the SEARCH Act has the potential to significantly reduce the time and painstaking efforts of those African Americans who truly care about their American past to contribute to the American future. This bill also seeks to authorize $5 million for States, colleges, and universities to preserve, catalogue, and index records locally.

In a democracy, records matter. The mission of NARA is to ensure that anyone can have access to the records that matter to them. The SEARCH Act of 2005 seeks to fulfill that mission by helping African Americans navigate genealogical research sources and negotiate the unique challenges that confront them in this process. No longer should any American have to wait to learn information, which in itself can offer such freedom.

I hope my colleagues will join me in celebrating the 140th anniversary of Juneteenth by passing this measure. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

I ask unanimous consent that the debate time on the Griffith nomination be yielded back and the Senate proceed to legislative session in order to consider S. Res. 39.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the clerk proceed with the reading of the resolution.

Mr. President, tonight this body will take an important and extraordinary step. The Senate will, belatedly but most sincerely, issue a formal apology to the victims of lynching and their families, some of whom are with us tonight in this Chamber, for its failure to pass antilynching legislation.

Without question, there have been other grave injustices committed in the noble exercise of establishing this great democracy. Some have already been acknowledged and addressed by this and previous Congresses, and our work continues. However, there may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility. In refusing to take up legislation passed by the House of Representatives on three separate occasions and requested by seven Presidents from William Henry Harrison to Harry Truman, the Senate engaged in a different kind of culpability.

Beginning in 1881, this tragic phenomenon of domestic terrorism was documented in large measure through the groundbreaking and heroic efforts of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the independent newspapers and publications. From that year until 1964, 4,742 American citizens were lynched. These are the recorded numbers. Historians estimate the true number to be much higher.

An apology alone can never suffice to heal the harm that was done, and for many victims justice is out of reach. Yet I believe, and this resolution lays forth the principle, that a sincere and heartfelt apology is a necessary first step toward real healing.

It is important that the people of our country understand the true nature of this unprecedented rampage of terror. Many Americans have images from popular books and movies, like ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' that cloud their understanding of lynching. A group of angry White men take an accused and presumed guilty Black man deep into the woods and hang him. Those are the images, although accurate and tragic, but they delude us from the true nature of lynching in this dark period of American history.

The thought of a small, angry mob murdering Black prisoners in the dead of night ignores the reality of lynching in most respects. We are fortunate and grateful that a passionate and resolute independent scholar named James Allen saw something catalytic in the photographic evidence of lynching, and he began to collect these gruesome and horrific photographs. His work, ``Without Sanctuary,'' showed the real faces of lynching, and the images he unveiled began to change the way people viewed these tragic events and called to several of us in the Senate to issue this apology tonight. It is because of his work, this book, that the Committee for a Formal Apology and the families of the lynching victims--and some victims themselves who are here--are here today and that this important historic resolution is before the Senate.

I would like to show some of these photographs now. This is one of the hundreds--thousands of photographs of men, women, and children who were lynched in this Nation, lynching that occurred--a citizen of our Nation, lynched. As your eyes look at this picture, they are immediately drawn to the victim. These hangings were sometimes--in most instances--very brutal events. Sometimes the hanging itself came after hours of torture and just excruciating fear and humiliation.

After this book was published and these pictures came into more full view of the American public, what happens is your eyes leave the figure of the victim and move to the audience. This is part of the story that, in my mind, has not been completely told, and it needs to be told tonight and every day into the future.

As you can see, there are children gathered here. These are children looking up at this man hanging from a tree. History will record that some of these children were let out of Sunday schools to attend the lynchings. History will record that some businesses closed down so that the whole town could attend these lynchings. History will record that these lynchings did not occur mostly at night or in the back woods or across the levees--lynchings were a community event. In many instances, it was a form of public entertainment. It was mass violence, an open act of terrorism directed primarily against African Americans and others who sympathized with their cause.

If we are truly to understand the magnitude of this tragedy, we must study the stories behind this grim parade of death.

In March of 1892, three personal friends of Ida B. Wells opened the ``People's Grocery Company,'' a store located across the street from a White-owned grocery store that had previously been the only grocer in the area. Angered by the loss of business, a mob gathered to run the new grocers out of town. Forewarned about the attack on their store, the three owners armed themselves for protection, and in the riot that ensued, one of the businessmen injured a White man. All three were arrested and jailed. Days later, the mob kidnapped the men from jail and lynched them. This was the case that led Ida B. Wells to begin to speak out against this injustice.

Her great grandson is with us today. He has told this story through the halls of Congress to give testimony to her life and to her courage and to her historic efforts. Without the work of this extraordinarily brave journalist, this story never really could have been told in the way it is being told now, today, and talked about here on the Senate floor. To her, we owe a great deal of gratitude. She knew these men personally. She knew they were businessmen. They were not criminals. She knew they were successful salespeople, not common thugs. And she wrote and she spoke and she tried to gather pictures to tell a story to a nation that simply refused to believe.

Forty-two years and thousands of lynchings later is the case of Claude Neal of Marianna, FL. After 10 hours of torture, Claude Neal ``confessed'' to the murder of a girl with whom he was allegedly having an affair. For his safety, he was transferred to an Alabama prison. A mob took him from there. They cut off his body parts. They sliced his side and stomach. People would randomly cut off a finger here, a toe there. From time to time, they would tie a noose around him, throw the rope over a tree limb. The mob would keep him there in that position until he almost died then lower him again to begin the torment all over.

After several hours, and I guess the crowd exhausted themselves, they just decided to kill him. His body was then dragged by car back to Marianna, and 7,000 people from 11 States were there to see his body in the courthouse of the town square. Pictures were taken and sold for 50 cents a piece.

One might ask, how do we know all the grizzly details of Claude Neal's death? It is very simple. The newspapers in Florida had given advance notice. They recorded it one horrible moment after another. One of the members of the lynch mob proudly relayed all the details that reporters had missed in person. Yet, even with the public notice, 7,000 people in attendance, and people bragging about the activity, Federal authorities were impotent to stop this murder. State authorities seemed to condone it, and the Senate of the United States refused to act.

Time went on. In 1955, just 9 years before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the world witnessed the brutal lynching of Emmett Till. Fourteen

years old, Emmett Till was excited about his trip from his home on Chicago's southside to the Mississippi Delta. Like many children during the summer, he was looking forward to visiting his relatives. Prior to his departure, his mother, Maimie Till Bradley, a teacher, had done her very best to advise him about how to behave while in Mississippi. With his mother's warning and wearing the ring that had belonged to his deceased father, on August 20, 1955, Till set off with his cousin, Curtis Jones, on a train to Mississippi.

Once there, he and some friends went to buy some candy at the general store. According to his accusers, this young 14-year-old whistled at a store clerk as he left. She happened to be a white woman.

Armed with pistols, the mob took Emmett from his uncle's home. His uncle is with us tonight. They took him in the middle of the night. Three days later his little body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated when Wright identified the body he could only do so based on the ring that he had been wearing.

Coincidentally, through no asking of our own, but I guess it is appropriate, the trial of his accused murderer, Edgar Ray Killen, begins today in Mississippi.

While the details that led to the lynching are not always clear from just these few that I have described, there is little doubt what took place at the lynchings themselves. In most instances, prelynching newspaper notices, school closings to allow children to view the spectacle, special order trains to carry people to the event, are all part of a gruesome but true part of America's history.

Jazz legend Billy Holiday provided real texture in her story and song ``Strange Fruit.'' She defied her own record label and produced and published the song on her own, was threatened with her life because she continued to sing it. But like so many things, words can't always describe what is happening, even though speeches were given, words were written, newspapers were published.

The words to the song are as follows:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh,

And the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and a bitter crop.

Something in the way she sang this song, something in the pictures that described the event, must have touched the heart of Americans because they began to mobilize, and men and women, White and Black, people from different backgrounds, came to stand up and begin to speak. They spoke with loud voices and with moving speeches and with great marches.

But the Senate of the United States, one of the most noble experiments in democracy, continued to pretend, to act like this was not happening in America and continued to fail to act.

It would be a mistake to look at this ugly chapter in our democracy's development with pity and hopelessness, however. The truth is, today's apology should be seen as a tribute to the endurance and the triumph of African-American families.

There is a particular family here, the Crawford family. I think there are over 150 of them. Earlier today I talked with some of the leaders of the family. I said: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They nodded because that is exactly what happened to this family. The town tried to kill this family, to run them out, and, in fact, ran them out of the town, but this family just grew stronger, and with their love and lack of bitterness, but with a determination to find justice some way, they are here today. In fact, it was the progress of African Americans that spurred this terrible reaction to them in the first place.

As I stated earlier, the early lynchings were not of criminals. The early lynchings were of successful farmers, of successful businessmen, leaders in their communities because these lynchings were an act of terrorism to make American citizens feel they had no voice and no place.

W.E.B. Dubois summarized the motivation behind these slayings perfectly when he said:

. . . [T]he South feared more than Negro dishonesty,

ignorance and incompetency, Negro honesty, knowledge, and

efficiency.

With slavery abolished by the Civil War, a group of Americans had to mentally justify as inferior and subhuman those who suddenly were equals and competitors. Having lost the war throughout the South, watching the progress of former slaves was simply too much in that region and in other regions throughout the country, as well.

As a senior Senator from the State of Louisiana, I feel compelled to spend just a few moments, before I acknowledge my friend and cosponsor in the Senate, Senator George Allen, who has brought this resolution to the attention of our Senate colleagues.

Louisiana has a distinct history from much of the United States due to its long colonial ties with both France and Spain. One consequence of this history is that Louisiana had more free people of color than any other Southern State. Nearly 20,000 Louisianians who were largely concentrated in New Orleans formed a large and very prosperous African- American community in the 1860s. They enjoyed more rights than most free men of color. A large percentage spoke only French and educated their children in Europe. The community, the records show, owned more than $2 million worth of property, which was quite a large sum in those days, and dominated skilled labor areas such as masonry, carpentry, cigar making, and shoemaking.

That is why Louisiana's prominent role in lynchings is so bitter. It mars a long history of tolerance and integration that to this day distinguishes Louisiana from other places in the South.

Still the difficult fact remains that only three States have had a higher incidence than Louisiana of these occurrences. The NAACP, which was founded over the issue of lynchings, recorded 391 such murders in my State.

I ask unanimous consent that a list of all the Louisiana victims compiled by Professor Michael Pfeifer, author of ``Rough Justice, Lynching and American Society,'' be printed in the Record.

It is also true that members of the Senate delegation from Louisiana participated in the actions that led us to not act.

However, I am very proud to stand here with my colleague from Virginia and to note that the other Senator from Louisiana, a Republican, stands with me. We are united in our support of this resolution to offer the sincere apology to try to bring to light the facts about lynching, to encourage people to seek the truth.

I said earlier today people are entitled to their own opinions. But they are not entitled to their own facts. And the facts about this terrible domestic terrorism and rash of terrorism stand today and will not be pushed aside. It is with humility but with pride that I support and put forth before the Senate today, with the Senator from Virginia, this resolution.

The junior Senator from Louisiana is an original cosponsor of this resolution, as are a number of sons of the South. Furthermore, in Louisiana's legislature in Baton Rouge, a very similar resolution passed today. Thus, the people of Louisiana can truly say we are trying to open a dialogue, and bring closure to a bitter history.

This is a particularly important step for the South. For while lynchings occurred in 46 of the 50 States, and people of all races were affected, it would be a mischaracterization to suggest that this was not a weapon of terror most often employed in the South, and most often against African Americans. That is why I am so glad to be joined in this endeavor by the junior Senator from Virginia, Mr. Allen. He has been instrumental in getting us to this point of consideration, and I truly appreciate his hard work and dedication to our joint effort.

It is also important to acknowledge the bravery of those who took personal risks long before this day in opposition to lynching. First and foremost, we must acknowledge the pioneering journalism of Ida B. Wells. Though personally threatened with death, Ms. Wells continued to document these outrages before justice, so that future generations might know the history of this era. It should be noted that it was her example that led other women, such as Jane Adams, to join in her fight against lynching. In fact, women, generally, are viewed as having played a major role in the antilynching campaign.

There was tremendous political courage shown in Georgia. Georgia was the first State to adopt antilynching legislation in 1893. Yet, the State continued to experience a disproportionate share of lynching attacks. However, starting with Governor Northen in 1890, several of Georgia's Governors fought lynch violence in their State resolutely. In many cases it came at personal cost. Gov. William Atkinson, having left the Governor's mansion, personally challenged a lynch mob of 2,000 people in his home town. It is a record of political leadership upon which Georgia can now proudly reflect.

Another great voice in the antilynching crusade was Congressman George White of Tarboro, NC. He was the last former slave to serve in Congress--ending his congressional career in 1901. He introduced an anti-lynching bill to stem the rising tide of violence, with 107 attacks having occurred in 1899. While his bill was defeated in the House of Representatives, he initiated one of its first political considerations.

Finally, we cannot ignore the Senate's own passionate voices to end the practice of lynching. Senator Champ Clark of Missouri famously posted photos of a recent Mississippi lynching in the Democratic cloakroom with the caption: There have been no arrests, no indictments, and no convictions of any one of the lynchers. This is not a rape case. Regrettably, those photos and his convictions could not bring these terrible events to a close. We also salute the efforts of Senators Robert Wagner of New York and Edward Costigan of Colorado. The Wagner- Costigan bill was yet another noble effort to inject Federal resources into combating lynching. While it was again filibustered, it was another noble effort that demonstrated that people of good will remained the majority.

Because of the courage of these and other individuals, by the 1930s public opinion had turned against lynching. In 1938, a national survey showed that 70 percent of Americans supported the enactment of an antilynching statute. Even in the South, at least 65 percent of these surveyed favored its passage. In short, even if southern Senators had the political latitude to endorse Federal antilynching legislation, most seemed to be too mired in personal prejudice to accept that fact. Where these southern Senators were concerned, justice was mostly deaf, but never color blind.

In closing, I would like to acknowledge several members of my staff: Jason Matthews, Kathleen Strottman, Nash Molphus, Sally Richardson, and many others, who have helped, along with others, put this resolution before the Senate today.

I want to end with one of the most moving comments that I read in the book ``Without Sanctuary,'' as I have read excerpts from publications and magazines and newspapers about this situation, and have been reading them now for months on this issue. It is taken from McClure's Magazine, in 1905, by Ray Stannard Baker, who wrote about one of the lynchings--I think it was of a Mr. Curtis. I will submit that for the Record. He says:

So the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail

with a railroad rail. The jail is said to be the strongest in

Ohio, and having seen it, I can well believe the report is

true. But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes

something much stronger: human courage backed up by the

consciousness of being right.

Mr. President, the Senate was wrong not to act. It was wrong to not stand in the way of the mob. We lacked courage then. We perhaps do not have all the courage we need today to do everything we should do, but I know we can apologize today. We can be sincere in our apology to the families, to their loved ones, and perhaps now we can set some of these victims and their families free and, most of all, set our country free to be better than it is today. However great it is, we can most certainly improve.

I yield the floor for my colleague, Senator Allen, from Virginia.

Mr. President, I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Massachusetts in just a moment. He has been very patient. As a cosponsor of the resolution that just passed, it is a privilege and it is appropriate for Senator Kerry to be one of the first Senators to speak upon its passage.

I wish to just mention very briefly, because I am not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, Mr. James Cameron has been with us all day. Mr. Cameron is 91 years old. He lives in Marion, IN. In 1930, when he was 16 years old, a mob dragged him from a cell at Grant County Jail and put a rope around his neck. He was accused of a murder and a rape. He was nowhere around when it occurred. His associates, Abe Smith and Thomas Schipp, were both lynched that night. A man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he, in fact, was innocent and should be let go. He then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. He has been married for 67 years, has 4 children and multiple grandchildren. Senator Evan Bayh, who serves in this body--when he was Governor of Indiana, he pardoned Mr. Cameron. But he

is really the one who has forgiven us for what was done against him.

I yield the floor to Senator Kerry.

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

Mr. President, I am here tonight on behalf of my colleague from Virginia, Senator Allen, and all of our colleagues who participated in the debate to close out this evening on this very important and historic resolution, S. Res. 39, which has apologized formally, officially, and with great sincerity to the thousands of victims of

lynching and to their descendants. It was, as was stated most eloquently and passionately on this floor, a very dark chapter, indeed, in American history, but a real mark against this Senate that, despite the repeated pleas of the victims and their families, thousands of Americans, the House of Representatives, and seven Presidents, of both parties, the Senate failed to act.

Tonight the Senate has admitted its mistake and has taken a very positive step in admitting failure so that we can have a brighter future. I know that many of these victims and their families-- ``survivors'' is really a better word--have triumphed against this evil. Many were African Americans, but they were people of all different races and religious backgrounds. Many of them were here tonight and have been with us all day today.

I know their names are part of the record, but again they were James Cameron, 91 years old, a victim of lynching who miraculously survived to tell his story; Doria Johnson, the great-granddaughter of Anthony Crawford--Grandpa Crawford, as he has been called--from Abbeville, SC-- what a story that family has to tell. Dan Distel, the great-grandson of Ida Wells. What a brave and historic journalist she was. In the face of literally constant threats to her life, she continued to write. What a role model for journalists everywhere of the courage of what it really takes to tell a story. And she did it.

We had many other family members and history professors with us today. There was a tremendous effort that enabled us to get to the floor tonight. As I wrap up, I want to again thank the staff. I thank my staff, including Jason Matthews, my deputy chief of staff; Kathleen Strottman, legislative director; Nash Molpus, who is with me on the floor. Our staff has been very helpful. Senator Allen's staff has also been remarkable and so many have contributed to this effort.

I had many quotes to choose from, Mr. President, to end tonight. Really, there were hundreds of them that would be appropriate. But one was especially appropriate, for the close of this debate because, while it ends one chapter, it begins many new chapters in the history of our Nation. The woman I will quote from is one I have admired my whole life. I have read much about her and have been taught a lot about her. I will read this quote from this particular woman because it took guts to say what she did, at a time when people in America didn't want to hear it. This came at a time when people didn't want to hear what women had to say, generally, about any subject, let alone the subject of injustice and intolerance not only in our Nation but the world.

The woman I will quote is Eleanor Roosevelt, who actually led a group of descendants into this Chamber in 1938 to urge the Senate, hopefully by their presence, to act--men and women who came with their own being, their own bodies to try to tell the Senate what you are reading about isn't true; these are innocent people. Eleanor Roosevelt escorted them to this Chamber and, of course, through all of their mighty efforts, actions were not taken, but not through any fault of hers. What I want to quote is what she wrote about universal human rights. I read this as a young legislator. Of course, we read lots of things, and some things stick and some don't. This particular quote is seared into my heart. I try to remember it every chance I get. I read it often, and I would like to read it tonight because it is very relevant to the debate that we have had. She wrote:

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small

places, close to home--so close and so small they cannot be

seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the

individual person, the neighborhood he lives in, the school

or college he attends, the factory, farm, or office where he

works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child

seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without

discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they

have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen

action to uphold them close at home, we shall look for them

in vain in the larger world.

We have heard stories today--hundreds of stories about these small places close to home--trees in a public square, river banks, levees, streets, alleys, open fields, behind school buildings, and in front of stores. This is where people want to experience dignity and justice. Some of these towns are so little they may still not be on any map of the United States. Maybe in some of these towns--because of what happened in the past--there are very few people who live there. And some of these places are quite large, where you can find them on the map. I think it is instructive for the Senate, as we make this sincere apology tonight, that we really take a breath and be very introspective to think about where these small places are in America, where these places of any size are in America, and recommit ourselves to be honest about our failings and our shortcomings, to be honest about the fact that we are not always as courageous as we should be.

But when we come to a point where we know we made the wrong decision, we didn't act in the best interests of our country or the American citizens who look to us for their protection and their support, we should at least be able to sincerely say we are sorry. That is what we did tonight. I thank Eleanor Roosevelt. I am forever grateful for her great leadership for the country and for thousands of Americans, people of all races, who advocated for justice and freedom at great expense to their own life--which is not what most of us experience today, gratefully--with great expense to their reputation, their livelihood. She was really not understood or appreciated in the world in which she lived.

There were many children in the Senate today, these children and great, great, great-grandchildren. Some of the victims and some of the journalists who have written about this in the past were here. Let's make sure they know the truth and they know that tonight we apologize.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, Socrates said, ``Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.'' To date, the Senate has confirmed 209 of President Bush's judicial nominees. The vast majority of them received overwhelming support from this body. We looked at their records and decided that they had the qualities that Socrates described. Janice Rogers Brown, however, lacks these qualities and falls far short of this ideal. I sincerely regret that the President has asked this body to confirm her to a lifetime appointment to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is no reflection on her individual accomplishments. She comes from a very humble background, a sharecropper's daughter, and has taken full advantage of all that this country has to offer to become a Supreme Court judge. She has gained some wisdom from this experience, I am sure, and I have no doubt that she will take her job as a judge seriously, soberly.

My greatest concern lies with her impartiality. Some of her statements and her decisions on the California Supreme Court lead me to believe that she will let her personal bias dictate her consideration of issues of law. I cannot trust the impartiality of someone who may be considering issues involving Medicare or Social Security who says that senior citizens ``blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have the right to get as much `free' stuff from the political system.'' Nor can I accept that she will be impartial when she says that age discrimination ``does not mark its victim with a stigma of inferiority.'' Tell that to the 50 year old waitress who loses a job because she doesn't look ``pretty'' anymore, and ends up getting replaced by a younger, less experienced person.

Janice Rogers Brown has been nominated to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the court that closely oversees the actions of Federal agencies--more than any other Circuit Court. It is widely recognized in the legal community as the second most important court in the country. Citizens come to the D.C. Circuit to enforce fair labor practice decisions made by the National Labor Relations Board, worker safety protection regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, regulatory decisions made by the Federal Communications Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, and much, much more.

But Janice Rogers Brown has said that ``where government moves in community retreats, civil society disintegrates. . . . The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the . . . decline of the rule of law . . . a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining. . . . '' She also called the New Deal, which gave us Social Security and the Tennessee Valley Authority, programs that exist today, ``the triumph of our own socialist revolution.'' With sentiments such as these I can only wonder what she thinks of Medicare, Medicaid, child nutrition programs, agricultural subsidies, No Child Left Behind, and a whole host of other programs that give opportunity to our citizens and help people live up to their given potential. To me, these programs are not socialism; they are what a compassionate society does for its people.

So I will vote against the confirmation of Janice Rogers Brown. I do so knowing that she will likely be confirmed. Her nomination is moving forward because she was one of the nominees that 13 of my colleagues and I agreed to no longer filibuster. I want to talk about this agreement just for a moment.

First, I must say that the compromise was essential to avoid a serious breakdown in the Senate rules and its functions. It represents the Senate at its best and upholds the traditional constitutional role of the Senate as the protector of the rights of minority interests when they were seriously threatened and perhaps irrevocably ended.

But more than this, my colleagues and I helped steer a better course with this compromise. A course for jobs, opportunity, better education, and future peace. I hope the President will reflect upon the resolve of these 14 Senators to protect and respect the minority and do so by sending us nominees who will respect the law and not come exclusively from the far fringes of the political spectrum.

I am open to discussing nominees with the President. I make this offer in good faith and in the same spirit as one of his original campaign promises from 2000: to change the culture in Washington. Here is what then-Governor Bush said in a speech at that time: ``There is too much argument in Washington and not enough shared accomplishment. . . . As President, I will set a new tone in Washington. I will do everything I can to restore civility to our national politics.''

My colleagues on this compromise have already helped set that new tone for the Senate. I urge him to work with the entire Senate on judicial nominees. I am ready to forge this new civility in Washington. I know future nominees will be conservative just as all of the 208 previously confirmed Bush nominees have been. I fully accept that fact. But I also expect future nominees to be fair and to have shown their fairness and impartiality by their words and their deeds. Janice Rogers Brown has not.

Mr. President, today I rise to bring your attention to National Foster Care Month. As we celebrate this National Foster Care Month, we must remember how far we have come, we must also remember how far we still have to go. In my 27 years as a public servant, I have had the opportunity to meet thousands of children in foster care. I have personally witnessed the sheer joy they find in having a ``forever family,'' and the utter pain when they do not. I firmly believe that there is no such thing as an unwanted child, merely unfound families. Let me tell you a story about one of these extraordinary children. A few years ago, a young woman named Sarah, who spent 14 of her 19 years of life in foster care, was asked by a Member of Congress what the word ``permanency'' meant to her. She said, ``many people in the system wrongly think that permanency means staying in one place for a long time, but to me, permanency means having someone to call when I am not sure if I should wash my new white skirt with a blue shirt, or to take me to Karate lessons, or to cry with me when I break up with my boyfriend.''

For those of us who have had that kind of permanency in our lives, living without it seems unfathomable. But the fact remains that each year, over 100,000 children in the United States are dreaming of that kind of permanency, 25,000 children leave the foster care system without ever having found it, and almost 600,000 go to bed every night wondering if they ever will find it. Every child deserves the opportunity to be in a loving family where they are nurtured, comforted, and protected. Adoption gives children who have been abandoned, orphaned, or abused a second chance to find happiness in a secure and supportive family.

Over the past decade, the number of children being adopted has risen dramatically, and according to the 2000 Census Special Report, over 2 million children today live in adoptive homes. In the last year alone, over 6,500 children have been listed on the web page of Adopt US Kids and 1,500 of these children have found families through this process.

In closing, I would like to share with you something said in the award winning book, There Are No Children Here, about foster care children. ``By the time they enter adolescence, they have contended with more terror than most of us confront in a lifetime. They have

had to make choices that most experienced and educated adults would find difficult. They have lived with fear and witnessed death. Some of them have lashed out. They have joined gangs, sold drugs, and, in some cases, inflicted pain on others. But they have played baseball and gone on dates and shot marbles and kept diaries. For, despite all they have seen and done, they are--and we must constantly remind ourselves of this--still children.''

During National Foster Care Month, I encourage you to log on to www.adoptuskids.org to learn more about the children who are waiting in our country and across the Nation for the safe, loving home they deserve. As Mistral said, ``Many things we need can wait, the child cannot. To him we cannot say tomorrow. His name is today.''

Mr. President, today I rise to honor a city from my home State of Louisiana and am delighted to recognize its achievement before this body.

The City of New Iberia, LA, was recently selected by The National Trust for Historic Preservation to receive a 2005 Great American Main Street Award. New Iberia won this prestigious award because of its successful downtown revitalization. In addition to being recognized as one of only five winning communities nationwide, New Iberia is the only community in Louisiana to ever receive this distinction. As a champion of sustainable and quality community development, I can personally attest to this well-deserved honor. New Iberia's Main Street creates a unique sense of place through the beauty of its architecture, landscaping, and natural integration with Bayou Teche. The residents of New Iberia identify with this special place, and it contributes to the quality of life and sense of community pride shared by them.

Founded in 1779, New Iberia was a prosperous antebellum community that matured into a modern city. By the mid 1960s, New Iberia's Main Street began experiencing decline typical of many communities in the United States at that time. Recognizing the role of Main Street in the life of a community, New Iberia's business leaders, elected officials, and citizens started a progressive downtown revitalization effort known as Operation Impact in the early 1970s. This focus on Main Street continued, and in the 1990s, New Iberia further enhanced its efforts by initiating an officially designated Main Street Program. The unified commitment, hard work, and enthusiasm of the people of New Iberia over nearly 40 years has reestablished their downtown as a vibrant nucleus of culture, commerce, and tourism. It has also fittingly earned them national acclaim.

In the few years since the Main Street Program began in New Iberia, the city has seen over 115 new businesses established, over 420 new jobs created, and more than $19 million in private investment with total investment exceeding $24 million.

Downtown development and Main Street revitalization efforts have contributed significantly to building safer communities, stronger economies, and better quality of life across America. New Iberia, LA, is a superb example of how these cooperative efforts can improve communities. Today, I give the people of New Iberia my thanks and praise.

Mr. President, over 50 years ago, Sir Winston Churchill uttered the immortal words, ``never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.'' Although Prime Minister Churchill was referring to the selfless and courageous effort of the Royal Air Force in their defeat of the Germans in World War II, I would like to argue that these words apply equally to the men and women fighting to preserve democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. These men and women are not only making it possible for each and every one of us to go about our daily lives under the blanket of safety and freedom to which Americans have become accustomed, but they are also striving to bring these benefits to people who have never had them before.

If you have had the opportunity to spend time with these men and women, as I have, you quickly observe that they embody everything good about America. Their patriotism, their unyielding commitment to serve their country, their selflessness and their sacrifice should serve as examples to us all. Perhaps what amazes me most, is that although these men and women are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, they ask for little in return from it. It is therefore incumbent on us to recognize the debt we owe to them, and honor it.

Today there are 80,000 members of the National Guard and our Reserve armed forces serving bravely in the war on terror. In addition, close to 89,000 members of the Guard and Reserve have been activated in anticipation of being sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other place their country calls on them to serve. While deployed, these citizen soldiers are asked, in a moment's notice, to leave their families, their jobs, and their communities behind, causing tremendous stress on the home front and in the workplace.

While having a loved one in harm's way is reason for stress alone, many of the families of these men and women have the added stress of trying to fill the void left. Many families have lost the main bread winner when a Guardsmen or Reservist gets deployed. As a result, they have trouble paying bills, the rent, the mortgage, or medicine for their children.

The primary reason these families cannot make ends meet is because for Guardsmen and Reservists military pay is often less than civilian pay. We call that the ``pay gap.'' According to the most recent Status of Forces Survey of Reserve Components, 51 percent of our citizen soldiers take a pay cut when they get deployed and 11 percent of them lose more than $2,500 per month.

We ask these men and women to make so many sacrifices on our behalf. I think that it is time that we be willing to make one in return. The least we can do is to help these families find relief from the financial woes caused by this gap. To help do this, my colleagues Senator Graham, Senator Allen, Senator Durbin, and myself are pleased to introduce the Helping Our Patriotic Employers at Helping our Military Employees Act of 2005. We call the bill by its nickname: HOPE at HOME. Our guard and reserve families have enough to worry about when a loved one gets called away, the least we can do is relieve some of the financial worry by encouraging employers to make up the pay gap. Let me describe for my colleagues how this legislation works.

HOPE at HOME will give a 50 percent tax credit to the thousands of employers around the country who have taken the patriotic step of continuing to pay the salary of their guard and reservists employees who have been called to active duty. There are literally thousands of employers out there who already take this noble step--they do it voluntarily, selflessly and at great sacrifice. The HOPE at HOME Act honors that sacrifice.

HOPE at HOME will also encourage companies that cannot afford to make up the pay-gap an incentive to do it. One survey found that only 173 of the Fortune 500 companies make up the pay gap. If the wealthiest companies cannot afford to help their active duty employees, imagine how difficult this is for smaller companies. HOPE at HOME will allow companies large and small to do the patriotic thing and reward those employees who are serving to keep us all free.

HOPE at HOME will also give small patriotic employers additional tax relief if they need to hire a worker to temporarily replace the active duty Guardsmen or Reservist. In addition, the bill clarifies the tax treatment of any pay-gap payments to make income tax filing easier for our Guard and Reservists.

A moment ago, I mentioned that thousands of employers make up the pay-gap for their employees. There is one employer, however, and it happens to be the Nation's largest, that does not make up the pay gap: Uncle Sam. The Federal Government, which should set the bar for patriotism in our country, does not do its part to help citizen soldiers. Senator Durbin has been a leader in this area, so our bill includes language that he has been fighting to require the Federal Government to make up the pay gap. We cannot ask the private sector to do more than they are doing if the Federal Government is not willing to step up and do its part for our military men and women.

This is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. Today our Nation relies on the Guard and Reserve to meet our armed forces needs more than at any other time in our history. At times in the war on terror, forty-percent of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were citizen soldiers. Many of them performed multiple tours of duty or found their duties extended.

All of the experts tell us that our need for our Guard and Reserve troops will only get greater. In the post-Cold War world, we have drastically reduced our standing Army from 800,000 in 1989 to approximately 482,000 today, a 40 percent decrease. The number of deployments has increased by over 300 percent. The Guard and Reserve have made it possible to meet these challenges. We still find ourselves stretched thin, but without the Guard and Reserve we would never be able to meet our obligation as guardians of freedom in the World.

But this over-reliance on the Guard and Reserve is starting to have a toll on our ability to recruit and retain these men and women. The percentage of Army Reserve personnel who plan to remain in the military after their tour of duty ends fell from 73 percent to 66 percent over 2004. The top reasons for leaving the Guard and Reserve, according to the Status of Forces Survey of Reserve Components, are family stress, the number and lengths of deployments, income loss, and conflict with civilian employment.

We are beginning to have recruitment problems as well for our standing military. Back in February, the Army and the National Guard and Reserve recruited 3,824 soldiers, but this was only 69 percent of their monthly goal. The numbers went up in March, but still fell short by 12 percent of the goal.

HOPE at HOME recognizes that a soldier who is worrying about how his or her family is paying the bills is not focusing on the mission at hand. A soldier who is worrying about whether the family is paying the rent, is not going

to reenlist. And every time one of our soldiers leaves, our Nation loses the experience and service of a highly trained, capable professional. We need to make every effort to keep our citizen soldiers in service to their country. HOPE at HOME is a first step to addressing our military's larger recruitment and retention issues.

During the Cold War we built our strength on having the biggest, best equipped standing army in the World. Now our military gathers its strength from a large reserve of qualified men and women in the Guard and Reserve who are ready to fight at a moment's call. We will lose that strength if we do not give our Guardsmen and Reservists and their families HOPE at HOME.

I hope my colleagues will join Senators Allen, Graham, Durbin and myself in supporting the HOPE at HOME Act.

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

Mr. President, over 50 years ago, Sir Winston Churchill uttered the immortal words, ``never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.'' Although Prime Minister Churchill was referring to the selfless and courageous effort of the Royal Air Force in their defeat of the Germans in World War II, I would like to argue that these words apply equally to the men and women fighting to preserve democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. These men and women are not only making it possible for each and every one of us to go about our daily lives under the blanket of safety and freedom to which Americans have become accustomed, but they are also striving to bring these benefits to people who have never had them before.

If you have had the opportunity to spend time with these men and women, as I have, you quickly observe that they embody everything good about America. Their patriotism, their unyielding commitment to serve their country, their selflessness and their sacrifice should serve as examples to us all. Perhaps what amazes me most, is that although these men and women are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, they ask for little in return from it. It is therefore incumbent on us to recognize the debt we owe to them, and honor it.

Today there are 80,000 members of the National Guard and our Reserve armed forces serving bravely in the war on terror. In addition, close to 89,000 members of the Guard and Reserve have been activated in anticipation of being sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other place their country calls on them to serve. While deployed, these citizen soldiers are asked, in a moment's notice, to leave their families, their jobs, and their communities behind, causing tremendous stress on the home front and in the workplace.

While having a loved one in harm's way is reason for stress alone, many of the families of these men and women have the added stress of trying to fill the void left. Many families have lost the main bread winner when a Guardsmen or Reservist gets deployed. As a result, they have trouble paying bills, the rent, the mortgage, or medicine for their children.

The primary reason these families cannot make ends meet is because for Guardsmen and Reservists military pay is often less than civilian pay. We call that the ``pay gap.'' According to the most recent Status of Forces Survey of Reserve Components, 51 percent of our citizen soldiers take a pay cut when they get deployed and 11 percent of them lose more than $2,500 per month.

We ask these men and women to make so many sacrifices on our behalf. I think that it is time that we be willing to make one in return. The least we can do is to help these families find relief from the financial woes caused by this gap. To help do this, my colleagues Senator Graham, Senator Allen, Senator Durbin, and myself are pleased to introduce the Helping Our Patriotic Employers at Helping our Military Employees Act of 2005. We call the bill by its nickname: HOPE at HOME. Our guard and reserve families have enough to worry about when a loved one gets called away, the least we can do is relieve some of the financial worry by encouraging employers to make up the pay gap. Let me describe for my colleagues how this legislation works.

HOPE at HOME will give a 50 percent tax credit to the thousands of employers around the country who have taken the patriotic step of continuing to pay the salary of their guard and reservists employees who have been called to active duty. There are literally thousands of employers out there who already take this noble step--they do it voluntarily, selflessly and at great sacrifice. The HOPE at HOME Act honors that sacrifice.

HOPE at HOME will also encourage companies that cannot afford to make up the pay-gap an incentive to do it. One survey found that only 173 of the Fortune 500 companies make up the pay gap. If the wealthiest companies cannot afford to help their active duty employees, imagine how difficult this is for smaller companies. HOPE at HOME will allow companies large and small to do the patriotic thing and reward those employees who are serving to keep us all free.

HOPE at HOME will also give small patriotic employers additional tax relief if they need to hire a worker to temporarily replace the active duty Guardsmen or Reservist. In addition, the bill clarifies the tax treatment of any pay-gap payments to make income tax filing easier for our Guard and Reservists.

A moment ago, I mentioned that thousands of employers make up the pay-gap for their employees. There is one employer, however, and it happens to be the Nation's largest, that does not make up the pay gap: Uncle Sam. The Federal Government, which should set the bar for patriotism in our country, does not do its part to help citizen soldiers. Senator Durbin has been a leader in this area, so our bill includes language that he has been fighting to require the Federal Government to make up the pay gap. We cannot ask the private sector to do more than they are doing if the Federal Government is not willing to step up and do its part for our military men and women.

This is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. Today our Nation relies on the Guard and Reserve to meet our armed forces needs more than at any other time in our history. At times in the war on terror, forty-percent of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were citizen soldiers. Many of them performed multiple tours of duty or found their duties extended.

All of the experts tell us that our need for our Guard and Reserve troops will only get greater. In the post-Cold War world, we have drastically reduced our standing Army from 800,000 in 1989 to approximately 482,000 today, a 40 percent decrease. The number of deployments has increased by over 300 percent. The Guard and Reserve have made it possible to meet these challenges. We still find ourselves stretched thin, but without the Guard and Reserve we would never be able to meet our obligation as guardians of freedom in the World.

But this over-reliance on the Guard and Reserve is starting to have a toll on our ability to recruit and retain these men and women. The percentage of Army Reserve personnel who plan to remain in the military after their tour of duty ends fell from 73 percent to 66 percent over 2004. The top reasons for leaving the Guard and Reserve, according to the Status of Forces Survey of Reserve Components, are family stress, the number and lengths of deployments, income loss, and conflict with civilian employment.

We are beginning to have recruitment problems as well for our standing military. Back in February, the Army and the National Guard and Reserve recruited 3,824 soldiers, but this was only 69 percent of their monthly goal. The numbers went up in March, but still fell short by 12 percent of the goal.

HOPE at HOME recognizes that a soldier who is worrying about how his or her family is paying the bills is not focusing on the mission at hand. A soldier who is worrying about whether the family is paying the rent, is not going

to reenlist. And every time one of our soldiers leaves, our Nation loses the experience and service of a highly trained, capable professional. We need to make every effort to keep our citizen soldiers in service to their country. HOPE at HOME is a first step to addressing our military's larger recruitment and retention issues.

During the Cold War we built our strength on having the biggest, best equipped standing army in the World. Now our military gathers its strength from a large reserve of qualified men and women in the Guard and Reserve who are ready to fight at a moment's call. We will lose that strength if we do not give our Guardsmen and Reservists and their families HOPE at HOME.

I hope my colleagues will join Senators Allen, Graham, Durbin and myself in supporting the HOPE at HOME Act.

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

Thank you, Mr. President. I understand we are in morning business. I ask unanimous consent that I may extend my remarks to consume about 20 minutes.