Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 668 be made pending.

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

Madam President, I rise to discuss amendment 668. This amendment relates to the Ryan White Program. We reauthorized that program 3 years ago. We did it on a very bipartisan basis. I need to expose how one person has once again overruled a bipartisan, bicameral effort to create fair and equitable funding mechanisms for the program. I did this last year. It was funneling money specifically to one area that had less people. The idea behind the bill was to make sure we had money for the people with HIV/AIDS, and the money is supposed to follow the people. Why do I bring this up? I was involved in the original reauthorization. We will be doing that reauthorization later this year. I can tell Members that Wyoming is not affected one way or the other by my amendment. But 46 States are affected by this amendment; 46 States are affected adversely if this amendment does not pass.

If anybody wonders which States those are, I am more than happy to tell them who the losers will be. And it will probably be a lot easier to say who the winners would be. I will get to that in a little bit.

The Ryan White CARE Act provides funding to States across this country to provide HIV/AIDS treatment, care, and prevention to individuals in need. In 2006, the committee reauthorized the program and established new bipartisan, bicameral funding formulas that provided more equity in the program. It required funding determinations to be made based on the number of people with HIV and AIDS. This is a major distinction.

Before 2006, funding was only based on AIDS cases. The Omnibus Appropriations Act includes a provision that will modify and dramatically change these bipartisan funding formulas. It allows larger cities to receive more Ryan White funding simply because they received more money in the past. The cities that had a high number of people with AIDS before 2006 will benefit, and those that have seen an increase in HIV and AIDS since 2006 will not be awarded the funding they need. Sadly, larger cities, most notably San Francisco, will receive more money than other cities for all the wrong reasons.

Unfortunately, this is not new language. We have seen it in the appropriations bills in the past. We know exactly what the language does. It primarily benefits San Francisco--a city that continues to receive funding to care for people who are deceased. All the while, nearly every other city would have reduced funding so San Francisco can receive more riches.

According to data put together by GAO--these are not my numbers; these are GAO's numbers, provided last Friday--so according to data put out by the Government Accountability Office, the language in the bill will ensure an additional $6.7 million will be awarded to San Francisco, while the other large cities will see a decrease in funding. I do not know why they did not ask to print $7 million more and put it in there instead of taking it from other people. That is kind of what we are doing these days.

That additional funding is not based on the number of people they are treating or how many new cases they have. As a hold-harmless provision, it is related to what that city has received before. Let me expand on that. If your city's problem is increasing, under the omnibus, you will get less money. You will be penalized if your city's HIV/AIDS problem is increasing. Now, if your city's problem is decreasing, according to the omnibus, you will get more money. If we are giving cities with more people with HIV/AIDS less funding, and cities with less people with HIV/AIDS more funding, how fair is that?

What is even more egregious is that after being exposed more than a year ago, someone has the audacity to include the language again. Of course, that may be because in conference they were able to get that pulled out and it happened anyway, even after a very substantial vote on this side of the building.

Our bipartisan reauthorization was based on a pretty simple idea: The

money should follow the patients. We modernized funding formulas in order to fight this deadly disease on its new front lines. More people in rural areas and the South, more women, and more African Americans are being infected with HIV/AIDS every day, and we made sure these populations could get the treatment they needed. It was a bipartisan, bicameral agreement. We were very clear about the implications of those new formula changes. In fact, we provided GAO reports with estimates on how the new formulas would change funding levels for grantees that were nearly identical to how the funding would be distributed today--but because of the language in the appropriations bill, it has not. Yes, that is how we did this vote last year, which, again, I repeat, Wyoming had no gain or loss in. We are not even involved in this issue. I have been involved in this issue trying to take care of HIV/AIDS patients. My amendment was taken out so the language can continue, and it is very unfair. It is unfair to the people in rural areas and the South, where more women, more African Americans are being infected with HIV/AIDS every day. We made sure treatment could be gotten. It passed this body. It passed the House. We agreed to these formulas. We were clear about the implications of the new formula changes. As I have mentioned, the GAO reports are practically the same this time as they were a year ago.

Those funding formulas included hold-harmless provisions to ensure that the formula funding would not decrease by more than 5 percent for anybody. Now, when we did that, I think we all thought that was going to be 5 percent for each of 3 years. As it turned out, it was a total of a 5-percent decrease over the 3 years for anybody. I would have preferred no hold-harmless provisions or ones that allowed for more dramatic fluctuations so the money could follow the HIV-infected person, but that was what we agreed on. That is the agreement we reached in this bipartisan, bicameral bill.

We did not pull the wool over anyone's eyes. We provided clear information about the implications of those funding formulas. We found the third way. Now, with one simple pen stroke, someone is again undoing all those carefully crafted bipartisan, bicameral compromises by inserting another hold-harmless provision with little thought to how this change would affect others. Last year we had the list of people, and we have that again, of who gains and who loses, and it was an easy vote to win.

This change does not allow money to follow the patient. It allows money to follow those who are in power. We want to change that with this amendment.

I do not know about you, but I find this reprehensible. This is simply unfair to those cities and States that are struggling to come up with the moneys for basic HIV/AIDS treatments. What is worse, the majority--well, what is worse is that this bill continues to cheat others. Not just once, not twice, but this would be the third year that San Francisco will have benefited from this language.

In 2007, I brought up this exact issue. A very strong majority of the Senate agreed with me. Unfortunately, it did not change. They are still willing to try to institute an unfair and unjust formula. I object to that provision and the implications of it.

We changed the formula to have money follow the problem. In 2007, we passed my amendment to focus the funding on people living with HIV/ AIDS. Most of the people in this Chamber voted with me. Of the ones who are still here, it is a vast majority.

Now, I understand that after passing it with those kinds of numbers, it was dropped in conference. I understand that will probably happen this year too. But I do think we need to send the message and hope for fairness. Without this amendment, there will be no fairness.

You realize that--last year--only a couple of States have a city that is helped. Most of you will be contributing money from your cities to help those with declining problems. Where I come from that is called cheating. So if you wonder if your State gains or loses, check with me.

The amendment I am offering is simple. It states that the language in the omnibus bill will not change the funding formulas we agreed to in a bipartisan, bicameral process in 2006. If you support an equitable system that distributes funding on the true basis of need, I believe you should support my amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from GAO to me dated March 6, 2009, and relevant material be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this amendment is an issue of the fairness of HIV/AIDS funding on which most of my colleagues who were here last year voted with me. With just those votes again, my amendment would be adopted.

When we passed the last reauthorization of Ryan White 3 years ago, we changed the formula to follow the HIV/AIDS patients. We did not just keep increasing the amounts the cities got. The amount had to relate to HIV or AIDS patients who were still living. We even put in a hold harmless clause so no one would lose more than 5 percent over the 3- year period. The reauthorization passed unanimously with the House agreeing with our changes.

This amendment does not affect Wyoming, but I am sensitive as chairman of the committee when we passed the reauthorization. The omnibus has a provision which, according to the GAO, only four States gain money. Of the $10 million being redistributed, San Francisco gets $6.7 million. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California are the only States that gain. This is redistributed money, which means it is not new money. This is money being taken from those with an increasing problem to pay for those with a decreasing problem.

This language is an attempt to change a formula for which most of my colleagues voted. I ask my colleagues to vote for the amendment.

Mr. President, I wish briefly to discuss an amendment that I filed related to the royalty collection of coal and other leasable minerals. I want to be clear that I am in favor of having coal companies and other mining companies pay the royalties they are required to pay. I believe that they should pay them on time and I believe that they should face the consequences if they do not pay them on time.

The provision in the omnibus bill is arbitrary. It attempts to apply the penalty sections of the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act to coal leases. The provision comes out of nowhere and, to my knowledge, has not been studied by the Senate Energy Committee nor the House Natural Resources Committee. This is a policy change, not a funding matter, and therefore, it should be considered in the normal legislative process--not slipped into an omnibus appropriations bill.

I have put forth this amendment to take a more considerate approach. My amendment would strike this provision and replace it with a study by the Minerals Management Service, MMS, the Government's royalty collection agency. The MMS would examine the current royalty system and provide a report back to Congress within 180 days that includes any recommendations with ways that royalty collection process can be improved. Doing so would then give the Senate the appropriate amount of background to consider making these changes and would ensure that we do not make a change that has unintended consequences.

Again, I want to reiterate that I fully support companies making royalty payments on time and if they don't, I support them being punished. I do not, however, support the process by which the majority has stuck this legislative provision in an appropriations bill. Rather than shooting from the hip, the Senate should give it proper consideration.

Mr. President, I want to follow the comments of the Senator from Washington, being the ranking member on the committee that worked on this nomination. I thank Senator Kennedy, Senator Murray, and other Senators on the committee for their help, cooperation, and due diligence on this matter.

I would be remiss if I did not thank Secretary Elaine Chao for the effort she put in during the time she was in office. I would mention that she made some of the first changes to OSHA and we made the first change in MSHA in 28 years while she was in office. It was a very bipartisan effort that we made, worked on both sides of the aisle, and done in 6 weeks, which is a record time for any of the committees around here to go through the regular process. There are other things we need to do in both OSHA and MSHA. I hope we have a chance to work on that.

I am here today to discuss the nomination of Representative Hilda Solis to serve as Secretary of Labor. This nomination followed regular order and worked through the committee process. Carefully reviewing nominations for Cabinet positions through the regular order is critical to fulfilling our constitutional advice and consent obligations.

As Senators, one of our most important responsibilities is confirming qualified and hopefully superior nominees to lead our executive agencies. In order to fulfill our responsibilities under the advice and consent clause properly, we have developed a process for vetting the President's nominees, all Presidents' nominees.

This vetting process typically includes a committee hearing, which encompasses a review of the nominee's credentials; a background check to screen for conflicts of interest, often related to financial holdings or associations with outside groups; followed by a markup and floor consideration, which is what we are doing today.

I am pleased that we are proceeding in this fashion with respect to the nominee for the Secretary of Labor. Representative Solis has a diverse background and a compelling personal story. Her life is one that epitomizes the American dream. Her dedication to public service is admirable, and it should serve as an example to young people everywhere.

Once confirmed, as chief Labor official, she is charged with overseeing job training programs, private pension plans, veterans employment and training issues, protecting America's workers' occupational safety and health, as well as ensuring mine safety and health, to name a very few of the things.

The Labor Secretary manages an annual budget of approximately $53 billion and nearly 17,000 full-time employees. Unfortunately, based on my review of her background, I am concerned about a lack of management experience that is needed to meet the demands of the job, even though I recognize that it is the President's prerogative in selecting his Cabinet.

In reviewing this nomination, we followed the same due diligence and background check that we follow for all nominees in both this administration and the previous administration. Unfortunately, we were not able to act on

this nomination for over a month because the nominee had numerous errors and omissions in the documents she filed with the committee in her application, as well as the financial disclosures to the House of Representatives, going back several years, and the Office of Government Ethics.

Because of these errors, we had to reconstruct her application and her financial statements to remove the possibility of any conflict of interest. If we had not faced these paperwork problems, we probably would have been able to vote on her nomination in January.

One of the conflict of interest issues that concerns me most is Representative Solis's position as a treasurer, a position with fiduciary responsibilities, of a 501(c)(4), a not-for-profit lobbying firm. As an accountant and the coauthor of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, I can assure my colleagues that there is no such thing as an ``honorary'' treasurer of a 501(c)(4) organization that lobbies Congress. So-called ``honorary'' positions are reserved for board of director positions on 501(c)(3) charitable organizations but not positions with a fiduciary responsibility, such as treasurers or general counsels for 501(c)(4) groups.

I was also deeply troubled to learn that this entity has filed lobbying disclosure paperwork with the House of Representatives that shows it lobbies in support of bills that Representative Solis cosponsored and in which she would be involved as the top Labor official in the executive branch.

To address these concerns, I have obtained from Representative Solis a sworn affidavit that she has no check-writing or signing authority as treasurer for this 501(c)(4) entity, nor does she have any control over the ability to control this entity's expenditures for campaign ads. This affidavit goes a long way to showing that no conflict of interest appears to have taken place.

In addition, the entity has filed amended filings with the Federal Election Commission that do not list Representative Solis as being responsible for any monies going toward the campaign ads.

To avoid any future conflict of interest, I hope and expect that Speaker Pelosi will immediately amend the House ethics rules to prohibit Members of Congress from serving in a position of fiduciary responsibility for 501(c)(4) board organizations. It is a blatant conflict of interest, not allowed in the Senate, and the House of Representatives should prohibit it immediately.

Additionally, the press recently reported that there were unpaid tax liens related to Representative Solis's husband's small auto repair business. It now appears that all of the outstanding liens are paid, and all of them were her husband's liens. I have obtained a letter from the County of Los Angeles treasurer and tax collector verifying that the county liens have been released.

My staff also held a conference call with officials from the State of California and received word that all outstanding state liens have been released. Of equal importance, I am concerned that Representative Solis simply failed to fully respond to a host of very basic labor policy questions posed at the committee in the hearing and in writing.

The nominee dodged legitimate questions relating to the Employee Free Choice Act, right-to-work laws, employment standards, and overtime regulations, to name a few. This is not a nomination for a judicial position where a nominee quite understandably should not be expected to respond to hypotheticals involving cases that might come before her. This is a policy post, and policy questions deserve full answers from any nominee. I am disappointed that we did not receive them, and equally disappointed that her reticence to discuss them precluded us from having a more thoughtful and necessary discussion of her views.

I was very disappointed when President Obama issued an executive order that discriminates against the 94.7 percent of the construction workers in Wyoming who are nonunion members, and 84.4 percent of construction workers nationwide. The order reverses the Bush policy of neutrality on Government contracts and instead encourages agencies to require their private contractors to engage in collective bargaining agreements on contracts of $25 million or more. During the confirmation proceedings, I asked the nominee whether she would support the neutral Bush policy. Her response was that she had not studied it nor participated in discussions about repealing it. Now that it has been repealed, I hope she will study the issue closely and urge the administration not to further expand the executive order to smaller contracts.

I am very concerned that the administration is choosing to limit access to good construction projects at a time when construction unemployment is extremely high and a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars is being spent on building projects. In many communities, the only construction projects bid on may well be Federal and not be restricted to 15.6 percent of construction workers who are unionized. This policy excludes many small and local contractors and also disadvantages women and minority employees who are less likely to be union members. Reserving the spoils of the stimulus bill for large unionized contractors seems to me the exact wrong policy for the current economic crisis. I hope Secretary Solis will take a careful study of these concerns and advise the administration that a neutral policy achieves the most equitable result and, even more importantly, will ensure that taxpayers get the most for their money.

Finally, I would also like to mention that prior to her hearing, Representative Solis and I discussed the Workforce Investment Act and how we need to reauthorize it immediately. I have been working on that for about 4 years, and we passed it unanimously through the Senate before, and it would train 900,000 workers for higher skilled jobs. I do not understand why we cannot get it through both bodies and get it conferenced and get it enacted. Instead of training people to get higher skilled jobs, we keep sending the jobs over to India and China and other places. So at a time when our economy is being challenged to create jobs that will bolster our infrastructure and our competitive edge in the 21st century, the skills of our workforce have not kept pace. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of providing lifelong access to quality education and training in our workforce. That is why I strongly believe we must renew and improve the Workforce Investment Act. Governors from States all over ask for more flexibility so they can actually use the money in that act. That is a law that would help provide American workers with the skills necessary to compete in the global economy.

I look forward to working with Representative Solis in her new Cabinet position as Secretary of Labor, and her staff, on this and many other labor and economic issues facing our country.

I know Members of the Senate are anxious to have a permanent Labor Secretary in place. I am too. It took longer than I would have liked to complete the necessary vetting, and, again, I wish to thank all my colleagues for their patience and help in allowing us to work through the regular order to ensure we fulfill our duties under the Constitution. Now that we have done our due diligence, we can move to have this nomination confirmed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the following documents: the affidavit from Representative Solis stating she did not have check-signing authority for American Rights at Work or control of their lobbying or campaign expenditures; and a statement from the Los Angeles County treasurer and Tax Collector's office stating that all liens relating to Representative Solis' husband's small business have been released.

I thank the Presiding Officer and I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I, too, want to speak about the conference committee report. I did not think it was possible, but after waiting until late last night to finally receive the text of this trillion-dollar economic bailout legislation, the Speaker of the House and the majority leader took a bad bill and made it worse.

Fix housing first. The housing market is where the problems began, and it is where they will end. Fix housing first. So what did the negotiators between the House and the Senate do? Amazingly, Democratic leadership managed to remove one of the provisions that would really do some good and help address housing. Stripped from the conference report is Senator Isakson's home buyers tax credit extension amendment. Expanding that successful tax credit program--we know from the 1990s-- would have addressed the source of our economic crisis--housing--and would help bring tentative homeowners back into the market. There are over 3.5 million homes on the market right now and no buyers. Instead of including this provision, the conferees replaced it with more wasteful Government spending. They have used our last bullet. They have maxed out the Federal credit card. Every drop has been taken out of the well, and they have spent this one-time money on expenses that will go on and on--and that is the real problem--on and on with money we do not have for things we do not need.

I have listened to the Democratic leadership speak on this legislation over the past day or so and have been surprised as they described it as bipartisan compromise legislation. I have been a Member of the Senate for 12 years, and in my experience, finding only three Members of the minority party to support legislation and only involving them at the end of the process is not bipartisan. It is not bipartisan in the slightest.

I am disappointed that we have reached this point. When we first began discussing this legislation, President Obama asked for change. He asked for a bipartisan economic stimulus measure, something that could garner as many as 80 votes. I wanted to see that as well. I wanted to see legislation that both parties could support because the economic crisis we are in is not a partisan problem. Unfortunately, the legislation we have before us is partisan, and it reads like a list of bundled liberal priorities that could not gain support individually. How do I know? It is a wish list that could not be passed for the last 20 years because they could not find the money.

Democratic leaders, even at the exclusion of other Democrats, wrote a bill, brought it to the floor, and then negotiated with Republicans they thought they could pick off. Several saw what was happening and dropped out. They picked three off by asking what it would take to get them to vote for the Democratic bill and making a few changes. It was not a bill made by both parties.

President Obama turned the drafting of this bill over to the Speaker of the House and other Democratic leaders who did not consult Republicans and even said: We won the election, we get to write the bill. Then the President went out on the campaign trail to stump for a plan crafted solely by Democratic leaders in the House and

Senate. He complained that he reached out to Republicans but they did not reach back. Reaching out cannot just be an afterthought.

The supporters are using the politics of fear. Fear mongering adds to the problem.

I was not part of the initial ``gang of eight'' Republican Senators who were handpicked to work with Senator Ben Nelson and the majority leader on a ``compromise'' ``stimulus'' bill. I would note, however, that five of the eight Republicans quickly saw how superficial the compromise was going and bowed out.

I nevertheless offered and supported ways to improve the bill that was put forward by some of my colleagues. I am not just talking about amendments you saw on the floor that would reduce the price. Those were simply efforts to salvage something out of the wreck. I suggested removing a number of things that did not make sense--policies backed by Republicans and policies backed by Democrats. I always recognize that both sides have to have things left out to be fair. I also backed moving the bill forward in several understandable pieces so we could bring the American public along.

I offered amendments that sought to improve several parts of the bill, including a change that would make sure the billions of taxpayer dollars spent to pay for health information technology would go toward items that will actually work in the real world. This was a real bipartisan effort which enjoyed broad support among both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, I did get an amendment adopted that was just technical changes, and that was difficult to do. I think it has been ripped out now too. But the bill will not work without those.

Unfortunately, it, along with my efforts to try to protect patients from Government bureaucrats rationing their access to health care, was largely ignored. As a result, I have strong concerns that this stimulus bill will likely backfire on patients and providers, resulting in more harm than any good we are likely to see from its ill-conceived and misguided efforts.

We are going to do health care reform this year. Partisan pieces do not have to be rushed through as ``stimulus.'' We do not have to legislate on a spending bill.

This massive bill contains short-term and long-term spending, and I advocated moving forward with the short-term spending immediately. I advocated for addressing the housing crisis and the jobs crisis right now. I suggested that after we dealt with those pieces of legislation, we should work together on the long-term items, not jam them in with no time for debate. Some of those items in this bill are important, but they should be dealt with in a separate measure going through the normal legislative process where we can have the time for real debate about our Nation's priorities.

I am not happy about deficit spending in these bailouts. I realize something is wrong with our economy, and we need to take steps to fix it. I worked to create a bill that efficiently used taxpayer money to improve the housing market and put people back to work. The ``compromise'' we are forced to take or leave is so far off the mark and full of pork that it is obscene. I will not support spending money we do not have for projects we do not need. I will support legitimate efforts put forward by either party that could help our country out of this economic mess.

I have been very critical of this bill and other bailout bills passed last year, and time is showing I made the right decisions opposing those bailouts. I would support an economic stimulus package if only it lived up to the President's own threshold of being targeted, timely, and temporary. I am leery of spending one-time money on programs that will have to continue. These will be continuing payments on our maxed- out credit card. But this bill does not fit with the President's words, and Democratic leadership has made no real effort to make it conform.

This bill is both bad in content and in process. It includes wasteful spending, including $2 billion for groups like ACORN and $1.3 billion for Amtrak. Funding that was stripped from the Senate version for sexually transmitted disease prevention was included in the conference report.

As is typical in Washington, programs that were Members' pet projects saw ridiculous increases in the conference. The Senate bill provided $2 billion for the High-Speed Rail Corridor Program. The House bill included no funding for the program. How did we compromise that? How much did the conference provide? It provided $8 billion. This is compromise according to Congress. Both the House and the Senate version of the bill included $200 million for ``Transportation Electrification''--both bills, House and Senate--$200 million for transportation electrification. Logically, one would then expect that the conference would provide $200 million, but logic flies out the window around here when you come inside the beltway. The conference provided $400 million--double what either body suggested.

I know how to do more than talk about bipartisanship. I have built a career on it without compromising my principles. Take a closer look and we will see bipartisan isn't about compromise; it is about establishing common ground and finding a third way. First you sit down together with principles each side can agree on. That is probably about 80 percent of any issue. Then you identify the 20 percent you were never able to agree on and either leave that out or preferably find a new way both sides can agree on--one that hasn't already been down in the weeds and washed for years and years. After you have the principles, you work on the details, keeping what you can agree on and throwing out what you can't, until you have legislation that is for and from both sides, from the beginning. That didn't happen here.

Talk is cheap, but the latest economic bill pushed through by a majority and three Republican Senators is not. And if this is the description of bipartisan support, then the House, with every Republican and 11 Democrats voting no, must be bipartisan opposition. This legislation is the single most expensive bill in the history of the United States and it is being sold to the American people as a ``compromise.'' Buyer beware.

Mr. President, I reserve the balance of the time, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be equally divided.

I ask unanimous consent that the following speakers on the Republican side be recognized for up to 10 minute each, in no designated order, with the remaining time under the control of Senator Grassley: Senators Kyl, Alexander, Inhofe, Thune, Graham, Chambliss, Bond, Sessions, and Coburn.

Madam President, I have to say it: The emperor has no clothes. Somebody has to say it. I am referring to this additional bailout, a spending bill that spends everything we have on nothing we are sure about. I have watched with dismay and disgust as this stimulus ballooned from $800 billion to more than $930 billion in only 4 days of debate. Today my colleagues tell me I am supposed to be giddy that we are only spending $827 billion. Frankly, I have had enough of this bailout baloney. Members from both sides of the aisle are taking advantage of taxpayer shell shock and a strident sense of national urgency to pump the recovery package with wasteful spending and unending tax provisions that blatantly fail a crucial yet simple test set by my Democratic colleagues--that the provisions of the stimulus bill would be targeted, timely, and, most important, temporary.

For example, this bill includes billions of new money for Federal agencies. Presumably these agencies will hire new workers. What happens at the end of the fiscal year when the funding for these new hires goes away? Will these new jobs be eliminated? Of course not. We never do. Lawmakers simply come back to the well in a few months and exert even more pressure to maintain the new programs and keep these new jobs and keep the bloated spending that supports them. There is nothing temporary about that kind of spending.

There is also nothing temporary about much of the programmatic spending included in this bill either. For example, the compromise includes $13.9 billion in additional funding for Pell grants to help college students pay for college costs. I am a strong supporter of Pell grants. But we provide funding for them in the normal appropriations process which, incidentally, we haven't passed last October's appropriations yet. I always wonder when we will get around to doing that. We are

kidding ourselves that after the stimulus bill, we will be able to return Pell grants to their prestimulus level. If we try to go back to that level, we will be accused of making college unaffordable. The same goes for the IDEA Program. It receives $13 billion in the compromise to improve education for disabled children. We are all for improving education for disabled children. But if we suggest that the IDEA Program go to a prestimulus level, we will be accused of cutting funding for disabled children. They are both good programs, but they should be funded in the normal appropriations process because they are not temporary spending increases. That is $26.9 billion with only those two. That used to be big money around here.

While this bill does not include traditional earmarks, we should all understand that there are earmarks in this bill. There is $850 million--just millions, nothing--to bail out Amtrak; a $75 million earmark for the Smithsonian, a $1 billion earmark for the 2010 census.

In addition to that, thousands of the projects that will be funded from this bill are what the American people would consider to be earmarks. For example, the compromise includes $1.2 billion for Byrne grants that will go to local law enforcement agencies to be spent on basically whatever they desire. This bill is not a stimulus package; it is another bloated appropriations package. That is another $3 billion that used to be real money around here. I wish I had time to cover the thousands of other spending ideas we would not fund in the past. Time does not allow it when you are talking about $800 billion.

I think it is ironic that Congress spent last fall criticizing subprime mortgage lenders who sold overvalued homes to people who could not afford them--and created this mess we are in--when we are committing that very same sin today in this ``stimulus'' bill. This Chamber is guilty of trying to sell an overvalued, bloated spending bill to taxpayers who can ill-afford the price tag. But unlike those homeowners who just left the keys and closed the front door, the American taxpayer does not have that option of just walking away when this bill comes due.

It is time to admit that, just like many Americans, the Federal Government has maxed out its credit card. But while most Americans are wisely trimming the fat in their budgets, reexamining their spending patterns, and focusing on what is truly essential, Congress has not smartened up yet. Now is not the time to put every politician's Christmas wish list on the Government credit card.

We are already approaching the debt ceiling with alarming speed. In fact, I will bet most Americans do not know that buried deep in this stimulus bill is the increase to $12.1 trillion in the Federal debt limit. Let me repeat that: a $12.1 trillion debt limit. And that is on top of the trillions already set as a debt ceiling.

The American people want Congress to act now, to act with urgency. They say we do not have time to wait. Well, that is what the party in charge is telling us. My reply is, do we have time to get it right? The American people do not want us to go fast for the sake of being fast. They want us to solve the problem, and they want a solution that makes sense to them. That is what will give the American people confidence, and confident American people are going to make our economy better, not the Federal Government throwing their money around with reckless abandon.

Do not get me wrong, I understand the immediate need to jump-start our economy. The employment numbers released last week were stark evidence that jobs continue to disappear at a fearsome pace. People are frightened, and they feel they have nowhere to turn. But in steering a ship through a crisis such as this, Americans need to be confident that the lawmakers have a steady hand on the tiller and a firm eye on the horizon. And it is clear from the sinking poll numbers that this stimulus bill gives them no such confidence. Americans have had enough bailout baloney too. What we need is a new plan and a new approach.

Alice Rivlin, a former OMB and CBO Director, suggested we split this bill into smaller pieces. I agree, and some of my colleagues agree too. Our first priority should be an antirecession package that can be both enacted and spent quickly. Elements of this bill should meet very strict criteria: The funds must spend out completely or expire by the end of this calendar year; the funds cannot be used to support permanent obligations such as entitlements or operating budgets; and the funds must be targeted at specific needs.

A second, separate set of packages could be considered without the same urgency after the completion of the antirecession package. These smaller bills would include funds for long-run investments that are not needed to enhance the future growth and productivity of the economy, including infrastructure investment, education, and worker retraining. I have been trying to get that through for 4 years.

Rushing this type of spending through, as we are doing in this bill today, ensures that mistakes will be made, plans will be poorly crafted, and precious taxpayer money will be wasted. This bill's ability to create jobs is dubious at best.

When combined with the outrageous cost of past bailouts for Wall Street and the automakers and bailouts we are told are yet to come for the banking and housing sectors, the only sure thing about this bill is that taxes are going up for everybody--working Americans; senior citizens; businesses small and large; and, as we have mentioned all along, our children and grandchildren. No one will be spared the cost of this stealth expansion of the welfare state. I simply cannot support a future tax increase the size this bill implies and will need. I plan to oppose this bloated bailout, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator. It is my understanding that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has in its health provisions $1.1 billion in new funds for comparative clinical effectiveness research. This is an important issue to me as HELP Committee ranking member. I am pleased to see that in its consideration of this bill, the Appropriations Committee made sure this research will evaluate comparative clinical effectiveness, not comparative cost- effectiveness. In addition, the committee's report language references provisions of the existing comparative effectiveness research program at HHS that ensure that the agency developing comparative information does not use it to set national practice standards or coverage restrictions. I also believe that comparative effectiveness research must be conducted using an open and transparent process, and must consider differences in how people respond to treatment. It is my understanding that the Comparative Effectiveness Research Act of 2008, which you introduced with Senator Conrad last Congress, is consistent with these principles. I would like to see the $1.1 billion used consistently with these principles, and ask that you advocate for these principles in conference.

I have no problem with 5 minutes. I do not think there is anyone in opposition. I will try and keep it under 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I call up amendment number 293, as modified.

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

This is an extremely important bill for the section that deals with Health IT. Senator Kennedy and I have been working on that for 3 years as well as many others in this Chamber. If we are going to have health care in this country that improves, we are going to have to have Health IT, and I think everybody realizes that.

We have tried to come up with a mechanism for getting interoperability. We have had good success on that without being able to get the bill passed that we have been working on for 3 years.

But there is a provision that moves Health IT along in this bill, but it needed some modifications so it actually would work. I am ever so pleased people on both sides of the aisle, particularly Senators Baucus, Kennedy, and Grassley, have helped and worked on this. The reason there had to be a modification was a little while ago we were able to clear up one more difficulty in that bill.

Without this, it will not work well. There are still other things that ought to be done with it. There are still other things I would like to have with Health IT. There are some things in there that I would not like to have. But this is the part we were able to get agreement on in order to make it work a lot better.

The Certification Commission for Health IT, or CCHIT, has done a lot of great work to accelerate the adoption of health IT by creating a credible, efficient certification process. Many companies have already begun voluntarily participating in the certification process. This system is working and is putting us on the right path to interoperability. Unfortunately, CCHIT is concerned certain details of the underlying bill will cause an ``unintended slowdown in the adoption of health IT''. This amendment allows CCHIT to continue their current mission without changing their priorities. CCHIT sent me a letter stating ``the amended language makes the path forward much clearer, and will build on current health IT momentum rather than disrupting it''.

This amendment puts the standards section back on the right track by building upon the progress of Secretary Leavitt and the Bush administration. Secretary Leavitt worked tirelessly to create the American Health Information Community, AHIC, a public-private partnership designed to ensure the Government and the private sector could work together on interoperability standards. Under Secretary Leavitt's leadership, the AHIC recently transitioned into the National eHealth Collaborative, a voluntary consensus standards body.

I strongly support the collaborative and I want to ensure it is able to continue. The bill before the Senate, however, threatens to ``take'' the assets of the collaborative and nationalize the collaborative. My amendment prevents that from happening. I have been working with the leaders of the collaborative and they ``strongly support my proposed amendment''.

The amendment will also ensure that Federal investments in IT comply with technology standards harmonized by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and certified by the Certification Commission for Health IT, and at a minimum this bill should accelerate the work of those two entities rather than delay it.

My amendment also makes other changes that were included in the bipartisan ``Wired for Health Care Quality Act'' that were left out of the bill before us today. Those changes include making sure the membership of the Health IT Standards Committee and the Health IT Policy Committee is balanced so that no single sector of the health care industry influences the actions of the committees. The amendment also specifies an appointment process for the HIT Policy Committee and adds back a lot of the other ``good government'' provisions that were included in the ``Wired Act'' but left out of this bill.

In order for health IT to achieve this potential, however, it must be done right. It must be interoperable, and the standards of interoperability should be defined by standards developed by all the stakeholders. Consensus will help prevent Government bureaucrats from mandating the equivalent of Beta Max standards in a VHS world, while assuring doctors and hospitals that their IT purchases will not be like investing in compact discs the day before iTunes launched.

I strongly believe all of these changes are critical to ensuring we don't backtrack on the progress we have made. I want to be clear though, I would have preferred to continue working with the other bill authors of the Wired for Health Care Quality Act. The ``Wired Act'' took a much more fiscally sustainable approach with regard to responsibly funding health IT for providers experiencing financial hardship. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated 90 percent of providers will adopt health IT by 2030 without spending any Federal dollars. This bill spends roughly 28 billion in hard-earned taxpayer's dollars to achieve that same 90 percent adoption rate, a few years earlier. This is not a wise use of the taxpayer's dollars and I do not support these provisions.

I feel the ``Wired Act'' also did a better job balancing patient privacy with proper access to health information. If information is wrapped up in so much red tape that doctors and their staff are not able to access it when they need it, patients will suffer and costs will increase. It will take time and hard work, but we must find the right balance so patient care does not suffer.

In closing, I would like urge all members to support this amendment. I have been working on this amendment with members from both sides of the aisle and I believe it reflects a bipartisan agreement. We need to make sure we continue the progress we have made rather than backtrack.

Madam President, it was my understanding it had been worked out between the Senators, through the staffs, and that is the only reason we put that modification in. These are technical corrections, hoping to be able to have a usable Health IT bill when we finish.

Madam President, I waited for 3 days to be able to make a technical correction amendment. Yes, I will agree to do that. I hope it does not get left out. I think without that amendment, the Health IT portion will not work. It is not anything about money, it is about having a portion that will or will not work.

Reserving the right to object, I have to ask one additional question. My amendment would still be pending then?

Mr. President, I believe the pending amendment is the Enzi amendment No. 293, as modified, and I ask unanimous consent that it be further modified.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his consideration, and I particularly thank the Senator from Minnesota, who is the subcommittee chair for information technology, who has played a very interesting role in this and has made some very good emphasis, and who understands what we are trying to do. So I thank her for all of her efforts too.

Mr. President, I ask for an immediate vote.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow in my office, Gemma Weiblinger, be granted floor privileges for the duration of debate on the stimulus legislation.

We need to pass a bill that will fix housing first. We recognized the problem about a year and a half ago, but Congress has not focused on the housing piece of that and come up with a solution that will work to fix housing.

``Fix Housing First,'' the slogan the Senator came up with, I appreciate the efforts of the Senator from Tennessee and the understanding that he has of this and the ability to pull people together. I thank Senator Ensign for all of the work he has done on a substitute bill. I particularly thank the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, for an idea that he has seen work before and knows will work again and has done the math on it to update it to today. But we have to fix housing first. That is what started the problem, that is what is continuing the problem, that is what has tightened the pocketbooks of Americans.

A realtor from Buffalo, WY, was in my office yesterday. He said the banks do have some money, that they had made 50 loans, they were processing 50 loans at the moment. He said, unfortunately, only two of those were for house sales. The rest of them were all refinancing as the interest rates have come down.

Even people who can afford to buy a house are not buying a house because they do not know where the bottom is in the housing market. So until we do something to put a bottom in the housing market and assure people who have bought houses as part of their retirement that their value is not going to go clear through the floor, America is not going to recover from this. People are not going to start spending. It is not Government spending that solves the problem, it is individual spending that solves the problem. And the individuals have stopped spending.

Government money spends twice, circulates twice; private money circulates seven times. We have to get the private money, the individual money, the personal money, back into the economy again, and that will make a difference.

The crisis began with the decline of housing prices in our Nation, a rising tide of foreclosures from homeowners who could no longer afford to make mortgage payments. The decline in the housing market sent shockwaves through our financial system as everybody realized their triple-A-rated investments looked more like junk bonds. With banks unwilling to lend against assets of an unknown value, our credit market came grinding to a halt. That is where we are today.

Now, the original plan of TARP was to buy toxic loans, to get those out of the market, to stabilize the banks. That did not happen. When we work in a hurry to pass something around here, particularly if it deals with a lot of dollars, we can often wind up in a different direction than where we thought we were going. Right now this bill is not focused on housing. It needs to be focused on housing, and focused on housing first.

Government spending by itself will not solve the problem. We cannot spend our way out of it. We have tried that before. We tried it in the 1930s. Government interference did not help. So we need to take some of this money and devote it to stemming foreclosures, invigorating the housing market, and getting our financial institutions and individual investors to step back into the market without fear.

I have a lot more I would like to say, but I know our time is limited. I would like the Senator from Tennessee to be able to conclude this discussion, conclude the beginning of the long discussion I hope will put housing first. Until we solve housing first, we do not have a solution.

Madam President, I rise today to talk about the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or what folks around here call SCHIP. This program was created by a Republican Congress in 1997 to help low-income kids get health insurance. The program expired in 2007, and Congress has worked to pass temporary extensions through March of this year. I am glad the Senate is now working on a longer term bill to extend this vital program.

I am a cosponsor and a strong supporter of the ``Kids First Act,'' S. 326, which extends the current SCHIP program. This bill provides health coverage to low-income kids and will give

States the resources they need to continue to operate their SCHIP programs.

To help more low-income children get health coverage, the bill provides $400 million over the next 4.5 years for States and other qualified entities to improve outreach and enrollment for low-income children. These funds will target the low-income children SCHIP was meant to help. The bill also enhances private options that provide more affordable and efficient care by encouraging premium assistance so that parents can have enough money for private health insurance for their children.

The Kids First Act also focuses on kids, not adults. Some States currently spend SCHIP money on adults when this money was meant for children. The bill takes the money spent on adults and uses it to insure children. The Kids First Act requires that all States phase out nonpregnant adults, including parents, and not allow the addition of any new nonpregnant adults to the program.

American children are the top priority and primary focus of the bill I support. The bill maintains existing law, which ensures that scarce resources go to covering American citizens first.

The bill does all these things, and it does them in a fiscally responsible way, without raising taxes. An economic recession is no time to raise taxes or expand Government programs and inefficient bureaucracies.

I have seen the potential for what SCHIP can do to help low-income kids in my home State of Wyoming. Wyoming first implemented its SCHIP program, Kid Care CHIP, in 1999. In 2003, Wyoming formed a public- private partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming and Delta Dental of Wyoming to provide the health, vision, and dental benefits to nearly 6,000 kids in Wyoming. These partnerships have made Kid Care CHIP a very successful program in Wyoming.

All children enrolled in the program receive a wide range of benefits including regular check-ups, immunizations, well-baby and well-child visits, emergency care, prescription drugs, hospital visits, mental health and substance abuse services, vision benefits, and dental care. Families share in the cost of their children's health care by paying copayments for a portion of the care provided. These copays are capped at $200 a year per family.

Wyoming is also engaged in an outreach campaign targeted at finding and enrolling the additional 5,000 kids that are eligible for Kid Care CHIP but are not enrolled.

I am proud of the great job Wyoming is doing implementing its program. I also want to note that Wyoming will get the same amount of money under the Kids First Act that I support as compared to Senator Baucus' bill, H.R. 2.

Unfortunately, all these descriptions apply to the Kids First Act, which is not the bill before us today. The bill before us today is a very partisan bill that fails to focus on low-income, American kids first.

Senator Baucus' bill, H.R. 2, would encourage middle-class families to drop their existing health insurance plans and instead get on the taxpayer dime. That is just not right; we need to put low-income children first.

Under H.R. 2, 2.4 million children will lose their private health insurance coverage and be forced to enroll in Government-run programs, where they may not have access to the physician and other health provider services that they need. The bill will also make it easier for both legal and illegal aliens to get covered under SCHIP.

Another important big difference is that the taxpayers will get to keep fewer of their hard-earned dollars if this SCHIP bill is enacted. At a time when the country faces a severe recession, raising taxes is not a good solution for any problem.

I am disappointed Senator Baucus and the Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate and the White House turned SCHIP into a partisan exercise. Along with the American people, I too was looking forward to change. I was encouraged by President Obama's call for change and was ready to work with him to make sure we could focus on the 80 percent we could agree on.

I was also encouraged by my discussions with Senator Daschle when he came before my committee as a nominee to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He committed to working with me and the other Republicans on my committee so together, we could work on a bill to reform our health care system. He promised bipartisanship and said he would convince my Democratic colleagues on the committee to work together to develop bipartisan solutions to our Nation's health care problems.

Unfortunately, with this SCHIP bill, the Senate is taking a step away from the process Senator Daschle described. The ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, as well as Senators Hatch and Roberts, among other members worked hard for a number of years on a bipartisan bill, but that bill is not the bill before us today.

Rather than following the example set by Senators Grassley, Hatch and Roberts, the sponsors of this bill chose to focus on the partisan issues that highlight the 20 percent upon which it is impossible to agree. I hope this is not the first taste of how the next 2 years will be here in the Senate.

I will close my remarks, but I just want to remind folks that we can do better. In general, if we work together on bipartisan bills, we can produce a better product. I think the bill before us today should focus on covering low-income, American kids first, and I hope that as we continue working on health care reform, we can work together rather than against each other so we can put the best policies possible before the American people.

We can do better, we must do better. Following Wyoming's lead of using the private market, we would insure every American kid whose family is uninsured and below 300 percent of poverty. I think that is a good answer for the family. We can do it without spending more. We can do it so kids are not thrown out mid-year because their parent or parents make a little more. They would be insured all year. So we would increase their eligibility from 200 percent of poverty to 300 percent, $40,000 a year to $60,000 a year, for a family of four and cover every uninsured American kid. But we will see that amendment voted down so statistics will look better. The current bill is a good statistics bill, it increases the number covered dramatically to include adults earning up to $120,000 a year in some instances and it is easier to find more people to sign up, at the taxpayer's expense. No, let's concentrate and force States to find the poor that are lost and neglected.

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

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

Mr. President, I rise today to comment on Mr. Geithner's nomination to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Although I became a member of the Senate Finance Committee only Thursday, I have spent considerable time reviewing the nomination documents and testimony of Mr. Geithner. I also brought to bear my expertise as an accountant and long-time member of the Senate Banking Committee to make a determination on Mr. Geithner's qualifications. After thoughtful deliberation, I voted against his nomination in the Senate Finance Committee. I continue to oppose his nomination today, and urge my colleagues to do the same.

The position of Secretary of the Treasury is one of the most important nominations this chamber considers. The Treasury executes the domestic and international economic policy of the United States; our trade policy, the purchase and sale of public debt, regulation of national banks, and of course our tax policy. All revenues of the Federal Government pass through the doors of the Treasury.

This position is even more meaningful when we consider the economic condition of the United States today. We are in the middle of a global financial crisis. The U.S. economy is slowing and Americans are losing their jobs, homes, and retirement savings at an alarming rate. The Secretary of the Treasury will be immediately tasked with turning our economy around. This challenge can only be met by the most capable and qualified candidate. Unfortunately, I do not believe that candidate is Mr. Geithner.

As chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, Mr. Geithner helped to orchestrate major bailouts for Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, and others. These bailouts have cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. The AIG bailout alone cost $85 billion in September, 2008. Many of the actions taken by the New York Federal Reserve, under Geithner's leadership, were beyond the purview of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and taken without the explicit consent of Congress.

The money used in these bailouts was spent without transparency or accountability. They were also spent on corporate retreats and executive compensation instead of loans to thaw our frozen credit markets. Mr. Geithner's career at the New York Fed should be described more as a financier of Wall Street than as a steward of American monetary policy. I am apprehensive about supporting the nomination of someone who puts shareholder interests above the needs of hardworking taxpayers.

Mr. Geithner has also failed to provide specifics about his plans to use the remaining $350 billion in TARP funding. His testimony before the Senate Finance Committee last week displayed the same urgency and strong language as former Secretary Paulson's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in September. Soon after, however, we saw that money spent in ways unaccountable to and unintended by the U.S. Senate and the American taxpayer. Measurable goals and clear direction are absolutely required if American taxpayers are to fully understand how and why their money is being spent to assist failing banks and companies. So far, Mr. Geithner has provided neither. I have not and will not support massive Government intervention to rescue private industry.

Finally, I believe Mr. Geithner's failure to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes is inexcusable. The Treasury Secretary is in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and the enforcement of our Nation's tax code. As one of my colleagues already noted, ``How do I explain to my constituents that I voted to confirm someone who will make them pay taxes, but sometimes does not pay his own taxes?'' This negligent behavior deserves more than a simple slap on the wrist or half-hearted apology before a Senate committee.

In previous years, nominees for positions that do not oversee tax reporting and collection have been forced to withdraw their nomination for more minor offenses. They have been ridden out of town on a verbal rail. They have been forced to withdraw. The fact that we are in a global economic crisis is not a reason to overlook these errors. It should be a reason to more closely scrutinize Mr. Geithner's record and his judgment.

The Treasury Secretary makes policy decisions every day that impact the global financial markets and put America on a new economic path. These decisions are often made without the explicit consent, or even knowledge, of those outside the administration. While the Senate cannot scrutinize and debate every decision the Secretary makes, it is our duty to ensure the President's nominee has the character and judgment necessary to perform these duties successfully. Mr. Geithner's past negligence casts doubt on his qualifications in this regard.

Some of my colleagues in the Senate have argued that, despite these concerns, President Obama should have his choice of economic counsel confirmed because he is the President. I respectfully disagree. We are charged with the advice and consent of nominees under the Constitution. Are we saying there is only one person in the whole world qualified to handle the situation as it is today? With the broad authority granted to the Treasury Secretary and the enormous challenge facing the new Secretary to right our country's economic ship, President Obama's choice impacts every American in a very personal way. The Senate would not be doing its duty if we simply confirmed this nominee without addressing these issues.

Many of my constituents are asking, ``Are you seriously considering putting someone who failed to pay their taxes in charge of the department which controls the IRS? You couldn't find anyone better?'' Yet that is exactly what we are doing. Many of your constituents are asking the same thing, but my voice seems to be one of the few of dissent. But that is not why we have a Senate. The Senate is not supposed to be a group of ``yes men'' rubber stamping everything the executive branch sends us. We are supposed to stand out, stand up and reason during the rush. We are supposed to think and then act based on understanding and knowledge. We are not doing so today.

Mr. President, I intend to vote against the nomination of Mr. Timothy Geithner as Secretary to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Senate needs more time to fully address the problems I have identified and debate Mr. Geithner's qualifications. I respectfully urge my colleagues to vote no.

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

Mr. President, can you tell me what the time agreement is?

Mr. President, I wish to call up amendment No. 28 and ask unanimous consent that as soon as we have disposed of amendment No. 28, that we will voice vote amendment No. 29 based on the decision of amendment No. 28, because there are two different sections of the law that say the same thing. So we have to have both pieces, but if one is acceptable, the other one ought to be acceptable. If one is not acceptable, the other one should not be acceptable. So I know it is a change in parliamentary procedure, but I am trying to speed things up by having as few votes as possible but still get the decisions made.

Mr. President, I have offered amendments Nos. 28 and 29 and they respond to the question many have asked about the underlying bill. Those of us who have looked at the bill have wondered what a particular provision means. This provision appears to greatly expand the number of people who can bring a Title VII lawsuit beyond those who have directly experienced discrimination.

As drafted, the bill extends the right to sue for employment discrimination, not only to the person who is discriminated against but also to any individual who is affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice. This can clearly be read to include spouses, family members, and other individuals, depending on the employee's income or pension, or even more broadly. There is a lack of definition in this part of the bill. In this part of the bill that we are debating, I am trying to amend to add some clarity, and Senator Specter will be trying to amend if mine fails to again bring some clarity to this issue. These are steps to see how expansive we can make the trial lawyer bailout.

So S. 181 would not only allow decades-old claims to be suddenly revived, it doesn't even require that they be revived by the person who was discriminated against, even if that person won't bring the action or even if that person is no longer around. The language is so broad that the claim could be brought by virtually anyone. It is nothing more than an invitation to trial lawyers to litigate a situation compounded by the fact that such claims would be largely indefensible because of the passage of time, maybe not even having the person around who was discriminated against.

Do we really want to see employers forced to expend resources defending decades-old, stale claims that are not even being brought by the individuals who are the supposed objects of the discrimination?

What we are looking at here could be an exponential increase in lawsuits at a time when many employers are struggling to make their payroll and avoid laying people off. It was reported this week that a certain type of employment-related class of lawsuits have increased 99 percent over the last 4 years--just the last 4 years, a 99-percent increase. If enacted as drafted, this bill could make that increase seem minuscule.

Our new President has made some proposals intended to stimulate the economy. One proposal he made at one point was to offer a $3,000 tax credit to employers who create new jobs. Perhaps that was a great idea, but if you couple that with increased litigation liability such as that included in this bill, it will not only cancel each other out, it would make that tax credit seem minuscule, very small, particularly when you compare it to the cost of a lawsuit. A small businessman faced with a lawsuit that is going to cost him $20,000, $25,000, $100,000 to defend cannot afford the time or the money to do that and may work harder at a settlement and encourage people to do lawsuits that may not have the same merit we are trying to achieve in this bill. I can tell you as a former small businessman, I would rather not have the tax credit and not get sued any day--not that the two are even related.

I hope the bill's sponsor can explain why this provision should be included in the bill. It is the sort of question that might have been sorted out more easily if the bill had gone through the proper committee process. But the majority has opted to circumvent that process again. My amendments would strike the provision entirely.

I understand there might be some, and I am sure we will hear some explanation of it, where there might be some instances where there were special circumstances. But this bill goes well beyond just special circumstances. It opens it up dramatically.

I look forward to a debate and vote on my amendment later today.

We also will be voting on two amendments that Senator Specter has offered to improve the underlying bill. I will use some of my time to speak in favor of those amendments as well.

Senator Specter's amendment No. 26 shows there is justifiable concern among many Members that allowing individuals to go far back in time and claim that pay decisions made years ago were discriminatory does place unfair burdens on employers.

Senator Specter's amendment No. 26 provides a small measure of potential relief to employers who must face the daunting task of trying to defend decisions made in the distant past by individuals who may not be available and based on documentation that no longer exists. We will have to increase the amount of time that we expect people to keep all of their records if this bill goes through the way that it is.

Senator Specter's amendment makes it clear that an employer in those circumstances may still raise traditional equitable defenses to those claims, such as the defense of laches. For example, if an employer can demonstrate an employee knew or should have known the allegedly discriminatory nature of a pay decision made years ago, but lets the claim slip, then it may be barred if the employer is hindered in mounting a fair defense because of the passage of time.

The proponents of S. 181 have said repeatedly that it is not their intent to limit employers in their use of equitable defenses. Accordingly, they too should support Senator Specter's amendment. It would restore a small measure of fairness in employment discrimination litigation. I commend Senator Specter for offering it. I support the amendment in full. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to look at it and support it.

Senator Specter's amendment No. 27 has also offered another amendment to improve the underlying bill which deserves full and fair consideration from colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We know Senator Specter has been very involved in judiciary work and that he does reasonable amendments and is concerned about some of the implications of the bill.

He has offered another amendment to improve the underlying bill. I hope we will give that a careful look. I have been clear that I am troubled by the fact that this bill effectively eliminates the statute of limitations from employment discrimination claims since I believe that statutes of limitations do serve an important function. They speed recovery to the victims of discrimination, as well as ensure fairness in our legal process and accuracy in the resolution of disputed claims. The important role they play demands that any effort to change or eliminate the statute of limitations be carefully defined and clearly targeted at the precise problem the legislation purports to address. As presently drafted, S. 181 does not come close to achieving this standard. Senator Specter's amendment does much to correct this very problematic lack of precision.

The proponents of S. 181 have been careful to note that the concern which they seek to address by this legislation relates to ``discriminatory pay decisions.'' The language of the bill, however, is much broader. The bill would not only eliminate the statute of limitations with regard to discriminatory pay decisions, it would also do so with respect to any ``other practice.'' However, this legislation nowhere defines what is meant by ``other practice.''

Virtually all personnel decisions--promotions, transfers, work assignments, training, sales territory assignments--affect an individual's compensation, benefits, or their pay. It appears that the other undefined ``other practices'' language would extend liability far beyond simple pay decisions to include anything that might conceivably affect compensation. This would include claims of denied promotions, demotions, transfers, reassignments, tenure decisions, suspensions, and other discipline, all of which could be brought years after they occurred and years after the employee left employment, and, without my amendments, be brought by other people. The phrase could also potentially embrace employment decisions with no discriminatory intent or effect.

This result is plainly an overreach and goes far beyond the publicly stated aims of this legislation's proponents. Defending a claim based upon a pay decision made years and years earlier is a heavy burden. Reaching back years and years to defend the dozens of other personnel actions an employer takes every day is an impossible burden. Senator Specter's amendment limits the reach of S. 181 solely to discrete pay decisions and makes clear that S. 181 does not apply to any other personnel decisions. While I believe it does not cure all the ills which S. 181 creates, it does put this very problematic interpretation to rest, and I support his effort and amendment.

I heard many on the other side of the aisle state that S. 181 has been fully vetted because two hearings were held on it last year. I point out that the HELP Committee hearing was held before Senator Hutchison offered her alternative legislation, her ``better Ledbetter.'' Neither hearing covered this or any other alternative means to accomplish the goal on which we all agreed. If we had been able to explore alternatives in a hearing and have a markup--and a markup is a point I keep emphasizing--I believe we might have come to a change in the legislation that would more clearly state what is trying to be done and wind up with an agreement on both sides which would greatly reduce the amount of time that it takes to do amendments. The amendments, again, are done up or down rather than having slight revisions that could perhaps make them palatable to both sides.

Our side has turned in amendments that are relevant, that are designed to hopefully improve the bill, and do it in a way that it does not eliminate the purpose of the bill. There could have been a lot of constructive work in a committee markup, but that is not the choice, so we will continue to proceed and we have been proceeding with amendments.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from Georgia needs, but first I wish to make a very brief comment.

The Senator from Maryland kind of makes the point I have been trying to make through all of this. If there is wording that more clearly states the Senate's intention or Congress's intention, and since there is disagreement over how widely this affects people, had we gone through a committee markup, we would have already covered this and would have found more careful wording that would have done what I think both of us are talking about. So again, that is why we should send them to committee.

I yield time to the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland. I have always appreciated working with her on issues. We probably wouldn't have completed the Higher Education Act if it had not been for her diligence and expertise and ability, and this is a bill on which she has expertise and ability. It hasn't gotten all of the viewpoints of all of the people on the committee, let alone all the people in this Chamber, and that is what we are trying to get to.

There isn't anybody in this Chamber or probably on the other end of the building who isn't for equal pay. That is the law. If anybody knows of a situation where that is not occurring, let any one of us know, and I bet you we would help to right the wrong. We are against discrimination.

But we are also against discrimination against the small businessmen who have to sometimes interpret our laws, figure out what we are saying, and become some of the precedent setters on some of the fine points that we don't even address. That should not happen. It is very expensive for them. What they are trying to do is put out a product or service and get compensated for it so they can compensate their employees. There are a lot of decisions they have to make to be able to do that. Fairness is one of them.

This 23-cent pay differential that keeps coming up--and that is wrong--is why we had a fantastic hearing in our committee about why that happens. That is because different jobs--not the same job, different jobs--pay different amounts. The ones with more risk apparently pay more. The ones with more risk are nontraditional jobs for women.

One of the people who testified had taken a course to become a mason, a rock mason, to do rock work. Her first rock work was, of course, at ground level. Later, she was installing big sheets of marble on the outside of skyscrapers. She went through how her compensation changed as she did these different jobs. That is a nontraditional job for a woman, but she is being paid more than most men in this country now.

That is what we have to do. We have to provide the encouragement, the skills, and the training to be able to perhaps do nontraditional jobs. I have tried to get this Workforce Investment Act through for the last 5 years. We passed it through the Senate once unanimously and were never able to get a conference committee on it with the House. Since that time, it has just languished. That would provide skills training to 900,000 people a year. It is criminal we do not pass that. That would solve a lot of the 23-cent gap we are talking about. That is not equal pay for equal work, that is higher pay for different work. But we need to have people trained to do that work, and we need to provide the training to do that work. That will solve a lot of the 23-cent gap.

But as long as we are encouraging people to do the traditional jobs, and we are not providing them with the training, we are relegating them to a gap. I guarantee it is bigger than 23 cents. That is the average. That is the way it works out across this country, which means some are making more and some are making a whole lot less. We do not want that to happen. I want everybody to be clear. Nobody wants to have unequal pay for equal work.

What we have tried to do, since we can't, as in a markup, sit down with the people who have the common interests in some of the parts of this that we have questions about and work out something that everybody agrees with that, from the perspective of those people in the room, solves the problem we are talking about--we have been doing that in the HELP Committee. We have been doing that on a frequent basis. We have even been so agreeable in the committee that a lot of times we will have some amendments that people are concerned about, and we haven't been able to reach an answer by the time we get to markup, but we know that is a problem, and we say we will get that solved by the time it gets to the floor, and we do and it doesn't take much floor time.

The reason I brought up this amendment is that I think it is far too broad. I have not had a chance to review the

specific cites that the chairman has brought up. I would like to be able to do that, but we are not going to have that time either which we would if we had a normal amendment markup--but S. 181 adds a new undefined term to title VII, and that is ``individual''--this ``affected individual'' will be permitted to sue under S. 181. But we do not know what the term means. Does it include spouses, et cetera? Why didn't the bill's sponsor use a defined term such as ``person.''

This bill, as drafted, leaves the door open to lawsuits from people other than the employee. My amendment shuts that door. Maybe it is not the most effective way, but we have not had the opportunity to sit down and look at these different perspectives, look at these words, make sure we have it defined right, make sure we have the right ones in the bill.

That always disturbs me. We are trying to solve a problem, a problem that is real, and we are trying to do it in a way that is fair to everybody. ``Everybody'' means all the employees and the employers and do it in a way that we will get the right information. If this opens the door to other people, even without the permission of the person who was affected in some cases--families take things much more personally than the individuals do usually. I know in campaigns it is the families who get upset when they see one of these terrible ads on television and they hold the grudge longer. They do not understand it the same way the candidate does. The same thing happens in the workplace--and I am sure it does. If a person comes home from work, and they are upset and they complain, the family takes it personally. That is a help to the employee. They need to be able to voice these things and have somebody who acts as a sounding board on it. But the family always continues the grudge longer.

I can tell you this bill allows those people to go ahead and open the door and sue on behalf of the person who came home with the grudge, even if that person is not willing to sue because they can be affected. There are ways to fix this, but I contend that just doing it through these votes on the floor probably is not going to do it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have made this point a number of times, that bills that go through committees have a markup and the amendments give us direction. We often get them worked

out. That did not happen on this bill. So we are trying to get some clarification done.

I appreciate that the Senator from Maryland put some things in the Record that show legislative intent. I prefer to have it in the bill. That is why my amendment is in here. It is an attempt to remove some of the legal uncertainty this bill will create. It will clarify who is able to sue under title VII.

Under my amendment, only the person who has experienced discrimination can bring a lawsuit. Without my amendment the door is left open to any affected individual. This is an undefined term in the statute.

Senator Mikulski and I have had some back and forth about what the language means. The truth is, without my amendment the courts will be able to define the term any way they want to. If you want to ensure that only the person affected has standing to sue, then support my amendment.

Mr. President, I would also like to speak in support of Senator Isakson's amendment No. 37. This amendment is about basic fairness. We have been talking a lot about fairness during consideration of this bill--fairness for employees who suffer discrimination and don't realize it before a legal deadline passes, and fairness for an employer who may have done nothing wrong but becomes a target of an ambitious trial lawyer eager to test new legal theories.

The question many people ask when looking at what the underlying bill would do is how is it fair to sue a businessperson over something that may or may not have happened in his or her company decades earlier? What is a businessperson to do if the person who is alleged to have committed the discriminatory act no longer works there or, perhaps, is deceased? Anyone can recognize the difficult position this creates. How do you prove something didn't happen years ago when the only witness other than the accuser is absent?

Senator Isakson has come up with a very equitable solution to this riddle. He recognizes that, if this bill is enacted, employers will have to keep a far more detailed record of every employment decision, every performance review, every personnel action, and more. The bill retroactively re-opens liability for dozens of years of employment decisions. Upon enactment of this bill, employers will be on notice that the statute of limitations for title VII cases virtually never expires. But it simply isn't fair to apply this new open-ended statute of limitations to employment decisions that occurred decades ago.

Senator Isakson's amendment resolves this inequity by applying the new law on a prospective basis. As a former small business person myself, I believe this is the only fair way to apply a new and burdensome standard.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the current amendment so that I may offer two amendments, amendments Nos. 28 and 29, and then return to the pending amendment.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Hutchison amendment. Before I do that, I want to voice some concern, again, about the process we have gone through on this bill and that we might be going through on others. I just came from a health care meeting where we are, in a bipartisan way, trying to reform health care. That is being done the right way. We have a task force and the task force has set down principles and questions. Those of us on the task force are returning to Members of our side of the aisle and gathering their input, answers, and additional questions. We will keep going through this process until we have hammered out the principles. Then we will start putting substance in it. Then it will go to the two committees of jurisdiction. That makes it a lot more difficult than most bills. It will go to both the HELP Committee for the health policy portion, and then it will go at the same time to the Finance Committee for the way to finance what we are talking about in the policy.

We did this on the pension bill. That was a 1,000-page bill that only took up an hour of floor time while we debated two amendments, had those two votes, and a final vote. That is the simpler way of doing bipartisan work that winds up with an actual result. So often here we spend all of our time debating the 20 percent we don't agree on and fail to look for any kind of a third way of doing something that solves the problem we started out on originally. This is not a very conducive atmosphere to negotiate anything. It is not a negotiation. It is a lay down your amendment, have it voted up or down, and because there can't be any nuances in it, the hundred voices are not heard. The voices of the constituents of the 100 people who serve here are not heard. We vote down a lot of things. Occasionally, we vote for something. But usually, what is brought to the floor is done so without any kind of a real set of principles, let alone consensus, and thus, never makes it through the body.

I know there have been some changes in majority and minority. That will still hold true, and I appreciate the majority agreeing that there will be amendments and that I got to offer two amendments that we will be debating and voting on later, I hope. This is kind of a test to see if we are going to do anything in a bipartisan way, and to see if we can do it from the floor of the Senate rather than in committee. This has not had a committee markup. This has not had the voice of the 23 people working, in some detail probably, through a couple hundred very detailed amendments, and that would be resolved between the Members. That is the most effective way to address the issue and to get it resolved.

The issue that was raised is, what if an employer discriminated against an employee because she was female and paid her less than male colleagues doing the same job with the same skills and experience? That is terrible. Such conduct by an employer has been illegal for 45 years under one statute and 46 under another. But like virtually all rights of action, it has to be exercised within a statute of limitations. So this bill's supporters ask: What if the employer hid the information the employee needed to realize she was the victim of discrimination and she missed the deadline to sue? We don't want that to happen, and courts have dealt with that issue by extending the statute of limitations on a case-by-case basis through the use of estoppel and equitable tolling. The reason this was not applied in the Lilly Ledbetter case was because there she stated in court proceedings that she was aware of the pay disparity many years before she brought the lawsuit. But putting her case aside, I can certainly agree that the statute of limitations should be extended, particularly in cases where an employer has deliberately hidden the fact of discrimination.

Senator Hutchison's amendment does just that. It codifies the discretion courts have applied for years. Under the Hutchison amendment, individuals who, because of conscious concealment or simple lack of information, are not aware of discrimination are not prevented from filing and pursuing their discrimination claim, even if it is well beyond the statute of limitations. Here we have an amendment that would provide some statute of limitations but takes care of that case where somebody illegally hides information or where it isn't the normal course of business to get that information.

I wish to review what the Hutchison amendment does not do. It does not eliminate the statute of limitations for all employment discrimination cases and thereby create a litigation bonanza. It does not eliminate the incentive for employees to air and resolve concerns about whether they are being treated fairly in the workplace. It does not open up standing to bring employment discrimination cases to individuals other than the affected employee. That is an important part right there. In the bill we are talking about, I know we would have extensive committee discussion about other affected parties. Who would they be? How long could they make a claim? Can it be generations later? Does it have to be at the time of death, while the person is still working there? We can't tell from the bill, but other affected persons is anybody the person may or may not be related to who could be affected by the decision.

Can you think of anything broader than that? Don't you think that ought to be pulled back a little bit? Again, we didn't talk about principles. We didn't go through committee. We didn't put in multiple amendments that could have brought up some of these points, so here we are on the floor of the Senate kind of doing up-or-down amendments and I am sure arriving at things that, even if they pass, will come to raise a lot of questions in a very short period of time. That is not what we are supposed to be getting done for the American people.

The Hutchison amendment does not present a direct threat to our already struggling defined benefit pension system. The more strain we put on that, the less people are going to do it, and we want people to have pensions. So for all of those reasons, I will support Senator Hutchison's wise and effective approach, one that could probably be negotiated finer and done more carefully, but that would be committee work. I will support it because I think it is a wise and effective approach that will ensure that no one loses the right to sue because they didn't have the information to realize they were being mistreated. That is our goal.

While I am expressing strong support of S. 166, which is the Hutchison alternative, and I spoke on this matter earlier, I continue to express my deep concern shared by most of my colleagues about the way the bill has been handled. I will keep bringing that up on this and every bill that skips the process.

By circumventing the regular order and not subjecting this legislation to the committee amendment process, I believe it has inadequate review and debate and no opportunity for a measured consideration of other means of achieving its same stated legislative goals. That is a process which should be done in committee, not attempted to be done on the floor. However, that is the route that is being forced on us, the minority, so that is the route we will have to follow now. We hope this is not a precedent-setting bill--or precedent- setting process. It definitely will be a precedent-setting bill regardless of whether it is S. 181 or S. 166. Yet when we compare the substance of S. 181 with that of the Hutchison bill, it should be clear the legislation has suffered from a lack of process and the review and scrutiny it needs and could bring.

Now, we should begin by first keeping clearly in mind the harm which S. 181 was purportedly designed to address. The problem is a simple one. Title VII requires that the victims of employment discrimination must commence a legal claim within 180 days of the act of discrimination, or in the case of a series of discriminatory acts, within 180 days of the last act in the series.

I should note that in most States the limitations period is actually 300 days. But in Mrs. Ledbetter's home State of Alabama, it is 180 days, so I will use that number in my statement today.

When title VII was drafted, Congress consciously used the 180-day period because they wanted to ensure that all claims of employment discrimination were raised immediately and remedied quickly--get the relief to the person right away. However, what happens if the victim does not know he or she has been discriminated against? There are a lot of possible examples of this. Suppose an individual who is a member of a racial minority applies but is not selected for a job bid or a promotion yet learns, more than 180 days after being denied the job, that it was awarded to a White applicant with the same or lesser qualifications? Or suppose a female worker receives a wage increase but does not learn until well beyond 180 days from when she gets the wage increase that she has received less than her male peers? She may not know she is being compensated less because her employer has intentionally hidden those facts or simply because employees may simply not know such information. In either case, the result is the same--the employee, through no fault of his or her own, simply does not know they may be the victim of discrimination until well beyond the 180 days from the time they received their wage increase or lose their job bid.

Let us be completely clear. I do not believe there is anyone who believes an employee in any of those or similar circumstances should lose the right to file a discrimination claim because they did not have the necessary facts and did not have any reason to know they were being discriminated against before the 180 days passed. This was precisely the problem that S. 181, the Ledbetter bill, was allegedly designed to address. If that were actually the case, I would vote for the Ledbetter bill. But the Ledbetter bill goes way beyond addressing the kind of situations I have outlined here--so far beyond that it creates new problems that make supporting it impossible for me and many other fair- minded Members.

By contrast, the Hutchison bill directly addresses and solves the very problems I have outlined. Under the Hutchison bill, the denied job applicant who did not learn the facts until long after his bid was denied or the female worker who did not know her wage differential compared to her male peers, either because of conscious concealment or simple lack of information, are not prevented from filing and pursuing their discrimination claim, even if it is well beyond the 180 days from when they got the raise or did not get the job. The Hutchison bill does this by making the 180-day period a flexible one that can be readily extended in the kind of cases I have mentioned.

On the other hand, the Ledbetter bill does this by eliminating the 180-day limitation period completely. The Hutchison bill is a rifle shot to solve a problem that everyone agrees must be solved. The Ledbetter bill is a shotgun blast that causes collateral damage to important safeguards in our system of laws.

Limitation periods, such as the 180-day period for Title VII employment discrimination claims, are a feature in every law that grants the right to someone to bring a legal action against someone else. They are universal because such limitations serve two very important purposes.

First, the existence of a limitations period is an inducement to those who have claims to seek redress promptly. All of us have an interest in a society where the laws are promptly enforced and, where the beneficiaries of those laws are promptly protected and promptly compensated. This is particularly true in the area of discrimination where society benefits best when discrimination is immediately exposed and immediately remedied. It may affect more than just the one person.

Second, limitations periods serve to ensure fairness in our litigation process. The simple truth is that the more removed in time an event is, the less likely anyone is to remember it clearly or accurately. In a work setting, those who made compensation decisions 5, 10, 20 years ago, may no longer be around. And even if they are around, how could they possibly remember with any accuracy the basis for the decisions? Under our Tax Code, records are not kept nearly that long for individuals or for businesses.

The inability to fairly defend against a claim and the inability to develop reliable evidence are the exact reasons why laws invariably contain a limitations period. Limitations periods are why someone cannot come along and try to sue you over an automobile accident that took place 20 years ago, or commence a legal action to take your house away because of a claimed defect in the title that is decades old, and why the Government cannot pursue actions against citizens that have become stale with time.

But S. 181 would do away with such limitation periods in employment discrimination cases and allow individuals to reach back in time to raise claims about which there is no fair chance to defend, no evidence of any value, and possibly nobody who was even there. We do not have to do this to address the concerns raised by the proponents of S. 181. Senator Hutchison's bill addresses those concerns completely.

S. 181 has a number of other problems which will be explained by my colleagues as we proceed to this bill, such as the potential to severely destabilize defined benefit pension plans and the expansion of individuals with standing to sue under civil rights laws. These are normally the kind of discussions we would have in the committee of jurisdiction, which in this case would be the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, where our members and staff are well-versed in employment laws. However, the majority's actions will require us to have those discussions on this floor. It is not the way I want to do it, and it is not the way the American people expect us to do business, and it is not the way we will get things done.

Now, on this bill a vast number of people voted to proceed to the bill, and we all waived the 30 hours that could have been required before we could even make the first amendment. It was a nice concession on both sides; speeds up the process. But there are a number of opportunities--if the process were to get jammed--that huge hours can be added to the deliberations on this bill that do not need to be, that would not have been, probably, had it gone through the committee amendment process.

I just cannot emphasize enough how important that is to me. I made sure it happened when we were in the majority. I am hoping it will happen on future bills while I am in the minority. Cooperation around here gets a lot more done, and that is what the American people expect of us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I support the pending nomination of Mr. Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education. I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Duncan earlier this month, although I have been aware of his work in Chicago for a number of years. What struck me the most is his focus on doing what is best for the children and his belief that every child can succeed regardless of their background.

During his confirmation hearing in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions--HELP--Committee, Mr. Duncan was asked about what he had accomplished in Chicago as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. His support for charter schools, public school choice, performance pay for teachers and school leaders was highlighted at the hearing. He described how he had closed low-performing schools in Chicago because they were not providing children the education they needed. He

also spoke of the important role teachers have and how we need not only to attract but retain quality teachers. He believes that children have one chance to get a good education, and as adults we need to make sure they have that opportunity to learn and achieve.

Historically, education has been a bipartisan issue. The HELP Committee has an excellent track record for getting bills passed and signed into law as a result of a strong bipartisan process. Mr. Duncan did not hesitate to commit to establishing and maintaining a cooperative working relationship with all Senators on the HELP Committee, Democrat or Republican, by promptly responding to any written or phone inquiries, sharing information as soon as it becomes available, and directing his staff to do the same. He also agreed that regulations promulgated under his direction should be based on legislative authority. Despite the recognition that it is easier to start something than to end it, he also pledged to target resources on programs that work and to eliminate those programs that don't. The members of the committee were impressed with his answers to our questions, and it was evident from our comments that he enjoys strong bipartisan support. I am hopeful that support will show itself by our vote today.

Mr. Duncan is no stranger to the challenges that he will face as Secretary of Education. He understands the important issues that will affect every child and every schoolroom throughout the United States. His track record with a major urban school district is well known. However, I did caution Mr. Duncan that I will remind him regularly and often of the unique challenges that rural and frontier schools and students face. Congress and the Department of Education need to work together to make sure that every school has the tools and the flexibility needed to help students develop the knowledge and skills required to be successful in the 21st century.

We cannot afford to have students leaving high school--and college-- without completing their programs of study. Mr. Duncan and I agree that we have to build upon the successes of No Child Left Behind, coordinate efforts across programs including Head Start, career and technical education and workforce programs under the Workforce Investment Act, and reduce the barriers nontraditional students face to obtaining education that will provide the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in the 21st century. Our country's future depends on our ability to reach this goal.

It is no secret--good skills lead to good jobs. Maintaining those skills through a lifetime of learning will lead to a good career. Mr. Duncan understands this and the fact that the workplace isn't what it used to be. In this global, technology-driven economy, school is never out. Today's workplace demands an ever-changing workforce that can adapt to the requirements and skills of the new high-tech jobs that are in such high demand. Keeping workers' abilities current will be vital if they are to continue to find the kind of good jobs they will need to support their families and maintain a consistently high standard of living. I was pleased to see that Mr. Duncan supports the role community colleges can play in providing this education and training and understands the need to support and accommodate the growing population of nontraditional students in our postsecondary education institutions.

I am pleased to be able to join the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Kennedy, in supporting the confirmation of Mr. Duncan to be the next Secretary of Education. Today, this body has the opportunity to confirm an excellent nominee with the skills, experience, and commitment to help students of all backgrounds throughout their lives achieve their own version of the American dream. By confirming Arne Duncan as the next Secretary of Education I am confident that we will have an effective advocate for education and who will work to meet the lifelong education needs of our children and students of all ages.

I intend to vote in favor of Mr. Duncan's nomination to head the Department of Education, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Nomination of Peter R. Orszag