Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Multidistrict Litigation Restoration Act of 2006.

The word ``Lexecon'' is well known in the Federal judiciary. It refers to the 1998 Supreme Court decision holding that statutory authority does not exist for transferee courts handling cases centralized by the Multidistrict Litigation Panel, or the MDL Panel, to retain these cases for trial. For approximately 30 years, courts receiving cases for pretrial proceedings from the MDL Panel invoked the general venue statute to transfer cases to themselves for trial. The process worked well because the court that had handled the pretrial phase was well-versed in the case's facts and was in the best position to encourage all parties to reach a settlement, or--barring settlement--make a final determination by adjudicating the dispute. But with the Lexecon decision that practice ended, and ever since we have been left with a multidistrict, multiparty, multiforum system that is costly, time-consuming, repetitive, inefficient, and often inconsistent.

As many of my colleagues know, the MDL Panel is an entity comprising seven judges, authorized to transfer civil actions pending in more than one district and involving one or more common questions of fact to any district court for coordinated pretrial proceedings. The MDL Panel authorizes the transfer upon determining that it will be for the convenience of the parties and witnesses, and promote the just and efficient conduct of such actions. Congress established this centralization mechanism in 1968 to avoid duplication of discovery, prevent inconsistent rulings, and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel, and the judiciary.

Typically, cases centralized by the MDL Panel are numerous and complex. About 150,000 cases with millions of claims have been resolved through the process since its creation. They have included such matters as mass torts, antitrust price fixing, securities fraud, and unfair employment practices. The transferee judge becomes highly knowledgeable about the litigation during his or her consideration of voluminous pretrial proceedings. When all of the cases are remanded to the various transferor courts following completion of pretrial proceedings, those courts know little or nothing about the litigation. Even when all the parties agree to keep the matter that has been transferred in the court it was transferred to, it cannot be done under the current law. In some instances, judges have followed cases to courts outside their judicial circuit to conduct trial, at considerable inconvenience and expense, in order to spare other judges from the nightmare of having such mammoth cases so suddenly thrust upon them.

Let me give you an example of what this means in real terms. In my own State of Utah, there have been nearly 1,000 cases that have been transferred

either in or out of Utah's judicial district by the MDL Panel since 1968. In fiscal year 2005, there were nearly 50 cases transferred out of Utah through the MDL process. That is 50 cases that could be dumped back onto our judges in Utah without any warning or preparation. At the same time, there were six MDL cases pending in Utah at the end of 2005. Under the post-Lexecon system, one or more of our judges could be required to follow these cases to other districts throughout the United States for trial. Both of these scenarios would prove to be a serious burden for a small judicial district like Utah, and could hamper or delay justice for the people of my State. This is the same challenge our courts face nationwide as a result of the Lexecon decision.

Congress is the only entity that can solve these problems. Writing for the Court in Lexecon, Justice Souter stated that ``the proper venue for resolving the issue remains the floor of Congress.'' That is why I am introducing the Multidistrict Litigation Restoration Act of 2006 today, to give the Federal judiciary the necessary statutory authority to transfer multidistrict litigation cases for the purposes of trial. This legislation will return the law to what was in effect for almost three decades prior to the Lexecon decision. It will provide the MDL Panel with the most efficient option for resolving complex issues, the best means to encourage universal settlements, and the most consistent approach for rendering decisions.

This legislation is supported by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy arm of the Federal judicial branch, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice. The legislation is also supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

Moreover, this is not a partisan effort. Proposals to reform multidistrict, multiparty litigation were first advanced by the Carter administration. I introduced similar legislation in the 106th Congress with Senators Leahy, Kohl, and Schumer. That bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

This legislation is long overdue. Lexecon was decided 8 years ago. The House has passed a Lexecon fix four times since 1999. In a letter to the chairman of the MDL Panel, Judge Thomas W. Thrash, a Federal district court judge for the Northern District of Georgia, reporting on the disposition of a multidistrict litigation case that he was required to try in Texas because he could not transfer the case to Georgia, summed up the situation well. Judge Thrash wrote, ``Needless to say, resolution of this case has been prolonged and involved greater expense to the judiciary . . . because of my inability to transfer the Northern District of Texas case to myself for trial here in the Northern District of Georgia. On the other hand, it would have been almost criminal to dump this case on a new Northern District of Texas judge for trial. . . . I hope that this problem will be fixed by Congress soon.''

Mr. President, I share that hope. I urge all of my colleagues to support the Multidistrict Litigation Restoration Act of 2006 and I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague and I appreciate his leadership on the floor. This is an exceptional nominee for the court.

I rise to voice my strong support for the nomination of Jerome A. Holmes of Oklahoma to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. With this nomination, we see an all-too-familiar pattern. Mr. Holmes is a highly qualified nominee, a man of integrity and character who knows the proper role of a judge, someone who is praised by those who know him and attacked by some who do not.

Let me review each element of this familiar pattern in turn.

First, Mr. Holmes is a highly qualified nominee. After receiving his law degree from Georgetown University in 1988, where he was editor in chief of the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Mr. Holmes returned to Oklahoma and began an impressive legal career. He clerked first for U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley of the Western District of Oklahoma, and then for U.S. Circuit Judge William Holloway of the Tenth Circuit. Both judges have since taken senior status, and I can only imagine how proud they must be to see their former clerk now nominated to the Federal bench himself. And in the case of Judge Holloway, I truly hope that Mr. Holmes will soon have the privilege of calling his former boss a colleague.

After 3 years of private practice with the highly regarded law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, Mr. Holmes entered public service. While an Assistant United States Attorney serving the Western District of Oklahoma, Mr. Holmes prosecuted a wide range of cases and was that office's anti-terrorism coordinator. No doubt among his most vivid

memories from that time was his experience on the prosecution team regarding the Oklahoma City bombing. Somehow, Mr. Holmes also completed a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Currently, after more than a decade as a prosecutor, Mr. Holmes is back in private practice as a director of Crowe & Dunlevy, a prominent law firm in Oklahoma City, where he chairs the firm's diversity. committee. He has also served as Vice President of the Oklahoma Bar Association. This is an exceptional man.

Second, Mr. Holmes is a man of integrity and character. We hear now and then about the need for judges who are well-rounded individuals, who are good people as well a good lawyers. Well, during his years in private practice and public service, Mr. Holmes has also served his community. In addition to chairing the Oklahoma City Rescue Mission, Mr. Holmes has been a director of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and a trustee of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation.

Third, Mr. Holmes understands the proper role of judge in our system of Government. He has testified under oath that he knows judges must separate their personal views from what the law requires. He has repeatedly affirmed his commitment to follow applicable Supreme Court precedent in cases that will come before him. This means, as he put it in answers to questions following his hearing, an even-handed application of legal principles in all areas.

Fourth, Mr. Holmes is praised and supported by those who know him. This includes Democrats in Oklahoma. Daniel Webber, appointed by President Bill Clinton to be U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma, has written the Judiciary Committee in support of Mr. Holmes' nomination. He has known this nominee for more than a decade and urged confirmation based on Mr. Holmes' intellect, experience, and character. Reaffirming that the nominee before us today knows the proper role of a judge, Mr. Webber wrote us that Mr. Holmes is ``respectful of the role of the courts. . . . When Jerome states under oath that he will put his personal views aside and follow the law, I believe he will do just that.''

Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, also wrote the Judiciary Committee to support this nomination. Governor Henry said that Mr. Holmes is ``a highly qualified candidate, a superb lawyer, with a reputation for fairness, ethics and integrity. In short, I do not think you could have a candidate more highly qualified and regarded than Jerome Holmes.'' A superb lawyer with a reputation for fairness, ethics, and integrity. It seems to me that is exactly the formula we should consistently be looking for in nominees to the Federal bench.

So far, so good. The fifth element of this familiar pattern, however, is that Mr. Holmes is being attacked and opposed by some who do not know him. Mind you, they have not suggested that Mr. Holmes is not qualified to sit on the Federal appellate bench. They have not disputed his character or integrity. Nor have they offered anything to cast doubt on what seems to be universal acclaim from those who know Mr. Holmes and have worked with him. In yet another familiar element of this pattern, Mr. Holmes' critics find fault not with his experience, his qualifications, his integrity, or his character, but his politics.

In particular, the critics take issue with Mr. Holmes' opposition to Government-imposed racial preference policies. Let me emphasize what I mentioned a few minutes ago, that Mr. Holmes helped create and chairs his law firm's diversity committee. In the private arena, he works to recruit and retain qualified lawyers of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. He also believes that race-based policies were once necessary to address the effects of past discrimination. Mr. Holmes would be the first African-American judge on the Tenth Circuit. At the same time, like two-thirds of Americans, Mr. Holmes opposes current programs that condition admission to public universities on race, not to address past discrimination but to create future diversity.

My liberal friends can, of course, disagree with Mr. Holmes on this issue. But by suggesting that his opinion on this issue somehow disqualifies him from serving on the Federal bench, they are treading on very dangerous ground. Mr. Holmes is hardly the first judicial nominee to have taken a clearly defined stand on a controversial issue. I could chronicle some of the more prominent examples, judges overwhelmingly confirmed by this body. Are my liberal friends saying that we should instead be looking to be judicial nominees individuals who have no opinions on issues of the day, who have done nothing, said nothing, and thought nothing? Or are they suggesting that if nominees have thought about and have opinions on controversial issues, only liberal opinions are acceptable?

The issue is not whether a nominee is liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, but whether he is committed to basing his judicial decisions on the law. The evidence from him and those who know him is that Mr. Holmes will do just that, and there is not a shred of evidence to the contrary.

Not only that, but Mr. Holmes' supporters--again, those who know him best--also stress his willingness to listen and to respect those with differing views. Oklahoma County Commissioner Jim Roth, another Democrat, wrote the Judiciary Committee calling Mr. Holmes ``a principled leader who demonstrates mutual respect for all people. In particular, he is respectful of views that differ from his own and he enjoys tremendous bipartisan support and respect.'' That is from a Democrat. How can you ask for a better statement from anybody?

Specifically on the issue that has so captivated Mr. Holmes' critics, Pastor George Young, Sr., who supports affirmative action, writes that ``Mr. Holmes has displayed a level of integrity in all his dealings that I have been aware and has shown in out personal conversation willingness to listen and respect differing views.''

Perhaps my liberal friends are taking out their litmus paper to judge Mr. Holmes' personal views because they believe that is precisely what should drive judicial decisions. Mr. President, I reject that notion out of hand and I invite those who take such an ideological, politicized view of what judges do to try and sell that to the American people.

Mr. President, personal views or political positions are the wrong standard for evaluating judicial nominees. It distorts the fundamental difference between advocates and judges, between opinion and law. And it misleads the American people about what judges do and the important place they occupy in our system of Government. I am convinced that Mr. Holmes understands far better than his critics that judges must be neutral arbiters, that they must follow the law, that they must set aside personal views or opinions. I am convinced that Mr. Holmes will do just that on the Tenth Circuit.

Mr. President, we have been here before. Nominees of obvious qualification and experience, unquestioned integrity and character, and solid bipartisan support, are nonetheless attacked and maligned because of their personal views or political opinions. It has happened before and, sadly, I expect it will happen in the future. The proper standard, however, looks at qualifications, integrity, and commitment to the proper role of judges in our system of Government. Judged by this proper standard, Mr. Holmes will be a fine member of the court he once served as a law clerk.

Let me close with the words of one of the judges Mr. Holmes served as a law clerk. Judge William Holloway was appointed to the Tenth Circuit in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson. He wrote the Judiciary Committee that Mr. Holmes ``performed his work for our court as my clerk with complete impartiality and compassion for the people whose cases were before the court. I am convinced he will give extraordinarily fine service as a fair minded and industrious judge.''

Excellence, fairness, integrity, impartiality, compassion, and a willingness to listen. That is what the evidence shows, Mr. President. Jerome Holmes is a fine lawyer and a good man. He will make a great judge.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this morning we are continuing our discussion of the Child Custody Protection Act, S. 403. This is an appropriate debate, and it comes at an appropriate time.

Last week, the Senate passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. That important bipartisan bill, which the President is expected to sign this week, will empower the Federal Government to step up the fight against sexual predators of children.

The bill we passed last Thursday is a serious bipartisan achievement, and for good reason. Republicans and Democrats alike can agree on the need to protect minors from abuse. That same purpose, the desire to protect children, is what motivates the Child Custody Protection Act, and my hope is that we can come together on this bill as well, Republicans and Democrats, and pass this legislation.

The American people have spoken. Our States have spoken. Though the media might not always hear the message, Americans are quite unified, and have been for a long time, on the issue of abortion. Supermajorities of the American people think that some regulation of abortion is appropriate. Nowhere is this more obvious than on the issue of parental consent and notification laws.

Most Americans understand that a parent or a guardian should be involved in this decision. The Child Custody Protection Act will give Federal support to State laws requiring this involvement, laws that are too often circumvented when young girls are taken across State lines to obtain an abortion, often with the assistance of the predatory men responsible for their pregnancies.

These actions are terrible for families and young women. They are a danger to a young woman's health and to her spirit. And, indeed, the involvement of a parent or guardian is critical when a young woman is making a choice of this magnitude, and we should do our part to support these parental involvement laws.

This bill does so by making it a Federal crime to transport a minor across a State line to obtain an abortion that would not be permitted absent parental involvement in the State where the minor resides. This is a limited and a reasonable bill. It specifies that neither the minor nor a parent can be prosecuted or sued for violation of the act. It also provides defendants in a prosecution or civil action an affirmative defense if they believed the required parental notice or involvement took place. Finally, it creates a private right of action for the parent or guardian whose rights are violated by a person who violates the act.

This is a balanced bill. And my hope is that my colleagues will support it.

Forty-four States have enacted laws that require some level of parental involvement in a minor's decision to obtain an abortion. Parental involvement laws are not a divisive issue. They are reasonable regulations. At many middle schools and high schools, you cannot get an aspirin from the school nurse without permission from your parents. Would it really make sense to allow a young girl, perhaps only 14 years old, to obtain an abortion without her parents' involvement?

The liberal pro-abortion interest groups routinely tell us that women must have completely unfettered access to abortion throughout their pregnancies. And they typically give two reasons. First, this is a private, medical decision between a woman and her doctor. And second, this is a moral choice that the woman should be able to make without any interference at all. These principles are taken to extremes by these groups. They lead to opposition of almost any regulation of abortion, including informed-consent laws, and even partial-birth abortion. Parental involvement regulations are commonsense and widely supported by the American people. But the reasoning of these interest groups leads them to a position of abortion absolutism--there can be no interference at any time with the decision to undergo this medical procedure.

I disagree with these arguments. Even so, taking these groups on their own terms leads me to believe that they should actually support parental involvement laws. After all, if abortion is a medical procedure, do we really want minors electing invasive medical procedures without a parent or guardian knowing about it? And if the decision to have an abortion is a profound moral choice, do we really want a child to make that choice without consulting with the parents who are responsible for teaching and raising that child? Of course not. And so the American people have reasonably, and responsibly, endorsed with considerable bipartisan support, the parental involvement laws that exist in 44 States.

Recently, my home State of Utah passed its own law. It is a good law. And it is a careful law. My State requires that before a minor obtains an abortion there must be notification of, and consent by, a parent or guardian. Our parental consent requirement prohibits a doctor from performing an abortion without first obtaining the written consent of a parent or guardian. And consistent with the Supreme Court's requirement that some judicial bypass be included in a parental consent statute, Utah allows a minor to obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian if a court finds by the preponderance of the evidence that the minor has given informed consent and is mature enough to be capable of giving her informed consent or that the abortion would be in the minor's best interest. That is a reasonable balance. The interest groups that oppose any and every restriction on abortion always tell us that this is an important choice. Well, if it is an important choice, I believe we should require that a minor's choice be an informed one.

Utah law also requires that a doctor, prior to performing an abortion, notify a parent or guardian. Again, this is reasonable. Why would we allow a young woman to undergo a medical procedure without first notifying those charged with her well-being? We would not allow it for a routine checkup, much less any other invasive surgical procedure. And Utah's legislators were careful in the way they went about this. They knew that in certain circumstances, a young woman might not want to notify her parents. For that reason, there are generous exceptions to this notice requirement.

If a medical emergency exists, the notice requirement is waived. If the physician reports to the proper State agency that the pregnancy occurred through incest, or if the child is a victim of abuse, the parent responsible for the physical or sexual abuse need not be notified. And if the legal parent or guardian has not assumed responsibility for the young girl's upbringing, that parent or guardian need not be notified.

Utah's citizens are not unique. As the citizens in most other States have, Utahns have determined that some level of parental involvement in this process is an important one. The interest groups disagree. And as a result, there is some opposition to this commonsense bill.

Here is the bottom-line. Forty-four States have parental involvement laws. In my opinion, some of those State parental involvement laws are ineffectual, but in 26, parents are effectively guaranteed the right to parental notification or consent. Yet with minor children, too often they are being taken across State lines, to a State with a more liberal abortion policy, to obtain an abortion without their parents' involvement. Taking a minor across State lines without her parents' knowledge? Most people would call this kidnapping. And in many cases, the actions come close.

I want to thank my colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions, for chairing a hearing in the Judiciary Committee on this subject in the 108th Congress. The hearing was very informative. This is what we learned from the testimony presented there:

The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence has found that ``[a]lmost two thirds of adolescent mothers have partners older than 20 years of age.''

The National Center for Health Statistics concluded that ``among girls 14 or younger when they first had sex, a majority of these first . . . experiences were nonvoluntary. Evidence also indicates that among unmarried teenage

mothers, two-thirds of the fathers are age 20 or older, suggesting that differences in power and status exist between many sexual partners.''

In a study of over 46,000 pregnancies by school-age girls in California, researchers found that ``71%, or over 33,000, were fathered by adult post-high-school men whose mean age was 22.6 years, an average of five years older than the mothers . . . Even among junior high school mothers aged 15 or younger, most births are fathered by adult men 6 to 7 years their senior. Men aged 25 or older father more births among California school-age girls than do boys under age 18.''

I could go on, and I want to thank Professor Teresa Collett of the University of St. Thomas School of Law for putting these statistics together in her testimony. They are important. They remain uncontroverted by those opposed to this bill. And they tell an important story.

Many thousands of teenage pregnancies are caused by predatory males, many years the girl's senior, who should be prosecuted for statutory rape. Let's be clear. Many thousands of teenage pregnancies are caused by felonious activity--scared and pregnant young girls; wounded and abused by these sexual predators.

And parental involvement laws go a long way toward making sure that people become aware of this abuse. Yet currently, it is too easy for these predators to circumvent these laws.

We have heard of older men, or their mothers, or their friends, who take these vulnerable young girls across State lines to get an abortion, and get rid of the evidence of the crime. And then when these girls are dumped back at home, those who care for them and love them are oblivious to what they have been through. This is not only physically dangerous. It is a threat to the spirit of a wounded and confused young woman.

This is not some hypothetical situation. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, we heard from Joyce Farley of Dushore, PA. In 1995 her daughter, Crystal, was raped and impregnated by a 19-year-old man whose mother then took Crystal for an abortion into the State of New York.

This was not a decision for this man, or his mother to make. These people were not interested in making the right decision for Crystal. They were making a decision that was in the best interests of the man who raped this child.

The Child Custody Protection Act would protect these young women. It would protect the rights of parents.

The decision to obtain an abortion is an important one. It is a medical decision, but it is also so much more. It is a decision that will impact a woman for the rest of her life. And it is a decision that a minor should, in most cases, make with the involvement of a parent or a legal guardian.

This important bill that my colleague from Nevada, Senator Ensign, has introduced will go a long way toward discouraging the abuse that often leads to teenage pregnancy, toward protecting minors from predatory males, and toward protecting the constitutionally recognized right of States to involve parents in these important decisions.

I look forward to this debate. There should be some bipartisan consensus on this issue, and my hope is that we will reach one. This is a bill that is worthy of our support. It protects the rights of parents that have been recognized by the States that we represent.

We should do our best to support those rights. I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. President, as one of the strong supporters of the Voting Rights Act, having supported it before in my Senate service, I have been very interested and, frankly, pleased with the comments that have been made. Let me add to what Senator Kyl said.

Moreover, even if we are wrong about how George v. Ashcroft would have been interpreted and applied in the future, in any event, today's bill clearly ends any risk that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act will be applied as a one-way ratchet favoring Democrats or Republicans at the expense of one or the other.

As the House committee report makes clear, the bill ``rejects'' the Supreme Court's interpretation of section 5 in George v. Ashcroft and establishes that the purpose of section 5's protection of minority voters is, in the words of the bill's new subsection (d), to ``protect the ability of such citizens to elect their preferred candidates of choice.''

It is important to emphasize this language does not protect just any district with a representative who gets elected with some minority votes. Rather, it protects only a district in which ``such citizens''-- minority citizens--are the ones selecting their ``preferred candidate of choice'' with their own voting power. I emphasize the words ``such citizens'' and ``preferred'' because they are key to this part of the bill and keep it consistent with the language abrogating Bossier Parish. Both parts have a limited but important purpose: protecting naturally occurring majority-minority districts.

The new subsection guarantees that districters will not discriminate against creating such districts. And this new subsection (d) ensures they will not break up such districts, at least not when neutral districting principles continue to commend the creation of such a district.

I note in passing that forcing the preservation of a noncompact majority-minority district likely would run afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling against racial gerrymanders in Shaw v. Reno. And, like subsection (c), all that subsection (d) does is protect naturally occurring majority-minority districts. By limiting non-retrogression requirements to districts in which ``such minority citizens'' are able with their own vote power to elect ``preferred candidates of choice''-- not just a candidate of choice settled for when forced to compromise with other groups--the bill limits section 5 to protecting those naturally occurring, compact majority-minority districts with which section 5 was originally concerned.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for granting unanimous consent to pass the most comprehensive child crimes and protection bill in our Nation's history--H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

This bill started in the House of Representatives by a courageous and ambitious Congressman from Florida, Mark Foley. Mark is with us in the Senate Chamber today, and I want to thank him, again, for getting this ball rolling and for fighting like a champion on behalf of our children. I appreciate his tenacity and enthusiasm--we would not be here without his devotion and hard work.

I also thank Senator Biden, who joined me in sponsoring the original Senate version of this bill. Senator Biden and I have worked together on so many bills, none more important than what we are accomplishing today for our children. Senators Frist, Specter, and Reid thank you for making this bill priority and for getting this bill through.

The bill we are about to pass, the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act, represents a collaboration between the House and Senate to include the strong provisions of S. 1086, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, and H.R. 4472, The Child Safety Act. It creates a National Sex Offender Registry with uniform standards for the registration of sex offenders, including a lifetime registration requirement for the most serious offenders. This is critical to sew together the patch-work quilt of 50 different State attempts to identity and keep track of sex offenders.

The Adam Walsh Act establishes strong Federal penalties for sex offenders who fail to register, or fail to update their information, including up to 10 years in prison for non-compliance.

The Adam Walsh Act imposes tough penalties for the most serious crimes against children, including a 30 year mandatory penalty for raping a child and no less than 10 years in prison for a sex trafficking offense. In fact, this bill creates a series of assured penalties for crimes of violence against children, including penalties for murder, kidnapping, maiming, and using a dangerous weapon against a child. And the bill allows for the death penalty in the most serious cases of child abuse, including the murder of a child in sexual exploitation and kidnapping offenses.

The bottom line here is that sex offenders have run rampant in this country and now Congress and the people are ready to respond with legislation that will curtail the ability of sex offenders to operate freely. It is our hope that programs like NBC Dateline's ``To Catch a Predator'' series will no longer have enough material to fill an hour or even a minute. Now, it seems, they can go to any city in this country and catch dozens of predators willing to go on-line to hunt children.

Laws regarding registration for sex offenders have not been consistent from State to State now all States will lock arms and present a unified front in the battle to protect children. Web sites that have been weak in the past, due to weak laws and haphazard updating and based on inaccurate information, will now be accurate, updated and useful for finding sex offenders.

There are more than a half-million registered sex offenders in the United States. Those are the ones we know. Undoubtedly there are more. That number is going to go up. Over 100,000 of those sex offenders are registered but missing. That number is going to go down. We are going to get tough on these people. Some estimate it is as high as 150,000 sex offenders who are not complying. That is killing our children.

Another important part of this bill will help prevent the sexual exploitation of children through the production of sexually explicit material. Every day we hear new stories about how pornographers and predators take advantage of new technology to exploit children in new ways. It is very difficult for legislatures even to keep up, and when we do pass new legislation, it is often stymied in the courts.

Federal law requires producers of some sexually explicit material to keep records regarding the identity and age of performers and to make those records available for inspection. The current statute, however, was enacted before the Internet existed and covers only some sexually explicit material. The provisions in the act before us brings key definitions in the law up to date, extends the record keeping requirement to more sexually explicit material, and makes refusal to permit inspection of these records a crime.

I want to thank John Walsh, host of ``America's Most Wanted,'' and his wife, Reve--who have waited nearly 25 years for this day. Next Thursday, July 27, 2006, marks 25 years since the abduction and subsequent murder of their son Adam--for whom this bill is named. And on that 25th anniversary the President will sign into law legislation that will help law enforcement do what John has been doing all along-- hunt down predators and criminals. I want to thank the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for their tireless work and for their assistance with crafting this legislation.

This is smart legislation and I am very proud of the Adam Walsh Act. I am determined that Congress will play its part in protecting the children of my home state of Utah and America. I have never been more excited to see a bill signed into law.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we go back and forth so long as we have people on both sides. So the distinguished Senator from North Dakota will be allowed to speak next and then the distinguished Senator from Virginia.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 3 minutes be yielded to the Senator from Georgia, and then we go back to the Senator from North Dakota, and then to Senator Allen, and that would be it for now.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Virginia speak next, but also after him, the distinguished Senator from Texas and then the distinguished Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell.

Mr. President, as far as I know, other than the few remarks I will make right now, I think Senator Frist is the only speaker remaining on our sex offender bill.

I would feel bad if I did not mention a number of the staff people who have helped us on this bill. My own staffer, Ken Valentine, who is a Secret Service agent, has been serving as a detailee in my office and has really carried the mail on this like few members of the Senate staff I have ever known.

Tom Jipping, on my staff; Dave Turk, on Senator Biden's staff, had a great deal to do with this, as well. Bradley Schreiber, with Mr. Foley's staff; Mike O'Neill, of Senator Specter's staff; Mike Miners, Senator Specter's chief counsel, crime counsel; Todd Braunstein, with Senator Specter; Matt McPhillips, with Senator Specter; Julie Katzman, with Senator Leahy; Bruce Cohen, Senator Leahy's chief of staff on the Judiciary Committee; Noah Bookbinder, with Senator Leahy; Christine Leonard, with Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy has played a significant role here. He was willing to withdraw the hate crimes bill so that this bill would pass readily through both bodies. I am very grateful to him.

Reed O'Connor of Senator Cornyn's staff; Nicole Gustafson of Senator Grassley's staff; Sharon Beth Kristal, Senator DeWine's staff; Gabriel Adler, of Senator Dorgan's staff; Joe Matal, from Senator Kyl's staff; Avery Mann, from America's Most Wanted, who played a significant role here; Bradley Hayes, from Senator Sessions' staff; Lara Flint, from Senator Feingold's staff; Cindy Hayden, from Senator Sessions' staff; Allen Hicks, of course, from Senator Frist's staff; and Brandi White, from Senator Frist's staff.

Of course, I would like to mention Michelle Laxalt, who took a great personal interest in this bill and from the outside helped us a great deal. We want to thank the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, especially Ernie Allen, John Libonati, Robbie Callaway, and Carolyn Atwell-Davis, who has carried so many balls for us here, and Manus Cooney, who used to be chief of staff under me on the Judiciary Committee.

And then I would like to pay respect to just some of the victims who really helped with this bill: Elizabeth and Ed and Lois Smart; Linda Walker, the mother of Dru Sjodin; Mark Lunsford; Erin Runnion; Marc Klass; Polly Franks, Patty Wetterling; and last but not least--really, really, we can never thank them enough, John and Reve Walsh.

So with that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I move to reconsider the vote.

I ask unanimous consent that the privilege of the floor be granted today and tomorrow for Dr. Vance

Randall, a legislative fellow for education policy serving on my staff.

Mr. President, today we have the opportunity to do something very important for a precious national resource: our children.

We must seize this opportunity and approve H.R. 4472, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

As the father of six and the grandfather of 22, and about to be 23, my heart reaches out to parents whose children become the victims of sexual predators.

I cannot imagine what a nightmare that must be.

And as a legislator, I want to assure those parents that we are doing all we can to make certain this never happens again.

I am very confident that due to passing this legislation, there will be fewer sex offender victims in America, and fewer sex offenders roaming free.

This bill has enjoyed vast bipartisan support. When Senator Biden and I first introduced the legislation in the Senate, in the form of S. 1086 the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act--42 Senators quickly signed on as cosponsors.

In particular, I thank for their support my colleague from Utah, Bob Bennett, and Senator Grassley. I also thank Representative Mark Foley who introduced a companion bill in the House and Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, who moved this through the House Judiciary Committee.

Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker Hastert are to be applauded for coming together to make sure this bill passed. I thank them all.

Technology of the 21st century, such as DNA testing, has empowered law enforcement to identify, prosecute, and punish sex offenders--the most despicable of criminals--as never before.

But advanced technology has also empowered sexual predators in way that outrages and disgusts me.

Some have compared the Internet to an ``open game preserve'' where sex offenders can prey on vulnerable children, meeting them in chat rooms and luring them into horrible situations.

Pedophiles use the web to hunt our children; now we will start using the web to hunt down sexual predators when this bill passes.

Today, there are more than 500,000 registered sex offenders in the United States.

Unfortunately, many of them receive limited sentences and roam invisibly through our communities.

With too many, we don't know where they are until it is too late.

We have tried tracking sex offenders through Web sites before, but these sites are virtually useless because the information is frequently wrong and outdated.

Most offenders register once a year, by mail. Moreover, state Web sites do not correspond with each other, and sex offenders are under penalty of only a misdemeanor if they lie or just decide not to participate. There are 150,000 out there that we do not know where they are.

This bill will enhance the web technology available for tracking convicted sex offenders and replace outdated, inaccurate Web sites with meaningful tools to protect children.

It will be a searchable national Web site that interacts with state sites.

Citizens in every state will be able to inform themselves about predators in their communities with accurate information.

Under this legislation, offenders will be required to report regularly to the authorities in person, and let them know when they move or change jobs.

And if they don't want to follow the rules, they will go to jail, because failure to provide truthful information will become a felony.

Those who break such a sacred trust and harm our children, no matter who they are, where they are from, or where they commit their crime, will have obligations under this law to make their whereabouts known voluntarily or subject themselves to additional prison time.

The bill also provides money to put tracking devices on high-risk sex offenders who are released from jail. If we convict these monsters, we can't lose track of them.

These are all common-sense solutions to a dark and horrible problem in our society.

We have all heard with horror the tales of sexual predators.

One of those tales that has captured national headlines comes from my home state of Utah. Elizabeth Smart, then a 14-year-old girl, was kidnapped from her home in 2002. Miraculously, she was rescued nine months later.

Since then, she and her father, Ed Smart, have vigorously labored on behalf of sex-crime victims and laws to help them, including this law.

Ed and Elizabeth have joined me in the Senate today. I thank them publicly, both for standing up and for fighting back. It means so much to all of us.

I have come to know and love them both, and I am grateful for the devotion they have shown for the children of this country.

This bill will call for the creation of a new office within the Department of Justice--called the SMART Office--the Director of which will be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. SMART is an acronym which represents the reaffirmed efforts of the Justice Department to, Sentence--Monitor--Apprehend--Register--and Track, sex offenders. It is also named after Elizabeth Smart.

I thank the Department of Justice for their commitment to the issues of sex offenders, child pornography and the creation of the SMART Office--and I want to, again, thank the Smart family for their active participation in this debate and for helping to move this bill forward.

This legislation is truly ``smart'' legislation.

Also included in this legislation are child protection provisions first introduced in the House by Representative Mike Pence, and which I introduced here in the Senate.

This legislation will help prevent children from participating in the production of sexually explicit material.

It strengthens current law by requiring producers of sexually explicit material to keep records regarding the identity and age of performers.

I thank the Senator from Kansas, Senator Brownback, who was this bill's original cosponsor, and the 29 other Senators, on both sides of the aisle, who joined as cosponsors of this bill.

As my colleagues are aware, Congress previously approved the PROTECT Act of 2003 against the backdrop of Department of Justice regulations applying recordkeeping statutes to both primary and secondary producers.

Along with the act's specific reference to the regulatory definition that existed at the time, this signaled Congress's agreement with the Department's view that it already had the authority to regulate secondary producers.

A Federal court in Colorado, however, recently enjoined the Department from enforcing the statute against secondary producers, a decision that conflicted with a DC court ruling on this point.

Title V of the Adam Walsh Act will eliminate any doubt that the recordkeeping statute applies to both primary and secondary producers. It clearly expresses Congress's agreement with the Department's regulatory approach and gives the Department the tools to enforce the statute.

I want to thank the American press corps for the attention it has given to this issue. News outlets have diligently raised the American public's awareness of the grave threat posed by today's sexual predators. And the press have followed the lead of John Walsh, host of ``America's Most Wanted.'' He and his wife, Reve, have waited nearly 25 years for the passage of this bill.

Next Thursday, July 27, 2006, marks 25 years since the abduction and murder of their son Adam. And on that 25th anniversary, it is our hope the President will sign into law legislation that will help law enforcement do what John has been doing all along--hunt down predators and criminals.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, along with Robbie Callaway, John Libonati, and Carolyn Atwell-Davis were also very prominent spokespeople for this legislation, and I want to personally thank them.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is one of the unsung heroes in the efforts to stop the abduction, exploitation, and murder of children. Their staff works long hours, and their commitment to stopping child pornography and sexual assault against kids is hard to match.

I am grateful that the Senate will soon act on this bill. In the preamble to our Nation's great Constitution, we the people promise to establish justice, promote the general welfare, and provide for the common defense. There is no defense more sacred, nor welfare more precious, than those of our children.

Currently, we track library books in this country better than we do sex offenders. With this measure, however, law enforcement will have the best means possible to protect our Nation's most precious national resource: our children.

Now, I appreciate the help of all of my colleagues. I certainly appreciate this time from the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma because I wanted to make this statement, and this was a good time to make it. I am grateful to him for providing the time. I yield back the remainder of my time and ask everybody in the Senate to vote for this bill.

Mr. President, I see the distinguished Senator from Alaska on the Senate floor. I believe he would like to introduce some people.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of stem cell research.

I plan to vote in favor of each of the three bills that we will be considering today. I call upon my colleagues to pass all three of these bills. I call upon the President to sign all of them into law.

Make no mistake about it. This is an important debate. We will cast important votes today.

Even with all the events taking place the world today, including the developments in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, it is my hope--and the hope of many others--that when the history of our time is written, the ultimate outcome of today's debate over stem cell research will have been a major breakthrough in our understanding of, and ability to promote, human health and prevent and treat disease.

I admire and respect President Bush tremendously for being the first President to dedicate Federal funds for stem cell research. As many may recall, in August 2001, the President announced that Federal funds would be used for research on 60 stem cell lines that were created from embryos that have already been destroyed. Unfortunately, many of these stem lines became contaminated so the cells could never be used for scientific research. I believe that H.R. 810 must be signed into law in order to make the President's policy work because in my view, the President already made the decision to use the cells. H.R. 810 just changes the guidelines for stem cell research by allowing embryos that would otherwise be discarded to be made available for research. I believe that by using these embryos for medical research, we are, in fact, promoting life.

One of the reasons why so many are so interested in this debate is that literally everyone either has, or knows, a loved one who has, one of the diseases or conditions that may one day benefit from stem cell research.

One reason why I support stem cell research so strongly is because I have heard from so many of my fellow citizens of Utah and fellow Americans about how important this issue is to them and their families.

That is the reason why Nancy Reagan wrote me the following letter about stem cell research:

May 1, 2006

Dear Orrin: Thank you for your continued commitment to

helping the millions of Americans who suffer from devastating

and disabling diseases. Your support has given so much hope

to so many.

It has been nearly a year since the United States House of

Representatives first approved the stem cell legislation that

would open the research so we could fully unleash its

promise. For those who are waiting every day for scientific

progress to help their loved ones, the wait for United States

Senate action has been very difficult and hard to comprehend.

I understand that the United States Senate is now

considering voting on H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research

Enhancement Act, sometime this month. Orrin, I know I can

count on friends like you to help make sure this happens.

There is just no more time to wait.

Sincerely,

Nancy.

I want to make it clear that there is broad consensus among leading scientists that among the three bills we will vote upon today--the Stem Cell Research and Enhancement Act, H.R. 810; the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act, S. 2754; and the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006--it is H.R. 810 that can most immediately advance science.

The vote on H.R. 810 is the one that really counts.

Some in this debate suggest that passage of the Specter-Santorum alternatives bill would obviate the need for H.R. 810. Neither Senator Specter nor I believe that. Nor do the leading scientists in America believe that. Nor should you believe that.

To put a point on it, the other two bills, S. 2754 and S. 3504, are most emphatically not a substitute for H.R. 810. These bills complement H.R. 810. In no way can, or do, they replace H.R. 810.

I support the alternatives bill, S. 2754, for a lot of the same reasons why I coauthored the cord blood stem cell research bill that President Bush signed into law last year. I believe that all scientifically credible and ethically sound avenues of stem cell research ought to be pursued. I might add that when we passed the cord blood legislation, that form of research had already yielded tangible results for several types of diseases, such as some forms of bone marrow cancer.

In sharp contrast, whatever benefits the alternatives bill may yield, experts tell us that they are largely unrealized today and, as often the case with cutting edge science, uncertain in the future. But that is the way science works. Advance in science often progresses in fits and starts. Sometimes, actually most of the time, particular avenues of research are found to be blind alleys and advances do not come. Many seeds of discovery have to be planted for the flower of progress to bloom.

Today's votes give us an opportunity to move forward on several fronts.

Let us be clear that the centerpiece of today's debate is H.R. 810. This is the bill that will help provide the long overdue expansion of the number of stem cell lines eligible for federally funded biomedical research. This is what our leading scientists have told us they want and need to move the field of stem cell research forward.

I have worked with leading scientists throughout my 30-year career in the Senate. Few, if any, issues have created the genuine sense of excitement among the scientific community as have the current opportunities in stem cell research.

Listen to what Dr. Harold Varmus has said about the promise of stem cell research. Dr. Varmus is a Nobel Laureate. He is the former Director of the National Institutes of Health. He currently runs the prestigious Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. By all accounts, he is one of the leading scientists in the world. I met with Dr. Varmus on several occasions to learn what scientists think about stem cell research.

Here is Dr. Varmus' assessment:

(t)he development of a cell that may produce almost every

tissue of the human body is an unprecedented scientific

breakthrough. It is not too unrealistic to say that this

practice has the potential to revolutionize the practice of

medicine.

More than 40 other Nobel prize-winners and as well most of our Nation's leading scientists, disease advocacy organizations, and many other interested citizens and organizations share this view.

For example, here is what Dr. Edward Clark of the University of Utah Department of Pediatrics has told me about stem cell research:

. . . I can assure you that the scientific progress of

stem cell research is extraordinary.

. . . In pediatrics, stem cell research offers therapy,

and indeed possibly a cure, for a wide variety of childhood

diseases, including neurologic disease, spinal cord injuries,

and heart disease . . .

I can think of nothing that will provide as much meaningful

therapy for children and children's problems than the promise

offered by stem cell research.

It is not hard to understand why the additional stem cell lines that can and will be used by federally funded scientists if H.R. 810 becomes law is so exciting for scientists and important for the American public.

The stakes of today's debate are high. As a report of the influential National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine has stated:

(S)tem cell research has the potential to affect the lives

of millions of people in the United States and around the

world.

This Institute of Medicine Report goes on to cite the following high prevalence diseases as likely candidates for stem cell research: Cardiovascular Disease--58 million U.S. patients; Autoimmune Diseases-- 30 million U.S. patients; Diabetes--16 million U.S. patients; Osteoporosis--10 million U.S. patients; Cancer--10 million U.S. patients; Alzheimer's Disease--5.5 million U.S. patients; Parkinson's Disease--1.5 million U.S. patients.

What family in America does not include someone afflicted with a disease on this list? And a complete list includes many other diseases and conditions such as spinal cord injuries, burns, and many birth defects. Experts believe that upward of 100 million Americans--and hundreds of millions of others around the world--may one day benefit from stem cell research.

For example, let us consider spinal cord injuries. Who does not know, or know of, someone whose life has been devastated by a spinal cord injury?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter I received just last month from Michael Armstrong, Chairman of the Board of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Mr. President, this letter describes groundbreaking research conducted by a Johns Hopkins scientist, Dr. Douglas Kerr, on how mouse embryonic stem cells have been able to regenerate damaged nerve tissue in paralyzed rats. According to the letter from Johns Hopkins University, one of the world's most respected biomedical research institutions in the world, Dr. Kerr's ``breakthrough represents the first time that scientists have actually re-grown damaged components of a nervous system, and it could lead to human therapies that seemed previously to be beyond our reach. Treatments not only for paralysis, but for ALS, multiple sclerosis, and similar diseases of the brain now seem possible.''

The current Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, has said that this research is ``a remarkable advance that can help us understand how stem cells can begin to fulfill their great promise.''

However, unless H.R. 810 becomes law and the number of stem cells lines eligible for Federal funding is expanded, this promising research could die on the vine.

As Mr. Armstrong explains in his letter:

The level of funding that will that will ultimately be

required to advance this field of science to human clinical

trials, however, suggests that federal funding will be

necessary. Yet, under current federal policy, the only stem

cell lines eligible for federal funding were created using

mouse feeder cells and could never be used in clinical trials

with humans. It is therefore crucial that current stem cell

policy be revised.

The precise type of revision that the scientists at Johns Hopkins tell us is needed is precisely the change in Federal policy that H.R. 810, the Castle-DeGette bill, will bring about.

And the scientists at Johns Hopkins are hardly alone.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from Dr. Darrel Kirch, President of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Mr. President, this organization represents our Nation's 125 accredited medical schools, 400 teaching hospitals, and more than 105,000 medical school faculty in 94 academic and scientific societies. This letter, sent to all Senators last Tuesday, call for us to support H.R. 810. The AAMC letter states:

The therapeutic potential of pluripotent stem cells is

remarkable and could well prove to be one of the important

paradigm-shifting advances in the history of medical science.

Support for H.R. 810 is not confined solely to academicians. Last year, when the House took up and passed H.R. 810 on a bipartisan basis, over 200 organizations gave their wholehearted support for this legislation. This includes many leading patient advocacy organizations such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation, the Christopher Reeve Foundation, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Alliance for Aging Research, to name a few.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of organizations that support the passage of H.R. 810.

Mr. President, support for the passage of H.R. 810 is not limited to the not-for-profit sector. While it is sometimes typical for the private sector to keep out of some controversial issues, this is not the case with stem cell research.

Last week, I received a letter of support for H.R. 810 from the Biotechnology Industry Organization. BIO represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, state biotechnology centers, and academic institutions. The BIO letter notes:

Expanded support of embryonic stem cell research could also

go a long way toward reducing the time and expense needed to

develop drugs because new chemical or biological compounds

meant to treat diseases could be tested in specific human

cells prior to their use in live human beings.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the July 12, 2006, letter from BIO calling for passage of H.R. 810.

Mr. President, some aspects of this issue involve complicated scientific facts and complex moral questions. Elected officials and the American public alike have had much to learn and consider since this issue first arose on the scene in 1998.

The more the American public thinks about this issue, the more it coalesces around the policy embraced by H.R. 810 which will significantly improve and expand taxpayer supported stem cell research.

Public opinion polls show that U.S. citizens are squarely behind stem cell research and H.R. 810.

For example, a poll commissioned by the Coalition for the Advancement of Stem Cell Research and taken in May of this year found that 72 percent of Americans support embryonic stem cell research and 70 percent favor the Senate adopting H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. This finding of broad public support is consistent with other previously conducted polls. For example, a Harris poll taken in August 2004 found that 73 percent of Americans think stem cell research should be allowed and a June 2004 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll placed public support for this research at 71 percent.

Some may try to quibble about how particular poll questions were phrased in particular surveys, but few would question the fact that for some time most Americans have wanted the type of research that H.R. 810 will help enable to go forward.

I can tell you this. The poll results I have just cited are consistent with what I hear from my neighbors and constituents in Utah. I come from a conservative State. But whenever the issue of stem cell research comes up at one of my meetings in Salt Lake City or other places in my State, somebody will come up to me to tell me their personal story with the diseases of a loved one and tell me that I am doing the right thing on stem cell research.

One of the reasons why I got involved with the issue of stem cell research in the first place was because of a little boy named Cody Anderson, whose family used to live in West Jordan, UT.

Cody and his family came to visit me in Washington in 2001 to tell me their tragic family struggle with diabetes. Cody's grandfather succumbed to diabetes at age 47 after a series of painful amputation operations. Cody, his grandfather's namesake, never got the chance to meet or know his grandfather because of diabetes.

Let me read you part of a letter that Cody and his family wrote me:

I don't want other small children like me to have to go

through the things that I have already had to go through. I

do not want to suffer the effects that my grandfather did

throughout his life because of this disease. I want to grow

old and not have to worry about all the bad things that could

happen to me because of diabetes. We have seen what diabetes

can do to an innocent life. Please don't let this happen to

me in my life now. I hope you will take it in your hearts to

listen to us, the people who live with this disease for every

minute of every day for now and the rest of our lives.

In a few hours we can pass a bill that can only help Cody and thousands of others suffering from diabetes and millions of others who suffer from other diseases and conditions that may benefit from stem cell research.

How do you think young Cody's parents felt when they learned of their son having the same diagnosis as his grandfather?

How would you feel if you were told that your child would lead a life revolving around multiple daily blood tests, insulin injections, and a tightly regulated diet and constricted activity schedule that no child would relish?

The answer of any parent is that you would want your government to leave no stone unturned in finding a cure for that disease. And you would want the cure found as soon as possible.

Let me say a few sobering words about the immediacy of the promise of stem cell research. Cures are not around the corner. While stem cell research may prove in time to be a revolutionary advance in science such progress does not come quickly or on the cheap.

If we start a vigorous program of federally funded stem cell research program progress will not likely be measured in hours and days. It will take years, perhaps 10 or 20 years, before American patients are administered a new class of products and treatments derived from stem cell research.

In this regard I am reminded of an instance in which, when advised that a certain type of rare plant took years and years to bloom if placed in a certain hostile environment, a great French General simply said, ``Then we must not delay, we must plant today.''

We have to proceed with stem cell research with a passion and urgency today precisely because we do not know how long it will take to find tomorrow's cure. But we do know that the sooner we start, the faster we will get there.

Nor will this research be inexpensive. No doubt one reason why the biotechnology industry is supporting H.R. 810 is because since the end of World War II basic biomedical research in this country has primarily been funded by taxpayers through the programs conducted or supported by the National Institutes of Health. Today, about 80 percent of the $28 billion NIH budget is invested in highly-competitive, peer-reviewed research that is undertaken by universities and research hospitals.

There has been a continuum of effort between the public sector basic research and private sector applied research that attempts to translate the new basic knowledge gleamed from federally supported NIH research into tangible FDA-approved products or other treatments before they can reach even the first patient's bedside. Americans should take pride in the fact that virtually every major advance in the biological sciences in the last 50 years emanated in some way from our investment in the

Mr. President, although at one time it appeared that as many as 78 stem cell lines might qualify under the President's policy, as many had feared, the number of lines that might be practically accessed today is no more than around a dozen at best. Moreover, all of these cell lines were

grown with so-called mouse feeder cells so could never pass muster with the FDA for use to make products for humans. Thus for the President's initial goals to be accomplished, new embryonic stem cell lines must be made available.

It has been over a year since he House has taken its historic action of passing H.R. 810 by a bipartisan 235-to-189 vote. I commend the leadership of Representatives Mike Castle and Diana DeGette for moving the bill through the House.

I must pay special respects to Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Tom Harkin for their dogged determination in conducting a series of some 15 oversight hearings on the issue of stem cell research since this breakthrough science was first reported in 1998. In fact, it was the work of the Specter-Harkin Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee that developed the factual basis and legal analysis that resulted in the legislation that became H.R. 810.

At long last, today the Senate will finally vote on this important legislation.

I hope that it will pass and if it does, I will strenuously urge President to reconsider his position and sign this bill into law.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as we face the close of the 109th Congress in the coming months, I feel it is important that we reauthorize the Traumatic Brain Injury Act. It is my pleasure to introduce this reauthorization bill along with the ranking minority member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, Senator Ted Kennedy, with whom I worked on the original legislation over 10 years ago. Our colleagues on the House side, Representatives Bill Pascrell, Jr., and Todd Russell Platts, have just recently introduced a companion bill with the same goal of reauthorizing the TBI Act this year.

Sustaining a traumatic brain injury--or TBI--can be both catastrophic and devastating. The financial and emotional costs to the individual, family, and community are enormous. Traumatic brain injuries contribute to a substantial number of deaths and cases of permanent disability annually.

Of the 1.4 million who sustain a TBI each year in the United States: 50,000 die; 235,000 are hospitalized; and 1.1 million are treated and released from an emergency department. Brain injuries are the most frequent reasons for visits to physicians and emergency rooms.

These statistics are more revealing when one considers that every 16 seconds someone in the U.S. sustains a head injury; every 12 minutes, one of these people will die and another will become permanently disabled. Of those who survive, each year, an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 people experience the onset of long-term disability associated with a TBI. An additional 2,000 will exist in a persistent vegetative state.

Even more startling is the fact that brain injury kills more Americans under the age of 34 than all other causes combined and has claimed more lives since the Turn of the Century than all United States wars combined. Sixty-eight percent of war veterans are returning home with sustained brain injuries.

The distress of TBI is not limited to diagnosis. A survivor of a severe brain injury typically faces 5 to 10 years of intensive services and estimated lifetime costs can exceed $4 million. Direct medical costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity of TBI totaled an estimated $60 billion in the United States in 2000.

The Traumatic Brain Injury Act is the only Federal legislation specifically addressing issues faced by 5.3 million American children and adults who live with a long-term disability as a result of traumatic brain injury. Reauthorization of the Traumatic Brain Injury Act will provide for the continuation of research, not only for the treatment of TBI but also for prevention and awareness programs which will help decrease the occurrence of traumatic brain injury and improve the long-term outcome.

In 2006, Congress has an opportunity to strengthen the TBI Act by authorizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, to determine the incidence and prevalence of traumatic brain injury in the general population of the United States, including all age groups and persons in institutional settings such as nursing homes, correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals, child care facilities, and residential institutes for people with developmental disabilities.

This legislation authorizes the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, to make grants for projects of national significance that improve individual and family access to service systems; assist states in developing service capacity; improve monitoring and evaluation of rehabilitation services and supports; and address emerging needs of servicemen and women, veterans, and individuals and families who have experienced brain injury through service delivery demonstration projects.

This bill also authorizes HRSA to include the American Indian Consortium as an eligible recipient of competitive grants awarded to States, Territories, and the District of Columbia to develop comprehensive system of services and supports nationwide.

Furthermore, this bill instructs HRSA and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities to coordinate data collection regarding protection and advocacy services.

The TBI Act offers balanced and coordinated public policy in brain injury prevention, research, education, and community-based services and supports for individuals living with traumatic brain injury and their families.

Mr. President, reauthorization of the Traumatic Brain Injury Act will further provide mechanisms for the prevention, treatment and the improvement of the quality of life for those Americans and their families who may sustain such a devastating disability. I ask my colleagues' support in promptly reauthorizing the Traumatic Brain Injury Act.

Mr. President, as we face the close of the 109th Congress in the coming months, I feel it is important that we reauthorize the Traumatic Brain Injury Act. It is my pleasure to introduce this reauthorization bill along with the ranking minority member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, Senator Ted Kennedy, with whom I worked on the original legislation over 10 years ago. Our colleagues on the House side, Representatives Bill Pascrell, Jr., and Todd Russell Platts, have just recently introduced a companion bill with the same goal of reauthorizing the TBI Act this year.

Sustaining a traumatic brain injury--or TBI--can be both catastrophic and devastating. The financial and emotional costs to the individual, family, and community are enormous. Traumatic brain injuries contribute to a substantial number of deaths and cases of permanent disability annually.

Of the 1.4 million who sustain a TBI each year in the United States: 50,000 die; 235,000 are hospitalized; and 1.1 million are treated and released from an emergency department. Brain injuries are the most frequent reasons for visits to physicians and emergency rooms.

These statistics are more revealing when one considers that every 16 seconds someone in the U.S. sustains a head injury; every 12 minutes, one of these people will die and another will become permanently disabled. Of those who survive, each year, an estimated 80,000 to 90,000 people experience the onset of long-term disability associated with a TBI. An additional 2,000 will exist in a persistent vegetative state.

Even more startling is the fact that brain injury kills more Americans under the age of 34 than all other causes combined and has claimed more lives since the Turn of the Century than all United States wars combined. Sixty-eight percent of war veterans are returning home with sustained brain injuries.

The distress of TBI is not limited to diagnosis. A survivor of a severe brain injury typically faces 5 to 10 years of intensive services and estimated lifetime costs can exceed $4 million. Direct medical costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity of TBI totaled an estimated $60 billion in the United States in 2000.

The Traumatic Brain Injury Act is the only Federal legislation specifically addressing issues faced by 5.3 million American children and adults who live with a long-term disability as a result of traumatic brain injury. Reauthorization of the Traumatic Brain Injury Act will provide for the continuation of research, not only for the treatment of TBI but also for prevention and awareness programs which will help decrease the occurrence of traumatic brain injury and improve the long-term outcome.

In 2006, Congress has an opportunity to strengthen the TBI Act by authorizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, to determine the incidence and prevalence of traumatic brain injury in the general population of the United States, including all age groups and persons in institutional settings such as nursing homes, correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals, child care facilities, and residential institutes for people with developmental disabilities.

This legislation authorizes the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, to make grants for projects of national significance that improve individual and family access to service systems; assist states in developing service capacity; improve monitoring and evaluation of rehabilitation services and supports; and address emerging needs of servicemen and women, veterans, and individuals and families who have experienced brain injury through service delivery demonstration projects.

This bill also authorizes HRSA to include the American Indian Consortium as an eligible recipient of competitive grants awarded to States, Territories, and the District of Columbia to develop comprehensive system of services and supports nationwide.

Furthermore, this bill instructs HRSA and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities to coordinate data collection regarding protection and advocacy services.

The TBI Act offers balanced and coordinated public policy in brain injury prevention, research, education, and community-based services and supports for individuals living with traumatic brain injury and their families.

Mr. President, reauthorization of the Traumatic Brain Injury Act will further provide mechanisms for the prevention, treatment and the improvement of the quality of life for those Americans and their families who may sustain such a devastating disability. I ask my colleagues' support in promptly reauthorizing the Traumatic Brain Injury Act.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation that would correct a property trespass question involving a 25-acre parcel of Bureau of Land Management, BLM, land in Garfield County, UT. The parcel is part of the Turn-About Ranch, which hosts a successful and popular program to rehabilitate troubled youth.

The trespass conflict is the result of an erroneous survey at the time that Congress approved a major land exchange--Public Law 105-335-- between the State of Utah and the BLM in January 1999. The legislation at hand would grant the owners of the ranch the opportunity to purchase the erroneously surveyed land at fair market value so that this very important program for at-risk youth can continue unimpeded.

Since 1995, Turn-About Ranch has graduated some 500 troubled and at- risk teenagers through an intense program of training and rehabilitation. The ranch employs some 35 Garfield County residents, and the Turn-About Ranch program has strong support from the local community and the local civic leaders in the area.

Historically used for agriculture and grazing purposes, it was purchased by the Townsend Family and leased to Turn-About Ranch, Inc., for the purpose of restoring dignity and self-esteem to wayward teenagers. Because Government-owned land administered by the BLM surrounds the private land, the only way to resolve the trespass is to ask for the blessing of Congress.

Mr. President, this legislation offers a simple and fair solution to a fairly technical problem on our public lands. I hope Congress can use this legislation to resolve this problem in the very near future.

Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation that would correct a property trespass question involving a 25-acre parcel of Bureau of Land Management, BLM, land in Garfield County, UT. The parcel is part of the Turn-About Ranch, which hosts a successful and popular program to rehabilitate troubled youth.

The trespass conflict is the result of an erroneous survey at the time that Congress approved a major land exchange--Public Law 105-335-- between the State of Utah and the BLM in January 1999. The legislation at hand would grant the owners of the ranch the opportunity to purchase the erroneously surveyed land at fair market value so that this very important program for at-risk youth can continue unimpeded.

Since 1995, Turn-About Ranch has graduated some 500 troubled and at- risk teenagers through an intense program of training and rehabilitation. The ranch employs some 35 Garfield County residents, and the Turn-About Ranch program has strong support from the local community and the local civic leaders in the area.

Historically used for agriculture and grazing purposes, it was purchased by the Townsend Family and leased to Turn-About Ranch, Inc., for the purpose of restoring dignity and self-esteem to wayward teenagers. Because Government-owned land administered by the BLM surrounds the private land, the only way to resolve the trespass is to ask for the blessing of Congress.

Mr. President, this legislation offers a simple and fair solution to a fairly technical problem on our public lands. I hope Congress can use this legislation to resolve this problem in the very near future.

Mr. President, the Senator makes some good points, but I don't think we should saddle Oman with what happened in Jordan. Saddling this agreement with that accusation, it seems to me, is not quite fair.

Mr. President, whenever I begin my examination and analysis of a proposed free-trade agreement, my first question is always: How will this agreement affect my folks, my people in Utah?

Any objective analysis would indicate that the passage of the United States-Oman Free Trade Agreement will have only a de minimis effect on the State of Utah, since Oman only has a gross domestic product of $24.8 billion.

The second question I ask is whether an agreement will have a positive effect on the American economy. According to the U.S. International Trade

Commission, the FTA will have a small, but it will be a positive, impact.

Specifically, trade between our two nations totaled over $1 billion in 2005, with the U.S. exporting $593 million worth of goods and services to Oman and importing $555 million from that country. This is a trade surplus for us of $38 million, which is a positive development, since our Nation bore a $48 million trade deficit with Oman as recently as 2004. Yet despite this positive trade balance, trade with Oman only accounts for 0.04 percent of all U.S. trade.

So what is the advantage for the American people and the people of Utah?

The United States-Oman Free Trade Agreement, as does the Bahrain FTA that preceded it, sends a very important message that the United States strongly supports the economic development of moderate Middle Eastern nations. This is a vital message in the global war on terrorism.

As you well know, since the end of the Second World War, the United States has, on a number of occasions, accepted nonreciprocal trade concessions in order to further important Cold War and post-Cold War foreign policy objectives. Examples include offering Japan and Europe nonreciprocal access to American markets during the 1950s and 1960s in order to strengthen the economies of our allies and prevent the spread of communism. At the time, this policy was affordable due to the tremendous size of the trade surpluses the United States enjoyed. However, those times have passed.

Our Nation has not enjoyed a trade surplus since 1975, and last year's deficit widened to a record $726 billion, increasing to 5.8 percent of the gross domestic product, from 5.3 percent in 2004 and 4.5 percent in 2003.

My colleagues may look at these hard truths and question the need for any further trade agreements, including the United States-Oman Free Trade Agreement. But I must remind my colleagues that we have a trade surplus with Oman and this agreement will permit more American companies to have full access to the Omani market.

Further, Oman is quickly running out of oil and, as a result, has launched a series of measures to reform its economy. Those measures will require American products, and this free-trade agreement immediately removes Oman's uniform tariff of 5 percent ad valorem on U.S. goods and phases out other tariffs on U.S. goods. Now, this means that the Omanis will have more money to buy what they are buying from us now: machinery, transportation equipment, and measuring instruments--products that provide good jobs for our fellow Americans.

I have also become aware of media reports that state the agreement provides Omani port operators an absolute right to establish or acquire operations to run port facilities within the United States. This, of course, is not accurate. The Oman FTA preserves the right of the United States to determine for itself whether to block a foreign investment in the United States in order to protect our essential security interests, including any potential investment in port authorities and activities. I also should point out this agreement does not affect current U.S. law that authorizes the President to block proposed foreign investment in the United States that threatens U.S. national security.

Mr. President, these Middle Eastern nations such as Oman are countries who work with us in the global war on terrorism. They are people who have taken care of our troops. They are people who help us with our military. They are people who are moderate in nature, and, for the most part, do a lot of good things and have a constructive view of the world. Therefore, I think a free-trade agreement with Oman is very important.

I also want to thank the vast majority of the people of the United Arab Emirates for the friendship they have shown to our country and, really, to the world at large.

Therefore, Mr. President, I will continue to support such agreements as the United States-Oman Free Trade Agreement, and I urge all of our colleagues to join us in supporting this agreement. Let's not give too much credibility to some of these arguments that are being made against this agreement.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I support the unanimous consent agreement on stem cell research legislation propounded by our majority leader, Senator Frist.

Overall, this is a fair proposal and it is certainly a matter that this Senate should be prepared to debate and vote upon as soon as possible.

It is over a year since the House of Representatives acted in a bipartisan fashion to adopt legislation, H.R. 810 that would increase the number of stem cell lines eligible for Federal funding if those stem cell lines were derived from embryos no longer needed for in vitro fertilization.

This is a good bill that Senators Specter and Harkin have urged on this body since 2001. It is time to debate and vote upon this proposal.

The unanimous consent agreement also accommodates the interests of other Senators by including two other bills in this package.

I believe I can support these other two measures which are designed to outlaw so-called fetal farming and to encourage alterative means of devising new stem cell lines.

While I do not think that the alternative measure can or should be thought of as a replacement for the new cell lines that will be derived if H.R. 810 is passed, I am supportive of this type of research.

The stem cell issue is ripe for debate and resolution and I think that this unanimous consent agreement will move us down the road in a constructive fashion.

While this unanimous consent agreement does not address the issue of cloning, or somatic cell research as it is known in the language of science, we will have ample time to debate these matters in the future. And as much as Senator Feinstein and I and others would like to debate and vote on our bill to ban reproductive cloning and to erect ethical safeguards to govern therapeutic cloning that advances the science of regenerative medicine, we can agree to have this somewhat different debate on a different day.

It is time for the Senate to vote on the Castle-DeGette bill that passed the House last year. Scientists tell us that there is great advantage to expanding the number of stem cell lines eligible for Federal funding.

Here is what one Nobel Laureate, Paul Berg of Stanford University, has said about the importance of passing this legislation:

Dear Senator Feinstein,

The Senate will shortly be considering legislation to

permit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund

research with additional and new and existing human embryonic

stem cell (hESC) lines. As a staunch supporter of biomedical

research and particularly research with hESCs, I trust that

you will exert your influence to ensure passage of H.R 810.

Scientists engaged in ESC research are counting on you and

like-minded Senate colleagues to assure its passage. The

President must also be persuaded not to veto this legislation

for if we continue on the path he set five years ago United

States investigators will be out of the running in converting

embryonic stem cells into important new therapies. It is

especially frustrating and demeaning that American scientists

are prohibited from using their NIH grant funds for research

with the hundreds of hESC line generated outside the United

States or generated in this country with private funding.

Paul Berg

When our Nobel Award winning scientists, like Dr. Berg, are telling us how important this research is, we should all pay careful attention.

Many among the American public agree that the time has come for the Senate to take up and pass the legislation that the House has already passed over a year ago.

Let me just share with you a letter that I received from Nancy Reagan on this important issue.

Office of Nancy Reagan,

Los Angeles, CA, May 1, 2006.

Hon. Orrin Hatch,

Washington, DC.

Dear Orrin, Thank you for your continued commitment to

helping the millions of Americans who suffer from devastating

and disabling diseases. Your support has given so much hope

to so many.

It has been nearly a year since the United States House of

Representatives first approved the stem cell legislation that

would open the research so we could fully unleash its

promise. For those who are waiting every day for scientific

progress to help their loved ones, the wait for United States

Senate action has been very difficult and hard to comprehend.

I understand that the United States Senate is now

considering voting on H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research

Enhancement Act, sometime this month. Orrin, I know I can

count on friends like you to help make sure this happens.

There is just no more time to wait.

Sincerely,

Nancy Reagan.

I think that Mrs. Reagan has it exactly right.

We need to debate and vote on this issue and we need to do it now. That is what I understand that the unanimous consent agreement proposed by Senator Frist will accomplish. I am pleased that all of my colleagues have agreed to this unanimous consent agreement.

This agreement is acceptable to some of the staunchest opponents of H.R. 810. For example, I do not think that anyone has been as outspoken in their opposition to H.R. 810 than my friend from Kansas, Senator Brownback. But I understand that this unanimous consent agreement is acceptable to him.

Both Senator Brownback and I--and many others--might have crafted a

slightly different unanimous consent agreement--but I think that most would agree that what is being proposed by Senator Frist gives a fair series of votes that could be accomplished in a reasonable amount of floor time in a part of the year when floor time is becoming a precious quantity.

Stem cell research presents a great opportunity for scientists to gain knowledge that can help those families in America and around the world in which loved ones suffer from currently incurable diseases such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's to name a few.

In order to develop a better understanding of the causes and cures of many diseases tomorrow, we must conduct a vigorous research program today.

And let me be clear, cures will not happen overnight or will come easily. We have years of hard work ahead of us. But we have much work to do today to bring about these future advances.

In my view, what this unanimous consent agreement does is to move the ball forward. I am pleased that no one appears to be objecting to this agreement so we can give this matter the debate and votes that it deserves.

The House has acted on an important bill and, in this case, I believe that the Senate should give the American people a simple, an up-or-down vote on this measure.

I think that each of these three bills can gain substantial majorities.

I support the unanimous consent agreement. I am prepared to vote and hope my colleagues will support this agreement that will allow us to debate and have votes in a manner that does not allow parliamentary tactics to unduly delay or otherwise obstruct debate on this important legislation.

This unanimous consent agreement is a step in the right direction and I look forward to the debate on these three bills which can benefit the American public so much down the road.

This is good news for individuals like young Cody Anderson of Utah, who suffers from juvenile diabetes. This is good news for many individuals.

I commend the majority leader and my colleagues for tonight's agreement on a way to move forward.

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