Floor Statements

Mr. President, this is a matter which I and my friend from California, Senator Boxer, will be speaking about later this afternoon, and that is the tragic death of a remarkable young Californian, Marla Ruzicka.

Marla was the founder of a humanitarian organization devoted to helping the families of Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have been killed or suffered other losses as a result of U.S. military operations. She died in Baghdad on Saturday from a car bomb while she was doing the work she loved and for which so many people around the world admired her.

In fact, Tim Rieser, in my office, has worked closely with her. We received e-mails about the work she was doing, and even photographs of people she was helping arrived literally minutes before she died.

I will speak later today about this. But she was a remarkable person. When I spoke with her family in California yesterday, I told them this was a life well worth living, that most people would not accomplish in their lifetime what this 28-year-old wonderful woman accomplished in hers.

Mr. President, I am going to speak on another matter. We have learned that those who are intent on forcing confrontation, breaking the Senate rules, and undercutting our democratic checks and balances plan to take their previous outrageous allegations of religious McCarthyism one step further and accuse Democrats of being ``against people of faith'' because we object to seven--seven--of the President's more than 200 judicial nominations.

If you followed the sick logic of this venom being spewed by some of the leaders in this Chamber, we would have to say that 205 judicial nominees forwarded by the President, whom the Democratic Senators have helped to confirm, would seem not to be people of faith, even though that is as false and ridiculous on its face as is the charge leveled at Democratic Senators.

This disgusting spectacle, this smear of good men and women as ``against faith'' is expected to happen, in of all places, a house of worship, according to a front-page article last week in the New York Times. It will involve twisting history, as well as religion, because according to the report, those involved will claim that Democratic Senators are using the filibuster rule to keep people of faith off of the Federal bench.

This slander is so laden with falsehoods, so permeated by the smoke and mirrors of partisan politics, and so intertwined with one man's personal political aspirations that it should collapse of its own weight. But too many who should speak out against it remain violent.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee began blatantly to invoke obscene accusations like this one earlier in the Bush administration. They hurled false charges against Senators saying they were anti-Hispanic or anti-African American, anti-woman, anti-religion, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian for opposing certain judicial nominees.

They never bothered to mention the same Senators who were making these slanderous statements had blocked, themselves, many, many, many-- over 60--Hispanics, women, certainly people of faith. And they never bothered to say the Senators they were slandering had supported hundreds of nominees, including Hispanics, African Americans, women, and people of faith--Catholic, Christian, and Jewish. They never hesitated to stoke the flames of bigotry, and to encourage their supporters to continue the smear in cyberspace or on the pages of newspapers or through direct mail.

Actually, to the contrary, they seemed to like the way it sounded. Maybe it tested well in their political polls. Now they have decided to up the ante on such ``religious McCarthyism,'' as a way to help them tear down the Senate and do away with the last bastion against this President's most extreme judicial nominees. It is crass demagoguery, and it is fueled by the arrogance of power.

They now seek to make a connection between the dark days of the struggle for civil rights, when some used the filibuster to try to defeat equal rights laws, and the situation we find ourselves in today when the voice of the minority struggles to be heard above the cacophony of daily lies and misrepresentations. This tactical shift follows on the rhetorical attacks aimed at the judiciary over the past few weeks in which Federal judges were likened to the KKK and ``the focus of evil.''

In the last few weeks, we have heard that, at an event attended by Republican Members of the Congress, people called for Stalinist solutions to problems, referring to Joseph Stalin's reference to killing people he disagreed with, and calling for mass impeachments. Wouldn't you think the Members of Congress, who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, would speak up or at least leave with their heads bowed in shame, instead of, apparently, enjoying it?

Last week, the Senate Democratic leadership called upon the President and the Republican leadership of Congress to denounce these inflammatory statements against judges. This week, I renew my call to the Republican leader and, in particular, to Republican moderates, to denounce the religious McCarthyism that is again pervading their side of this debate.

I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle to follow the brave example of one of Vermont's greatest Senators, Republican Ralph Flanders. Senator Flanders recognized a ruthless political opportunist when he saw one. He knew Senator Joseph McCarthy had exploited his position of power in the Senate to smear hundreds of innocent people and win headlines and followers, and campaign contributions, with his false charges and innuendo, without regard to facts or rules or human decency.

Senator Flanders spoke out during this dark chapter in the history of this great institution. He offered a resolution of censure condemning the conduct of Senator McCarthy. Now, in our time, a line has again been crossed by some seeking to influence this body. I ask my friends on the other side of the aisle to follow Senator Flanders' lead in condemning the crossing of that line.

I have served with many fair-minded Republican Senators. I am saddened to see Republican Senators stay silent when they are invited to disavow these abuses. Where are the voices of reason? Will the Republicans not heed the clarion call that Republican Senator John Danforth sounded a few weeks ago? And he is an ordained Episcopal priest. What has silenced these Senators who otherwise have taken moderate and independent stands in the past? Why are they allowing this religious McCarthyism to take place unchallenged? The demagoguery that is so cynically and corrosively being used by supporters of the President's most extreme judicial nominees needs to stop.

Not only must this bogus religious test end, but Senators should denounce the launching of the nuclear option, the Republicans' precedent-shattering proposal to destroy the Senate in one stroke, while shifting the checks and balances of the Senate to the White House.

I would like to keep the Senate safe and secure and in a ``nuclear free'' zone. Even our current Parliamentarian's office and our Congressional Research Service has said the so-called nuclear option would go against Senate

precedent and require the Chair to overrule the Parliamentarian. Is this how we want to govern the Senate? Do Republicans want to blatantly break the rules for some kind of a short-term political gain?

Just as the Constitution provides in Article V for a method of amendment, so, too, the Senate Rules provide for their own amendment. Sadly, the current crop of zealot partisans who are seeking to limit debate and minority rights in the Senate have no respect for the Senate, its role in our government as a check on the executive or its Rules. Republicans are in the majority in the Senate and chair all of its Committees, including the Rules Committee. If Republicans have a serious proposal to change the Senate Rules, they should introduce it. The Rules Committee should hold serious hearings on it and consider it and create a full and fair record so that the Senate itself would be in position to consider it. That is what we used to call ``regular order.'' That is how the Senate is intended to operate, through deliberative processes and with all points of view being protected and being able to be heard.

That is not how the ``nuclear option'' will work. It is intended to work outside established precedents and procedures as explained by the Congressional Research Service report from last month. Use of the ``nuclear option'' in the Senate is akin to amending the Constitution not by following the procedures required by Article V but by proclaiming that 51 Republican Senators have determined that every copy of the Constitution shall contain a new section or different words--or not contain some of those troublesome amendments that Americans like to call the Bill of Rights. That is wrong. It is a kind of lawlessness that each of us should oppose. It is rule by the parliamentary equivalent of brute force.

The recently constituted Iraqi National Assembly was elected in January. In April it acted pursuant to its governing law to select a presidency council by the required vote of two-thirds of the Assembly, a supermajority. That same governing law says that it can only be amended by a three-quarters vote of the National Assembly. Use of the ``nuclear option'' in the Senate is akin to Iraqis in the majority political party of the Assembly saying that they have decided to change the law to allow them to pick only members of their party for the government and to do so by a simple majority vote. They might feel justified in acting contrary to law because the Kurds and the Sunni were driving a hard bargain and because governing through consensus is not as easy as ruling unilaterally. It is not supposed to be, that is why our system of government is the world's example.

If Iraqi Shiites, Sunni and Kurds can cooperate in their new government to make democratic decisions, so can Republicans and Democrats in the United States Senate. If the Iraqi law and Assembly can protect minority rights and participation, so can the rules and United States Senate. That has been the defining characteristic of the Senate and one of the principal ways in which it was designed to be distinct from the House or Representatives.

This week, the Senate is debating an emergency supplemental appropriations bill to fund the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The justification for these billions of dollars being spent each week is that we are seeking to establish democracies. How ironic that at the same time we are undertaking these efforts at great cost to so many American families, some are seeking to undermine the protection of minority rights and checks and balances represented by the Senate through our own history. Yet that is what I see happening.

President Bush emphasized in his discussions earlier this year with President Putin of Russia that the essentials of a democracy include protecting minority rights and an independent judiciary. The Republican ``nuclear option'' will undermine our values here at the same time we are preaching our values to others abroad.

I urge Senate Republicans to listen carefully to what their leaders are saying, here in the Senate, and out across the country to their most extreme supporters. Consider what it is they are about to do and the language they use to justify it. Both are wrong. It would steer the Senate and the country away from democracy, away from the protections of the minority and away from the checks and balances that ensure the freedoms of all Americans.

I would also like to talk for a moment about the independence of the judiciary. I have expressed my concern that members of Congress have suggested judges be impeached if they disagree with the judges' decisions. Republicans rushed through legislation telling federal judges what to do in the Schiavo case, and then criticized the judges when they acted independently, judges appointed by President Reagan, by former President Bush, and by President Clinton. They were all criticized for that, although there are still those who are saying we should impeach the judges, or as I mentioned earlier in my speech, one speaker at a recent conference, to the cheers of some suggested Joseph Stalin's famous ``No man. No problem'' solution, because he killed those who disagreed.

I remember a group of Russian parliamentarians came to see me to talk about federal judiciary, and they asked, ``Is it true that in the United States the government might be a party in a lawsuit and that the government could lose?'' I said, ``Absolutely right.'' They said, ``People would dare to sue the government?'' I said, ``We have an independent judiciary, yes, they could.'' They said, ``Well, if the government lost, you fire the judges, of course?'' I said, ``No, they are an independent judiciary.'' And I remember the discussion around the conference room in my office. This was the most amazing thing to them, that the people who disagreed with the government could actually go to a federal court or a state court, bring a suit there and seek redress even if it meant the government lost. Sometimes it wins, sometimes it loses. I was a government prosecutor. I know how that works. I think they finally understood that the reason we are such a great democracy is that we have an independent judiciary.

I would call out to my friends on the other side of the aisle to stop slamming the federal judiciary. We don't have to agree with every one of their opinions but let's respect their independence. Let's not say things that are going to bring about further threats against our judges. We've had a lot more judges killed than we've had U.S. Senators killed for carrying out their duties. We ought to be protecting them and their integrity. If we disagree with what they've done in a case where we can pass a law and we feel we should, then pass a law and change it. Don't take the pot shots that put all judges in danger and that attack the very independence of our federal judiciary.

We remember our own oath of office. Part of upholding the Constitution is upholding the independence of the third branch of government. One party or the other will control the presidency. One party or the other will control each House of Congress. No political party should control the judiciary. It should be independent of all political parties. That was the genius of the founders of this country. It is the genius that has protected our liberties and our rights for well over 200 years. It is the genius of this country that will continue to protect them if we allow it to. It would be a terrible diminution of our rights and it would be one of the most threatening things to our whole democracy if we were to remove the independence of our federal judiciary. That would do things that no armies marched against us have ever been able to do. None of the turmoil, the wars, all that we've gone through in this country has ever been able to do. If you take away the independence of our federal judiciary, then our whole constitutional fabric unravels.

I will close with one little story. One day, years ago, on the floor of this Senate, there was an attempt, in a court-stripping bill, to remove jurisdiction of the Federal courts because one Senator did not like a decision they came down with. It was decided if there had not been a vote by 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, we would not vote on it. So three Senators took the floor to talk against it--myself, former Republican Senator, Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, and one other. We spoke for several hours, and the bill was drawn down.

Now, I do not remember what the decision was of the Federal court.

I may have agreed with it. I may have disagreed. I did not want to see us making the Senate into some kind of a supreme court that would overturn any decision we didn't like. On the way out, the third Senator came up to Lowell Weicker and myself and linked his arm in ours, and he said: We are the only true conservatives on this floor because we want to protect the Constitution and not make these changes.

I turned to him and I said: Senator Goldwater, you are absolutely right.

I was glad Barry Goldwater, Lowell Weicker, and I stood up for the Constitution, stood up for the independence of the Federal judiciary. It probably was unpopular to do so, but I think Senator Goldwater, Senator Weicker, and I all agreed it was the right thing to do.

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

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, the Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and I are waiting to speak about the tragic death of Marla Ruzicka over the weekend in the form of eulogies. I don't want to interrupt the work of the distinguished senior Senator from Virginia, but when he is finished I am going to seek the floor-- both Senator Boxer and I--to give the eulogies, which will not take a great deal of time, but they are important.

Mr. President, am I correct that the Senator from Alabama only needs a minute or so?

Mr. President, I will withhold my recognition so he can do that.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, be recognized following me, and that the two of us be recognized as in morning business to speak about the tragic death this weekend of Marla Ruzicka.

Mr. President, I join my good friend, the Senator from California, in paying tribute to a remarkable young woman from Lakeport, CA, Marla Ruzicka.

There are times when we are called upon to give speeches such as this on the floor. They are never easy. Sometimes they are speeches given about somebody at the end of a long and full life. Here we are speaking about a young woman at the beginning of a life already full but with promise for decades to come.

Marla was the founder of a humanitarian organization called Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict which is devoted to helping the families of Afghan and Iraqi citizens who have been killed or suffered other losses, such as their homes destroyed, businesses destroyed, as a result of U.S. military operations. We know such suffering occurs no matter how careful the military may be.

But Saturday, Marla died in Baghdad. She died from a car bomb, a car bomb not directed at her but directed at a convoy. She was doing the work she loved and which so many people around the world admired her for. She was on her way to help somebody else. It was the case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was not unusual because she had risked her life so many times in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I met Marla 3 years ago when she first came to Washington. She was barely 26 years old. She had been in Afghanistan. She had seen the effects of the U.S. bombing mistakes that destroyed the homes and lives of innocent Afghan citizens. In one or two incidents, wedding parties had been bombed. In others, the bombs missed their targets and instead destroyed homes and neighborhoods.

I remember one incident she spoke of where every member of a family-- 16 people--was killed except a young child and that child's grandfather. These were the cases Marla spoke about. She spoke about them passionately because she felt passionately that the United States should help those families put their lives back together.

She met with me. She met in my office with Tim Rieser, who works on appropriations for me in the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. It did not take her long to convince either Tim or myself that she was so obviously right. We knew we not only had a moral responsibility to those people who had suffered because of the mistakes of the United States, we also had an interest in mitigating the hatred, the resentment toward Americans that those incidents had caused.

It was Marla's initiative--going to Afghanistan, meeting those families, getting the media's attention, coming back here and meeting with me and Tim and others--that led to the creation of a program that has contributed more than $8 million for medical assistance, or to rebuild homes, provide loans to start businesses, and provide other aid to innocent Afghan victims of the military operations.

From Afghanistan, Marla went to Iraq. She arrived, as I recall, a day or two after Saddam's statue fell. She and her Iraqi colleague, Faiez Ali Salem, who died at the same time, the same place as Marla, organized dozens of Iraqi volunteers to conduct surveys around the country of civilian casualties. Then she returned to Washington and again her efforts--I have to emphasize, her efforts, her personal efforts, her pounding on doors, her going person to person with her irrepressible energy--led to the creation of a program now known as the Civilian Assistance Program which has provided $10 million to the families and communities of Iraqi citizens killed by the U.S. and other coalition forces--another $10 million was allocated for this program last week--all by this happy, young woman you see depicted here, sitting with the people she helped.

To my knowledge, this is the first time we have ever provided this type of assistance to civilian victims of U.S. military operations. It would never have happened without the initiative, the courage, the incomparable force of character of Marla Ruzicka.

In my 31 years as a Senator, I have met a lot of interesting, accomplished people from all over the world, as all of us do--Nobel Prize recipients, heads of State, people who have achieved remarkable and even heroic things in their lives. I have never met anyone like Marla. She made sure we knew what she was doing and how we could help. Tim Rieser received an e-mail from her within an hour of the time she was killed. He sent it on to me during the middle of the night, Saturday night, with the photographs of Marla and the little girl she had helped.

I know how both my wife Marcelle and I felt, looking at those pictures, knowing we would never see another. There are so many stories about her, and some of them are being recounted now in the hundreds of press articles that have appeared in just the past 48 hours.

One story I remember the day after Marla arrived in Washington from Kabul. She had heard there was a hearing in the Senate where Secretary Rumsfeld and General Franks were going to testify. Thinking, perhaps a bit naively, that they might talk about the problem of civilian casualties, she decided to go hear what they would say. After the hearing was over, obviously disappointed that the issue she cared so deeply about hadn't even been mentioned, Marla walked straight up to Secretary Rumsfeld at the witness table and started talking to him.

He heads down the hallway; she heads down the hallway with him. I can imagine what the security people felt. She followed him right outside to his car, and she did not stop talking to him about the families of civilians she had met who had been killed and injured and the need to do something to help them.

Anybody who knew Marla can see that. Secretary of Defense? Secretary of State, Senator, it didn't make any difference. She had a story to tell and, by golly, you were going to hear that story. You could run down the hall, you could go to the elevator, but you were going to hear her story. She was not someone who was easy to say no to.

Not easy? It was almost impossible to say no to her. That was not simply because she was insistent. We all have insistent people who come to our offices. We have all developed ways to say no. But in her case, she was not just insistent, she was credible. She had been there. She knew what the war was about. She had seen the tragic results, and she was not about blaming anyone. She wasn't there to blame others. She just said: Look, there are people who need help. I want to help in whatever way I can.

That is what made it different. She saw her work as part of the best of what this country is about. It was the face of a compassionate America she believed in. She wanted the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to see the face of the America she believed in, a compassionate, humanitarian face.

It took time for some of us to realize she was not just a blond bundle of energy and charisma, which she was, but she was also a person of great intellect and courage who realized she wanted to help more victims. It wasn't enough to protest; that you can do easily. She needed to work with people who could help her do it. Of course, that meant the Congress, the U.S. military, the U.S. Embassy, the press, everybody else involved. She understood that. So she put aside politics and focused on the victims. But she made sure the Congress, the U.S. military, the U.S. Embassy and the press and everybody else heard from her. It didn't take long before the U.S. military saw the importance of what she was doing and they started to help. There were several civil affairs officers with whom Marla worked as a team. She would find the cases. They would arrange for the plane to airlift a wounded child to a hospital or some other type of assistance. She became one of our most beloved ambassadors because she was doing what our ambassadors want to do--put the good face, the humanitarian face, the loving and caring face of America first and foremost.

I think one of the reasons so many people around the world feel Marla's loss so deeply is because we saw how important her work was, and that meant taking risks the rest of us are unwilling take. In a way, she was not only helping the families of Iraqi war victims; she was also helping us, until she finally became an innocent victim of war herself. Yesterday, my phone rang so many times, people calling from Baghdad, calling me at home. Every one of them had a different story of something she had done, some way in which she had made somebody's life different. She has been called many things: an angel of mercy, a ray of sunshine in an often dangerous and dark world.

One person who knew her well described Marla as being as close to a living saint as they come. I suspect that is how many of us feel. She probably didn't feel that way herself. Many of us feel that way.

I don't think I have ever met, and I probably will never meet again, someone so young who gave so much of herself to so many people and who made such a difference doing it. Our hearts go out to her parents, Cliff and Nancy. I talked to her father yesterday. I said: Think how much she did in her short lifetime, more than most of us will get to do in a lifetime. But I thanked them for having the courage to let her be the person she wanted to be--not that I suspected anybody could have stopped her from being what she wanted to be.

One of the articles talks about her going to a checkpoint and the guard stopping her and she didn't have the proper papers. She stuck her head forward and pulled back the scarf. They saw the blond hair. She started talking to them about why she had to go here and there. Next thing you know, she is being sent on her way.

So our job is really to carry on the work Marla started not just in memory of a wonderful and heroic young woman, although that should be enough reason, but because the work is so important. That is what I am committed to. I know I will work with my friend from California to honor Marla in that way. I think it would be safe to say to my friend from California, I suspect there will be others in this Chamber who will do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate is going to pass S. 289, a bill to reauthorize the Mental Health Court Program and provide $10 million in grant funding annually for mental health courts through fiscal year 2011. I am the lead Democratic sponsor of this bill, and cosponsored similar legislation in the last Congress.

Senator DeWine and I have worked together on a number of mental health issues. Last year, we worked together to enact the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which authorizes $50 million annually for a range of State and local projects designed to reduce the number of crimes committed by mentally ill individuals. We are now working together to obtain appropriations to fund the new law.

As former prosecutors, Senator DeWine and I both realize the tremendous impact of mental illness on our criminal justice system. We need to stop the ``revolving door'' whereby mentally ill offenders cycle in and out of the criminal justice system for relatively minor offenses, taking up the time and resources of law enforcement officers, judges, and the community as a whole. My State of Vermont has benefited from funding under the Mental Health Court Program, and I know firsthand the good that mental health courts can do.

I hope the House will take up this bipartisan and uncontroversial legislation promptly and ensure that Federal support for mental health courts will continue.

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

Mr. President, I notice we have been in a quorum call and realize I am not taking time from others. I thought this might be a good time to note that I am a cosponsor of the Mikulski amendment.

We all know, from the discussion we had yesterday with the distinguished Senator from Maryland and others, that the amendment makes additional visas available for aliens who wish to perform seasonal work in the United States. We are well aware of that in my State of Vermont. We are also aware of the fact that for the second year in a row the statutory cap on so-called H-2B visas was met before businesses that needed additional summer employees were even eligible to apply for visas.

This is kind of a catch-22. They are told they have to wait for a period of time to be eligible to apply for the visas, and then when the time comes, the visas are already used. It has hurt businesses across the country. This amendment would provide needed relief.

In Vermont, many hotels and inns and resorts that have a busy summer season use these visas. I have heard from dozens of these businesses in Vermont over the past year. They have struggled mightily to manage without temporary foreign labor. I know the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, the Vermont Lodging & Restaurant Association, and many small businesses in Vermont are vitally concerned, and I expect similar associations and businesses in the other States are as well.

It is interesting, one of the places I have heard from is a summer business where I worked when I was working my way through college. I know even then, in our little State, to keep it open, to go forward, they needed those foreign workers.

You have a wide range of industries that use these visas. This is not a parochial issue. It is not just Vermont. I suspect the same argument, one way or the other, could be made in virtually every State. I would be surprised if there is any Senator who has not heard from a constituent who has been harmed by the sudden shortage of H-2B visas. Many of them fear they are going to go out of business altogether if Congress does not make these visas available.

Now, the amendment would not raise the cap on the program but would allow those who had entered the United States in previous years through the H-2B program to return. It seems to be a very fair, very reasonable compromise. After all, these are people, by definition, who came to the United States legally. Then, after coming to the United States legally, they returned to their own countries legally, as they are required to do. The amendment also addresses those concerns some Members have expressed about fraud.

I have been working to solve this crisis for more than a year. I joined, last year, with a very substantial coalition of both Republican and Democratic Senators in introducing S. 2252, the Save Summer Act of 2004. This was going to increase the cap on the H-2B program. Unfortunately, there was a small number of Republican Senators who opposed it, so they put a hold on it. It was never allowed to have a vote. Our constituents suffered the consequences.

This year, I have urged the Mikulski-Gregg bill, on which this amendment is based, S. 352, be considered by the Judiciary Committee without delay. It is a bipartisan bill. It deserves to win a broad majority in this body. But this is not one of these things we can talk about and delay and delay and delay on throughout the spring and summer. Many of these businesses, if they are even going to open their doors, if they are going to stay in business this year, need the relief today.

Most of them are small businesses. An awful lot of them--I know the owners in my State; I suspect Senator Gregg from New Hampshire knows them in his State--are people who work very hard, with 80- and 90-hour weeks. They are sort of mom-and-pop operations. They own their businesses, and they need this seasonal help or they go out of business. If they go out of business, the other people they hire year- round are out of a job, and the local community has lost a significant place.

We should move forward. These are people relying on us. I do not know the politics of any of these people. I do not care. They are relying on us to help keep their businesses afloat.

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

Mr. President, I rise in support of amendment 395. There are many Members on both sides of the aisle with strong objections to the REAL ID Act. Those of us who value our Nation's historic commitment to asylum do not want to see severe restrictions placed on the ability of asylum seekers to obtain refuge here. Those of us who value states rights side with the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the Council of State Governments in opposing the imposition of unworkable Federal mandates on State drivers license policies. Those of us who value the environment and the rule of law object to requiring the DHS Secretary to waive all laws, environmental or otherwise, that may get in the way of the construction of border fences, and forbidding judicial review of the Secretary's actions.

To include the REAL ID Act in the conference report for this supplemental would also deprive the Judiciary Committee and the Senate as a whole of the opportunity to consider and review these wide-ranging provisions.

The majority leader has indicated in recent days that the Senate will be considering immigration reform this year. The provisions in the REAL ID Act should be considered at that time and in conjunction with a broader debate about immigration. They should not be forced upon the Senate by the leadership of the other body.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this resolution, which I am proud to cosponsor with Senators Feinstein, Brownback, Alexander, and many others.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, be recognized, but that I retain the last 5 minutes of the time before the vote.

Mr. President, I am pleased to see the Senate finally be able to vote on the nomination of Paul Crotty to be a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. The seat to which Mr. Crotty has been nominated has been unnecessarily vacant for months, and Democrats have been asked for months now, since last year, for this nominee to be considered, debated, voted on and confirmed.

As I have noted in earlier statements in the Judiciary Committee, among this President's renominations there are two noncontroversial judicial nominations on which we should have been able to make immediate progress. I have often spoken of the President's nomination of Mr. Crotty to the District Court for the Southern District of New York and the nomination of Michael Seabright to the District Court of Hawaii. All Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have been prepared to vote favorably on these nominations for some time. We were prepared to report them last year, but they were not listed by the then-chairman on the committee agenda. I thank Chairman Specter for including them at our meeting on March 17.

Last week I noted that both these consensus nominations were continuing to languish without action on the Senate calendar and that the Senate Republican leadership was refusing to work with us to schedule them for action. I thank the Senate Republican leadership for being willing to turn to the Crotty nomination this evening. I hope that they will not make Mr. Seabright, the people of Hawaii and the Hawaii District Court wait much longer before we are allowed to consider, debate and confirm Michael Seabright, as well.

Once confirmed, Mr. Crotty will be the 205th of 215 nominees brought before the full Senate for a vote to be confirmed. That means that 829 of the 875 authorized judgeships in the Federal judiciary, or 95 percent, will be filled. As late as it is in the year, we are still ahead of the pace the Republican majority set in 1999, when President Clinton was in the White House. That year, the Senate Republican leadership did not allow the Senate to consider the first judicial nominee until April 15.

Of the 46 judicial vacancies now existing, President Bush has not even sent nominees for 28 of those vacancies; more than half. I have been encouraging the Bush administration to work with Senators to identify qualified and consensus judicial nominees and do so, again, today.

It is now the second week in April, we are more than one-quarter through the year, and so far the President has sent only one new nominee for a Federal court vacancy all year--only one. Instead of sending back divisive nominees, would it not be better for the country, the courts, the American people, the Senate and the administration if the White House would work with us to identify, and for the President to nominate, more consensus nominees like Paul Crotty who can be confirmed quickly with strong, bipartisan votes?

I commend the Senators from New York for their ability and efforts in connection with Mr. Crotty's nomination. Their support is very helpful and indicative of the type of bipartisan efforts Senate Democrats have made with this President and remain willing to make. We can work together to fill judicial vacancies with qualified, consensus nominees. The vast majority of the more than 200 judges confirmed during the last 3\1/2\ years were confirmed with bipartisan support. The truth is that in President Bush's first term, the 204 judges confirmed were

more than were confirmed in either of President Clinton's two terms, more than during the term of this President's father, and more than in Ronald Reagan's first term when he was being assisted by a Republican majority in the Senate. By last December, we had reduced judicial vacancies from the 110 vacancies I inherited in the summer of 2001 to the lowest level, lowest rate and lowest number in decades, since Ronald Reagan was in office.

There should be no misunderstanding; Mr. Crotty has strong Republican ties. He worked as Corporation Counsel for then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and served in New York City government in a variety of posts over the years. After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, Mr. Crotty played a major role in coordinating Verizon's work in restoring telephone service to the New York Stock Exchange, Federal, State and local agencies and large business customers. He continues to play a significant role in Verizon's revitalization of its telephone network in Lower Manhattan. In 2002, Mr. Crotty led Verizon's efforts in a complex administrative proceeding to gain the New York Public Service Commission's authorization to rebalance retail revenues in light of the increasing competition in New York's communication market.

Mr. Crotty has also given generously of his time and currently serves on the Boards of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Tri-State United Way, where he is also the Corporate Secretary, Polytechnic University, Council of Governing Boards, St. Vincent's Hospital- Manhattan, New York State Business Development Corporation, Regional Plan Association, and the New York Urban League. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York since 2001. In addition, Mr. Crotty serves on the Advisory Boards of the New York Law School and the C.U.N.Y. Irish Studies program.

Senate Democrats have long supported and requested action on this nomination. We will be delighted that the New York Senators will be able to call Mr. Crotty tonight and tell him that after 5 months of unnecessary delay the Senate finally did consider his nomination and granted consent overwhelmingly. I add my congratulations to Mr. Crotty and his family.

I have been urging this President and Senate Republicans for years to work with all Senators and engage in genuine, bipartisan consultation. That process leads to the nomination, confirmation, and appointment of consensus nominees with reputations for fairness. The Crotty nomination, the bipartisan support of his home State Senators and the Senate's act of granting its consent tonight with a strong bipartisan vote is a perfect example of what I have been urging.

I have noted that there are currently 28 judicial vacancies for which the President has delayed sending a nominee. In fact, he has sent the Senate only one new judicial nominee all year. I wish he would work with all Senators to fill those remaining vacancies rather than through his inaction and unnecessarily confrontational approach manufacture longstanding vacancies. It is as if the President and his most partisan supporters want to create a crisis. Last week we heard some extremists call for mass impeachments of judges, court-stripping and punishing judges by reducing court budgets. Rather than promote crisis and confrontation, I urge that this President do what most others have and work with us to identify outstanding consensus nominees. It ill serves the country, the courts, and most importantly the American people for this administration and the Senate Republican leadership to continue down the road to conflict. The Crotty nomination shows how unnecessary that conflict really is. Let us join together to debate and confirm these consensus nominees to these important lifetime posts on the Federal judiciary.

It is the Federal judiciary that is called upon to rein in the political branches when their actions contravene the constitutional limits on governmental authority and restrict individual rights. It is the Federal judiciary that has stood up to the overreaching of this administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. It is more and more the Federal judiciary that is being called upon to protect Americans' rights and liberties, our environment and to uphold the rule of law as the political branches under the control of one party have overreached. Federal judges should protect the rights of all Americans, not be selected to advance a partisan or personal agenda. Once the judiciary is filled with partisans beholden to the administration and willing to reinterpret the Constitution in line with the administration's demands, who will be left to protect American values and the rights of the American people? The Constitution establishes the Senate as a check and a balance on the choices of a powerful President who might seek to make the Federal judiciary an extension of his administration or a wholly-owned subsidiary of any political party.

Today, Republicans are threatening to take away one of the few remaining checks on the power of the executive branch by their use of what has become known as the nuclear option. This assault on our tradition of checks and balances and on the protection of minority rights in the Senate and in our democracy should be abandoned.

Eliminating the filibuster by the nuclear option would destroy the Constitution's design of the Senate as an effective check on the executive. The elimination of the filibuster would reduce any incentive for a President to consult with home State Senators or seek the advice of the Senate on lifetime appointments to the Federal judiciary. It is a leap not only toward one-party rule but to an unchecked executive.

Rather than blowing up the Senate, let us honor the constitutional design of our system of checks and balances and work together to fill judicial vacancies with consensus nominees. The nuclear option is unnecessary. What is needed is a return to consultation and for the White House to recognize and respect the role of the Senate appointments process.

The American people have begun to see this threatened partisan power grab for what it is and to realize that the threat and the potential harm are aimed at our democracy, at an independent and strong Federal judiciary and, ultimately, at their rights and freedoms. Tonight's confirmation is a civics lesson that shows that the Republican's threatened use of the nuclear option is unnecessary and unwise.

Mr. President, I see the chairman of the committee on the floor. While I had the remainder of the time reserved, I will yield it to him, if that is possible--we are still going to vote at 5:30--if the chairman wishes. I yield the remainder of my time to the chairman.

Mr. President, yesterday marked the beginning of National Crime Victims' Rights Week. For a quarter of a century, we have set this week aside each year to renew our commitment to address the needs of victims and their families and to promote victims' rights.

This year's commemoration comes at a critical juncture in the history of the victims' rights movement. Much has been achieved in the past 25 years to provide victims with greater rights and assistance, but perhaps none so important as the passage of the Victims of Crime Act of 1984, VOCA, and its establishment of a dedicated source of funds to support victims' services. The Crime Victims Fund provides critical funding that helps millions of victims of all types of crime every year. The future of the fund is in doubt, however, and 25 years of progress may be at risk due to the administration's proposal to rescind all amounts remaining in the fund at the end of fiscal year 2006--an estimated $1.267 billion. That would dry up the fund, leaving it with a balance of zero going into fiscal year 2007 to support vital victim services.

Our new Attorney General, upon his confirmation, gave a speech to discuss his priorities for the Department of Justice. He stated, ``As we battle crime, we must also defend the rights of crime victims and assist them in their recovery.'' While I agree on the importance of this goal, rescinding the Crime Victims Fund is not the way to achieve it.

The Crime Victims Fund is the Nation's premier vehicle for the support of victims' services. Nearly 90 percent of the fund is used to award State crime victim compensation and victim assistance formula grants. VOCA-funded victim assistance programs serve nearly 4 million crime victims each year, including victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, elder abuse, and drunk driving, as well as survivors of homicide victims. VOCA-funded compensation programs have helped hundreds of thousands of victims of violent crime.

The Crime Victims Fund also serves victims of Federal crimes. VOCA funding supports victim assistance services provided by U.S. Attorneys Offices and the FBI, as well as the Federal victim notification system. It is used for child abuse prevention and treatment grants, and it is also used to provide emergency relief to victims of terrorism and mass violence.

Since fiscal year 2000, Congress has set a cap on annual fund obligations expressly for the purpose of ensuring ``that a stable level of funding will remain available for these programs in future years.'' The ``rainy day'' fund created by this spending cap has been used to make up the difference between annual deposits and distributions three times during the past six years.

When Congress began considering caps on fund obligations, I proposed and Congress enacted an amendment to the Victims of Crime Act to clarify our intent to stabilize and preserve the fund for the benefit of victims. The amendment, now codified at section 10601(c) of title 42, requires that ``. . . all sums deposited in the Fund in any fiscal year that are not made available for obligation by Congress in the subsequent fiscal year shall remain in the

Fund for obligation in future fiscal years, without fiscal year limitation.'' Thus, in both the authorization and the appropriations processes, Congress has clearly and emphatically stated its intent to maintain a stable source of federal support for essential victim services.

Over the past 4 years, the Bush administration and this Republican Congress have squandered record surpluses and racked up $7.6 trillion in Federal debt as a result of reckless spending and budget-busting tax cuts. Now the Bush administration proposes to reduce the deficit by siphoning off resources that we set aside to assist victims of crime. In this regard, it bears emphasis that the Crime Victims Fund does not receive appropriated funding; deposits come from Federal criminal fines, forfeited bail bonds, penalties, and special assessments, not from the pockets of American taxpayers.

Together with Senators Biden and Schumer, I wrote to President Bush on March 11, 2005, to urge him to reconsider and withdraw his proposal to rescind the Crime Victims Fund. We received no response to that letter.

On March 17, 2005, I offered and the Senate approved by voice vote a budget resolution amendment intended to head off the administration's plans to raid the Crime Victims Fund. I was joined by Senators Kennedy, Mikulski, Feingold, Biden, Durbin, Obama and Dodd, and I thank them again for their support. As amended, the budget resolution passed by the Senate rejects the proposed rescission by assuming that all amounts that have been and will be deposited into the Crime Victims Fund, including all amounts to be deposited in fiscal year 2006 and thereafter, will remain in the fund for use as authorized by the Victims of Crime Act.

In every State and every community across the country, the Crime Victims Fund plays an essential role in helping crime victims and their families meet critical expenses, recover from the horrific crimes they endured, and move forward with their lives. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a letter from a number of victims' organizations, representing the millions of Americans who become victims of crime every year. They wrote that rescinding the Crime Victims Fund at the end of fiscal year 2006 would create a ``disastrous'' situation for victim service providers and their clients.

Mr. President, National Crime Victims' Rights Week is upon us. I urge my colleagues to honor our longstanding commitment to crime victims by working together to preserve the Crime Victims Fund.

Mr. President, before that, will the Senator yield? I had spoken to the Senator from Indiana about perhaps taking 3 to 4 minutes before they start on another matter. I ask unanimous consent, if I might, to be recognized for not to exceed 4 minutes. I assure the Senator it will not be beyond that.

Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Indiana for his usual courtesy.

(The remarks of Mr. Leahy are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Amendment No. 309

Mr. President, we heard a distinguished leader of a country pushing into democracy this morning, addressing a joint meeting of the Congress over in the other body. I think every time a country moves into democracy, and its leaders and citizens come to this country, one of the things they are thrilled about is the independence of our Federal judiciary and our judiciary overall. They say in their country, if they ever want to have democracy, they have to have the independence of the judiciary.

I mention this because in recent weeks there seems to have been this escalating verbal attack by political leaders--and I must say, with all due respect, Republican political leaders--against Federal judges, including those who have been appointed by Republican Presidents, and against the Supreme Court, where most of the justices have been appointed by Republican Presidents.

The Republican leader of the House has spoken seeking vengeance against judges involved in the Terri Schiavo matter. A Senate Republican has referenced the brutal murders in the State court in Georgia and of Judge Lefkow's family in Illinois as if they were somehow connected to judicial decisions that some people do not like and which lead to pressures that explode in violence.

Now, I know all Senators, Republicans and Democrats, including the Senator who made those remarks, strongly agree there can be no justification for violence against judges or their families. In Iraq, judges are being attacked by insurgents. In Columbia, honest judges were murdered by drug-dealing thugs. That is not a circumstance we want to see anywhere in the world, especially here. We cannot tolerate or excuse or justify it here in the United States.

When I chaired the Judiciary Committee in 2001, one of the first things I did was push for passage of the Judicial Protection Act, which toughened criminal penalties for assaults against judges and their families. I sponsored it

with Senator Gordon Smith. We enacted it. We were right to do so. Protecting our judges and Federal law enforcement officers should be a top priority for us. I think sometimes the focus on terrorism distracts us from the day-to-day dangers for judges.

I remember the autumn of 2001, when Senator Daschle and I were each sent anthrax-laced letters in an environment in which high-ranking Republican leaders had criticized us unfairly during the sensitive weeks leading up to that. People who touched the outside of the envelope addressed to me--the envelope I was supposed to open--people who simply touched it, doing their job, died as a result of that. And no perpetrator was ever arrested or convicted for these anthrax attacks by someone who may have thought himself a ``super patriot'' willing to will to make his point.

I do not want to see more attacks on our Federal and State judges. So I urge those members of the other party who are making these attacks to disavow the rhetoric and those attacks. They should not be creating an atmosphere in which anyone will feel encouraged or justified in attacking our judiciary if they do not like a particular decision.

In this regard, I thank the Senator from Texas for the comments he made Tuesday afternoon in which he expressed his regrets with regard to certain remarks he made on Monday that he says were taken out of context and misinterpreted. He has urged that the overheated rhetoric about the judiciary be toned down and acknowledged that ``[o]ur judiciary must not be politicized.''

Mr. President, I became a Member of the Senate more than 30 years ago at a time when the country was recovering from an abuse of power by President Nixon. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, many of us were elected to be a forceful check on executive power. It was a mindfulness of the danger that absolute power corrupts that the Founders designed our Constitution to contain a vital set of checks and balances among the three branches of our Federal Government. Those checks and balances have served to guarantee our freedoms for more than 200 years.

Today, Republicans are threatening to take away one of the few remaining checks on the power of the executive branch by their use of what has become known as their ``nuclear option.'' This assault on our tradition of checks and balances and on the protection of minority rights in the Senate and in our democracy should be abandoned.

The American people have begun to see this threatened partisan power grab for what it is and to realize that the threat and the potential harm are aimed at our democracy, at the independent Federal judiciary and, ultimately, at their rights and freedoms. A thoughtful editorial appeared in one of my home State's newspapers today. In that editorial, The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus observed: ``Abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominees is another, more extreme, form of intimidation.'' I ask that a copy of that editorial be included in the Record at the end of my statement.

Eliminating the filibuster by the nuclear option would violate and destroy the Constitution's design of the Senate as an effective check on the executive. The elimination of the filibuster would reduce any incentive for a President to consult with home-State Senators or seek the advice of the Senate on lifetime appointments to the Federal judiciary. It is a leap not only toward one-party rule and absolute majoritarianism in the Senate but to an unchecked executive.

Recently Republican partisans have ratcheted up the vitriol even further with their direct threats upon the judiciary. They spare no one, neither State court judges, nor Federal judges, nor Federal judges appointed by Republican Presidents, nor the Supreme Court Justices themselves. Their goal is intimidation and subservience to an ideological agenda, rather than adherence to the rule of law. Worst of all, some Republican leaders have taken their rhetoric to a level that should concern all Americans, at a time when violence against judges, their families and courtroom personnel has shocked the nation. The Republican leader of the House has recently spoken of seeking vengeance against judges involved in the Terri Schiavo matter. I recall a similar call by that House leader in 1997 in which he called for the intimidation of judges. I spoke against it then and do so again today. It is essential that we preserve the independence of our judiciary and protect it from intimidation.

In my time in the Senate we have often faced issues directly relevant to the separation of powers and the role this body plays as a check on executive power. As ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee and as a former chairman of the committee, I have invested significant time and energy on providing resources to our third branch of Government. During the 17 months I chaired the committee, the Senate confirmed 100 of President Bush's judicial nominees. In the other 34 months of the Bush administration, the Senate has confirmed but 104.

The independent, nonpartisan role that judges play in our democracy is vital. I agree with Chief Justice Rehnquist when he called the independent judiciary the ``crown jewel'' of our democracy. It is the envy of and the model for the world. In order to keep this branch of Government independent and above politics, these nominations to lifetime appointments should be of the caliber to garner wide consensus, not political divisiveness. The goal should not consistently to be to see how many controversial nominees can be confirmed by the narrowest of partisan margins. Partisan passions must be kept in check when we are addressing an independent branch of Government, and no President should seek to pack the bench with unalloyed partisans or narrow ideologues.

It is the Federal judiciary that is called upon to rein in the political branches when their actions contravene the Constitution's limits on governmental authority and restrict individual rights. It is the Federal judiciary that has stood up to the overreaching of this administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. It is more and more the Federal judiciary that is being called upon to protect Americans' rights and liberties, our environment and to uphold the rule of law as the political branches under the control of one party have overreached. Federal judges should protect the rights of all Americans, not be selected to advance a partisan or personal agenda. Once the judiciary is filled with partisans beholden to the administration and willing to reinterpret the Constitution in line with the administration's demands, who will be left to protect American values and the rights of the American people? The Constitution establishes the Senate as a check and a balance on the choices of a powerful President who might seek to make the Federal judiciary an extension of his administration or a wholly-owned subsidiary of any political party.

The Senate's role in advising the executive and determining whether to consent to confirmation of particular nominees is a fundamental check and balance on the executive. It is especially important with respect to lifetime appointments to the judiciary. The Senate's rules, already adopted and in place for this Congress, continue to provide for an orderly procedure to end debate on matters before the Senate and an orderly procedure for amending the Senate rules.

Just as amending our fundamental charter, the Constitution, requires supermajorities, so amending our Senate rules does, as well. When the Senate rule for ending debate in the Senate has been amended in the past, the rules for amending those rules have been followed. Previous Senate majorities have followed the rule of law by amending rule XXII only after a supermajority has agreed to end debate on amending the rule. The nuclear option would circumvent rule XXII and would destroy the equivalent of the rule of law in the Senate.

Even the Senate's Republican majority should not be above the law. The Senate has always protected minority rights. The nuclear option would bring an end to that tradition and to the comity and cooperation on which the Senate depends. The Senate and the House were designed by the Founders to serve different functions in our Government. The nuclear option destroys the fundamental character of the Senate. Breaking so fundamental a Senate rule by brute force is lawlessness. Over

the past 2 years, the Republican majority has already bent, broken or ignored the rules governing committee consideration of judicial nominees. This year they are moving to destroy the one Senate rule left that allows the minority any protection and any ability to protect the rights of the American people.

In political speeches we all talk about the importance of the rule of law. In Iraq over the last 2 years, young Americans have given the ultimate sacrifice seeking to help establish a democracy that upholds the rule of law. The governing transitional law that the Bush administration helped design for Iraq calls for a two-thirds vote of the Iraqi legislature to select the president and vice presidents. This was created to protect the minority and encourage consensus. Just today we hear that the long period of negotiations following the Iraqi elections has yielded an agreement on the presidency council, which is the next step in forming an Iraqi government, and that the Iraqi national assembly expects to have the two-thirds vote required to proceed to name a Kurdish leader, a prominent Shiite Arab politician and a Sunni Arab leader as the president and the two vice presidents of Iraq. While we recognize and fight for consensus-building and minority protection in Iraq, Republican partisans here at home are threatening the nuclear option to remove protection for the minority in the U.S. Senate. That is wrong.

When President Bush last met earlier this year with President Putin of Russia, he spoke eloquently about the fundamental requirements of a democratic society. President Bush acknowledged that democracy relies on the sharing of power, on checks and balances, on an independent court system, on the protection of minority rights and on safeguarding human rights and human dignity. What we preach to others we should practice. Destroying the protection of minority rights, removing the Senate as a check on the President's power to appoint lifetime judges and undermining our independent Federal judiciary are inconsistent with our democratic principles and values but that is precisely what the nuclear option would do.

Breaching the Senate rules to eliminate filibusters of nominations will only produce more division, bitterness and controversy. To date the Senate has proceeded to confirm 204 lifetime appointments to the Federal judiciary by President Bush. The Senate has refused to grant its consent to only a handful of his most controversial and divisive nominees and only after public debate and the votes of a substantial number of Senators. Those who now threaten the nuclear option were willing to forestall votes on more than 60 of President Clinton's moderate and qualified judicial nominees if only one anonymous Republican Senator had a secret objection.

The way to resolve this conflict is for the President and Senate Republicans to work with all Senators and engage in genuine, bipartisan consultation aimed at the appointment of consensus nominees with reputations for fairness who can gain wide support and join the more than 200 judges confirmed during President Bush's first term. By last December, we had reduced judicial vacancies to the lowest level, lowest rate and lowest number in decades, since President Ronald Reagan was in office.

There are currently 28 judicial vacancies for which the President has delayed sending a nominee. In fact, he has sent the Senate only one new judicial nominee all year. I wish he would work with all Senators to fill those remaining vacancies rather than through his inaction and unnecessarily confrontational approach manufacture longstanding vacancies.

There are currently two of his nominees, Michael Seabright of Hawaii and Paul Crotty of New York, who the Republican leadership refuses to schedule for consideration. I believe that those nominees can be debated and will be confirmed by overwhelming bipartisan votes, if the Republican leadership of the Senate would focus on making progress instead of seeking to manufacture a crisis. They can become the first judges confirmed this year. Let us join together to debate and confirm these consensus nominees.

Rather than blowing up the Senate, let us honor the constitutional design of our system of checks and balances and fill judicial vacancies with consensus nominees without unnecessary delay.

Exhibit 1

[From the Times Argus, Apr. 6, 2005]

Time To Stand Up

Republicans and Democrats are headed for a showdown in the

Senate over the Democrats' insistence that, for a handful of

extreme and ill-suited judicial nominees, it will use the

filibuster to block action. Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking

Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, will be in the

center of the fight.

Republicans have responded to the prospect of Democratic

filibusters by threatening to throw out the rule allowing

filibusters for judicial nominees. Democrats say that if that

happens they will halt all but the most essential Senate

action.

The battle over the judiciary is a central political

struggle of our time. The congressional effort to meddle in

the Terri Shiavo case was a prelude to the battle over the

courts, and it revealed the dangerous degree to which the

nation's Republican leaders intend to twist the judiciary to

their will.

The party line among Republicans is that they favor judges

who interpret the law rather than making it. They don't want

judges imposing outcomes or crafting decisions to carry out a

personal agenda.

Yet the astonishing comments by Rep. Tom DeLay, House

Republican leader, show the Republicans' true aim. DeLay

revealed that, above all, he wants to impose outcomes. The

outcome in the Schiavo case didn't go his way so he began

talking of impeaching the judges involved. Judges whose

independence is curbed by that kind of intimidation will be

forced into outcomes demanded by politics, not by the law.

The Schiavo case passed before judges in state and federal

courts, the federal appeals court, even the U.S. Supreme

Court, and all those judges, liberal and conservative, ruled

that Terri Schiavo's expressed wishes, as conveyed by her

husband, should prevail. There has been much debate about

whether the husband was reliable and whether the medical

diagnosis was correct. But those questions went to judgment

in the courts. That is what courts are for. The judiciary is

independent so that courts can weigh facts in a calm and

reasoned fashion, free of political pressures or the

enthusiasms of enflamed groups. Sometimes we don't agree with

the outcome, but citizens, like judges, are not supposed to

impose outcomes.

Intimidation of the judiciary was also the approach of

former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who sought to

discipline judges who acted counter to his wishes. Abolishing

the filibuster for judicial nominees is another, more

extreme, form of intimidation.

The Republican critique of the judiciary suggests they

believe judges are somehow outside the democratic system,

that they have no business thwarting the workings of the

legislative branch. But judges are an essential part of the

democratic system. For one, they are appointed by the elected

executive and confirmed by elected senators. And they exist

to safeguard our democratic system when the legislative or

executive branches try to ride roughshod over the law.

In the Schiavo case, the executive and legislative branches

sought to abolish the constitutional role of the judiciary as

an independent branch. In those cases where President Bush's

judicial nominees exhibit similar lack of respect for the

law, senators have the duty to oppose them and to stand up

against the intimidating tactics of the Republican

leadership.

Mr. President, Vermont is a State filled with extraordinary people who lead extraordinary lives. We take great pride that despite our modest geographical size, Vermont produces people whose voices, commitment and accomplishments transcend our borders and leave a lasting impact on the world in which we live.

Later this spring, one such Vermonter will be moving on to a new chapter in his life. Professor Alan Wertheimer, the John G. McCullough Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, will be retiring after over 35 years of teaching.

Professor Wertheimer is a distinguished scholar, having authored a number of highly acclaimed books. He has taught thousands of students over the years, including many members of my staff. He has been active in the affairs of the university and the community. His wife Susan and their children have been by his side every step of the way.

The role of scholars in shaping our society has been debated for thousands of years. Professor Wertheimer leaves in his wake a whole generation of students who he helped grapple with some of the most difficult and complex political and philosophical questions of our time, in a relevant, provocative and memorable style.

We in Vermont owe an enormous debt to Professor Wertheimer. He chose to grace our State university with his presence for his entire academic career. Thousands of Vermonters and students from all over the country and the world have had their lives enhanced by his dedication and scholarship.

I ask unanimous consent that a recent article in the Vermont Quarterly about Professor Wertheimer be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I again will discuss mercury pollution and the serious and immediate health risks it poses to the health of citizens across our Nation.

This is not a new issue. We have known about mercury pollution for decades, and it remains one of, if not the last, major toxic pollutant without a comprehensive plan to control its release. We know where the sources mercury pollution are, we know where the pollution deposits, and we definitely know what harm it causes to people and to wildlife.

We need to confront mercury pollution because it is a threat to pregnant women and children. The Environmental Protection Agency's own scientists estimate that one of every six women of child-bearing age has elevated levels of mercury in her body above safe thresholds.

Mercury can cause neurological harm to children exposed to increased mercury levels while in the womb and during the first few years of their lives, which can lead to increased risk for learning disabilities, developmental delays, and other serious problems.

Just last year EPA scientists nearly doubled the previous estimate of the number of children at increased risk from exposure to elevated mercury levels in their mothers' wombs from 300,000 to over 600,000. This finding should alarm all of us and spur this Administration to promptly develop strong controls on mercury pollution from power plants that meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act and that fully protect women and children.

Yet unfortunately, this Administration has not done that. The Administration's new mercury rule and the so-

called ``Clear Skies'' proposal turn back progress, ignore available clean air technology, and will leave more toxic mercury in our air, water, and fish and for a longer time than is necessary.

Because of this, on behalf of Senator Snowe and myself, I am reintroducing legislation today that will confront this problem directly and that will reduce mercury pollution from all sources.

Our bill will reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90 percent by 2010. The cap-and-trade approach the Administration is pushing for in both the mercury rule and the President's Clear Skies proposal would only reduce emissions by less than 50 percent in the near future and possibly 70 percent over the next 15 years.

I introduce this legislation on the heels of two recent reports about the proposed EPA mercury rule, one from the Government Accountability Office and one from the EPA Inspector General. Both the IG and GAO reports severely criticize this Administration's mercury rulemaking process, saying it violated EPA policy, OMB guidance, Presidential Executive Orders and, in some instances, important provisions of the Clean Air Act.

I find this extremely troublesome. These are serious problems that greatly undermine the credibility of this Administration and that led them to create policies that fail to adequately protect the children in my state of Vermont and those all across the country. Rather than develop unbiased science-based limits on mercury pollution, they instead developed limits to fit predetermined numbers found in the President's industry friendly Clear Skies proposal.

The GAO found critical flaws with the economic analysis that basically prevent anyone from actually verifying the supposed benefits of the cap-and-trade approach proposed in both EPA's rule and in the Clear Skies plan. In simple terms you could call it another example of the smoke and mirrors this Administration has used to support its flawed dirty air pollution policies.

Not only were the supposed benefits of the cap-and-trade proposal virtually undocumented, they did not even bother to analyze whatsoever the health benefits to women and children from controlling toxic mercury. If protecting the health of women and children is truly important to this Administration, then why would they skip such an important analysis?

Not surprisingly, the EPA Inspector General confirmed what the GAO found. That EPA staff were directed to ignore the Clean Air Act and instead write a mercury rule to fit the weak mercury caps in the President's Clear Skies initiative.

Rather than let EPA's capable scientists and engineers do their jobs, they decided to play politics and bow to special interest groups. How else did industry favorable policies and analyses found in memos written by industry lobbyists make it into the rule, verbatim?

Both the GAO and IG reports make it clear that EPA staff were pressured to ignore parts of the Clean Air Act and to propose weaker mercury reductions than what are technically feasible and required under the law.

The President's Clear Skies proposal formed the basis for the flawed mercury rule, so it obviously shares the same flaws. These two reports confirm what many of us already suspected, that Clear Skies is based on biased analyses, inadequate and faulty justifications.

This Administration must stop the shenanigans. They need to stop downplaying the health risks of mercury pollution and stop catering to the special interests of the power industry and their lobbyists.

The clarity and diversity of voices opposed to their poor mercury policies are unprecedented in the 30-year history of EPA. Now is the time for them to listen to the voices of more than 600,000 citizens and more than one million sportsmen and women nationwide that sent EPA letters opposing the weak mercury rule.

Now is the time to listen to the nearly 100 national and local church leaders, representing dozens of denominations and millions of congregants, who sent a letter to President Bush expressing ``grave moral concern'' about his misleadingly titled Clear Skies Initiative.

I call on the Administration to take immediate action to correct the serious problems in EPA's proposed power plant mercury rules. Instead, I hope that we can begin to meet the targets set out in this bill and start protecting the health of women and children.

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

Mr. President, today I again will discuss mercury pollution and the serious and immediate health risks it poses to the health of citizens across our Nation.

This is not a new issue. We have known about mercury pollution for decades, and it remains one of, if not the last, major toxic pollutant without a comprehensive plan to control its release. We know where the sources mercury pollution are, we know where the pollution deposits, and we definitely know what harm it causes to people and to wildlife.

We need to confront mercury pollution because it is a threat to pregnant women and children. The Environmental Protection Agency's own scientists estimate that one of every six women of child-bearing age has elevated levels of mercury in her body above safe thresholds.

Mercury can cause neurological harm to children exposed to increased mercury levels while in the womb and during the first few years of their lives, which can lead to increased risk for learning disabilities, developmental delays, and other serious problems.

Just last year EPA scientists nearly doubled the previous estimate of the number of children at increased risk from exposure to elevated mercury levels in their mothers' wombs from 300,000 to over 600,000. This finding should alarm all of us and spur this Administration to promptly develop strong controls on mercury pollution from power plants that meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act and that fully protect women and children.

Yet unfortunately, this Administration has not done that. The Administration's new mercury rule and the so-

called ``Clear Skies'' proposal turn back progress, ignore available clean air technology, and will leave more toxic mercury in our air, water, and fish and for a longer time than is necessary.

Because of this, on behalf of Senator Snowe and myself, I am reintroducing legislation today that will confront this problem directly and that will reduce mercury pollution from all sources.

Our bill will reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90 percent by 2010. The cap-and-trade approach the Administration is pushing for in both the mercury rule and the President's Clear Skies proposal would only reduce emissions by less than 50 percent in the near future and possibly 70 percent over the next 15 years.

I introduce this legislation on the heels of two recent reports about the proposed EPA mercury rule, one from the Government Accountability Office and one from the EPA Inspector General. Both the IG and GAO reports severely criticize this Administration's mercury rulemaking process, saying it violated EPA policy, OMB guidance, Presidential Executive Orders and, in some instances, important provisions of the Clean Air Act.

I find this extremely troublesome. These are serious problems that greatly undermine the credibility of this Administration and that led them to create policies that fail to adequately protect the children in my state of Vermont and those all across the country. Rather than develop unbiased science-based limits on mercury pollution, they instead developed limits to fit predetermined numbers found in the President's industry friendly Clear Skies proposal.

The GAO found critical flaws with the economic analysis that basically prevent anyone from actually verifying the supposed benefits of the cap-and-trade approach proposed in both EPA's rule and in the Clear Skies plan. In simple terms you could call it another example of the smoke and mirrors this Administration has used to support its flawed dirty air pollution policies.

Not only were the supposed benefits of the cap-and-trade proposal virtually undocumented, they did not even bother to analyze whatsoever the health benefits to women and children from controlling toxic mercury. If protecting the health of women and children is truly important to this Administration, then why would they skip such an important analysis?

Not surprisingly, the EPA Inspector General confirmed what the GAO found. That EPA staff were directed to ignore the Clean Air Act and instead write a mercury rule to fit the weak mercury caps in the President's Clear Skies initiative.

Rather than let EPA's capable scientists and engineers do their jobs, they decided to play politics and bow to special interest groups. How else did industry favorable policies and analyses found in memos written by industry lobbyists make it into the rule, verbatim?

Both the GAO and IG reports make it clear that EPA staff were pressured to ignore parts of the Clean Air Act and to propose weaker mercury reductions than what are technically feasible and required under the law.

The President's Clear Skies proposal formed the basis for the flawed mercury rule, so it obviously shares the same flaws. These two reports confirm what many of us already suspected, that Clear Skies is based on biased analyses, inadequate and faulty justifications.

This Administration must stop the shenanigans. They need to stop downplaying the health risks of mercury pollution and stop catering to the special interests of the power industry and their lobbyists.

The clarity and diversity of voices opposed to their poor mercury policies are unprecedented in the 30-year history of EPA. Now is the time for them to listen to the voices of more than 600,000 citizens and more than one million sportsmen and women nationwide that sent EPA letters opposing the weak mercury rule.

Now is the time to listen to the nearly 100 national and local church leaders, representing dozens of denominations and millions of congregants, who sent a letter to President Bush expressing ``grave moral concern'' about his misleadingly titled Clear Skies Initiative.

I call on the Administration to take immediate action to correct the serious problems in EPA's proposed power plant mercury rules. Instead, I hope that we can begin to meet the targets set out in this bill and start protecting the health of women and children.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to address shortfalls in the budget resolution for key community and economic development programs. The budget before us includes a reduction of roughly $2 billion in Federal assistance to distressed and underserved communities. These cuts are shortsighted, ill-advised and represent a significant retreat from our long-standing commitment to invest in our Nation's communities. I join Senator Sarbanes in offering an amendment to restore funding for these programs to their fiscal year 2005 levels.

Last year the Federal Government invested $5.7 billion in communities across the country through a network of community and economic development programs. These programs were used to enhance social services, invest in infrastructure, promote affordable housing, provide public services and revitalize our downtowns. These investments changed the face of our cities and helped improve the standards of living across the Nation.

Unfortunately, the President has proposed to eliminate this network of programs and replace them with a single block grant at the Department of Commerce. Eighteen programs are on the chopping block, including the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, CDFI, the Community Services Block Grant, CSBG, Brownfields Economic Development Initiatives and the Economic Development Agency, EDA. I find this proposal underwhelming and unacceptable. To add insult to injury the President has proposed, and this budget includes, only $3.7 billion for community and economic development activities covered under this initiative--a 34-percent reduction in all programs combined. This is simply not adequate.

Each of the programs slated for elimination was created for a specific purpose, each serves targeted constituencies and addresses distinct needs. Consolidating and under funding these programs would leave critical gaps in the web of support for our Nation's cities and towns. I question the President's assertion that these programs are ineffective or inefficient and I question the wisdom of starting a new program at a new agency when the old system is not broken.

I am particularly concerned with the elimination of the Community Development Block Grant program. CDBG is the centerpiece of the Federal government's efforts to help States and localities meet the needs of low-income communities. CDBG funds vital housing rehabilitation, supportive services, public improvements and economic development projects in communities across the Nation. It serves more than 1,100 entitlement communities, urban counties and States, and more than 3,000 rural communities.

Last year over 95 percent of CDBG funds went to activities benefiting low and moderate income persons. CDBG housing projects assisted over 160,000 households, public service projects benefited over 13 million individuals, and economic development projects helped create or retain over 90,000 jobs. Vermont used CDBG grants to rehabilitate over 270 units of affordable housing and help create or preserve over 150 jobs.

I recently led a bipartisan letter with Senator Coleman to the Budget Committee attesting to the effectiveness of CDBG and urged that it be fully funded and retained at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fifty-seven members of the Senate joined me in this letter.

I ask unanimous consent to print this letter in the Record.

Mr. President, I believe you will find similar support for each of the other programs under this umbrella.

I challenge each Member to go back to their State and find one community that has not reaped the benefits of a CDBG investment. I challenge each member to visit with their local community action groups and hear how they use the Community Services Block Grant to support the neediest in their communities. These programs fill a real need and have proven results. A cut of $2 billion in Federal funds will result in the loss of at least $18 billion in matching funds from local and State governments and nonprofit and private sector investments. I fail to see the wisdom in dismantling programs that are so vital to our communities.

Our amendment would restore nearly $2 billion for community and economic development programs and urges the Senate to retain the administration of these programs at their current agencies. We fully pay for the increase in funds by closing egregious tax loop holes that over 90 Members of this Chamber has already gone on record in support of closing.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in support of this amendment and express their support for these important programs.

Mr. President, I am offering a sense-of-the-Senate amendment intended to head off the administration's plans to raid the Crime Victims Fund of more than $1.2 billion. I am joined by Senators Kennedy, Mikulski, Feingold, Biden, Durbin, Obama, and Dodd on this amendment.

We created this fund under the Victims Crime Act of 1984 to be used for the victims of crime. We made a solemn promise these funds would be there. The budget resolution rescinds all amounts remaining in the fund. It is wrong. We should not be saying your suffering--even though we promised with great fanfare, the President and everybody else promised that your suffering is going to be our concern. We should not say it is no longer that way.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk regarding Boys and Girls Clubs.

I ask to send a modification of the amendment to the desk. If they cannot find the amendment at the desk, I ask that it be in order to have the modification be the amendment to be considered. It is amendment No. 237.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment to restore funding for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to their current fiscal year level. From my days as a prosecutor, throughout my career in the Senate, I have seen the great value of Boys and Girls Clubs. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue.

We have a responsibility to make sure that our children are safe and secure. I know firsthand how well Boys and Girls Clubs work and what top-notch organizations they are. When I was a prosecutor in Vermont, I was convinced of the great need for Boys and Girls Clubs because we rarely encountered children from these kinds of programs. In fact, after I became a U.S. Senator, a police chief was such a big fan of the clubs that he asked me to help fund a Boys and Girls Club in his district rather than helping him add a couple more police officers.

In Vermont, Boys and Girls Clubs have succeeded in preventing crime and supporting our children. The first club was established in Burlington 63 years ago. Now we have 20 club sites operating throughout the State in Addison, Chittenden, Orange, Rutland, Washington, Windham and Windsor Counties. There are also four new Boys and Girls Clubs in the works in Winooski, Brattleboro, Barre and Vergennes. These clubs will serve well over 10,000 kids statewide.

As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have pushed for more Federal funding for Boys and Girls Clubs. Since 1998, Congress has increased Federal support for Boys and Girls Clubs from $20 million to $85 million in this fiscal year. Due in large part to this increase in funding, there now exist 3,500 Boys and Girls Clubs in all 50 States serving more than 4 million young people.

Because of these successes, I was both surprised and disappointed to see that the President requested a reduction of $25 million for fiscal year 2006. That request will leave thousands of children and their Clubs behind. We cannot allow such a thing to happen.

Last year, Senator Hatch and I worked together to shepherd into law a reauthorization of Justice Department grants at $80 million for fiscal year 2006, $85 million for fiscal year 2007, $90 million for fiscal year 2008, $95 million for fiscal year 2009 and $100 million for fiscal year 2010 to Boys and Girls Clubs

to help establish 1,500 additional Boys and Girls Clubs across the Nation with the goal of having 5,000 Boys and Girls Clubs in operation by December 31, 2010.

If we had a Boys and Girls Club in every community, prosecutors in our country would have a lot less work to do in the courtroom. Each time I visit a club in Vermont, I am approached by parents, educators, teachers, grandparents and law enforcement officers who tell me ``Keep doing this! These clubs give our children the chance to grow up free of drugs, gangs and crime.''

You cannot argue that these are just Democratic or Republican ideas, or conservative or liberal ideas--they are simply good sense ideas. We need safe havens where our youth--the future of our country--can learn and grow up free from the influences of drugs, gangs and crime. That is why Boys and Girls Clubs are so important to our children.

Across the Nation, Boys and Girls Clubs are preventing crime and supporting our children. My amendment will restore funding for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to the fiscal year 2005 level of $85 million. It provides a full offset at $50 million split evenly for the Boys and Girls Clubs and for deficit reduction by, for example, closing corporate tax loopholes. It also expresses the sense of the Senate on the value of Boys and Girls Clubs in their mission to inspire and enable all young people, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.

Congress has authorized and appropriated increased levels of funding for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in each of the last 8 years because of the clubs' proven role in discouraging youth gangs, drug abuse and youth violence. The budget resolution, following the President's lead, reduces funding for Boys and Girls Clubs by $25 million--from $85 million to $60 million--and completely ignores the 5- year authorization for the Boys and Girls Club grant program enacted by Congress and signed by the President in October 2004. A drop to $60 million in the coming fiscal year will likely result in an across-the- board decrease of 30 percent to club pass-thru grants, as well as a 30 percent cut to the overall increase in youth served. In connection with my amendment I have offered to substitute other offsets.

Mr. President, I urge the Senate to adopt the Leahy amendment to restore funding by $25 million for the 2006 fiscal year for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Our country's strength and ultimate success lies with our children. Our greatest responsibility is to help them inhabit this century the best way possible and we can help do that by supporting the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment.

I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 262

I join the Senator and urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. President, the President is setting a course that jettisons sound stewardship of fiscal policy and that ignores America's real needs, from education to first responders, and this budget resolution largely facilitates that reckless course.

Iraq's needs fare well in the President's spending priorities, but America's needs deserve to fare better. In record time, the administration's policies already have converted record surpluses into record deficits, and if these new policies are enacted, the worst is yet to come. More tax cuts for the wealthy, more borrowing, more deficits, and fewer investments in the priorities that really count in the everyday lives of America's families and communities.

We hear a lot in this town about ``compassionate conservatism.'' We hear speeches about declining family values and the breakdown of the traditional family. And we hear about streamlining Government and making it run more like a business based on cost-benefit analysis.

But the truth is, this budget before the Senate today is neither compassionate nor conservative. On the one hand it slashes, freezes, or totally eliminates funding for programs that help the poorest and the most vulnerable Americans, and on the other it uses smoke and mirrors to conceal the creation of a federal deficit larger than any other in our Nation's history.

This is a difficult time for many Americans, and this budget will only make things worse. Fifteen million American households cannot find affordable housing, yet this budget would force housing costs onto state and local governments.

Forty-four million Americans do not have health insurance, yet the budget that was brought to the floor would force the costs of Medicaid right back onto our cash-strapped State and local governments. I am pleased that we were able to soften this crushing blow to our states' Medicaid programs--for now--with a successful amendment. But there will be determined efforts to undo that vote at every step of the legislative process that lies ahead.

At a time when American companies are forced to hire from abroad because the students here lag behind in math and science skills, this budget would eliminate education programs by the dozen and severely underfund No Child Left Behind programs and funding for low-income schools. Perhaps most disturbingly, as we see more and more young troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan in need of long term medical and psychological care, this budget would dramatically reduce benefits and services to veterans.

I recently received a letter from a charitable organization that I believe does great work, Catholic Charities USA, describing their views on the proposed budget. I think it will surprise many members what they say. I ask unanimous consent that March 8, 2005, Catholic Charities letter addressed to me be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, what does this charitable religious group ask? Less funding for family planning efforts? No. More tax cuts for the wealthy? No. Tougher bankruptcy standards to help credit card companies? No. Class action relief for big corporations? No. Yet those have been the White House's and the Congress's priorities so far this year, and those are their priorities in this budget. But what this charitable religious group convincingly asks that we do is far different. They ask for the following: They ask Congress and the President to make a higher priority in the budget of federal programs that protect and support low-income families and other vulnerable people in our society. Oppose the inclusion of Medicaid cuts in Fiscal Year 2006 budget reconciliation. The budget resolution should not place arbitrary caps on discretionary spending. And if pay-as-you-go rules are included in budget reconciliation, they should be balanced.

Now, these sound like reasonable proposals that would help the neediest among us. Those sound like priorities that would benefit the 35 million people--including 12 million children--now living below the federal poverty line. These proposals truly sound compassionate.

Some claim that the cuts in this budget are steps toward fiscal responsibility. But anyone who looks closely at this budget will see that any semblance of fiscal responsibility is lost because this budget leaves out a number of Governmental costs in the outyears. It leaves out the costs of ongoing U.S. responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. It leaves out the cost of any repair of the alternative minimum tax system. It leaves out the cost of extending the President's tax cuts. And most incredibly, it leaves out any of the expected $4.5 trillion in costs for the President's plan to privatize Social Security. With these costs factored in to the equation, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2012, the United States deficit will reach $527 billion, making each family's share of the debt an astonishing $85,967.

I take very seriously this warning from the Government Accountability Office in their February 2005 report titled ``21st Century Challenges: Reexamining the Base of the Federal Government:''

Absent significant changes on the spending and/or revenue

sides of the budget, these long term deficits will encumber a

growing share of federal resources and test the capacity of

current and future generations to afford both today's and

tomorrow's commitments. Continuing on this unsustainable path

will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy,

our standard of living and ultimately our national security.

This budget will plunge the United States into red ink as far as the eye can see. We have an obligation to be honest about the true costs of our budget to the people who are paying for it. If we continue to follow this path of fiscal irresponsibility, we will be leaving our children and grandchildren with a debt that they cannot possibly begin to afford. We need to turn around the massive loss in total revenues that we have seen during the Bush years. We need to strengthen our current Social Security system so that less money is drained from the trust fund. And we need to realign our budget priorities with the real needs of the American people and discard these politically motivated budget cuts.

I may be seen in this town as a progressive Senator from Vermont, but I have a conservative message for my colleagues today. We cannot continue down this reckless path of financial irresponsibility that we have been led down for the past four years. We need to get our fiscal house in order. Foreign investors are growing weary of our record debt. Our sons and daughters in uniform--including those in our National Guard and Reserves--are in harm's way overseas and need to be properly equipped and to have the health insurance they deserve. And essential programs for disadvantaged people across the country are being slashed to squeeze out more money for tax cuts to the wealthiest among us. This is not the American way. We are a more compassionate people than this budget resolution assumes we are.

The American people deserve better than fiscal and budget policies such as these, and I will vote against this budget resolution.

Mr. President, our Nation has a proud history as the leading advocate of human rights around the world. Throughout this history, we have committed ourselves to numerous international human rights treaties, including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The bill that I introduce today will reaffirm our obligations under this Convention and reassure the world that we are a nation committed to the rule of law. I want to thank my cosponsors, Senators Durbin, Kennedy, and Dodd, for working with me on this legislation, and for their leadership on these issues.

It has been nearly a year since the first horrific images from Abu Ghraib prison appeared in the media, shocking the world and shattering the image of the United States. As the Administration circled the wagons and claimed the abuses were committed by a ``few bad apples,'' new details about the widespread abuse of detainees continued to emerge. I have spoken many times about the need for a comprehensive, independent investigation into the abuse of detainees. I have no doubt that such an investigation would be painful, but it is also a necessary step to moving forward.

Prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel is deeply troubling, but it is only one aspect of a broader and serious problem. While we must ensure that prisoners are treated humanely by our own personnel, we must also prohibit the use of so-called ``extraordinary renditions'' to send people to other countries where they will be subject to torture. Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture states that ``no State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.'' The bill I introduce today, the ``Convention Against Torture Implementation Act,'' will ensure that we honor this commitment.

We have addressed this issue before. Congress implemented Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, but this Administration has exploited loopholes in that law to transfer detainees to countries where they are subjected to torture. Attorney General Gonzales recently said that U.S. policy is not to send detainees ``to countries where we believe or we know that they're going to be tortured,'' but he acknowledged that we ``can't fully control'' what other nations do, and added that he does not know whether countries have always complied with their promises. In fact, they have not.

My proposed legislation does not broaden the obligations that we agreed to by ratifying the Convention Against Torture; it simply closes the loopholes in the 1998 law and ensures that we honor our commitment not to outsource torture to other countries.

The case of Maher Arar provides a chilling example of extraordinary rendition, and illustrates why this bill is necessary. Mr. Arar, a Canadian and Syrian citizen, was stopped by immigration officers at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 as he attempted to change planes on his way home to Canada from Tunisia. He claims that he was interrogated by an FBI agent and a New York City police officer, and that he was denied access to a lawyer. He further claims that he repeatedly told U.S. officials that he feared he would be tortured if deported to Syria. After being detained for nearly two weeks in a Federal detention center in New York, Mr. Arar was transferred by U.S. authorities to Syria and held at the Bush administration's request. Mr. Arar claims that he was physically tortured during the first two weeks of his detention in Syria, and that he was subjected to severe psychological abuse over the following 10 months, including being held in a grave-like cell and being forced to undergo interrogation while hearing the screams of other prisoners.

According to Administration officials, the CIA received diplomatic assurances from Syria that it would not torture Mr. Arar. But those assurances amounted to little more than a wink and a nod. Unnamed intelligence officials were later quoted in the press, saying that Arar confessed under torture in Syria that he had gone to Afghanistan for terrorist training. Syria has a well-documented history of state- sponsored torture. In fact, President Bush stated on November 7, 2003, that Syria has left ``a legacy of torture, oppression, misery, and ruin'' to its people.

Rather than rely on assurances that a country will not torture an individual, we must make our own unbiased determination. We already have the necessary information to do so. Each year, as required by law, the State Department publishes country reports on human rights practices. The most recent report on Syria states that its torture methods include ``administering electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; and using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim's spine.''

Some will argue that the post-9/11 world is different; that we must use any and all means available to extract information from suspected terrorists. Their argument might be more credible if every person who turned up on a terrorist watch list were, in fact, a terrorist. I cannot say whether Mr. Arar had ties to terrorist groups or not, but we do know that he was never charged with a crime. After enduring months of torture at the hands of the Syrians, he was released and sent back to Canada.

Nor was Mr. Arar's experience an isolated incident. A recent article in The New Yorker titled ``Outsourcing Torture'' provides disturbing details about how the administration embraced the use of rendition after the 9/11 attacks. Several press reports detail the CIA's use of its own Gulfstream V and Boeing 737 jets to secretly transfer detainees to countries around the world, where it is likely that they will be tortured.

The Convention Against Torture Implementation Act addresses the extraordinary rendition problem in a straightforward manner. It requires the State Department to produce annually a list of countries where torture is known to occur. The list would be based on information contained in the State Department's country reports on human rights practices. The bill prohibits the transfer of individuals to any country on this list or to any other country if there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be tortured. It also provides reasonable exceptions to this prohibition to allow for legal extraditions and removals.

Most importantly, the bill closes the diplomatic assurances loophole. We would no longer accept assurances from governments that we know engage in torture. Our past reliance on diplomatic assurances is blatantly hypocritical. How can our State Department denounce countries for engaging in torture while the CIA secretly transfers detainees to the very same countries for interrogation? The President says he does not condone torture, but transferring detainees to other countries where they will be tortured does not absolve our government of responsibility. By outsourcing torture to these countries, we diminish our own values as a nation and lose our credibility as an advocate of human rights around the world.

Last June, in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the President was asked if he had authorized abusive interrogation techniques. He replied,

``The authorization I issued was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations.'' The legislation I introduce today will help us fulfill the President's promise.

The Senate gave its advice and consent to the ratification of the Convention Against Torture more than a decade ago. It is time to honor our commitment and show the world that we will hold ourselves to the same standards that we demand of others.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a section-by-section analysis be printed in the Record.