Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the economic stimulus package.

In the last several years, millions of Americans have seen their primary source of wealth--their homes--plummet in value. As many as 2 million mortgage holders may lose their homes in this subprime crisis we are seeing. Investors around the world are now very concerned about the state of our economy. In my home State of Washington and across the country, people are very worried. We see Americans losing their jobs, we see them struggling to make ends meet, to buy groceries, to pay their power bills, even to afford health insurance. With our markets in decline, we have the opportunity now to give this economy a jump-start and help prevent a full-fledged recession.

Experts are telling us that taking action now to stimulate the economy by giving millions of taxpayers a rebate could help increase production and lift employment. Businesses--especially American manufacturers--need people to buy their products, and Americans need money to spend on those. I believe a quick stimulus bill that gives Americans some of their tax money back could make a real difference. But we also have to ensure that whatever action we take, it is temporary and targeted to where it can do the most good, and I am optimistic we can do that.

I wish to thank our House colleagues for coming to a quick agreement with the President on an economic stimulus package. Their proposal was a very good start, and I wish to thank Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley for getting to work immediately on a Senate plan. I hope we can all agree to get a bill to the President by February 15 and get this economy moving again.

In the last few days, I have talked with several economists who have appeared before our Budget Committee. They have shared their analysis of what Congress can do to prevent our economy from a full recession, and I think the legislation that was passed by the Senate Finance Committee largely meets their recommendations.

The Finance Committee bill would give middle and lower income Americans a $500 rebate check. It ensures that seniors who receive Social Security will get that rebate and, importantly, it extends the rebate to ensure that our disabled veterans who would not have qualified under the legislation at this point would get that rebate as well. I think this is particularly important. It restores the income cap so the rebates will go to the people who need it the most.

Any bill we pass has to ensure the rebates are targeted at seniors and working families. They are the backbone of our economy. They are the ones who need the money most, and they are the most likely to spend it. So you can be sure I will continue to fight any proposal that changes those provisions.

But I wish to add a few words to underscore the importance of including seniors in this bill. More than 20 million seniors depend on Social Security for their income, and they spend 92 percent of it--a greater proportionate share than all other adults--and seniors are among those who are hurt the worst during an economic downturn because of increasing health care costs. As our Finance Committee Chairman pointed out, seniors have worked hard all their lives, they pay taxes all their lives, and many of them still pay sales, property, and, of course, other taxes. So leaving seniors out of any stimulus bill would overlook their importance to our economy. It would make our stimulus bill much less effective and, most importantly, it would be enormously unfair.

I am encouraged by the progress we have made so far. I think a temporary, targeted stimulus is the shot in the arm our country needs. I have been pleased to see the President has been willing to work with us in Congress. I also believe there is a great deal more we can and should do that will help millions of struggling families and turn our economy around over the longer term. I know many of my colleagues agree. So I hope the President continues to see the value of working with us on longer term investments that will pay off for years to come.

One of those investments that I have high hopes will get us back to restoring our economy is a summer jobs program for teenagers. The unemployment rate for teenagers has jumped in the last year. For all teens, it is 17 percent, up from 13 percent in December of 2006. Among African Americans who are ages 16 to 19, it is almost 35 percent as of last month. Thirty-five percent unemployment for African-American youth between the ages of 16 and 19.

A summer jobs program would have a number of immediate and long-term benefits. We all know teenagers are likely to quickly spend any money they earn, so of course it would provide an immediate economic stimulus. But it also would work to begin to create a new generation of workers. Research shows teens who get work experience earn more over their lifetime.

Last November, I held a field hearing of my HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety at South Seattle Community College. We focused on the need to create a number of pathways, multiple pathways to career success for our young workers. We had representatives from the private sector, organized labor, and they all talked about the need for a new generation of skilled workers, while students said they were not getting enough information about career opportunities and options. I heard about the real need for green-collar workers and the dire need for skilled trade workers who drive our country's economic engines. Quite frankly, attracting these young people to our labor force is something I believe is vital to our economic future in this Nation.

But the summer jobs program I have been talking about has another benefit for our communities. Teens with jobs are less likely to commit crimes or join gangs. A columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a story that caught my eye a few weeks back. It was about a 17- year-old boy who had been killed in what police believe was a gang- related shooting. The columnist, Robert Jamieson, interviewed some of the boy's friends for the piece he wrote. One friend said the boy had applied for nearly a dozen jobs, but couldn't get anyone to call him back, so he turned to other means. Tragically, we lost him in a gang- related shooting.

Tragically, too many of our young people face the same choice between joining a gang or sticking with a discouraging job search. That story, I believe, illustrates why a jobs program for young people is one of the most important investments we can make in all our futures.

I wish to work with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to provide the opportunities and the resources to ensure that this generation of workers and the next have the skills employers need so we can compete in the global economy.

I also believe we can create jobs and stimulate the economy by making desperately needed investments in our infrastructure, including our roads, bridges, levees, and mass transit systems across this country. Investing in our infrastructure would create jobs and increase spending on construction materials that would immediately infuse millions of dollars into our economy. Do you know that for every billion dollars of Federal spending on highways and transit, we create a whopping 47,500 jobs. That is putting people to work. Those investments would pay off in the long term as well by helping ensure that our roads and bridges and mass transit systems are safe and they are strong.

Finally, we have to do more to address the housing crisis itself that has spread across this country. While the economy may be headed toward recession, the housing market is in a depression. According to the New York Times, the number of homes set for foreclosure is higher than at any time since the Great Depression. We are seeing communities in this country where people are literally abandoning their homes because they cannot afford their mortgages, and they cannot find a willing buyer. In this country, home ownership has always been a sign of prosperity, but now, for millions of Americans, it has become a trap. With each and every foreclosure, the foundation of every one of our communities weakens as well.

There were warning signs more than a year ago that this crisis could affect the entire Nation, but President Bush took a hands-off approach and ignored the problem. Regulators failed to take aggressive action. Now economists tell us the worst is yet to come.

Our economic strength depends on Americans having a safe and stable place to live and raise their families. Our economy will not be stable again until this housing crisis is corrected. We have to take action to help prevent more drastic problems, and we have to ensure that this situation can't happen again. Families facing foreclosure must be able to get mortgage counseling or help in refinancing their mortgages.

The Finance Committee bill includes as well critical tax relief which I support for businesses that were directly impacted by the home building industry, which has, as we all know, now come to a standstill. We must reform the lending system to prevent more families from losing their homes. I think we should have two main goals.

First of all, we need to modernize the FHA to enable the Federal Government to offer an alternative to nontraditional loans we have seen explode in the past several years. Secondly, we need to ensure that Government lenders can replace some of the worst subprime loans with sound, traditional mortgages. I believe those investments will have a positive ripple effect on the economy for years to come. I guarantee I will be back on this floor many times over the next several months pushing this Congress to take action.

The current economic trouble we face is a direct result of this administration's failure to plan for the future and lead us in the right direction. Similar to any family who prepares to balance its checkbook, we have to take stock of our finances and get our books back in order. American families understand how to live within their means. When they sit down and work out their yearly budget, they consider all their costs, decide how to invest in savings, and balance their checkbooks. The Bush administration inherited a budget surplus, but they squandered it with policies paid for by borrowing funds from future generations of Americans.

By waging a war in Iraq and failing to be honest about the true costs of that war, President Bush has racked up a mountain of debt with no strategy whatsoever to pay it back. Instead of looking out for the needs of everyday Americans, he allowed his friends on Wall Street to take massive paychecks, while allowing predatory lenders to work unregulated. At the same time, the Bush administration has failed to invest in our roads, bridges, in health care, in education, in energy independence, and in our safety here at home. These are things that help our citizens get to work, stay healthy and safe, and these are things that keep our economy stable over the long term. The longer we go without addressing our

crumbling highways, our skyrocketing health care costs or our dependence on foreign oil, the higher the costs will be when we have no choice and limited options to fix those problems. We saw that with Katrina. We saw it with the Minnesota bridge collapse.

Every family knows ignoring the need to spend wisely on things you depend on and failing to live within your means is a recipe for serious trouble down the road. So while the economic stimulus we are working on will do a lot of good in the short term, we have to insist that we deal with the real causes of our economic problems. It is time to take a lesson from American families: balance the budget, be honest about the true costs of this war, and think seriously about how we move forward. It is time to insist the Federal regulators who are supposed to watch out for economic trouble actually do their jobs.

It is time to stop ignoring our needs right here at home. President Bush has shown a willingness to work with Congress on this economic stimulus package. I hope he continues to see the value in working with us on the longer term policies that our economy and American families badly need.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to talk about a subject that is very important to all of us. I listened to the Senator from Texas lamenting the fact that the war in Iraq has not been on the front pages of the paper recently.

Well, I am here today to say: Actually, it has been. In fact, on the front page of the Washington Post today, an article, ``Soldier Suicides at Record Levels. Increase Linked to Long Wars, Lack of Army Resources.''

We are hearing several news outlets today reporting on the front pages of papers and in headlines that suicides among our Active-Duty soldiers are at the highest rates since the Army began keeping records back in 1980.

According to those reports, 121 soldiers took their own lives last year. That is nearly 20 percent more than in 2006. The number of attempted suicides and self-inflicted injuries has dramatically increased since the start of this Iraq war. Those findings are tragic.

I know all our hearts go out to those families, their friends, and to the fellow soldiers of each one of those service men and women. Our great servicemembers who face deployment after deployment without the rest, recovery, and treatment they need are at the breaking point.

Many of them have seen their best friends killed, they have seen other untold horrors. Yet we still are expecting them to head back to the battlefield to perform unaffected by what they have seen or gone through.

While military suicide is back in the press today, those of us who travel across our States, who go home and talk to servicemembers and veterans who are struggling with mental health care, we know this is an issue, we know it all too well. We know that for family members who live through this tragedy, the pain stays long after those headlines fade.

We owe it to our servicemembers and their families to be outraged when these numbers are going up and up and up and not down. We owe it to them to demand action. On Monday, in his State of the Union Address, the President called on us, Congress, to improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope and promise and dignity.

Well, Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care system. We have worked hard and pushed through legislation to require the military and the VA to destigmatize mental health treatment, to help increase the awareness of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and do further reach on traumatic brain injury.

But it takes more than money being thrown at the problem, it takes leadership and it takes a change in the culture of war. The President can make all the platitudes he wants, but as Commander in Chief, he needs to lead by example and show he understands what these never- ending deployments are doing to our troops and to our veterans.

While the Department of Defense has taken some action, today's report makes me deeply concerned that progress has not been made and that these programs have not been implemented throughout the system. Some of our soldiers are telling us all they get is a 1-800 number to call if they need help.

Well, many soldiers need a real person to talk to. They need psychiatrists and they need psychologists who understand the horrors of war and the stresses these troops feel after serving their third or their fourth or even their fifth tour of duty in an urban theater.

Too many of our troops today say they cannot even get the military to understand when they are crying out for help. As I said, the Washington Post reported this morning on the military suicides, with an update on Lieutenant Whiteside. The Post wrote about this case the first time in December. She is the 25-year-old medic, an Army medic who attempted suicide in theater. Then she was charged by her superiors with endangering another soldier.

Now, I met with her father before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee when we were hearing the nomination of General Peake. Lieutenant Whiteside had experienced a mental breakdown from stress serving in Iraq and she suffered from ``demonstrably severe depression,'' according to her doctors.

But the story revealed that medical opinion was brushed aside in her case and her superiors in the field said: ``Mental illness is an excuse.''

Well, this past Monday, she was awaiting the Army's decision whether she was going to be court-martialed or not, and she swallowed dozens of pills in another suicide attempt. The Post reported today she left a note that explained: ``I am very disappointed in the Army.''

According to this article, Lieutenant Whiteside is now in stable physical condition and the charges have finally been dismissed.

But, unfortunately, she is not the only soldier who has struggled to get the Defense Department to understand the real trauma of military service. Her story and the statistics that are being reported today are a reflection of something many of my colleagues and I have said over and over: A prolonged war has stretched our military thin and is taking a tragic toll on the brave men and women who serve in our all-volunteer Army and military. They deserve more.

Some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have raised concerns that prolonged and repeated deployments are placing the overall health of our servicemembers at risk. David Rudd, who is the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Texas Tech University and a former Army psychologist, was quoted in this article this morning as saying the Army suicide rates pose:

Real questions about whether you can have an Army this size

with multiple deployments.

Over the past weeks, both the President and White House officials have hinted that a reduction of troops in Iraq is likely only temporary. As a result, I continue to be very concerned about the readiness of our military and our ability to sustain these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think we need to ask the question: With the reality of today's reports and the knowledge that extended troop deployments are stretching our military readiness, I want to know, what is the Pentagon's plan to address and decrease the number of Army suicides and suicide attempts?

This afternoon, I wrote a letter to Secretary Gates, and I asked him that question. I want to hear his response. We need to know that the change in culture is more than a talking point; we need to know and be assured our senior leaders in the military are ensuring that their words and programs are being executed out in the field.

Our troops are heroes who are sacrificing for this Nation. It is time for this Government to wake up and provide them with the care they need.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote on which cloture was not invoked on the Rockefeller-Bond substitute amendment and move to lay that motion on the table.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to join with the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from North Dakota to urge our colleagues to support this legislation that is going to make a critical difference to thousands of American Indians in Washington State and across our country.

I join in the words of my colleague, the Senator from Alaska. She mentioned several of the tribes in Washington State. This has an important impact on them. I agree with her and thank her for the tremendous work on this issue, helping us bring it to the floor and hopefully to passage so we can make a difference.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It does reauthorize and update the health care services our Government provides to American Indians and Alaska Natives. This bill will allow our Indian health clinics and our hospitals to modernize their services and enable them to provide better preventive care. These services are vitally important in Indian Country, where our tribal members suffer from high rates of diabetes and other chronic illnesses. Our Government has a legal responsibility to provide health care for American Indians, but we have a moral responsibility to ensure we provide the best care possible.

The Indian Health Care Improvement Act has not been reauthorized since 1992, and in the years since it expired in 2001, what Congress has done is simply appropriate money for health care programs without examining this act to see how we can improve it. This bill we are now considering takes important steps toward ensuring we are providing the best and the most cost-effective care. It is long time past to pass it.

The health disparity between American Indians and the general population is great. The numbers show why this bill deserves our attention now. The infant mortality rate among Indians is 150 percent greater than for Caucasians. Indians, in fact, are 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. Indians suffer from greater rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the suicide rate among Indians is more than twice the national average. In fact, life expectancy for American Indians is nearly 6 years less than the rest of the U.S. population.

An example from my home State of Washington helps to illustrate the impact these numbers have on Indian communities.

Three years ago, in a 6-month period, the Skokomish Tribe, which has a reservation near Hood Canal, lost 9 of its 1,000 members. Among them were two children, two young adults, and five elders. One of those elders was Bruce Miller. He was a Vietnam veteran and a nationally known artist and spiritual leader. Bruce helped restore ceremonies that were once banned by the U.S. Government. His work to prevent drug abuse and rebuild tribal customs will be sorely missed. Bruce was only 60 years old when he passed away.

Many of the Skokomish Tribe members died of conditions that are all too common on our Indian reservations--drug overdose, heart disease, cancer, diabetes. These conditions we know are preventable, and many in Indian Country have been working very hard to reverse the numbers I mentioned. But their work has been hindered because Indian health services are badly in need of updating.

The most important thing the Indian Health Care Improvement Act does is help to modernize those services. In the last 16 years, as the Senator from Alaska said, we have revolutionized the way we approach chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Doctors' offices and health clinics around the country now emphasize the importance of eating right, staying healthy. We have changed where we provide services. Instead of treating elderly and chronically ill patients in the hospital, more and more people get care at home or in a community clinic. And now, of course, it is standard practice to coordinate mental health and substance abuse and domestic violence prevention services. But while we have done all that, health care for Indians has gone badly out of date. We are still providing services today as if it was 1992.

The bill we are considering today will help bring health care for Indians into the 21st century and enable their clinics to do more than treat symptoms and instead focus on prevention and mental health.

It is particularly important to ensure Indian health clinics can provide up-to-date care because for many of our tribal members, those clinics are the only source of health care available. For tribal members in rural Washington State and across the West, visiting a doctor off the reservation often means driving for hours to get to the nearest big city. In some of our remote areas, some tribal members never see a doctor off the reservation. They are born in Indian hospitals, they see that doctor for their entire life, and they die in the same hospital.

This bill also funds urban Indian health clinics. In recent years, President Bush and some of my colleagues have questioned the need to provide health services to Indians who live in and around major cities. In fact, disappointingly, the President's budget routinely eliminates funding for the 34 urban Indian health centers that exist in this country, and every year Congress restores the funding because those centers serve thousands of Indians, many of whom are uninsured and would not get care elsewhere. The doctors and the nurses who staff those urban clinics specialize in the conditions many Indians face. Even more importantly, they are sensitive to the cultural needs of their patients. That makes the difference all too often when a patient is deciding whether to seek care or to do preventive treatment and it increases the chance that an Indian will continue to get the treatment they need, as I said, for preventive or even mental health care.

I am disappointed Republican objections have limited how far the important improvements for urban Indians in this bill can go, but this bill, as now written, does ensure those important health centers stay open. My State has two of them. I have to tell you, I have heard firsthand from a number of our tribal members how important and critical they are.

Both our urban and our rural Indian health clinics also give tribes more decisionmaking power over health programs so they can determine how best to serve their people. In Washington State, we have the Nisqually Health Clinic that is located near Olympia. It offers a community health representative program that trains the tribal members about how to provide basic preventive care and education to help their elders and members who suffer from diabetes or substance abuse.

We need to give programs such as those a boost so they can grow and they can succeed so other tribes can try similar programs. Reauthorizing the Indian Health Care Improvement Act will help us to do that.

Finally, this bill also makes important improvements to the medical benefits provided to tribal veterans. Tribal veterans, as many of my colleagues know, have served throughout this Nation's history with great honor and valor. In fact, American Indians have served in higher numbers than any other ethnic minority in this Nation. But despite that extraordinary commitment to this Nation, veterans services for American Indians oftentimes falls short of what is available for non-Indians.

Fortunately, this bill we are considering changes current law to allow the Secretary to enter into or expand arrangements to share medical facilities and services with the Department of Veterans Affairs. That provision requires consultation with the affected Indian tribes before entering into those agreements, and it requires reimbursement to the IHS, tribes or tribal organizations.

I wish to repeat something I said earlier because it is important. Providing health care to Indians is part of our Government's trust responsibility. It dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Congress enacted the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 1976 to better carry out that duty. In President Ford's signing statement, he said:

Indian people still lag behind the American people as a

whole in achieving and maintaining good health. I am signing

this bill because of my own conviction that our first

Americans should not be last in opportunity.

Thirty-two years later, we still have a long way to go toward achieving that

goal, but we can take some important steps by reauthorizing this bill now.

Housing and Emergency Preparedness

While I have the floor this afternoon, I wish to change gears and talk about two other issues I heard a lot about at home--housing and emergency preparedness--because I am hearing now disturbing rumors that the President's upcoming budget proposal is going to recommend cuts in those two areas.

First, I wish to emphasize how important it is we continue to provide Federal support for police, fire, and emergency responders in all our communities. This past month, I held several roundtables with our first responders in Washington State to hear what they need to protect their communities, and at every stop, they told me they have already been squeezed by budget cuts and that they have spent the last several years trying to do more with a lot less. They said they are very worried about what it will do if their budgets are cut again.

Emergency responders in our small and rural communities are especially concerned because they depend on Federal grants to keep their communities safe. Let me give one example of the impact these grants have had in my State that I think illustrates why Federal support is so important.

A month ago, storms causing major flooding and wind damage slammed into western Washington. Thousands of our homes on the coast and in the inland counties were flooded and damaged severely. Grays Harbor County, which sits along the Pacific coast, was one of the hardest hit. But Grays Harbor emergency officials told me they were ready because they had recently done exercises to practice emergency response training.

When those horrendous storms hit, first responders in Grays Harbor County relied on vital equipment, basic radio and other safety gear. Without that training, without that equipment, more people in Grays Harbor would have been hurt in that storm. Grays Harbor had both of those thanks to Federal homeland security grants.

From the flooding in Washington State to Hurricane Katrina, to California wildfires, we have had too many opportunities now to witness the need for effective predisaster planning and response support. Real security in our communities does not come cheap.

Now, I have already written to President Bush to warn him against cutting money for port security, transit security, and emergency management grants. I am prepared to fight for these grants. Supporting and protecting Americans here at home has to be a priority for all of us.

Housing

When I was home, I also heard from citizens and lenders, housing counselors, people involved in the housing issues in Washington State who are very concerned about the potential cuts to housing grants they are hearing about.

Washington State is fortunate that the economy is still relatively strong compared to the rest of the Nation. But we are seeing signs of trouble. In fact, I heard from a housing official who worked in Kitsap County, one of our more rural counties. She has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who are now seeking housing counseling. She told me that last fiscal year, their two full-time housing counselors helped homeowners with 50 defaults. They saw that many people in this first quarter alone. In fact, in the 2 days she was with me and others talking about housing, she said she went back home and there were seven more calls on her answering machine about foreclosures.

The Federal Government has to do everything possible to address this wave of foreclosures. One way we can do that is investing in housing counseling. It is vital for troubled mortgage holders to get help early so they can avoid foreclosure and keep their homes.

At a time when we are trying to work to help repair the economy and ensure people can pay their bills, we cannot afford any cuts in our budget for that safety net for our homeowners.

We also have to ensure that low-income Americans who are not homeowners also get help. That means we have to continue to support programs such as Section 8, homeless assistance, and CDBG, which will help keep our communities strong through this and help make sure our low-income residents have a home and can avoid homelessness.

Next month, when we get the President's budget sent to us, you can count on me, I will be scrutinizing every word of it, and I will be back on this floor, if necessary, to fight funding cuts to those programs that are so important to keeping our communities strong.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as chairman of the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Subcommittee, I have mixed feelings as I rise to talk about the transportation and housing division of this Omnibus appropriations bill.

This bill is the result of a lot of hard work, and there is a lot to be proud of. At the same time, I regret that over the last month, we have had to strip some $2.1 billion in resources from it. As all of us know, the Omnibus bill before us has a total cost that is slightly higher than the levels requested by President Bush, and much of the press coverage surrounding this bill has highlighted the fact that we have shrunk this bill down to the levels that were requested by the President. But when it comes to the transportation and housing division of this bill, I wish to make it clear to my colleagues that the budget reflected in this bill is not the President's budget. Instead, this bill makes great strides in rejecting President Bush's hardest and harshest cuts in transportation and housing, and it includes critical initiatives that are new that will make important improvements to transportation safety.

I am proud of what this bill accomplishes. It provides funding to hire and train new air traffic controllers, and it rejects the President's efforts to cut funding to modernize the air traffic control system. It responds to our need to address crumbling infrastructure, especially our Nation's highway bridges, and it responds to the worsening congestion our families experience on our highways and our runways.

This bill rejects the efforts by the administration to slash funding that would ease congestion at our airports. It rejects his efforts to push Amtrak into bankruptcy and leave millions of Americans stranded on the platform. And it rejects his attempt to walk away from the needs of millions of Americans who depend on the Federal Government to keep a roof over their heads, including our elderly and our disabled.

Finally, this bill reaches a helping hand to the millions of families who are worried at this holiday season about whether they will be able to keep their homes in the coming year. Millions of people are facing foreclosure on their homes in the coming months as mortgage payments are rising out of control. There are communities in this country where every third home or even every other home is being abandoned by homeowners who cannot make their payments.

This bill addresses that crisis by targeting almost a quarter of a billion dollars to ensure that our families get the counseling they need. This kind of housing counseling can make all the difference for homeowners who are struggling to make payments and to keep their homes. The amount this bill provides for housing counseling is more than 4\1/ 2\ times the level that was asked for by President Bush.

Earlier this year, my very able partner Senator Bond and I held numerous hearings on the most important transportation and housing challenges that face this Nation. Together we negotiated every line of a very complicated spending bill with each other and then with our colleagues in the House. We were able to put together an appropriations bill that was reported, in fact, unanimously by our committee and passed the Senate with 88 votes. We then negotiated a conference agreement that earned the signature of every single conferee on both sides of the aisle on both sides of the Capitol. So we produced a truly bicameral, bipartisan bill.

Unfortunately, even though House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate

Democrats, and Senate Republicans were agreed on a balanced package that did address our transportation and housing needs, the one person who did not agree with us was President Bush. Because of that, we are blocked from sending our Transportation bipartisan bill to his desk for a veto.

Since that time, we have had a couple of very difficult negotiations and, as a result, we have had to strip almost $2.1 billion of funding out of our part of the bill. There are real consequences to those additional cuts on which the President insisted. Transit riders across the country are going to ride in outdated buses because there is not enough money to replace them. Construction of new light rail systems in some of our most congested cities is going to be slow. Discretionary highway programs have been stripped of the dollars that would have been available for national competitions.

Because of the President's demands, we were required to cut matching funds that we were sending to the States to support expanded passenger rail service. We reduced the initial commitment made by our conferees to expand the number of family unification vouchers. That is a program that provides the necessary housing assistance so foster children and their struggling parents can be reunited in a stable household.

We were required to slow the release of a satellite navigation throughout our national aerospace.

As I said, I have mixed feelings about this bill. We were dealt a very difficult hand by the President's budget demands, and in order to live within those constraints and move forward, we had to make some difficult cuts, and those cuts mean we have had to put off important investments in transit, in highways, and in community development, among many other areas.

Still, I appreciate the work of my colleagues to ensure that this bill rejects the President's worst transportation and housing cuts. Instead, this bill responds to the most critical needs in transportation and housing and makes sure our broken bridges and highways get repaired, that our crowded airports are safe, Amtrak is protected from bankruptcy, and we are protecting our most vulnerable citizens from homelessness.

Finally, I do want to spend a couple minutes on a related subject. In the last few days, the Appropriations and Finance Committees were able to reach an agreement on the way FAA funding will be made available in the future. I am letting my colleagues know, this past fiscal year was supposed to be the year Congress finished important legislation to reauthorize our Federal aviation programs. That included the core authorizations for the operations of the FAA, as well as the agency's procurement budget, research budget, and Federal grant program that are used to improve and expand our Nation's airports.

I regret Congress was not able to make more progress on the legislation this year, but thankfully this appropriations bill now includes a number of important authorities and funding that will keep the FAA functioning and keep the airport and airway trust fund solvent.

This conference agreement extends the current aviation excise taxes until the end of February, and it includes provisions to extend the existing war insurance risk program, as well as third-party liability protections.

The bill also includes funding that rejects the President's proposed cuts to essential air service which guarantees air service to a lot of our rural communities, something about which many of us care. And it rejects the President's proposed cuts to our effort to modernize the air traffic control system and invest in airport infrastructure.

Congress has not been able to finish the FAA reauthorization process in part because of the disagreements among the Senate committees about what their role is in overseeing and funding FAA programs. There are also disagreements about what type and mix of taxes and fees are supposed to be used to fund the FAA. But I am pleased to report that we have now successfully worked through one of those disagreements. Over the last 2 days, the two committees have come to an understanding about how funding for FAA programs will be moving forward.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the exchange of letters between the leadership of the two committees.

Mr. President, the final paragraph of the letter our Appropriations Committee received from Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley of the Finance Committee states that they look forward to working with our Appropriations Committee as partners in advancing the needs of our aviation system.

As one member of the subcommittee that oversees aviation funding, I express my strong interest in working as a partner with both committees to come up with a bill that fully addresses the future needs of our national aviation system. I hope that important effort will be one of the Senate's first priorities when we reconvene next year.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Virginia for their tremendous work on this legislation.

I am glad we are considering this bill. And I have come to the floor today to highlight a section of this legislation that's especially important to me because it will make a huge difference in the lives of our servicemembers and veterans--the Wounded Warriors Act.

The Wounded Warriors Act has already passed the Senate once on its own. To ensure it passed Congress this year, it was added to this Defense bill, too. It is taken longer than I had hoped to get to this point. But today, I'm optimistic that we can pass this bill, and get these much-needed improvements to our troops and our veterans soon. This is a major step toward real change.

I want to talk about how we got to this point, and why this bill is so necessary. This February, the Washington Post stunned us all with a series of articles on the squalid conditions some of our servicemembers were living in at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The articles described infestations of mice and cockroaches in some Walter Reed facilities. They described moldy walls, and broken ceilings in the rooms servicemembers were living in while they waited to get care. And the articles described how many of our servicemembers and their families feel trapped in a bureaucratic ``Catch-22,'' while they try for months to work out their disability ratings.

I am proud that Democrats led a bipartisan effort in the Senate to address these problems aggressively. The Wounded Warriors legislation we have now is the result of a historic partnership between two of our committees--the Veterans' Affairs Committee,

chaired by Senator Akaka, and the Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator Levin. I want to thank both Senators for their leadership on this.

Together, we convened hearings, reached across the aisle, and crafted legislation that will make sure that the men and women who have served our country so honorably get the care they deserve when they come home.

The more we dug for information, the more we learned about the huge problems we need to address. Last winter, when I visited Walter Reed with our majority leader and other members of the Leadership team, the servicemembers we talked to weren't just frustrated with their living conditions. They had reached the end of their patience trying to navigate a disability system, which made absolutely no sense to them-- or to us.

And the problem was not limited to servicemembers at Walter Reed. I went home and met with servicemembers in medical hold in Washington State--more than 200 people showed up. They, too, were angry and frustrated with their situation. They told me story after story about how they had to struggle to get their disability ratings and fight for the care they needed.

It was clear from these meetings that the Defense Department and the VA don't have a joint strategy for caring for servicemembers and veterans, and that they use inconsistent ratings for disabilities. Their paperwork doesn't even match. How you're rated as disabled by the military is completely different than how you're rated by the VA.

The result is that our servicemembers get caught in the middle. They get lost in the bureaucracy, while trying to get the treatment they need to recover. Too often, our injured servicemembers are the ones trying to figure out how to work out the transition. It's frustrating, and it's completely unacceptable.

Other servicemembers told us that they have had to struggle to get the right diagnosis for their injuries. Our military has long known about the mental wounds that can be caused by war. But many servicemembers still said they got little or no help to cope with mental illness.

I talked to men and women who said they knew something was wrong. They felt different. And they forgot little things--basic things. They described not being able to find their keys after they put them down. They couldn't remember their kids' birthdays. They couldn't even remember what they'd done the year--or even the day--before.

One young man from a rural community in my home State of Washington said he came home and felt isolated, unable to talk to his childhood friends. He was 22, but he couldn't remember what he'd learned in school just a few years ago. He said he didn't know who he was any more, and he eventually tried to take his own life.

That young man had a traumatic brain injury. He had been around not one--not five--not 20--but more than 100 explosions while he was on the ground in Iraq. Even so, he wasn't screened for TBI when he was discharged. No one asked how he was doing. And no one followed up when he got home to ask how he was adjusting to civilian life.

This should not happen to any of our servicemembers who have served us honorably. Yet that young man's experience is all too common.

As a result of our investigation, Democrats said, ``No more.'' It's simply unacceptable that after fighting for our country, our servicemembers have had to return and fight against our government for the care they deserve.

By passing the Wounded Warriors Act, we are moving aggressively to make sure that these men and women are treated well when they come home. The Wounded Warriors Act lays out a clear path directing the Defense Department and the VA to address shortfalls in the care of our wounded warriors.

It requires the Defense Department and VA to work together to develop a comprehensive plan to prevent, treat and diagnose TBI and PTSD. It creates DOD centers of excellence for TBI and PTSD to improve our understanding of these devastating injuries. If directs the two agencies to develop a joint electronic health record so that critical medical files aren't lost as our wounded troops move from battlefield doctors, to medicals holds, and on to the VA.

The act requires the military and the VA to work together on disability ratings. This is the first step toward bridging the gap between the VA and the Defense Department. And it requires the military to adopt the VA presumption that a disease or an injury is service- connected when our heroes--who were healthy prior to service--have spent 6 months or more on active duty.

The bill also addresses many of the horrifying conditions that our troops found themselves in at Walter Reed and other facilities. It ensures our servicemembers get adequate severance pay. And it can provide medical care for the families of recovering servicemembers.

In addition to the Wounded Warriors Act, the Defense Authorization bill includes important provisions passed by the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee aimed at improving care for servicemembers once they reach the VA system.

As you know, my colleagues on the Committee and I have worked hard to get these improvements in place, so I want to take a moment to mention them as well.

Under this bill we will require that an initial mental health evaluation be-provided to veterans or returning servicemembers no more than 30 days after they ask for one. We will extend the period of eligibility for VA health care for combat veterans of the Persian Gulf War and future conflicts. That time period will increase from 2 years to 5 years after discharge or release. And we'll ensure improvements to the quality of care for veterans with TBI by requiring age-appropriate nursing care, and plans to help servicemembers recover and transition back into civilian life.

While this bill is an important step toward providing our wounded warriors with the level of care they deserve and have earned, it's by no means the last step. Much work remains to be done by the DOD and the VA. We in Congress will have to keep a close watch to make sure the Defense Department and the VA are meeting the goals we've set out here.

And as a member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I can assure you that I will be doing just that.

I voted against going to war in Iraq. But I've said consistently that no matter how you feel about the war, we have an obligation as leaders to make sure that our men and women who fight for us get the care they deserve. I'm particularly proud of the way Democrats moved to address the problems facing our returning servicemembers, which clearly wasn't a priority for the Bush Administration.

Democrats said: ``Not on our watch. Not any more.''

The Wounded Warrior bill provides real solutions for our troops and veterans from the battlefield to the VA and everywhere in between. Our servicemembers have always answered the call of duty, but for too long, our Government has not answered theirs. I'm proud to say those days are over. This bill is part of that commitment. Let's pass it today, so we can get started on these improvements and provide the kind of care our servicemembers and veterans deserve. As I said at the beginning of this speech, this is a major step toward real change for our troops.

Nomination of General James Peake

While I have the floor, Madam President, I also want to take a minute to say a few words about the nomination of GEN James Peake to be the next Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

On Thursday, I joined with my colleagues on the committee and voted in favor of his nomination. As we all know, there has been a vacuum at the head of the VA for years now, and for the reasons I have already laid out today, we need someone strong to lead this agency as we work to change course there. I do not think we ought to dwell on the mistakes of the past. I believe we do have to learn from them.

At his confirmation hearing, General Peake pledged to stand up and put the needs of veterans above the political needs of the White House. He can guarantee that I am going to hold him to his word because we owe our troops nothing less.

After fighting for their country, too many have had to fight against their Government to get the care and benefits they have earned. They have had to contend with bureaucratic ineptitude, a massive claims backlog, and wait times--just to name a few of the many problems at the

Mr. President, on behalf of majority leader, I object.

On behalf of the majority leader, I object.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about two amendments to the farm bill proposed by the Senator from New Hampshire.

These amendments would have devastating impacts on farmers in my home State of Washington, and I urge my colleagues to oppose both of them.

The first would strike the badly needed agriculture disaster assistance trust fund and direct the money to other sources.

Under my colleague's amendment, most of that money would go to reduce the deficit, and some would help low-income residents with their heating bills.

The second would strike the Market Loss Assistance Program for asparagus growers.

Our farmers are the backbone of our Nation. But farming is a difficult business.

One bad storm can wipe out a whole crop or a whole herd--and take your livelihood with it.

That is the position that some of the farmers in my home State are in now. And that is why it is so important that we have a safety net ready to help them.

Last week, I spoke on the Senate floor about the storms that had devastated western Washington.

Winds and dangerous floods and mudslides washed out roads and homes and cut off power to thousands.

Thousands of people are still coping with the damage, and our agriculture producers in southwest Washington were hit especially hard.

We won't know the full impact of this storm for some time.

But we are already starting to hear reports about lost livestock, poultry, farm buildings, and equipment.

Some reports say that producers lost thousands of animals--and that number may still grow.

The agriculture disaster trust fund in this farm bill ensures that we have a permanent pool of money to help farmers after natural disasters, such as the storms in Washington State.

I appreciate the work of the Finance and Agriculture Committees to add this important program. And I want to thank Senators Harkin and Chambliss for their leadership on this bill.

I wish this program were already in place.

If it were, farmers in Lewis and Grays Harbor--two of the counties hit hardest by the flooding--would be able to apply for Federal aid to rebuild their herds.

For example, the Livestock Compensation Program in the trust fund would pay 75 percent of the value of the dead animal.

Without a permanent disaster assistance program, we are left to provide this kind of help on an ad hoc basis. A trust fund would ensure that money is always there when it is needed.

Our farmers shouldn't have to depend on political whim when disaster strikes.

And that is why the amendment to strike this fund would be such a bad idea.

Now I strongly support the LIHEAP program. I think it is critical, especially as we head into the winter months. But I think we can find a better solution that doesn't eliminate this trust fund.

And so I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment by Senator Gregg.

Secondly, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the amendment to strike the market loss help for asparagus growers, another program that is vital in my home State.

Historically, asparagus has been a major crop for Washington State farmers. In fact, it was the first crop harvested in Washington.

But our asparagus farmers are hurting now because of competition from growers in Peru.

The Andean Trade Preference Act has allowed Peruvian asparagus to flood the market.

And unlike most free-trade agreements, the act went into effect without a transition period to allow U.S. producers to prepare or adapt.

Over the Thanksgiving recess, I visited with a number of farmers in Yakima, WA, who told me about the devastating impact this trade agreement has had.

The numbers speak for themselves.

In 1990, the value of the crop was approximately $200 million. Its value now is down to $75 million.

Before the act, more than 55 million pounds of asparagus were canned in Washington State--roughly two-thirds of the industry. But by 2007, all three asparagus canners in Washington had relocated to Peru.

I have fought to help our U.S. growers. I have tried to get them trade adjustment assistance and other help.

And over the past several years, I have secured funding for research on a mechanical harvester to make this labor-intensive crop less expensive to produce.

And most recently, I worked with my colleagues from Michigan and Washington to include the market loss program for asparagus growers in this farm bill.

I appreciate the leadership of Senators Harkin and Chambliss on this issue as well.

This program would provide up to $15 million nationwide to help U.S. farmers who still grow asparagus despite foreign competition.

I hope this program will help growers in my State continue to invest in asparagus.

We modeled this after a similar program for apples and onions, which I helped add to the 2002 farm bill.

I remember hearing from apple growers about the effects of Chinese imports on our markets.

That program provided over $94 million for our Nation's apple growers, and it has proven to be a big help to our apple industry.

I would note to my colleague from New Hampshire that his State received over $1 million from the apple program.

Striking the market loss program from the farm bill would be a step in the wrong direction for our asparagus industry.

And it would have serious impacts on farmers in my home State.

So I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment as well.

``No'' votes on both of these amendments will support the struggling asparagus industry.

And they will help our farmers and ranchers when disaster strikes.

These programs are too important to our farmers to be cut.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about why it is so important that we pass the 2007 farm bill. When a lot of people think of my home State of Washington, they think about Seattle and Boeing and Microsoft, and all those important things, but farming is an incredibly important part of Washington State's economy. We happen to be the eleventh largest farm State in the Nation and we are the third largest producer of fruits and vegetables, which are also known around here as specialty crops. This farm bill is very important to my home State because it will keep our State healthy and strong.

In fact, farming has been an important part of my own personal life. My grandfather moved to the Tri-Cities in central Washington to take a job with Welch's Grape Juice factory a long time ago, in the early 1900s, and my own dad grew up picking asparagus in central Washington. My hometown of Bothell, WA, where I grew up--a small town of about 1,000 people, now backyard to Microsoft--when I was growing up there, we were surrounded by berry farms. We grew up with a very clear understanding of how important family farms are to Washington State's economy. So I know personally that passing the farm legislation before us is absolutely critical for our farmers, who grow apples or cherries, peaches or grapes, asparagus, potatoes, and many of the other important products to Washington State.

I know this is not a perfect bill, this farm bill, but it is the best farm bill in years for my home State farmers, largely because of what it does for those specialty crops I talked about. My home State and our Nation cannot be strong unless our farmers are doing well, and this farm bill helps them stay strong by investing in programs that help them find markets for their crops both here in the United States and abroad. Importantly, this bill will help fund research to ensure that our farmers have a healthy and safe crop in the future.

The Senate now has an opportunity to move forward a very good farm bill. Unfortunately, as we all are aware now, we have become bogged down because the Republicans are now insisting on unrelated amendments that threaten to kill the help our farmers need and deserve today. So I want to be clear about what is happening here. Republicans have been complaining for the last several days about the need to move forward legislation of any kind, but here they are blocking this bill.

I hope we can eventually make progress, but I want to talk this afternoon about what this farm bill can do and what we are losing if we don't move it forward. The biggest victory in this farm bill for Washington State is the $2.2 billion that will help our specialty crop farmers. This is the very first time in this Nation we have addressed these specialty crops in a comprehensive and meaningful way. The money in this bill will help carry out programs I have been pushing very hard for in the last several years.

In this bill, we have $270 million in block grants. Those block grants will help our local growers increase the competitiveness of their crops. We have $15 million in badly needed aid for our asparagus farmers, who have been struggling to compete in this global marketplace they are required to be in, because we have been seeing a flood of cheap asparagus coming in from Peru.

This bill also helps our farmers compete in what we all know is an increasingly global marketplace and to find new markets abroad for their crops. We know South America and China and other countries are aggressively pursuing selling their crops in many of these very important nations overseas. We have to remain competitive and we have to give our farmers the ability to get out there and let other people know what we have so we can be competitive in that market.

This farm bill, importantly, increases funding for technical assistance for the specialty crop programs that will help our farmers overcome some of the barriers that threaten their ability to export their crops today. This is so important to my home State. I actually was out in our State last week, as many of us were after the Thanksgiving holiday. I was in Yakima, WA, where I had a listening session with some of our farmers, and there were some cherry farmers there who are working very hard to develop a new program in Japan. They were talking about how this technical assistance will help them help the Japanese understand how important this is so we can open an entire new market that will help my farmers locally but certainly help our Nation be competitive in this global marketplace.

Another thing this bill will do will be to help ensure that nurseries can continue to have access to safe and virus-free plant materials. This is extremely important. Apples, peaches, and grapes are very vulnerable to viruses. A single plant or a single grapevine can infect and wipe out an entire established orchard or vineyard. Washington State University at Prosser is doing some national research on this topic and they are going to be an incredibly important part of this national clean plant network.

I also wish to talk about a part of this bill that gets neglected way too often as we talk about it, and that is the nutritional programs. I think very few people realize that over half of the farm bill goes to these important nutritional programs. Those are the programs that will help our kids in our schools get access to fresh fruits and vegetables in their school lunches. We hear all these reports about obesity. I read this morning that the life expectancy of the younger generation is going to be, for the first time, less than our generation because of obesity. We have to make sure our kids, at the very youngest ages, are getting access to the best nutrition possible. This farm bill helps to do that, to make sure fruits and vegetables are part of a nutritious lunch and are accessible at an early age when they are beginning to understand, to learn, and to eat the right things so we don't have obesity which, as we all know, leads to a lot of the health care problems in this Nation today.

The farm bill also is helpful in terms of the nutritional programs for people who get food stamps and other assistance, so they also get access to fresh, nutritious food. The bill will help end the benefit erosion we have seen in the food stamp program over the years, and that is especially important today for our low-income families. Our low- income families are struggling today with gas prices rising, health care access, and all the other things that impact them, just as much if not more than most of the rest of our families. Making sure they have access to a food stamp program that makes sure they have adequate nutrition is especially keen and especially important right now. To use an old cliche, I see this as a win-win. These nutritional programs help our children and adults fight obesity and, at the same time, it helps our specialty crop growers.

Finally, I wish we had been able to include important improvements to the safety net that is so critical to the wheat farmers in my State. I have been working for a number of years now with the wheat farmers in Washington State to help improve the countercyclical payment program so it will actually work for them. Unfortunately, we could not make significant changes in this bill, but I am happy the bill holds them harmless, and that was important.

None of us get everything we want in this bill. I am not out here on the floor

to hold up this bill because I didn't get one thing I wanted. I am working to move this bill forward because, in the large part, it is best for our Nation's farmers, and I hope we all step back and recognize that. In a democratic body, we have to fight for what we believe in, but at the end of the day it is our responsibility to make sure the larger bill moves forward. I find it very troubling that because some people didn't get something they wanted, they are now stopping this farm bill in the aggregate from moving forward.

We have a lot of opportunity now to do good for our farmers, so it is very troubling that we see the Republicans coming to the floor now and objecting to this bill. We have to ask: Why are they objecting? So we go and look at the record, and they are saying they are not allowed to get, I think it is over 200 amendments now that are listed here up for consideration on this bill. I was reading through them a few minutes ago, on what they want us to vote on in order to move this farm bill forward. There are over 200 amendments. That is not going to happen in the last 2 weeks we have in this session.

At the expense of asking for extraneous amendments that have nothing to do with the farm bill, they are holding up these critically important nutritional programs, programs that our farmers need in order to keep their livelihoods going, and sending out all across the Nation a huge question mark about whether they are going to have what they need as they move into the next growing cycles. I looked at this list of amendments. There are amendments they want us to consider on a farm bill for fire sprinklers and tort reform and estate tax repeal. They may all be critical issues, but a farm bill is not where we consider these issues.

This bill is far too important for our Nation's health and our economy to use it now as a vehicle for some kind of political game. Only once in our modern history has a nonrelevant amendment been added to the farm bill. Each and every time we have considered the farm bill, the majority and the minority have worked out a reasonable agreement that helps clear the path forward for this important bill. What we see today, unfortunately, is a Republican minority that has decided to throw out the history books and continue to set a record-setting pace of obstruction and kill the help our farmers need and deserve.

Today our families are all struggling--gas prices, energy prices, mortgage crisis, health care costs. We have to get beyond the politics and make sure our farmers and our kids benefit from the very critical investments in this farm bill. These aren't just numbers in a bill. As you well know, Madam President, coming from a State that depends on agriculture, these programs can make or break people's livelihoods.

We have got to come together, and I urge our Republicans to get their ship in order, come to the table with a reasonable plan to move forward, and let us get this bill passed.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House of Representatives with respect to S. 2371, Higher Education Technicals.

The Presiding Officer (Ms. Klobuchar) laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate concur in the House amendment and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House of Representatives with respect to H.R. 710, Charlie W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. klobuchar) laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate concur in the House amendments and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 3074, the Transportation-HUD, related agencies appropriations, 2008; that there be 20 minutes of debate with respect to the conference report, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators Murray and Bond or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on adoption of the conference report, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to make sure the record is clear on the difference between what is being said in Washington, DC, today and what is actually taking place.

Yesterday, President Bush took to the microphones to complain for the second day in a row that Congress was not getting its work done. For a second day in a row, he complained that Congress is not sending him appropriations bills that fund the most basic functions of Government. And for a second day in a row, our minority leader, Senator McConnell, followed suit. He came out on the Senate floor and complained that Congress has not sent the appropriations bills to the President.

Let's be clear, I made a request to pass the final conference bill for the transportation-housing appropriations bill so it could be sent to President Bush. What was the result? The Republican Senators blocked it from going to the White House, and that was not the first time that happened. They blocked the transportation-housing appropriations bill from going to the White House twice before. Mr. President, 2\1/2\ weeks ago on November 15, they blocked it; 2\1/2\ weeks ago on November 16, they blocked it; and then they blocked it again today.

Let me tell you what is going on here. President Bush and the Senate Republican leadership are trying to quietly block our progress on funding the needs of the American people while loudly complaining about our failure to make progress.

I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if our transportation-housing bill was partisan or divisive, but the conference agreement we are trying to move again today has the support of every single Republican who sat on the conference committee in the House and in the Senate. That bill originally passed the Senate with 88 votes. That conference agreement has already passed the House with 270 votes.

This is not a controversial bill. It makes critical investments in some of the most urgent needs of the American people and their local communities. That bill provides $195 million to replace the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, an issue all of us came out on the floor and said we would move rapidly to take care of. It is sitting right here in the Senate, one step away from getting it to the President to be signed into law, and the Republican leadership said no. So they are loudly complaining about our failure to make progress.

I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if they had not taken a look at this bill and realized the critical funding in it. Besides the $195 million for the I-35W bridge, we have $1 billion in enhanced highway formula funding so all our States--all 50 States--can inspect and make repairs to their most deficient bridges, an issue we all agreed was important.

We have $75 million in new housing vouchers that will shelter homeless veterans, including our struggling veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is critical funding for which our communities and our veterans are waiting.

It rejects hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts that were originally proposed by the White House, cuts that would have thrown Amtrak into bankruptcy and made the congestion at our airports worse, not better.

Our bill also includes $200 million which is urgently needed to provide housing counseling services to keep struggling mortgage holders in their homes.

I wish to take a moment to talk about that last item, the $200 million for housing counseling. This Nation is in the middle of a housing crisis. Millions of homeowners are at risk of losing their homes in the next few quarters as interest rates on billions and billions of dollars in mortgages are being adjusted upward.

On Monday, a few days ago, the President's own Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, and his Housing Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, made speeches on the need for Congress to address the many steps necessary to minimize this crisis. Secretary Paulson complained at a national housing forum about the number of borrowers who were entering foreclosure without contacting either their lender or their mortgage counselor. He said:

For this public outreach campaign to be successful, there

must be enough trained mortgage counselors to answer the

phone when homeowners call. The administration requested

funding for NeighborWorks America and other nonprofit

mortgage counseling operations in its budget.

Mr. President, I ask for 4 additional minutes to finish my statement.

Mr. President, we have a number of Senators on our side seeking recognition. Perhaps we can put that together fairly quickly.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended to include 4 minutes for myself, the Senator from Washington----

Ten minutes to the Senator from Texas, 5 minutes to the Senator from Montana, 10 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.

I add that to the consent request, that if there are Republican Senators who would like intervening times, in between, we include those as well in the unanimous consent request.

That is included in my request. I ask additionally that Senator Menendez be allowed 10 minutes as well as the end of that unanimous subsequent request.

I do.