Floor Statements

Mr. President, today, I oppose the AgJOBS amnesty. I oppose it. I oppose it unequivocally. I oppose it absolutely.

The Senate has already heard a great number of euphemisms about the AgJOBS bill, but let's be clear from the start about what we are discussing. AgJOBS is an amnesty for 3 million illegal aliens. It is amnesty for aliens employed unlawfully in the agricultural sector, and it is amnesty for the businesses that hire and exploit them as cheap labor.

AgJOBS is legislation that embodies the darkest and most disturbing elements of our immigration system; namely, illegal aliens being smuggled across our borders; unscrupulous employers taking advantage of undocumented workers; uncontrolled migration, black markets, and fraudulent documents used by terrorists to circumvent our border security.

The AgJOBS bill tarnishes the magnanimous promise of a better life enshrined on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It cheapens the struggle of those immigrants who arrived on Ellis Island 100 years ago, and all of those who have come to this country and followed the rules to earn citizenship in this great Republic.

Amnesties beget more illegal immigration--hurtful, destructive, illegal immigration. Look at the statistics. After President Ronald Reagan signed his amnesty into law in 1986, 2.5 million illegal immigrants flooded into this country. Since the 1986 amnesty, the Congress has passed 6 additional amnesties, resulting in an explosion in the illegal immigrant population, with an estimated 900,000 new illegal aliens settling in the United States each year, hoping to be similarly rewarded. The last thing we need is another amnesty masquerading as immigration reform. Amnesties cheat--amnesties cheat-- immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.

Our immigration system is already plagued with funding and staffing problems. It is overwhelmed on the borders, in the interior, and in its processing of immigration applications.

Senators need only go to the emergency rooms of the hospitals in this city and in the environs of this city. Go, see for yourselves. The infrastructure is already greatly overburdened. The infrastructure cannot handle the problems that are coming upon us.

I go to the emergency rooms. I have been to them many times, taking my own wife of almost 68 years of marriage, taking her. I see the emergency rooms. I see how they are overcrowded. I see how there are people waiting. I see how there are people out in the corridors, in the halls, lying on cots awaiting attention. The schools are overburdened. Health services, health facilities, just take a look at what is happening. It is too much for the infrastructure.

Now we are going to increase the problem. If the AgJOBS amnesty is enacted into law, it is going to get worse. My forebears were immigrants, too. They came to this country a long time ago. It is going to get worse for employers, worse for immigrants, worse for the security of the American people.

Following the passage of the 1986 amnesty for 2.7 million illegal aliens, the INS had to open temporary offices, hire new workers, divert resources from enforcement areas. The result was chaos that produced rampant fraud, with many aliens, almost 20 years later, still disputing their amnesty claims in the courts. Today's backlog of immigration applications is even larger, with the stack of pending applications at 4 million and rising. The AgJOBS amnesty would dump countless more applications on an already overtasked immigration system. With resources so scarce, the process would literally break down, background checks would be missed, document verification would be ignored, and backlogs would grow, encouraging more and more fraud.

It only took 19 temporary visa holders to slip through the system to unleash the horror of the September 11 attacks. The AgJOBS proposal would shove 3 million illegal aliens, many of whom have never gone through a background check, through our border security system, in effect flooding a bureaucracy that is already drowning. It is a recipe for disaster.

It is not mere speculation to suggest that a terrorist would exploit an amnesty. It has already happened. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was legalized--legalized, I say--under the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing.

A closer look at the details of the AgJOBS amnesty raises even more concern. The only way to secure amnesty under the AgJOBS proposal is to seek U.S. employment. That puts U.S. citizens in direct competition with illegal aliens. Even if U.S. workers are not displaced, illegal immigration depresses wages. It depresses benefits for American jobs.

Under the AgJOBS amnesty, an illegal alien, once achieving temporary status, becomes eligible to apply for permanent residency or even citizenship, which puts that alien ahead of every immigrant waiting to immigrate legally to the United States. That is not fair. When amnesty advocates evoke the image of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, imagine those law-abiding immigrants being told to get back on the ship because an illegal alien had taken their spot. Is that right? Is that fair?

I hope Senators will take a close look at this proposal. I want to aid hard-working immigrants, but this is amnesty for illegal aliens. It is amnesty for the unscrupulous employers who exploit them. It is amnesty for potential terrorists seeking to circumvent our border defenses.

The AgJOBS bill is a sweeping, extreme proposal that will undermine our immigration system. It has no place on this wartime supplemental appropriations bill, and the Senate ought to reject it.

I yield the floor.

Well, I thank the distinguished Senator for his statement. I thank him for his attention to my remarks. I was here then. I am here now. I am concerned about the amnesty we are talking about, the AgJOBS amnesty. I have stated my feelings about it. I am going to leave it at that. I thank the distinguished Senator.

Mr. President, in every year since 1951, Congress has included a provision in the General Government Appropriations Act which states the following:

No part of any appropriation contained in this or in any

other act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes

within the United States not heretofore authorized by

Congress.

I am quoting from section 624 of Public Law 108-447.

This is the law of the land, and yet despite the law, the Congress and the American people continue to hear about propaganda efforts by executive branch agencies. On more than one occasion, this administration has provided tax dollars to well-known conservative talk show hosts to promote its agenda. One was paid a hefty fee to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. Another talk show host was paid to promote the administration's welfare and family policies.

If those examples are not bad enough, in an effort to blur the line between

independent media and administration propaganda, some agencies have produced prepackaged news stories designed to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by free market news outlets.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which is an arm of the Congress, in an opinion dated February 17, 2005, the administration has violated the prohibition on publicity and propaganda. In a memorandum sent to executive branch agencies, the GAO stated:

During the past year, we found that several prepackaged

news stories produced and distributed by certain Government

agencies violated this provision.

So very simply, according to the GAO, the administration broke the law. The GAO specifically cited the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services for violating the antipropaganda law. But these are not the only agencies pretending to be a credible news outlet.

On March 13, 2005, the New York Times wrote about the administration's approach in an article entitled ``Under Bush a New Age of Prepackaged TV News.''

I ask unanimous consent that the entire article be printed in the Record following my remarks.

The Times article spotlighted three new segments that each looked the same as any other 90-second segment on the local news. But these are not new. The Federal Government produced all three of these. The Times told of a news segment produced by the State Department featuring a jubilant Iraqi American telling a news crew in Kansas City: ``Thank you, Bush. Thank you, USA.''

The Department of Homeland Security apparently produced a so-called news report on the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. The reporter called the establishment of TSA ``one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.'' But what the American people, the viewers, did not know was that the so-called reporter was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. How about that?

A third segment broadcast in January was based on a news report produced by the Department of Agriculture. The Agriculture Department apparently employs two full-time people to act--listen now--to act as reporters. They travel the country and create their own so-called news, distributing their work via satellite and mail, always pushing the White House line.

What are things coming to?

In the January report, these U.S. Department of Agriculture employees, claiming to be independent journalists, called President Bush ``the best envoy in the world.''

I am not here to argue whether George W. Bush is America's best envoy to the world, but I would rather leave that discussion to independent analysts, not to administration employees or on-the-payroll journalists pushing the White House line.

Yes, the administration should explain its ideas and positions to the American people. No one argues that fact. Educating the public about issues affecting their lives is an essential role of the Government. But the administration should not engage in a blatant manipulation of the news media. Leave the work of manipulation to the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Keep the job of Government focused on the people. Manufacturing propaganda is a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars, and it is your money, your money, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.

The administration has disputed GAO's views. The administration takes the view that it is OK to mask the source as long as the ads are ``purely informational.''

The White House Office of Management and Budget, with the support of the Justice Department, went so far as to issue a memorandum to agency heads dated March 11, 2005, specifically contradicting the conclusions of the Government Accountability Office. The Justice Department concluded that the Government Accountability Office's:

. . . conclusion fails to recognize the distinction

between covert propaganda and purely informational Video News

Reports, which do not constitute propaganda within the common

meaning of the term and therefore are not subject to the

appropriations restriction.

If paying national columnists and talk show hosts, faking news segments, hiring actors to pretend to be reporters ``do not constitute propaganda,'' what does? What does constitute propaganda? It is time for the administration to back off.

We, the American people, trust the media to provide us with independent sources of information, not biased news stories produced by the administration at the taxpayers' expense. It is time for the White House to be upfront with the American people: no propaganda, no manipulation of the press. The administration should tell the people its position on issues, yes, but should do so honorably and without such deliberate manipulation of the free press. Propaganda efforts such as these are not the stuff for a Republic such as ours. The American people must be able to rely on the independence of the news media. The constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press is not for sale. The country must know that reporters--real reporters--are presenting facts honestly, presenting facts fairly, presenting facts without bias. Democracy should not be built on deception.

Just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission, on a unanimous vote--on a unanimous vote of 4 to 0--approved a public notice that directs--that directs, hear me--that directs television broadcasters to disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the Government or corporations when the material runs on the public airwaves. The Commission acknowledged the critical role that broadcast licensees and cable operators play in providing information to the audiences they serve. This information is an important component of a well-functioning democracy. Along with this role comes a responsibility, the responsibility that licensees and operators make the sponsorship announcements required by the foregoing rule and obtain the information from all pertinent individuals necessary for them to do so. The public notice goes on to stress that the Commission may impose sanctions, including fines, including imprisonment, for failure to comply with the ruling. You better watch out. So the FCC, by a unanimous vote, I say, made clear, crystal clear, as clear as the noonday Sun in a cloudless sky, what their rules are. They made clear to the broadcasters what their rules are.

Now Congress should make clear what the rules are for Federal agencies. Just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission, on a unanimous vote, 4 to 0, approved this public notice, I am saying it again, that directs television broadcasters to disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the Government or corporations--I will say this a third time--when the material runs on the public airwaves.

So this is a warning. We, in the Congress, ought to do our best in support of the ruling and to enforce it.

Let me say now that my amendment prevents any agency from using taxpayer dollars to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed, intended to be heard, intended to be read, which do not clearly identify the so-called news was created by a Federal agency or funded with taxpayer dollars. That is plain common sense.

I urge Senators to back the law that we, Congress, have passed each year since 1951:

No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other

Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within

the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.

Back it up. My amendment simply makes it clear, I say again, that Congress does mean what Congress says. I urge adoption of the amendment. I will yield the floor, but I want to send my amendment to the desk.

Exhibit 1

[From the New York Times, Mar. 13, 2005]

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News

(By David Barstow and Robin Stein)

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

``Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,'' a jubilant Iraqi-

American told a camera crew

in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of

Baghdad. A second report told of ``another success'' in the

Bush administration's ``drive to strengthen aviation

security''; the reporter called it ``one of the most

remarkable campaigns in aviation history.'' A third segment,

broadcast in January, described the administration's

determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second

segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government

produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by

the State Department. The ``reporter'' covering airport

safety was actually a public relations professional working

under a false name for the Transportation Security

Administration. The farming segment was done by the

Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has

aggressively used a well-established tool of public

relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that

major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to

pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In

all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense

Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed

hundreds of television news segments in the past four years,

records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast

on local stations across the country without any

acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that

a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration

policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from

the government. But the administration's efforts to generate

positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive

than previously known. At the same time, records and

interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by

television stations, given industry ethics standards that

discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from

any outside group without revealing the source.

Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the

origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports

themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the

typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the

``reporters'' are careful not to state in the segment that

they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid

overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-

making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts

describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.

Some reports were produced to support the administration's

most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq

or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters,

like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school

tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity,

its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its

plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to

fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature

``interviews'' with senior administration officials in

which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed.

Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of

mismanagement, waste or controversy.

Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's

largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles,

Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

An examination of government-produced news reports offers a

look inside a world where the traditional lines between

public relations and journalism have become tangled, where

local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with

``suggested'' lead-ins written by public relations experts.

It is a world where government-produced reports disappear

into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals,

syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge

cleansed on the other side as ``independent'' journalism.

It is also a world where all participants benefit.

Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up

original material. Public relations firms secure government

contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks,

which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the

government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates

that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an

unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional

reporting.

The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton

administration, is continuing despite President Bush's recent

call for a clearer demarcation between journalism and

government publicity efforts. ``There needs to be a nice

independent relationship between the White House and the

press,'' Mr. Bush told reporters in January, explaining why

his administration would no longer pay pundits to support his

policies.

In interviews, though, press officers for several federal

agencies said the president's prohibition did not apply to

government-made television news segments, also known as video

news releases. They described the segments as factual,

politically neutral and useful to viewers. They insisted that

there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a

conservative columnist who promoted the administration's

chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act,

without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education

Department.

What is more, these officials argued, it is the

responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers

that a segment about the government was in fact written by

the government. ``Talk to the television stations that ran it

without attribution,'' said William A. Pierce, spokesman for

the Department of Health and Human Services. ``This is not

our problem. We can't be held responsible for their

actions.''

Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the

Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of

Congress that studies the federal government and its

expenditures, has held that government made news segments may

constitute improper ``covert propaganda'' even if their

origin is made clear to the television stations. The point,

the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last

month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal

agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports ``that

conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing

audience that the agency was the source of those materials.''

It is not certain, though, whether the office's

pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a

few federal agencies have stopped making television news

segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice

Department and the Office of Management and Budget

circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch

agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum

said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert

propaganda and ``purely informational'' news segments made

by the government. Such informational segments are legal,

the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in

producing them is disclosed to viewers.

Even if agencies do disclose their role, those efforts can

easily be undone in a broadcaster's editing room. Some news

organizations, for example, simply identify the government's

``reporter'' as one of their own and then edit out any phrase

suggesting the segment was not of their making.

So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture

Department, the agency's narrator ended the report by saying

``In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for

the U.S. Department of Agriculture.'' Yet AgDay, a syndicated

farm news program that is shown on some 160 stations, simply

introduced the segment as being by ``AgDay's Pat O'Leary.''

The final sentence was then trimmed to ``In Princess Anne,

Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting.''

Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended the

changes. ``We can clip `Department of Agriculture' at our

choosing,'' he said. ``The material we get from the U.S.D.A.,

if we choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our

choice.''

Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One Woman's Role

Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase ``covert propaganda.''

These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have

attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.

Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after ``reporter''

for news segments produced by the federal government. A

journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations

consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for

seven federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments

for the Department of Health and Human Services and the

Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the

accountability office's recent inquiries.

The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies ``designed and

executed'' their segments ``to be indistinguishable from news

stories produced by private sector television news

organizations.'' A significant part of that execution, the

office found, was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her

typical sign-off--``In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan

reporting''--delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to

television reporters everywhere.

Last March, when The New York Times first described her

role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for

Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. In Cleveland, The

Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline ``Karen

Ryan, You're a Phony,'' and she was the object of late-night

jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail.

``I'm like the Marlboro man,'' she said in a recent

interview.

In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than

$5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also

playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video

news release. ``I just don't feel I did anything wrong,'' she

said. ``I just did what everyone else in the industry was

doing.''

It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players,

Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with

offices in New York and London. It produces and

distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most

commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations

Society of America even gives an award, the Bronze Anvil,

for the year's best video news release.

Several major television networks play crucial intermediary

roles in the business. Fox, for example, has an arrangement

with Medialink to distribute video news releases to 130

affiliates through its video feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN

distributes releases to 750 stations in the United States and

Canada through a similar feed service, CNN Newsource.

Associated Press Television News does the same thing

worldwide with its Global Video Wire.

``We look at them and determine whether we want them to be

on the feed,'' David M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge,

said of video news releases. ``If got one that said tobacco

cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it.''

In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing

vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the

major networks are shrinking, many local stations are

expanding their hours of news coverage without adding

reporters.

``No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time

or funds to cover every worthy story,'' one video news

release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to

potential clients, adding that ``90 percent of TV newsrooms

now rely on video news releases.''

Federal agencies have been commissioning video news

releases since at least the first Clinton administration. An

increasing number of state agencies are producing television

news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

alone has produced some 500 video news releases since 1993.

Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to

be producing more releases, and on a broader array of topics.

A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no

comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as

there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way to

determine what has been broadcast, and when and where.

Still, several large agencies, including the Defense

Department, the State Department and the Department of Health

and Human Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce

news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet

appeared in such segments.

A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another

rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million

in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly

double what the last Clinton administration spent.

Karen Ryan was part of this push--a ``paid shill for the

Bush administration,'' as she self-mockingly puts it. It is,

she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.

Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially

political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for

a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she

grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television

news--too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.

In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from

journalism was not as far as one might expect. ``It's almost

the same thing,'' she said.

There are differences, though. When she went to interview

Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services

secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not

the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he

already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help

him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said,

everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political

benefits.

Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in

January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail

and cited the drug benefit as one of his major

accomplishments.

The script suggested that local anchors lead into the

report with this line: ``In December, President Bush signed

into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people

with Medicare.'' In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing

the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and

reports that ``all people with Medicare will be able to get

coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending.''

The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry

the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry.

The G.A.O. found that the segment was ``not strictly

factual,'' that it contained ``notable omissions'' and that

it amounted to ``a favorable report'' about a controversial

program.

And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by

Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the

accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of

the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the

Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one

narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached

22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services

of America, a company that tracks news programs in major

cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were

broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest

television markets.

Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach

of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable

station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004,

days after the government distributed its Medicare segment,

News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including

the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment,

however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station

edited out the original narration and had one of its

reporters repeat the script almost word for word.

The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-

mail message, ``Our policy on provided video is to clearly

identify the source of that video.'' In the case of the

Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was

produced and distributed by a major network and did not know

that it had originally come from the government.

Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations

willing to run her government segments without any editing or

acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her

work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when asked if

she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she

were a local news director.

``Absolutely not.''

Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain Weight

``Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all

material provided by outsiders.''

Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio-

Television News Directors Association, the main professional

society for broadcast news directors in the United States.

Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any

outside material, especially entire reports. And spurred

by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the

news directors association is close to proposing a

stricter rule, said its executive director, Barbara

Cochran.

Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is

unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not

adhering to the existing code, and the association has no

enforcement powers.

The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has

never disciplined a station for showing government-made news

segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said.

Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say

yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which

stated, ``Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom

they are being persuaded.''

In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors

endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed

disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from

government agencies, corporations and special interest groups

who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or

influence.

But when told that their stations showed government-made

reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation.

Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news

programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside

party, let alone the government.

``They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the

possibility for follow-up questions--or any questions at

all,'' said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news

director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky.

Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America

indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan

segments, including one for the government, without

disclosing their origin to viewers.

Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San

Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news

segments on the air.

``It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?'' he said.

Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of

America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one

government-made segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others

featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced

by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not

appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25

segments.

``I thought we were pretty solid,'' Mr. Stutz said, adding

that they intend to take more precautions.

Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at

a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some

said they were unable to find archive tapes that would help

answer the qustion. Others promised to look into it, then

stopped returning telephone messages. A few removed the

segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in

the future or pleaded ignorance.

Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on the Air

On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis,

marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting

report on how assistance from the United States was

helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.

Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan

women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last

emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses

and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving

decent medical care for the first time and even participating

in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview

with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only

allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how

the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.

In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however

modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that

forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom,

improving lives and winning friends.

What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that

the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State

Department contractors. The contractors also selected the

quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that

went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much

of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes.

As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones

in the dark.

Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview

that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State

Department. ``If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone

would false report on anything like that,'' she said.

How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came to

narrate a segment by the

State Department reveals much about the extent to which

government-produced news accounts have seeped into the

broader news media landscape.

The explanation begins inside the White House, where the

president's communications advisers devised a strategy after

Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage supportive news coverage of the

fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained to

reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American

imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American

efforts to liberate and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq.

An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of

Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so

editors and technicians whose typical duties include

distributing video from news conferences. But in early 2002,

with close editorial direction from the White House, the unit

began producing narrated feature reports, many of them

promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq and

reinforcing the administration's rationales for the

invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the

United States and around the world for use by local

television stations. In all, the State Department has

produced 59 such segments.

United States law contains provisions intended to prevent

the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948

Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to

broadcast progovernment news to foreign audiences, but not at

home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not

apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event,

said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman: ``Our

goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a

propaganda agency.''

Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia

Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration

has come to regard such ``good news'' segments as ``powerful

strategic tools'' for influencing public opinion. And a

review of the department's segments reveals a body of work

in sync with the political objectives set forth by the

White House communications team after 9/11.

In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that

depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the

people of southern Iraq. ``After living for decades in fear,

they are now receiving assistance--and building trust--with

their coalition liberators,'' the unidentified narrator

concluded.

Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women,

which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a

``prime example'' of how ``White House-led efforts could

facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on

terror.''

Tracking precisely how a ``good news'' report on

Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State

Department is far from easy. The State Department typically

distributes its segments via satellite to international news

organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television

News, which in turn distribute them to the major United

States networks, which then transmit them to local

affiliates.

``Once these products leave our hands, we have no

control,'' Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy

assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an interview.

The department, he said, never intended its segments to be

shown unedited and without attribution by local news

programs. ``We do our utmost to identify them as State

Department-produced products.''

Representatives for the networks insist that government-

produced reports are clearly labeled when they are

distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from

satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to

another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion.

Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated

Press Television News acknowledged that they might have

distributed at least one segment about Afghanistan to the

major United States networks without identifying it as the

product of the State Department. A spokesman said it could

have ``slipped through our net because of a sourcing error.''

Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president for news at WHBQ in

Memphis, said he could not explain how his station came to

broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women.

``It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it,'' he said in

an interview, insisting that it would not happen again.

Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's

script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin.

But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time

that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one done

first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It

is not unusual, she said, for a local station to take network

reports and then give them a hometown look.

``I didn't actually go to Afghanistan,'' she said. ``I took

that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my

own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how

it all started as far as women covering their faces and

everything.''

At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting

office is moving away from producing narrated feature

segments. Instead, the department is increasingly supplying

only the ingredients for reports--sound bites and raw video.

Since the shift, he said, even more State Department material

is making its way into news broadcasts.

meeting a need: rising budget pressures, ready-to-run segments

WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois.

Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour

morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs.

There are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though,

has been cut to 37 from 39. ``We are doing more with the

same,'' said Jim P. Gee, the news director.

Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many

demands, he said, ``It is hard for us to justify having a

reporter just focusing on agriculture.''

To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department,

which has assembled one of the most effective public

relations operations inside the federal government. The

department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with

an annual budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some

90 ``mission messages'' for local stations--mostly feature

segments about the good works of the Agriculture Department.

``I don't want to use the word `filler,' per se, but they

meet a need we have,'' Mr. Gee said.

The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob

Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports,

which are vetted by the department's office of communications

before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa

Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said Mr.

Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and

accurate coverage.

``They cover the secretary just like any other reporter,''

she said.

Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free

accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one

report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help

Florida clean up after several hurricanes.

``They've done a fantastic job,'' a grateful local official

said in the segment.

More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the

new agriculture secretary, and the White House were

determined to reopen Japan to American beef products. Of his

new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, ``He called Bush the best

envoy in the world.''

WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by the

Agriculture Department over the past three months alone. Or

put another way, WCIA has run 26 reports that did not cost it

anything to produce.

Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these

accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded

journalism. But, he added: ``We don't think they're

propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're

informative. They're balanced.''

More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture Department

to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are

the work of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of

closing his report with ``I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the

U.S.D.A.,'' Mr. Ellison says, ``With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob

Ellison, reporting for `The Morning Show.' ''

Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise

``awareness of the name of our station.'' Could it give

viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location

with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? ``We think viewers can make up

their own minds,'' Mr. Gee said.

Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary,

said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy,

she said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter

works for the department. In any event, she added, she did

not think there was much potential for viewer confusion.

``It's pretty clear to me,'' she said.

the `good news' people: a menu of reports from military hot spots

The Defense Department is working hard to produce and

distribute its own news segments for television audiences in

the United States.

The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense

Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and

satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs

specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters,

are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news

reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the

United States. All a local news director has to do is log on

to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net., browse a

menu of segments and request a free satellite feed.

Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service,

a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local

stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of

military members.

``We're the `good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam,

the unit's deputy director.

Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending

holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit

also produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50

stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all,

reaching 41 million households in the United States.

The news service makes it easy for local stations to run

its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never

identified by their military titles. ``We know if we put a

rank on there they're not going to put it on their air,'' Mr.

Gilliam said.

Each account is also specially tailored for local

broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would

include an interview with a service member from there. If the

same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched

out for one from Oklahoma City. ``We try to make the

individual soldier a star in their hometown,'' Mr. Gilliam

said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and

cities selected by the service members interviewed.

Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the

segments. ``Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half

news piece and it looks just like they went out and did the

story,'' Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt

to advance any particular political or policy agenda, he

said.

``We don't editorialize at all,'' he said.

Yet sometimes the ``good news'' approach carries political

meaning, intended or not. Such was the case after the Abu

Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although White

House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the

work of a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious

questions about the training of military police officers.

A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news

segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of

prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where some of

the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had

been trained.

``One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat

prisoners strictly but fairly,'' the reporter said in the

segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for

detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police

officers were taught to ``treat others as they would want to

be treated.'' The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or

how the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort

Leonard Wood.

According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any

effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a

broad command failure.

``Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said,

`We need some good publicity?' '' he asked. ``No, not at

all.''

I have no objection to that.

I thank the very distinguished Senator for his support and for his statement. It is a very pertinent statement. In the FCC Public Notice 05-84, dated April 13, 2005, on page 2, it says:

This Public Notice is confined to the disclosure

obligations required under Section 317 and our rules

thereunder, and does not address the recent controversy over

when or whether the government is permitted to sponsor VNRs,

which is an issue beyond the Commission's jurisdiction.

My amendment is simple and clear. Here is what it says:

None of the funds provided in this Act or any other Act may

be used by a Federal agency to produce any prepackaged news

story unless the story includes a clear notification to the

audience that the story was prepared or funded by that

Federal agency.

Mr. President, it does not create confusion, as a Senator said a moment ago. It creates clarity.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from New Jersey for his comments and support. I thank him profusely.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator for his willingness to not move to table at this point. I hope we can take a little time and see if we might reach a meeting of the minds on language that might accomplish the purposes that we hoped to accomplish.

For that reason, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have no objection. We can reach an understanding if I am unable to come up with language that is capable of being a workable and effective compromise that we might go ahead and have a vote on the Byrd amendment. Might we have a time limit on the Senator's proposal?

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

Mr. President, I have a proposed modification to the amendment which I have discussed with the distinguished manager of the bill, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Cochran.

I send the modification to the desk and ask that it be stated by the clerk.

Mr. President, I am prepared now to go to a vote, if the distinguished chairman is also prepared. And I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, may I just be sure that we are clear on this language.

I understand that the language as read by the clerk is agreed to on both sides.

Right.

Mr. President, do I have the floor?

I ask unanimous consent that I may yield to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, for not to exceed 10 minutes, without losing my right to the floor.

Madam President, I ask if the Senator will add my name as a cosponsor to both amendments.

Madam President, the bill before us contains funding for a number of items that can hardly be described as emergencies, despite the fact that they are contained in an emergency supplemental funding bill.

One of those items that fairly leaps off the page is a $36 million earmark, tucked away in the report under military construction for the Army, to build a new, permanent prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. Why is this tucked away as an emergency? It is to house detainees from the war on terrorism.

What struck me about this item is that the American people are being asked to build a permanent prison to house 220 prisoners from the war on terrorism when the courts have not yet determined the legal status of the detainees or whether the United States can continue to hold these individuals indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

We are walking on thin ice here--thin ice. If ever there was a case of putting the cart before the horse, this seems to be it. Construction of a new

permanent prison in Guantanamo assumes that the United States has in place a solid policy and a valid requirement for the long term internment of detainees at that site when in fact neither the policy nor the requirement has been validated.

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled last year that U.S. law applied to Guantanamo, and that prisoners held there could challenge their detentions in Federal Court, the status of the detainees at Guantanamo has been a matter of open debate. A flurry--we have reached beautiful spring weather now, but a flurry of subsequent legal challenges mixed with allegations of prisoner abuse have only muddied the waters further.

In August, a Federal district judge ruled that the military tribunals being conducted at Guantanamo must be halted because they did not provide minimally fair procedures and violated international law. Hey, look out here. Look what we are doing. Where are we going? Meanwhile, another Federal judge recently stopped the Government from transferring detainees from Guantanamo to other countries pending a review of the process.

What is wrong with that? At the heart of the Guantanamo detention controversy is whether the detainees are entitled to prisoner of war status under the 1949 Geneva Convention, or are they, as the administration contends, ``enemy combatants'' who are entitled to no judicial oversight. It is a complex legal debate that is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

And yet the White House has determined that the construction of a $36 million maximum security prison at Guantanamo is such an urgent requirement that it cannot allow the courts to rule on the validity of the administration's detainee policy or even wait for the regular appropriations process. Not even wait for the regular bill--put it in the supplemental.

This despite the fact that there is currently no overcrowding at Guantanamo, that the prison population is steadily declining--down to approximately 540 from a high of about 750--and that the Pentagon has already built a $16 million, permanent, state-of-the-art maximum security prison at Guantanamo to hold 100 prisoners. At the same time, according to an article last month in The New York Times, the Defense Department is trying to enlist the aid of the State Department and other agencies to transfer more prisoners out of Guantanamo, in an effort to cut by more than half the current population at Guantanamo.

The fact is, the Pentagon has no idea at this point how many detainees from the war on terrorism are facing long term detention, or where they will eventually end up.

As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee in February, ``The Department of Defense would prefer not to have the responsibility for any detainees.''

For once, I agree with Secretary Rumsfeld, particularly given the allegations of abuse that have dogged the Defense Department's treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo. The Defense Department should not automatically assume an open-ended burden of being the world's jailer of foreign enemy combatants.

Given all the uncertainties concerning the future requirements for detention facilities at Guantanamo, where--oh where, tell me--is the urgency in this request? The Defense Department insists that prisoners currently in custody at Guantanamo are in conditions that are safe, secure, and humane. The current detention facilities at Guantanamo include Camp 4, where detainees live in 10-man bays with nearly all-day access to exercise yards and other recreational privileges; Camp 1, where detainees are housed in individual cells with a toilet and sink in each cell; and Camp 5, the new 100-bed maximum security prison that the Pentagon boasts would be envied by many States. Camp Delta also boasts a 19-bed detainee hospital, which military officials describe as a state-of-the-art facility, complete with first-rate dental care.

With the exception of the existing maximum security prison, these are temporary facilities, but according to the Defense Department, they are designed to provide safe, secure, and humane housing for the prisoners. As the Pentagon is quick to point out, the concrete slab and open-air chain-link enclosures that originally housed prisoners when the Guantanamo detention facilities opened in January of 2002 are long gone.

The Defense Department, in its justification for the new prison, asserts that the existing temporary facilities are nearing the end of their useful life, will not meet Geneva Convention requirements, and will be subject to continued scrutiny by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, until facility standards are raised.

Playing the Geneva Convention card is a curious tactic coming from an administration that selectively cherry-picks which of the Geneva Convention standards it chooses to apply to the prisoners at Guantanamo. The only Geneva Convention requirements cited by the Defense Department in its justification for the new prison are that housing units and core functions should be contiguous and allow for communal conditions where practical--certainly nice-to-have amenities but hardly a core requirement for the humane treatment of prisoners.

In fact, the ICRC's main concern about Guantanamo, according to the organization's website, is not contiguous detention units but the fact that the administration has attempted to place the detainees in Guantanamo beyond the law. Building a new prison will not address that concern, and it will not exempt the Guantanamo detention center from the watchful eyes of the Red Cross. Nor will allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo be resolved by trading one set of cell blocks for another.

There may indeed be advantages to moving more Guantanamo prisoners from temporary into permanent detention facilities, but until we have a clearer picture of the number of prisoners who will be housed there over the long term, there is no compelling reason to rush into spending $36 million of your money--it is your money--the taxpayers' dollars to build a prison based on guesstimates instead of facts.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Gen Bantz Craddock, Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo, was asked what the Pentagon was doing to improve the quality of life for the U.S. military personnel assigned to Guantanamo. General Craddock replied that he had submitted a list of unfunded requirements of several million dollars for U.S. military facilities. But, he continued, ``we are watching this closely because we don't want to get out in front of the policy with regard to the long-term detainee issue down there.''

That is good advice from General Craddock, and I would suggest that we apply it to the detention facilities at Guantanamo as well. It is the policy that should drive the construction, not the other way around. Before we ask the American taxpayers--before we ask you, the people out there who are watching the Senate Chamber here with open eyes, with open ears and probably with open mouths, you, it is your money--before we ask you, the American taxpayers to spend $36 million to build a brand new permanent prison for foreign detainees at Guantanamo we should make sure that we have an ironclad requirement for that prison. Until the courts have resolved the legal status of the prisoners and until the Department of Defense and the administration determine the role of the department in the long-term detention of the prisoners, building a permanent maximum security prison at Guantanamo is premature.

Madam President, are there any pending amendments ahead of this amendment?

I will take my amendment in the order in which the amendment has been called up.

I ask unanimous consent ahead of time if it may be in order to have the yeas and nays on my amendment, even though it won't be voted on at this moment.

Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to ask for the yeas and nays at this time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I thank the Chair, and I thank all Senators.

Mr. President, Senator Durbin's amendment touches on a critical issue: the strains being placed upon the National Guard and the Reserve by the long deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He correctly points out that these deployments have resulted in a financial crisis for unknown numbers of American families who have loved ones called to duty, pulled out of their civilian careers, and sent half a world away for long periods of time.

The amendment pending before the Senate would compensate those members of the National Guard and the Reserve who suffer a loss of income because they are away from their civilian jobs--but only if those jobs are with the Federal Government. The many Guardsmen and Reservists who work in the private sector would not be helped by the amendment.

I am very sympathetic to the plight of the families of National Guardsmen and Reservists who have found themselves in dire financial straits because of a long, unexpected deployment that takes the family breadwinner away from his job. I have heard from families in West Virginia who could be facing financial ruin because of a soldier's drop in income due to a protracted, 18-month deployment.

However, the Congress is approaching this problem from the wrong end. The heart of this matter is not how much Uncle Sam may pay our citizen- soldiers. The problem is that our National Guard and Reserve are being deployed, and re-deployed, for such long periods at a time. The United States hasn't sent so many part-time soldiers overseas in half a century. In addition to causing financial hardships for many American families, the pace of these deployments is threatening to break the back of the National Guard and the Reserve.

In 2003, I offered two amendments to limit the deployment and re- deployment of the National Guard and Reserve. Unfortunately, the Senate voted down those amendments, and the strains on the National Guard and the Reserve continue and, in some cases, are worsening. Until Congress limits the excessive deployments of our citizen-soldiers, or until our troops start coming home from Iraq, there will continue to be myriad strains on our troops and their families. It is not reasonable to expect the government to

compensate our troops and families for each difficulty or strain that this foolish war in Iraq has caused, because our national treasure is finite.

What's more, I am concerned that the amendment on which the Senate will soon vote will have financial consequences for many years down the road. Our country is neck deep in red ink, and Congress must be judicious in enacting benefits that grow to have a life of their own well after the Senate has voted. This problem is compounded by the refusal of the President to budget for the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the White House does not budget for the war, there is no way to increase revenues or lower other spending in order to balance the budget. In the coming days of debate on this emergency supplemental appropriations bill, I will offer an amendment on this crucial point.

Despite these reservations about the pending amendment, the bottom line is that the families of many National Guardsmen and Reservists are experiencing real financial hardships. Although this amendment will only take care of some of those families, it will provide a lifeline to families who are struggling to make ends meet because of the demands of the war in Iraq. I commend the Senator from Illinois for his commitment to the National Guard, and I will support him on this amendment.

However, when the Senate next considers relieving the strains caused by the long deployments of the Guard and Reserve, the Senate should not adopt a piecemeal approach. The heart of the matter is our open-ended mission in Iraq. Unless that matter is addressed head-on, Congress will continue to find more and more ways to spend our nation's scarce treasure. That is not a wise fiscal course.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, am I recognized?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, the Pentagon defends the current facilities for the incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo as being safe, secure, and humane. There

is no emergency, unforeseen or otherwise, that requires the immediate construction of a 220-bed maximum security prison to relieve existing deficiencies at Guantanamo, and so it is premature.

That is part of the case I am making, it is premature. Why have this item in this bill? Why in an emergency supplemental bill? It is premature to ask the American taxpayers to spend $36 million--it is your money, I say to the taxpayers--to build a permanent maximum security prison at Guantanamo when the courts have not yet determined the legal status of the detainees at Guantanamo or have not determined whether the United States can continue to hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

The prison population at Guantanamo is steadily declining, down to about 540 from a high of 750. The Department of Defense reportedly hopes to further cut the current population by at least half. However, DOD has not given a firm estimate of how many detainees it expects will require long-term incarceration.

Why all the hurry? The 220-bed prison is a guesstimate--a guesstimate--not an estimate.

The Department of Defense has already built one permanent maximum security prison at Guantanamo, a $16 million state-of-the-art facility completed less than a year ago that has the capacity to hold 100 prisoners.

Temporary detention facilities at Guantanamo include several camps in which prisoners are housed in individual cells with a toilet and sink in each cell, and one camp where detainees who are considered the least dangerous are housed in 10-man bays with all-day access to exercise yards.

The Department of Defense contends that these temporary facilities are nearing the end of their useful life, but the Department does not argue they are unsafe or uninhabitable.

The U.S. military has many urgent unmet needs, some of which are emergency status needs. Construction of a second permanent maximum security prison at Guantanamo is not among these urgent, unmet needs. This is a decision that should be deferred until the courts have resolved the legal status of the detainees at Guantanamo and until the Defense Department determines the number of detainees it expects to hold in custody for the long term.

What I am saying right now is the request is premature. Let us wait until the courts do their job. Then we will have a picture of what we need to do. Let us not be premature in spending the taxpayers' money when there are too many unanswered questions that ought to be answered and which in time will certainly present us with a clear picture of the permanent needs.

I thank the Chair and thank all Senators.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Cochran of Mississippi, for his generosity and for his very gracious and courteous action in this regard. I thank him for the time. I will not use the entire 10 minutes. I take it I may yield some of that time, if I wish, to other Senators.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained America. The cost of these wars has strained the Federal budget. The deployments of the National Guard and the Reserves have strained American families. The toll of the wars on our troops and their equipment has strained the readiness of our Armed Forces. But there is no one who bears more of the strains of these wars than the veterans who have served our country in combat.

According to the Department of Defense, nearly 12,000 troops have been wounded in Iraq and another 442 have been wounded in Afghanistan. These troops have received the finest medical care our military can offer, but untold numbers of service men and women will require long- term care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. However, the VA is also feeling the strains of war. VA hospitals are seeing more and more veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time the aging veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam are most in need of the VA's health care services, to which they are entitled. However, the administration has not met this growing demand for VA health care services with budget increases.

Fortunately, Congress has stepped in and added billions in needed funds in recent years. Last year, Congress added $1.2 billion to the President's request for veterans health care. Two years ago, Congress added $1.57 billion to the President's budget for VA health care. But the shortfalls in the veterans budget continue. The Disabled American Veterans, in its independent budget for fiscal year 2006, estimated that the White House budget for VA health care is $3.4 billion less than what is required to care for all veterans who are entitled to care. Clearly, more needs to be done to care for veterans.

The Murray-Akaka-Byrd, and others, amendment would increase veterans health care by $1.98 billion. These funds are targeted to provide care for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to increase mental health services and to support local VA hospitals and clinics. This is a commonsense amendment to support the men and the women who have borne the wounds of battle. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

I thank the Chair and again thank my chairman, Mr. Cochran.

May I yield the remaining time to Senator Murray and Senator Akaka?

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Baucus, I ask unanimous consent that Cuong Huynh, a fellow on his staff at the Finance Committee, be accorded floor privileges during the consideration of H.R. 1268, the emergency Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental appropriation bill, and any votes thereon.

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

Mr. President, am I recognized?

I thank the Chair. Mr. President, my speech will probably need 40 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that I may utilize as much time as I need.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, in my home State of West Virginia and all across America, our people are frustrated and outraged with the soaring cost of gasoline.

The rising cost of gasoline means workers in West Virginia are seeing their paychecks dramatically reduced by the simple fact that they have to drive to get to work and to get back home. It is darned difficult and expensive for a coal miner to pay $2.25 a gallon to drive his pickup truck to work on the two-lane, hilly, winding roads of West Virginia.

Noting that West Virginians have become ``hawkish about watching gas prices,'' the Charleston, WV, Gazette of March 11, 2005, pointed out that they ``have few mass transportation options, travel farther to work, and often traverse [much] more rugged terrain.''

Automobiles are essential for West Virginians to get to work. According to Census data, although West Virginia is a relatively small State, workers in West Virginia spend more time commuting to work than the national average.

Mr. President, 86 percent of West Virginians use cars or trucks to get to work, and nearly 75 percent of West Virginians commute by themselves in their pickup trucks and other such vehicles.

The percentage of people in West Virginia who own a pickup truck is almost double the national average. Nearly one-third of West Virginians must travel outside their home county to get to work. Let me say that again. Nearly one-third of West Virginians must travel outside their home county to get to work, a figure that is 17 percent above the national average, and an average West Virginian drives more miles--now get this--the average West Virginian drives more miles each year than average Americans throughout the rest of the country.

The point is this: West Virginians rely on their cars and their pickup trucks to keep West Virginia working. Large, rugged vehicles are not an expensive luxury for workers in West Virginia and in many other rural States, and anyone who has tried to navigate the narrow, uphill climbs of West Virginia's mountains by weaving around corners, constantly slowing, constantly accelerating and stopping and starting knows the need for these rugged vehicles and, regrettably, the cost of fueling them.

Imagine navigating that kind of terrain not only to work but also in getting children to school, as well as to the grocery store.

The frustration and the outrage of West Virginians paying $25, $30, and $45 just to gas up is certainly understandable.

Family budgets already strained by the rising costs of health insurance, the rising costs of college tuition, and other everyday expenses are being stretched even thinner by these recordbreaking gasoline prices in West Virginia. West Virginia's small businesses depend on deliveries. Floral shops, pizza parlors, produce shippers, taxi companies, construction and remodeling businesses, plumbers, electricians, landscapers are finding it harder to make ends meet. Many are going out of business.

I recently read of an independent trucker who lives and works in Norfolk, VA, telling the Christian Science Monitor that last year she paid more than $250 a week for fuel, and that was making her life as a single parent very difficult. She was even forced to decide between paying a doctor bill for her child or buying new tires for her truck. Guess who lost. ``My truck lost,'' she explained.

Today's record high gasoline prices in West Virginia are affecting literally everyone from commuters, consumers, and businesses to public and private agencies. Meals on Wheels programs are having trouble delivering meals. Think of it. Local governments already straining to pay for essential services in these days of cutbacks in Federal assistance are simply overwhelmed in their efforts to keep schoolbuses, police cars, firetrucks, and other city and county vehicles in operation. What a shame.

The damage is devastating and is everywhere. Last year, polling data showed that more than half of the American people said the rising cost of gasoline had been hard on them financially while more than a third said it had caused them serious problems. U.S. consumer confidence fell for a third month in March, and this is being attributed to the cost of gasoline. It is awful. It is terrible.

At one time, inflation was called the cruelest tax. Soaring energy costs are the ecumenical tax. Did everyone get that? Soaring energy costs are the ecumenical tax. Why? They tax everyone with a car or a truck--everyone, regardless of race, sex, age, occupation. Low-income workers are being hit the hardest, however, as they usually have to travel the farthest to work because of the need for affordable housing. They have less access to mass transportation. One can understand that when they look at those mountains in West Virginia. And they drive older, less fuel-efficient vehicles.

As the American people cry out for help in this current crisis, what do they do? They look to Washington for action. The White House's response to this outcry has been to moan and groan about the failure of Congress to pass its so-called energy plan and recycle old legislation.

When it comes to dealing with today's energy mess, the White House is out of gas. For three Congresses, an energy bill has clanged about Washington like Marley's ghost. The administration's national energy policy has been drafted by special interests, ironed out behind closed doors now and presented as a fait accompli for Members to support, take it or leave it. But the national energy policy in its totality would do little to seriously address our energy needs now or in the long term.

The only major provisions that might provide tangible progress are the energy tax incentives, but these, too, could be a mirage as the President's proposed fiscal year 2006 budget only provides $6.7 billion over the next 10 years for all energy incentives, only about a third of what was provided 2 years ago in the Senate Energy bill. Analysis by the Department of Energy's own Energy Information Administration, EIA, of the Energy bill of the 108th Congress has clearly shown that the bill would have a negligible impact on increasing production, reducing consumption, lowering imports, or affecting energy prices. Now, take that home for dinner.

Furthermore, this administration actually significantly slashes funding for oil and gas research programs. Like its agricultural policies, the administration's energy policy promises the American people a rose garden. It ruminates with much rhetoric but then fails to fertilize with funding.

While the White House has failed to propose any serious policy options or take any action to remedy the current crisis, I am suggesting that it is time--it is time, I say to the White House--to get serious. It is time that this Nation makes the necessary investments so we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

What does this mean? It means getting the next generation of vehicles on the road. It means investing in fuels that can be made from domestically secure sources such as agricultural residues and through coal gasification. It means investments in building. It means upgrading our refining and pipeline infrastructure in order to move our petroleum products to market.

At the end of the day, it requires that we set our sights on the goal of getting off foreign oil. Senator Bingaman sent a letter to the Secretary of Energy and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in April 2004. That letter laid out 13 concrete actions that President Bush could take to respond to high gasoline prices. I concurred with many of these recommendations in a letter to the President myself in May 2004. However, this administration has not followed through on any of these suggestions.

Right now, more than ever, what we need are not only long-term policies but also near-term programs and actions that address the immediate problem. For one thing, as the great British economist John Maynard Keynes reminded us, ``In the long run we are all dead.''

I am also reminded of the response that an aide to President Franklin Roosevelt gave when asked why the administration was acting so quickly and forcefully at the time to put people back to work during the dark days of the Great Depression--I lived in them--when in the long run market forces would eventually do it. The aide, Harry Hopkins, snapped: People do not eat in the long run. They eat every day.

While we do need long-term energy policies to reduce our dependency on foreign energy, we still drive cars every day during the dark days of these soaring gasoline prices. American workers, American consumers, and American small businesses suffer because of the failure of their Government to provide short-term relief.

Here are some suggestions which might provide assistance. The White House could direct the Secretary of Energy to suspend the delivery of oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until market conditions improve. We might consider liberalizing the vehicle depreciation allowance to assist workers who daily commute more than 30 miles one way to work, and $15.5 billion in targeted tax incentives over the next 10 years, including $2 billion to deploy advanced clean coal technologies, would help to strengthen the economy, enhance our Nation's energy resources, promote an array of advanced energy technologies and increase jobs while promoting a healthy government.

Yes, we can do more. We can do plenty. We need an investigation into what is going on and why the people in West Virginia and other States are getting squeezed, why the people in West Virginia and other States are getting gouged, when huge oil companies are enjoying recordbreaking profits. I call on the White House to direct the Federal Trade Commission to review whether speculations in the futures market may be playing a role in driving up gasoline prices. I call for a congressional investigation to ascertain the role of oil companies in setting the steep price that West Virginians and people in other rural States pay at the pump.

Finally, I urge the White House to stop wimping out and to confront OPEC. Press these oil-producing countries to increase oil supply to help stabilize global prices. While running for the Presidency, George Bush promised to get tough with OPEC, especially the Saudis. Now, Mr. President, is the time to do it.

The White House should work on rehabilitating its own weak, creaky spine which has kept it from playing hardball with the foreign countries that sell us most of our oil. In his book, ``Plan of Attack,'' Bob Woodward reported that Saudi Arabia offered to fine-tune oil prices in the months before the 2004 Presidential election. Why not use the bully pulpit now to call for increased oil production? Why not dispatch the Secretary of State to OPEC countries to twist arms and knock heads together to get an increase in oil production? Why does the White House remain silent, as silent as a stone, when OPEC announces, as it did on March 30, that it had ruled out an increase in oil production? Why does the administration hold its tongue when Middle Eastern potentates collude to separate working Americans from their hard-earned dollars?

Instead of reading headlines about tough administrative action to reduce oil prices, we read of scandals about lucrative billion-dollar, no-bid contracts for Iraqi oil fields. Instead of lowering prices at the pump in the USA, less than 18 months ago the White House asked Congress to approve $900 million in taxpayer money to send more gasoline to filling stations. Where? Baghdad.

The President might not have a short-term energy strategy for the United States, but he has a great one for Iraq. The only problem is that the American people are paying for it twice, once on April 15, the day our income taxes are due, and once again on every trip to the filling station.

I yield back the remainder of my time. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this is the first appropriations bill brought to the floor under the chairmanship of my good friend, the senior Senator from the great State of Mississippi, Thad Cochran. He has scrubbed the numbers so that, as he has pointed out, the bill is under both the President's request and the House of Representatives allowance. I commend Senator Cochran for his efforts. This was not easy. He has been fairminded. He has been evenhanded in the processing of this bill.

I will say a few words about our former chairman, the very distinguished Senator from the State of Alaska, Ted Stevens. Because of the committee chair term limits imposed under the Republican Caucus, Ted Stevens has taken over the reins of the Senate Commerce Committee. He will do a good job there.

He is always up to the deed, up to the moment. He carries his responsibilities manfully, nobly, and he never forgets the Constitution of the United States, the fact that this Government is under that Constitution, that the separation of powers is a part of that Constitution, that the Senate is equal to the House of Representatives, and they make up the Congress of the United States, and that the Congress is equal to each of the other branches, the executive branch and the judicial branch.

But Senator Stevens, although he has left the chairmanship, and had to leave by virtue of the Republican Caucus rules, still serves on the Appropriations Committee. He chairs the Subcommittee on Defense. He very ably chairs that subcommittee. He has had a lot of experience. He knows what he is doing, and he has a mind that is like a tar bucket. Everything that hits it sticks to it. He will continue to be a power. He has served and he continues to serve the people of Alaska with honor and dignity as their Senator.

Both of these men, the former chairman and the current chairman, are true gentlemen to the depths of their hearts in their relations with their colleagues. We know they are fair, and we are grateful for that.

Senator Cochran has worked hard to produce this fiscal year 2005 emergency supplemental appropriations bill. As he explained, it totals $80,581,832,000. That is $1,460,796,000 below the President's budget request and $785,046,000 below the House-passed bill. The supplemental bill that is before the Senate includes over $74.4 billion for the Department of Defense.

I must say that our men and women in uniform are indeed among the finest of our country's citizens. I heard the chairman read the letter from a man who was instrumental in helping the people who had been disadvantaged by the recent tsunami. This man was on a helicopter. He helped move that fixed-wing aircraft into the various parts of one of the islands or more than one perhaps.

I was there 50 years ago. I had to sleep in the mosquito cages, and I looked at a huge tarantula crawling around and listened to lizards over in the windows rustling about in the room in which I was to sleep. Well, this is terribly hot. Gee whiz, when I went there you had to lie down. You did not have enough energy to walk around. You slept in mosquito cages.

Well, think of what this man who wrote the letter was going through on the helicopter. He was on a mission of mercy--mercy--thank God. I salute him for that letter. What a graphic story of what was going on, and the service our men and women were performing. I salute them for their valor. I thank them for their service.

But we owe our troops more than mere gratitude for a job well done. We owe our troops the confidence of a clearly defined military mission, one that has measurable goals and benchmarks and, more importantly, one that has an identifiable endpoint. In short, we owe our troops--our men and women, our magnificent troops--in Iraq not only the resources with which to fight the war but also a strategy to end that war. I was never in favor of it in the beginning, but that is a matter of record and history.

Unfortunately, the President's supplemental budget request fails to deliver what our troops need most. The President is asking the Congress to continue to shovel out money into United States military operations in Iraq with no further clarity as to what goals the military is expected to achieve, no hint--not even a hint--of a possible timetable, and no end to the occupation in sight.

The recent elections in Iraq gave the United States a unique window of opportunity to change course in order to lower the profile of the American military presence and to open the door to greater international cooperation. But the administration, despite all of its conciliatory gestures to our European allies, has effectively squandered that opportunity.

The very size of this supplemental request sends a clear message that the United States is not winding down its military operations in Iraq. Instead, the United States appears to be gearing up either to accommodate a permanent military presence in Iraq or to establish a launching pad for other military operations in the region. Oh, how long--how long--is this going to continue in this fashion? Either way, we are sending the wrong signals to the people of Iraq, to its neighbors in the region, and to the larger international community.

Instead of taking this opportunity to temper anti-American sentiment

among disaffected Iraqis and their neighbors, the administration has turned up the heat, and now the Iraqis are saying: Get out. Leave us alone. Come back some other day, but let us alone. Let us alone. Those protests are mounting. The administration has turned up the heat with the construction of new military facilities in Iraq and the construction of the most costly Embassy in the world in Iraq, a country of only 25 million inhabitants.

You taxpayers out there who are watching this debate through those magnificent lenses, it is your money, your sons, your daughters.

I am troubled by many aspects of this request. I want to support our troops. I fully intend to support our troops. I would not think of doing otherwise. They are there. They have been there too long. Few of them asked to go there, but they are there. They are the empty chairs at the table on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, on holy days--empty chairs.

I am not willing to give the executive branch carte blanche to run roughshod over the Congress and to pursue policies never debated fully on this floor.

The request sent to the Congress by this administration contained ``ambiguous flexibilities'' to spend money on unspecified activities with little or no involvement of the Members of Congress. I am grateful that Chairman Cochran has responded to my entreaties to limit these extraordinary authorities. I suggest the committee bill still goes too far.

The President also requested, and the bill still includes, ambitious policy initiatives, including the construction of a permanent maximum security prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, and a host of seemingly enduring military facilities in Iraq. Why? The courts have yet to determine what the legal status is of detainees from the war on terrorism or whether the United States can continue to hold them indefinitely without charging them with any specific crime. Yet this bill includes $36 million to build a permanent prison facility at Guantanamo Bay. I went there years ago. These are policy decisions, not simply pocketbook issues. Decisions to build permanent facilities should not be made via an emergency supplemental appropriations bill.

In fact, the White House has turned on its head the definition of an emergency supplemental appropriation. In his budget, the President calls on Congress to deploy a stricter standard for what constitutes emergency spending, spending that is thus excluded from constraints on spending. He urges the Congress to only approve emergency spending for activities that are ``necessary expenditures, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and not permanent.'' Yet the President has asked the Congress to approve funding for the most expensive U.S. Embassy in the world. And he hasn't done it in a regular bill; he has done it in an emergency war supplemental. This Embassy would be larger than the U.S. Embassy in Russia, larger than the U.S. Embassy in China, larger than the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, and 10 times the size of most U.S. Embassies. Funds to staff that Embassy, which will not be needed until fiscal year 2006, are also requested in this emergency bill. As noted earlier, to build a permanent prison at Guantanamo Bay is also requested.

A supplemental bill is being used to tunnel deeper and deeper and deeper into Iraq with no definitive exit strategy in sight and no light on the horizon. This request encompasses serious and far-reaching policy questions, and we are having it shoved down our throats.

Moreover, on July 17, 2003, the Senate voted 81 to 15 for my amendment expressing the sense of the Senate that the President should request funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--they are two different wars--in the regular budget, rather than through emergency supplemental appropriations bills.

On June 24, 2004, I offered the same sense-of-the-Senate amendment which was approved by an even wider margin in the Senate by a vote of 89 to 9. Both sides joined in. Republicans and Democrats joined in that vote. It was 89 to 9. These are strong, emphatic, definitive votes. This provision was included in both the fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2005 Defense Appropriations Acts. I didn't put those words in those acts alone. It was with the support of Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the aisle. So much for the views of the Senate.

Instead, the White House chose to seek an $81.9 billion emergency supplemental for fiscal year 2005 and requested nothing for the war for fiscal year 2006. This is not truth in budgeting. This is not leveling with the American people about their money. This is not truth in budgeting. This is hocus-pocus. Now you see it; now you don't. It is not there.

Tactics such as this hide the real cost of the wars. I say it to you people out there who are watching through those lenses, watching the most deliberative body, upper body in the world today--and I hope it remains that way; I hope the nuclear option is pushed aside--tactics like this, putting these requests into emergency supplementals, hiding the real costs of the wars. The American people don't see those costs. That is wrong. That is not being fair with the American people. That is not being honest with the American people. That is not being straightforward with the American people. That is not laying it on the line with the people who are going to pay the cost.

By seeking $81.9 billion as an emergency supplemental, rather than in his budget, the President avoids a debate about priorities and how the war should be paid for. By seeking an $81.9 billion emergency supplemental for the war, by asking for that much money in an emergency supplemental for the war in Iraq, the President avoids any discussion of the tradeoffs that are inherent in a decision to spend another $81.9 billion on defense and foreign aid.

If the President's emergency request for 2005 is approved, the Congress will have approved over $210 billion just for the war in Iraq. How much is $210 billion? That is $210 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born 2,000 years ago. How much is it? That is $210 for every minute that has passed since Jesus Christ was born 2,000 years ago.

While the budget deficit grows to record levels, the President tells us we have to cut domestic programs by $192 billion over the next 5 years. The President tells us we have to charge veterans--those brave men and women--for their medical care, and we have to cut grants for firefighters and first responders, that we cannot adequately fund the No Child Left Behind Act, and that we should cut funding for the National Institutes of Health.

For fiscal year 2006, the President fails to request any funding for the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will say that again. For fiscal year 2006, the President fails to request any funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The President pretends that he cannot project what the war will cost in 2006. Well, I assure the American people the costs will not be zero. The President will not tell the American people what the war in Iraq will cost. No, he will not tell the American people what the war will cost in Iraq. It is your money, I say to the people of this country. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, whatever you will, it is your money.

Nor will the President give the American people a plan for getting out of Iraq. How long are the American people going to suffer under the weight of this colossal burden? The President continues to insist on borrowing the money to fund the war in Iraq 1 year at a time through emergency supplemental appropriations requests. So far, the Department of Defense has received appropriations of $16 billion, $14 billion, $7 billion, $10 billion, $63 billion, $65 billion, and $25 billion for the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--all emergency spending, one piece at a time, and all of it, adding to our horrendous debt. What a shame. What a colossal shame.

In his budget for fiscal year 2006, the President's only plan to help pay for his tax cuts and his war in Iraq is to slash that small portion of the budget that pays for priorities at home. In order to hide the consequences of his proposed cuts in domestic programs--cuts of $192 billion over 5 years--the President's budget excludes the details that are traditionally included in the budget. However, based on data the Office of Management and Budget has provided to the Congress on the levels of funding in each of the next 5 years, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has studied the impact of the proposed cuts.

Adjusted for inflation for 2010, when the President's proposed reductions would reach their full dimensions, education funding for kindergarten through the 12th grade would be cut by $4.6 billion or 12 percent. Grants to States and localities would be cut by nearly $22 billion in 2010. The number of low-income women, infants, and young children receiving assistance through the WIC supplemental nutrition program would be cut, cut, cut by $670,000. The number of children in low-income working families who receive childcare assistance would be cut, cut, cut by $300,000. The number of low-income families, elderly people, and people with disabilities who receive rental assistance through the provision of rental vouchers that help them to afford modest apartments would be cut, cut, cut by $370,000. Environmental protection would be reduced by 23 percent, including EPA programs that support State and local efforts to ensure clean drinking water, reduce air pollution, and upgrade sewage treatment facilities which would be sliced 28 percent.

I call on the President--Mr. President, I say this to the President in the White House--to send Congress a budget amendment this week that includes his estimates for the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are tradeoffs we are making to fund these efforts to the tune of about $1 billion a week. There needs to be a debate about that. The issue becomes crystal clear when these war costs are shown as part of the regular budget process. As we consider the budget for fiscal year 2006, Congress should understand the full cost of the wars.

I want to say that again. I shall say it again. As we consider the budget for fiscal year 2006, Congress should understand and the American people should understand the full costs of the wars, and especially the war in Iraq, so that we, the Members of Congress, can make reasoned spending choices so that we can inform our constituents about how we plan to pay for those choices.

Again, I thank my chairman. I thank the staff, the magnificent staff of the Appropriations Committee, the staff who worked hard to help our chairman and to help me and to help the members of our Appropriations Committee in our efforts to bring this full bill to the floor.

The majority staff is led by Keith Kennedy. There is a man, Keith Kennedy. He knows what he is doing. He knows this bill up and down and sideways. Keith Kennedy. I am gratified that the chair has chosen him, and I am also thankful to the chair that he has chosen a man like Mr. Kennedy.

I am also thankful for the minority staff, led by Terry Sauvain, that man from Notre Dame, and a deputy named Chuck Kieffer. He has worked on both the legislative and executive sides. He knows the appropriations process inside, outside, from the executive branch viewpoint and from the legislative side. I thank all of the members of the appropriations staff on both sides of the aisle. I thank the Chair, and I thank all Senators. Again, I thank my illustrious chairman.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, that request is supported on this side of the aisle 100 percent.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the International Clean Energy Deployment and Global Energy Markets Investment Act of 2005. This is a forward-thinking, made-in-America action plan that can serve as a building block that puts the right structure and mechanisms in place, mobilizes the necessary resources, and helps define the course we will have to take in order to better design the global energy system that will be built in coming decades. But let me also state up front what this legislation does not do. It is not intended to be a substitute for the need to seek globally binding climate change agreements that would include commitments from the largest industrial and developing country emitters of greenhouse gases. However, my legislation can serve as a meaningful first step to seriously engage developing countries in tackling the critical link between our mutual energy and climate change challenges. Additionally, such engagement can be a new cornerstone for the U.S. to demonstrate that we are committed to working with other nations on a broad range of international issues.

We must start by honestly addressing several bottom line issues. We know that the world's population will likely grow by about 50 percent during this century, and those people, most of whom will live in developing nations, will be seeking the necessary resources to live. These nations will be growing rapidly and their requirements for energy will follow suit for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, we know that growth needs to be undertaken in as clean and efficient a manner as possible. When economies heat up so does energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and that global change. How can any nation's economy continue to grow and provide good jobs in a way that does not undermine its environment and vice versa? How do we find ways to address these problems of mutual concern for our citizens and for their children and grandchildren? These issues matter as much in the United States as they do in places in China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.

This legislation's journey began several years when I included, in the fiscal year 2001 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, language that called for a clean energy exports and market development strategic plan. The Bush administration sent that report to Congress in October 2002. Since that time, I have been urging, cajoling, and pushing Federal agencies like the Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Agency for International Development to cooperate more and increase public/private efforts to help export U.S. clean energy technologies and open more of these markets abroad. It is now time to take the next step and introduce this legislation in order to expand upon that foundation.

By taking this next step, I am suggesting that we must work together to develop a broad-based action plan that builds on American ingenuity, encourages the export of made-in-America clean energy technologies, helps advance developing country climate change engagement, increases international sustainable development, and strengthens interagency and public/private cooperation. The objectives of this legislation further include efforts to increase access to clean and reliable energy services, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy security, and integrate these goals in a manner that is consistent with U.S. foreign policy interests around the world. Finally, my legislation essentially codifies and enhances the administrative structure that has already been put in place.

On a related but separate note, I am very aware that on February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force. As the primary author of Senate Resolution 98, which passed unanimously in 1997, I worked to establish core principles which should be part of any future binding, international climate change agreement. Those principles were that a treaty should be cost effective and should include the participation of developing nations, especially the largest emitters. The Kyoto Protocol does not meet those principles for the United States.

There have been widely varying interpretations of that resolution, especially by the Bush administration. The Byrd-Hagel resolution was intended to guide our Nation's role in international negotiations, not kill that effort. It was meant to strengthen the hand of

any administration as it sat at the international negotiating table, but this White House has used the Senate's vote as an excuse to totally abandon the negotiations and offer, instead, only hollow alternatives. Yet, it is the height of hypocrisy for the Bush administration to claim that it is defending that resolution's principles when, as a matter of fact, it has disregarded its very purpose.

That Senate resolution directed that any climate change treaty include commitments for the developing world, like China and India, which will surpass the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. These commitments could lead to real reductions. An international treaty with binding commitments also could allow for developing countries' continued economic growth with relatively modest requirements at first, pacing upwards, with ultimate goals to be achieved over time.

Moreover, given their expected economic growth and energy demands, developing nations are a primary market for clean energy technologies. But, this multi-billion dollar window of opportunity could close for the United States. With little pressure on developing countries to reduce or contain their emissions growth, these potentially enormous markets for clean energy technologies, made in the U.S., could slip away. Thus, my legislation can serve as a commonsense foot-in-the-door to help jump start efforts to seek fair and effective globally binding agreements in the future.

Despite this, the President has clearly stated that the U.S. would only pursue voluntary measures both domestically and internationally, and he continues to follow that path despite the fact that no major environmental problem has ever been solved by a purely voluntary basis. Since retreating from the international forum, his own climate change program is a strong testament to prove that voluntary actions are not likely to result in any serious decrease in overall emissions. While global climate change is long-term problem, it does not mean that we can put off action indefinitely. If we wait for decades to take more significant actions, then more radical measures will likely be necessary.

Additionally, I have long said that the U.S. needs a comprehensive, national energy strategy that has bipartisan support. A serious energy efficiency program, bolstered by the promotion of renewable energy and other clean home-grown energy sources, provides a compass point for a U.S. energy strategy. At its core, we must rely on our nation's domestic energy assets, especially coal. Coal must become a primary fuel source for new energy demands into the 21st century. However, to do so requires that we think differently about coal.

It is a myth to say that the U.S. or other major nations like China and India will stop burning coal any time soon. Yet, we must begin to treat this plentiful resource like black gold and use it in a much cleaner and more efficient way. We must accelerate the deployment of commercial-scale technologies that move us away from simply burning coal toward the enhanced ability to transform coal into a variety of energy products. We can begin to meet this challenge by demonstrating and deploying advanced power generation, especially coal gasification and carbon sequestration technologies, as well as by producing synthetic fuels and, eventually, hydrogen for use in other sectors of the economy. This broad approach also requires sending strong and clear regulatory and market signals which can significantly reconcile numerous environmental and climate change concerns, stimulate technology deployment, and set the stage for coal into the future.

The path that I am proposing here today goes far beyond the energy proposals that this White House has offered. Pursuing this course will take steadfast leadership, hard work, and American ingenuity to move forward in a responsible, balanced, and intelligent way. It is time for industry, labor, academic, environmental, and community interests to work with policymakers to find common ground. Commonsense market-based and regulatory approaches, emerging technology platforms, and new policy perspectives can bring these divergent groups together.

I believe it is time to send the message that there will likely be a binding carbon management regime in place for the U.S. at some point in the future. It may not be in place tomorrow or the next day or even in the next 2 to 4 years. It may also be a modest approach initially, but it is on the horizon. We certainly cannot run until we have walked, and we cannot walk until we have taken a step. But we can no longer stand still forever. By acting boldly, we can champion a new energy and environmental legacy that will benefit all the world's citizens.

With regard to my legislation's introduction today, our Nation must recognize the incredible impact that U.S. technologies and ideas can have in helping to meet other nations' energy needs in a more sustainable way. We must work to open and expand international markets for a range of U.S. clean energy technologies and simultaneously address global energy security, economic, trade, and environmental objectives.

I thank you for this opportunity and hope this legislation will receive serious consideration. I urge Members to see this as a key component of the architecture that will be necessary if we ever hope to seriously tackle the tough energy and environment issues before us as well as a way to enhance our broader foreign policy and climate change efforts around the world.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing the International Clean Energy Deployment and Global Energy Markets Investment Act of 2005. This is a forward-thinking, made-in-America action plan that can serve as a building block that puts the right structure and mechanisms in place, mobilizes the necessary resources, and helps define the course we will have to take in order to better design the global energy system that will be built in coming decades. But let me also state up front what this legislation does not do. It is not intended to be a substitute for the need to seek globally binding climate change agreements that would include commitments from the largest industrial and developing country emitters of greenhouse gases. However, my legislation can serve as a meaningful first step to seriously engage developing countries in tackling the critical link between our mutual energy and climate change challenges. Additionally, such engagement can be a new cornerstone for the U.S. to demonstrate that we are committed to working with other nations on a broad range of international issues.

We must start by honestly addressing several bottom line issues. We know that the world's population will likely grow by about 50 percent during this century, and those people, most of whom will live in developing nations, will be seeking the necessary resources to live. These nations will be growing rapidly and their requirements for energy will follow suit for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, we know that growth needs to be undertaken in as clean and efficient a manner as possible. When economies heat up so does energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and that global change. How can any nation's economy continue to grow and provide good jobs in a way that does not undermine its environment and vice versa? How do we find ways to address these problems of mutual concern for our citizens and for their children and grandchildren? These issues matter as much in the United States as they do in places in China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.

This legislation's journey began several years when I included, in the fiscal year 2001 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, language that called for a clean energy exports and market development strategic plan. The Bush administration sent that report to Congress in October 2002. Since that time, I have been urging, cajoling, and pushing Federal agencies like the Department of State, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Agency for International Development to cooperate more and increase public/private efforts to help export U.S. clean energy technologies and open more of these markets abroad. It is now time to take the next step and introduce this legislation in order to expand upon that foundation.

By taking this next step, I am suggesting that we must work together to develop a broad-based action plan that builds on American ingenuity, encourages the export of made-in-America clean energy technologies, helps advance developing country climate change engagement, increases international sustainable development, and strengthens interagency and public/private cooperation. The objectives of this legislation further include efforts to increase access to clean and reliable energy services, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy security, and integrate these goals in a manner that is consistent with U.S. foreign policy interests around the world. Finally, my legislation essentially codifies and enhances the administrative structure that has already been put in place.

On a related but separate note, I am very aware that on February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force. As the primary author of Senate Resolution 98, which passed unanimously in 1997, I worked to establish core principles which should be part of any future binding, international climate change agreement. Those principles were that a treaty should be cost effective and should include the participation of developing nations, especially the largest emitters. The Kyoto Protocol does not meet those principles for the United States.

There have been widely varying interpretations of that resolution, especially by the Bush administration. The Byrd-Hagel resolution was intended to guide our Nation's role in international negotiations, not kill that effort. It was meant to strengthen the hand of

any administration as it sat at the international negotiating table, but this White House has used the Senate's vote as an excuse to totally abandon the negotiations and offer, instead, only hollow alternatives. Yet, it is the height of hypocrisy for the Bush administration to claim that it is defending that resolution's principles when, as a matter of fact, it has disregarded its very purpose.

That Senate resolution directed that any climate change treaty include commitments for the developing world, like China and India, which will surpass the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. These commitments could lead to real reductions. An international treaty with binding commitments also could allow for developing countries' continued economic growth with relatively modest requirements at first, pacing upwards, with ultimate goals to be achieved over time.

Moreover, given their expected economic growth and energy demands, developing nations are a primary market for clean energy technologies. But, this multi-billion dollar window of opportunity could close for the United States. With little pressure on developing countries to reduce or contain their emissions growth, these potentially enormous markets for clean energy technologies, made in the U.S., could slip away. Thus, my legislation can serve as a commonsense foot-in-the-door to help jump start efforts to seek fair and effective globally binding agreements in the future.

Despite this, the President has clearly stated that the U.S. would only pursue voluntary measures both domestically and internationally, and he continues to follow that path despite the fact that no major environmental problem has ever been solved by a purely voluntary basis. Since retreating from the international forum, his own climate change program is a strong testament to prove that voluntary actions are not likely to result in any serious decrease in overall emissions. While global climate change is long-term problem, it does not mean that we can put off action indefinitely. If we wait for decades to take more significant actions, then more radical measures will likely be necessary.

Additionally, I have long said that the U.S. needs a comprehensive, national energy strategy that has bipartisan support. A serious energy efficiency program, bolstered by the promotion of renewable energy and other clean home-grown energy sources, provides a compass point for a U.S. energy strategy. At its core, we must rely on our nation's domestic energy assets, especially coal. Coal must become a primary fuel source for new energy demands into the 21st century. However, to do so requires that we think differently about coal.

It is a myth to say that the U.S. or other major nations like China and India will stop burning coal any time soon. Yet, we must begin to treat this plentiful resource like black gold and use it in a much cleaner and more efficient way. We must accelerate the deployment of commercial-scale technologies that move us away from simply burning coal toward the enhanced ability to transform coal into a variety of energy products. We can begin to meet this challenge by demonstrating and deploying advanced power generation, especially coal gasification and carbon sequestration technologies, as well as by producing synthetic fuels and, eventually, hydrogen for use in other sectors of the economy. This broad approach also requires sending strong and clear regulatory and market signals which can significantly reconcile numerous environmental and climate change concerns, stimulate technology deployment, and set the stage for coal into the future.

The path that I am proposing here today goes far beyond the energy proposals that this White House has offered. Pursuing this course will take steadfast leadership, hard work, and American ingenuity to move forward in a responsible, balanced, and intelligent way. It is time for industry, labor, academic, environmental, and community interests to work with policymakers to find common ground. Commonsense market-based and regulatory approaches, emerging technology platforms, and new policy perspectives can bring these divergent groups together.

I believe it is time to send the message that there will likely be a binding carbon management regime in place for the U.S. at some point in the future. It may not be in place tomorrow or the next day or even in the next 2 to 4 years. It may also be a modest approach initially, but it is on the horizon. We certainly cannot run until we have walked, and we cannot walk until we have taken a step. But we can no longer stand still forever. By acting boldly, we can champion a new energy and environmental legacy that will benefit all the world's citizens.

With regard to my legislation's introduction today, our Nation must recognize the incredible impact that U.S. technologies and ideas can have in helping to meet other nations' energy needs in a more sustainable way. We must work to open and expand international markets for a range of U.S. clean energy technologies and simultaneously address global energy security, economic, trade, and environmental objectives.

I thank you for this opportunity and hope this legislation will receive serious consideration. I urge Members to see this as a key component of the architecture that will be necessary if we ever hope to seriously tackle the tough energy and environment issues before us as well as a way to enhance our broader foreign policy and climate change efforts around the world.

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

Mr. President, opponents of free speech and debate claim that, during my tenure as majority leader in the United States Senate, I established precedents that now justify a proposal for a misguided attempt to end debate on a judicial nomination by a simple majority vote, rather than by a three-fifths vote of all Senators duly chosen and sworn as required by paragraph two of Senate rule XXII. Their claims are false.

Proponents of the so-called nuclear option cite several instances in which they inaccurately allege that I ``blazed a procedural path'' toward an inappropriate change in Senate rules. They are dead wrong. Dead wrong. They draw analogies where none exist and create cock-eyed comparisons that fail to withstand even the slightest intellectual scrutiny.

Simply put, no action of mine ever denied a minority of the Senate a right to full debate on the final disposition of a measure or matter pending before the Senate. Not in 1977, not in 1979, not in 1980, or in 1987--the dates cited by critics as grounds for the nuclear option. The Congressional Research Service confirms that only six amendments have been adopted since the cloture rule was enacted in 1917, and ``each of these changes was made within the framework of the existing or `entrenched' rules of the Senate, including rule XXII.''

In none of the instances cited by those who threaten to invoke the nuclear option did my participation in any action deny the minority in the Senate, regardless of party, its right to debate the real matter at hand.

Let us examine each of these so-called precedents in greater detail.

October 3, 1977--Enforcing Senate Rule XXII Against Improper Post- Cloture Delay: In 1977, the Senate invoked cloture on S. 2104, described as ``a bill to establish a comprehensive natural gas policy.'' Shortly thereafter, two Senators began a postcloture ``filibuster by amendment,'' after a supermajority of the Senate had already chosen to invoke cloture (under the Senate rules) and had made clear its desire to bring debate on the bill to close. Though the Senate had voted to invoke cloture by an overwhelming vote of 77 to 17, two Senators nonetheless continued to offer amendments, to request quorum calls, and to offer amendments to amendments to preserve and extend time on the bill post-cloture. Their efforts, as confirmed by the Chair, ran directly contrary to the purpose of rule XXII, which is to limit debate.

The tactics employed were sufficiently egregious that the Senate spent 13 days and 1 night debating the bill, which included 121 rollcalls and 34 live quorums. Cloture having been invoked by an overwhelming vote, I then made the point of order that:

when the Senate is operating under cloture, the Chair is

required to take the initiative under rule XXII to rule out

of order all amendments which are dilatory or which on their

face are out of order.

Critics have alleged that my actions in this instance ``cut off debate'' and somehow constitute a precedent for ending a filibuster of a judicial nominee by 51 votes before cloture has been invoked. But that argument is erroneous.

The Senate was operating postcloture. The Senate had voted 77 to 17 to end debate. I didn't do that; the Senate took that action.

If anything, my actions clarified that rule XXII means what it says. The text of rule XXII provides explicitly that, once cloture is invoked, ``no dilatory motion, or dilatory amendment, or amendment not germane shall be in order.'' Therefore, once Members have voted to invoke cloture, dilatory amendments or actions are simply out of order. Senators still retain their hour of postcloture debate. Senators still have the right of appeal.

Some have falsely alleged that I even acted to impede debate on that appeal,

but they are mistaken yet again: Under the provisions of rule XXII, appeals from rulings of the Chair were not and are not debatable postcloture.

Nothing that was done in 1977 changed rule XXII or sent a shock wave through the Senate. Nothing that was done restricted the right of Senators to wage a filibuster against a nominee or legislation before cloture is invoked. No action taken affected the fundamental right of Senators to debate the natural gas deregulation bill; they had already debated the bill and, of their own volition, had decided to end their debate by an overwhelming vote. Instead, I sought to end dilatory tactics postcloture, when such tactics were, and remain today, prohibited by the plain text of paragraph two of rule XXII. I simply sought a ruling from the Chair to enforce Senate rule XXII.

In fact, when, in 1977, my point of order was sustained, the Chair in so doing noted that the point of order was consistent with the purpose of rule XXII, which ``is to require action by the Senate on a pending measure following cloture within a period of reasonable dispatch.'' When the Chair's ruling in support of my point of order was thereafter appealed, that appeal was tabled in the Senate by another overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

No Member of the minority in the Senate lost his right to debate the natural gas deregulation bill. Their ability to debate the bill was not tampered with or impeded in any way. Each Senator retained the right to debate, under the Senate rules, the bill both precloture and in the hour that was provided to each Senator under rule XXII postcloture.

Thus, contrary to current assertions, in 1977, a strong, bipartisan, supermajority of the Senate, supported by, among others, Minority Leader Howard Baker and myself, endorsed this necessary effort to halt postcloture dilatory tactics consistent with Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate. That is completely unlike the so-called nuclear option that is currently being discussed by some in the Senate. I sought to enforce rule XXII; not to destroy it.

January 15, 1979--Enforcing Rule XXII Against Improper Post-Cloture Delay: At the beginning of the new Congress in 1979, I, as Senate majority leader, introduced a resolution to make various changes to Senate rule XXII, the bulk of which addressed circumstances postcloture. Recently, on March 10, 2005, a Senator spoke on the Senate floor and stated that this resolution serves as a precedent for the nuclear option. However, my resolution served to enforce rule XXII, not to destroy it. My introduction of S. Res. 9 was influenced by the postcloture dilatory tactics that were suffered by the Senate during its consideration of the natural gas deregulation bill during the preceding Congress.

My efforts in that regard were supported, on a bipartisan basis, by Minority Leader Howard Baker who stated in response to my introduction of S. Res. 9:

I point out, as I am sure most of our colleagues are aware

and will recall, that in the case of the most recent post-

cloture filibuster, it was the majority leader and the

minority leader, with the distinguished occupant of the

chair, the Vice President, in the chair at the time, who

managed to establish a line and series of precedents that

created the possibility to at least accelerate the

disposition of the controversy and conflict.

The point of the matter is that this is not, nor has it

been, a matter that is purely partisan in its character. . .

.

He added:

I share with the majority leader the belief that the post-

cloture filibuster, a creature of fairly young age and recent

development, is one that the Senate has not focused on

adequately. I am prepared to do that and I want to do that.

As the minority leader in the Senate recognized at the time, the text of rule XXII provides explicitly that, once cloture is invoked, ``no dilatory motion, or dilatory amendment, or amendment not germane shall be in order.'' Therefore, once Members vote to invoke cloture, dilatory amendments or actions are impermissible. No proposal of mine in 1979 restricted the right of Senators to filibuster a nominee or a piece of legislation prior to the invocation of cloture, consistent with Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate. And the position I took at the time enjoyed support on both sides of the aisle.

November 9, 1979--Strengthening Rule XVI Against Legislation on Appropriations Bills: Opponents of free speech and debate in the Senate cite a third event as a supposed basis for their proposed ``nuclear option.'' In November 1979, during consideration of a Department of Defense Appropriations bill, Senator Stennis raised a point of order that an amendment to change the rate of pay for military personnel, which had been offered by Senator Armstrong, constituted legislation on an appropriations bill and was therefore out of order under the express terms of Senate rule XVI. Legislative amendments to appropriations bills violate Senate rule XVI. However, by precedent, the ``defense of germaneness'' arose. According to this practice, which evolved outside the text of rule XVI, if the House has acted first to ``open the door'' to legislate on an appropriations measure, a Senator could respond with a legislative amendment, provided that it is germane to some House legislative language. If a point of order were made that an amendment constituted legislation, a ruling by the Chair on that question would be preempted by a vote on the germaneness of the amendment to the House language. This practice was justified only if the House had included legislative language in its bill. But this practice made a mockery of the rule if the House had not included any legislative language.

When Senator Stennis raised the point of order that the Armstrong amendment constituted legislation on an appropriations bill, Senator Armstrong asserted the defense of germaneness, meaning that his amendment was germane because it was relevant to the House bill. At that point, I made the following point of order:

I make the point of order that this is a misuse of the

precedents of the Senate, since there is no House language to

which this amendment could be germane and that, therefore,

the Chair is required to rule on the point of order as to its

being legislation on an appropriation bill and cannot submit

this question of germaneness to the Senate.

I was concerned that, as a threshold matter, the amendment should not be considered because there was no House language to which the proposed amendment could possibly be germane. The Chair noted that while this was a case of first impression, my point was ``well taken,'' and he sustained my point of order. Senator Armstrong then appealed the ruling of the Chair, and I moved to table that appeal. My motion was adopted by the Senate.

Critics claim that my actions in this instance were contrary to the plain language of rule XVI, because rule XVI at paragraph four states, ``all questions of relevancy of amendments under this rule, when raised, shall be submitted to the Senate and be decided without debate.'' But their assertion that I acted in a manner contrary to rule XVI is false.

My point of order went not to the issue of legislating on an appropriations bill, but to a different issue: The concept of ``defense of germaneness.'' Nowhere in rule XVI is there a reference to the concept of ``defense of germaneness.'' The source and subsequent application of defense of germaneness and its threshold test is not rooted in any Senate rule. Instead, it dates back to a precedent, which is identified by Riddick's Senate Procedure as a ``theory,'' which was ``enunciated'' by Vice President Marshall in 1916, that, ``Notwithstanding the rule of the Senate . . . when the House of Representatives opens the door and proceeds to enter upon a field of general legislation . . . the Chair is going to rule, but of course the Senate can reverse the ruling of the Chair, that the House having opened the door the Senate of the United States can walk through the door and pursue the field.''

Second, my efforts were to avoid the misuse of precedent and thereby enforce the express provisions of Senate rule XVI, which prohibits legislation on an appropriations bill. It is only by precedent that germaneness justified a legislative amendment on an appropriations bill, and only if the House opened the door. My goal was to preserve proper precedent and strengthen rule XVI; not to weaken it, as the nuclear option would do to rule XXII. My actions did not establish any precedent to destroy the right of extended debate in the Senate. In fact, the Senate's action affected only the ability to offer certain amendments to particular legislation, and, even then, the Senate minority's rights to appeal a ruling of the Chair were fully preserved.

March 5, 1980--Enhancing the Right of Debate of Nominations on the Executive Calendar: Critics of extended debate also reference a motion I made in 1980 to proceed directly to a nomination on the Executive Calendar. They claim that this created a precedent making a motion to proceed to any nomination on the Executive Calendar nondebatable. It did no such thing.

At the time, a nondebatable motion to go into executive session automatically put the Senate on the first treaty on the Executive Calendar. This meant that moving to the Executive Calendar required consideration of treaties before nominations, simply because the Senate's Executive Calendar prints both treaties and nominations in the order in which they are reported out of their respective committees of jurisdiction, and treaties are then printed in the first section of the Calendar.

But the placement of treaties and nominations on the Senate Calendar was not and is not based on any great precedent or legal requirement that would elevate treaties to a position of prominence greater than nominations. Instead, the placement of treaties and nominations on the Senate Executive Calendar is simply the result of a clerical printing convention. There has never been a logical reason for the Senate to distinguish between a motion to proceed to a nomination and a motion to proceed to the first treaty. Because there is no substantive reason that the Senate should have to go to treaties before being able to consider a nomination, it seemed logical that the Senate should be able to proceed directly to a nomination on the Executive Calendar.

My motion to proceed directly to the first nomination, rather than a treaty, did not inhibit or frustrate Senate debate in any way. The Chair explicitly confirmed that it did not contravene any precedent or Standing Rule of the Senate. Moreover, it also did not restrict the ability of the Senate to filibuster the nomination itself. In fact, disposition of the nomination remained, as it is today, fully debatable in several respects. A nomination remains fully debatable when it comes before the Senate, and motions to proceed from one nomination to another are also fully debatable when the Senate is in executive session.

May 13, 1987--Enforcing Rule IV Against Improper Debate of a Motion To Approve the Journal: In 1987, a Republican minority led a filibuster seeking to prevent the Senate from considering a defense authorization bill. Prior to moving to the bill, I sought unanimous consent that the Journal of the preceding day ``be approved to date,'' a routine request in the course of Senate business. The Journal is the official record of the proceedings of the Senate, and under Senate rule IV, the Journal of the preceding day must be read following the prayer by the Chaplain unless, by nondebatable motion, the reading of the Journal is waived.

In this instance, Senator Dole objected to my request that the Journal be approved by unanimous consent, and the question of whether the Journal should be approved was put to a vote. Under Senate rule XII, if a Senator declines to vote during a rollcall, he or she must, at the time his or her name is called, give a reason for not voting. In an unusual occurrence, Senator Warner advised the Chair that he ``decline[d] to vote for the reason that I have not read the Journal.'' Rule XII requires that if a Senator declines to vote, the Presiding Officer must put a nondebatable question to the Senate on whether it is ``permissible for the Senator to decline his right to vote on the issue.''

The Chair called for the vote to determine whether Senator Warner should be excused from voting on the Journal. However, before that vote was completed, Senator Dan Quayle stated that he, too, declined to vote, because he said, ``I do not believe a Senator should be compelled to vote.'' The Chair asked the clerk to call the roll on whether to excuse Senator Quayle from voting, when Senator Symms stated that he, too, declined to vote for the same reason. At this point, there were four Senate votes pending. if additional Senators in the Chamber similarly chose to decline to vote, seriatim, the process could have continued forever.

Recognizing that, just a bit over a year previously, the Senate had deliberately amended rule IV to make the motion to approve the Journal a nondebatable motion, I made a point of order that the requests of the Senators to decline to vote were not in order. I stated:

that in amending rule IV, the Senate intended that a majority

of the Senate could resolve the question of the reading of

the Journal. I make my point of order that a request of a

Senator to be excused from voting on a motion to approve the

Journal is, therefore, out of order and that the Chair

proceed immediately, without further delay, to announce the

vote on the motion to approve the Journal.

Through a series of subsequent motions and votes, I prevailed in rectifying what I observed at the time was an extraordinary situation illustrated by a series of, in essence, ``votes within a vote.''

Contrary to erroneous allegations by some, my actions in this regard did not set a precedent that ``changed Senate procedure to run contrary to the plain text of a Standing Senate Rule.'' In fact, the action I took achieved exactly the opposite result: It ensured that Senate procedure would conform more closely to both the intent and the plain text of Senate rule IV.

At the time, one Senator mistakenly stated that the Chair could not entertain a unanimous consent request to suspend the application of rule XII in this instance. But that is an incorrect understanding by a Senator who was referring to rule XII, paragraph 1--where Senators cannot seek to be added to a vote that they missed, and the Chair may not do it or entertain a request to do so, a rule that was not in question and has always been strictly enforced by the Chair--not rule XII, paragraph 2, which was in dispute at the time.

Again, the actions I took were to enforce both rules IV and XII. Should I, instead, have endorsed a procedure whereby one Senator after another could simply decline to vote and put each Senator's reasons for declining to vote to another vote? Should Senators have been permitted, one after another, to decline to vote, then force a vote on each one's reason for not voting, on what is a nondebatable question in a nondebatable posture? Had I not raised a point of order against this abusive practice, it could have been used in innumerable future circumstances, and the Senate would not be able to complete a vote on any measure or matter, ever. It would, again, have made a mockery of the Senate's rules. Keep in mind that, if the tactic were ever legitimized, it could be employed to prevent a judicial nominee from ever receiving a vote.

It should be further noted that the point of order I made applies only to proceedings on motions to approve the Journal. Both the Presiding Officer and I confirmed this specifically in response to a question from Senator Alan Simpson. As I then stated:

where Senators decline to vote on other rollcall votes in

other situations--this point of order does not go to those.

This point of order only goes to the unusual situation, the

extraordinary circumstances, in which the Senate found itself

today, when it was trying to act on a motion to approve the

Journal to date, and when three Senators in succession stood

to say, ``Mr. President, I decline to vote on this rollcall

for the following reasons.''

Elsewhere, I also expressly stated that, ``for the legislative history,'' the precedential value of my point of order was ``confined only to that situation in which the Senate is trying to complete a vote on a motion to approve the Journal to date . . . It is confined to that very narrow purpose.''

The Senate's decision on that day was fully consistent with the text of rules IV and XII, which provides expressly that the question of whether a Senator could decline to vote, ``shall be decided without debate.'' The decision, once again, further enforced the existing rules of the Senate. This stands in stark contrast to the proposed nuclear option, which would contravene, by a simple majority vote, the express text of rule XXII, which applies to ``any measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate,'' and which requires an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn.

Let me state, once again, that no action of mine cited by the proponents of the nuclear options has ever denied a minority in the Senate its right to full debate on the final disposition of a measure or matter pending before the Senate.

The steps discussed here have all gone toward strengthening or enforcing

Senate rules, or clarifying the application of Senate precedents--not undermining them. The Senate has been the last fortress of minority rights and freedom of speech in this Republic for more than two centuries. I pray that Senators will pause and reflect before ignoring that history and tradition in favor of the political priority of the movement.

Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Two minutes.

Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator, the chairman of the committee, for his characteristic courtesy.

I rise, Madam President, to express my admiration for Senator Cochran as he assumes the duties of chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Today, I stand with Chairman Cochran in support of his amendment concerning the authority of Congress to designate funding as an emergency.

In the Constitution, there is no ambiguity about which branch of Government has the power of the purse. It is the congressional power of the purse which is the central pillar of the system of checks and balances under our Constitution. The budget resolution that is before the Senate includes a provision which makes the ability of the Congress to designate funding as an emergency subject to the approval of the President.

The measure that is before the Senate is a budget resolution. It is not a law. It will not be sent to the President for his approval. The Congress should not use a budget resolution to tie its own hands on spending decisions. The Congress should not tie its own hands in determining whether an expenditure for war, or an expenditure for victims of a flood, hurricane, or earthquake is an emergency. The Senate should not have to get on its knees and plead with any President for his permission to designate a provision as an emergency. The Congress is a coequal branch of Government under our Constitution, and it should jealously guard the prerogatives associated with the power of the purse, so wisely preserved for the legislative branch by our Founding Fathers.

If the Senate wants to provide emergency funding for agriculture disaster relief, or for responding to a recent flood or hurricane, or to provide additional funding to the Department of Defense for body armor, it must have that authority. The Cochran amendment makes clear Congress retains that authority.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

Again, I thank the chairman.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Montana for his overly charitable and very gracious comments concerning my efforts. I thank him for his work, likewise.

Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to allow the Senate to once again pass a $318 billion highway bill. That is precisely the bill that the Senate approved last year by a vote of 76 to 21.

Now, my good friend, the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Gregg, was among the 21 Senators who voted against last year's highway bill. I don't have any expectations he will support the amendment. My plea is to the 73 Senators still serving in the Senate who voted for that highway bill last year, Republicans and Democrats alike. We must reverse the continuing deterioration of the highways and transit systems in our State. We know the right vote was cast in February of last year when we approved a $318 billion highway bill despite the veto threats of the President.

We know that the highway and transit needs in the States have not diminished one thin dime since that vote last year. Today I am asking my colleagues to vote again for a budget that will allow for a $318 billion highway bill.

Just yesterday, the Environment and Public Works Committee marked up a new highway will. The bill marked up yesterday in committee provides far less funding than the bill passed last year, so that the bill's total would stay within the level of funding that President Bush has said he would accept, namely, $284 billion. That lower level of funding, $284 billion, is the level incorporated in the budget resolution before the Senate. The product of yesterday's committee markup is harsh medicine--harsh medicine, indeed--to all 50 States in our Nation. The bill approved in committee yesterday distributes almost $25 billion less to our States in formula funds than the bill approved by more than three-quarters of the Senate last year.

We now see precisely the amount of money that States will lose as a result of this retreat because it represents the elimination of almost 1.2 million jobs that would have been created without that lost funding. A major benefit of the committee having marked up its bill yesterday is that every Senator can see what their State will lose as a result of this retreat.

Currently sitting on every Senator's desk is a table comparing the amount of funding that was distributed by a formula to every State between 2005 and 2009 under the bill approved by the Senate last year and the smaller bill approved by the Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday. I have taken the liberty of including in this table the size of the job loss that results from these funding reductions. I ask unanimous consent this table be printed in the Record at this point.

I ask every Senator to take a close look at this table before voting on this amendment. Senators should be aware of precisely the amount of investment and the number of jobs their State will be losing if they vote against this amendment. In my state of West Virginia, failure to adopt this amendment will mean a loss of almost $275 million and this amendment will mean a loss of almost $275 million and more than 13,000 desperately needed jobs.

For several larger States--such as Florida, Georgia, and Ohio--the loss over a 5-year-period to each State is more than $1 billion and more than 50,000 jobs.

Mr. President, before any Senator argues that my amendment just increases spending without ensuring it will be spent on highways and mass transit, let me point out that my amendment restores the special highway and transit budget categories. Every additional penny provided by this amendment will be required to be spent on our highways or mass transit programs.

The offset for my amendment is the very same type of financing mechanism that served to enhance the receipts to the highway trust fund and were included in last year's highway bill with the bipartisan support of the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. President, may I ask for 1 additional minute?

Mr. President, I know that some Members are saying that it is foolhardy to try to pass a highway bill at $318 billion because the President has already vowed to veto a measure of that size. But I wish to remind my colleagues that our job--our job here--is to legislate based on our recognition of what is needed by our States and by the Nation. It is the President's job to either sign that bill or veto it.

So I ask my colleagues, why do our constituents send us here if we do not look out for their needs? We have been sent here to vote our conscience and to stand for the needs of our constituents. So in offering this amendment today, I am saying to my colleagues, let's do our job. Let's adopt a budget that will enable us to pass a highway bill that we believe addresses the transportation and commerce needs of the Nation. The President will review that piece of legislation, and he will either sign or veto it. That is his job. That is his prerogative. But now is not the time to back away from the country's transportation needs.

When the roll is called on this amendment, Senators will be faced with a stark choice. They can either vote for the level of highway spending that they received in last year's highway bill or they can resign their constituents to ever worsening congestion.

I thank the Chair and implore my colleagues to vote for the amendment.

Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, I oppose the taxation of Social Security benefits. Nevertheless, deficits continue to rise to alarming levels, and the tax cuts authorized by this budget resolution will worsen those deficits significantly. I urge the Finance Committee to pay for any tax cuts included in the reconciliation bill authorized by this budget resolution.

In 1993, Congress was at it again, and that year the Clinton tax was passed. The Clinton tax allows 85 percent of a senior's Social Security Benefit to be taxed if their income is above $34,000 for a single and $44,000 for a couple.

The additional money this tax raises doesn't even go to help Social Security's solvency--instead it goes into the Medicare program.

I was in Congress in 1993, and I fought with many of my colleagues against the Clinton tax. Unfortunately, we lost that fight and the tax went into place.

Some people may argue that this is a tax only on so-called ``rich'' seniors, but that just isn't the case. In fact, the income thresholds both for the 50 percent tax and the 85 percent tax haven't changed since they were first enacted back in 1983 and 1993.

A lot has changed in the last two decades, and more and more seniors are being affected by these taxes. In fact, it

is estimated that over 15 million beneficiaries pay taxes on their Social Security benefits.

Eleven million of these pay taxes on up to 85 percent of their Social Security benefit.

On one hand, we tell seniors to plan and save for retirement, and on the other we tax them for doing just that. In the past, there have been efforts by members of Congress--including myself--to remove the Clinton tax.

Today, the amendment I am introducing finally takes steps to repeal the Clinton tax. The amendment provides additional money under reconciliation so that this tax can be rolled back.

This means that the 85 percent tax tier would be eliminated and the maximum amount of Social Security benefits that could be taxed would be 50 percent.

This amendment will allow millions of seniors to keep more of their Social Security benefits in their pocket. Some of us have been trying to undo this tax for years, and this amendment finally gives us an opportunity to do that.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and to end this unfair tax on seniors and their Social Security benefits.

Mr. President, I yield back my time.