Floor Statements

Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?

Mr. President, I note the presence on the floor of the distinguished Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley. May I inquire through the Chair, is the Senator here to speak on the bill?

I would be happy for him to proceed if he wishes.

Mr. President, has the Pastore rule run its course?

Mr. President, it was not long ago--just a few short weeks, in fact--that Washington was cloaked in the somber palette of winter, a chiaroscuro of black, charcoal, burnt umber, and paler shades from snow white to icy slush.

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter,

Long ago.

Thus wrote the nineteenth century poet Christina Rossetti.

Despite the threat of a last snowstorm here, and large snowstorms in the Northeast, today presents a very different picture. It is as if an old black-and-white photograph has been gently tinted by a master's hand. A soft, green mist has crept over barren fields and dormant lawns. A rosy blush, tenderly applied, warms the tree tops with the buds of new leaves. Spangles of color, royal crocus and cheerful daffodil, sparkle among the decaying leaves. Iron-hard earth, now pliable, exudes the lush scent of fertile earth, and water, released from its frozen prison, gushes merrily over the stones. The stark infrastructure of life, the bare branches and simple undulations of the earth, are transformed each day by the miracle of the awakening season that even a temporary return to colder temperatures cannot stay.

As Robert Burns wrote:

Again rejoicing Nature sees

Her robe assume its vernal hues,

Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,

All freshly steep'd in morning dews.

On this past Saturday, March 20, Spring began. I am always glad to welcome it. Erma welcomed it, too. As the Earth fills with life, we can each share in that sense of renewal. Like the plants around us, we can take in the energy of the Sun and transform it into energy and enthusiasm for life.

It feels so good to take a few minutes to take a walk with my little dog, Trouble, or Baby, as I have nicknamed her--to take a walk or just stand and bask in the warmth of a sunny window and feel miles away from the pressures of work. To see a flock of robins busy on the lawn, keenly listening for the subterranean noises of an earthworm, takes me back to boyhood dreams of sunny afternoons long ago spent rediscovering the outdoors after a winter spent inside. The soft song of the whippoorwill recalls those first nights sleeping with the windows opened wide, cool breezes fanning the curtains, and the smell of sheets that had been dried on a line with clothes pins--remember the clothes pins? I can smell the earth of a newly tilled garden on a hillside, a lovely scent in the early days before the weeds come on strong.

As Mary Howitt wrote:

Buttercups and daisies,

Oh, the pretty flowers;

Coming ere the spring time,

To tell of sunny hours

When the trees are leafless;

When the fields are bare;

Buttercups and daisies

Spring up here and there.

This year there is so much to distract us from the simple pleasures of a springtime afternoon. The omnipresent undercurrent of terror threats, the ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the difficult budget and trade issues, and the building election battle-- all of these vie for our attention, and all of these deserve our attention. But spring does put all of these great issues into a larger context, reminding us of the permanence and the adaptability of the Earth and the even-paced cadence of life. For all that men do to each other and to the Earth, the seasons continue to roll onward, inexorable.

We, too, would do well to take a longer view and spend our effort against the long term, like a gardener planting perennial flowers or carefully siting a young tree, mindful that it will still be growing many decades hence. We must not be deterred by short-term setbacks or be daunted by the size of our problems. With discipline and consistent effort, we have beaten large deficits before. We have survived greater wars before. We must focus on our Nation like a good gardener focuses on his plot, improving the soil, pruning the weeds and deadwood, adjusting our seeding as conditions change, always mindful that a good effort this year builds toward a good harvest and a better year next year. The Nation we want our children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren to grow up in is like a well-tended garden--rich and productive, vibrant with life and opportunity, a place of beauty for all to admire and emulate.

Who loves a garden

Finds within his soul

Life's whole;

He hears the anthem of the soil

While ingrates toil;

And sees beyond his little sphere

The waving fronds of heaven, clear.

Thus wrote Louise Seymour Jones. She captured well the closeness to the Creator that being in nature brings. Even within the fortresses of stone, concrete, steel, and glass that surround us in Washington, spring finds ways to lighten our hearts. The pansies that smile at us from flower beds outside, the dandelions that invade even the smallest cracks in the pavement, bring nature's message home--take heart, spring is here at last. And to those facing the deep drifts of late season snowstorms farther north, be patient. Spring is coming.

Surely as cometh the Winter I know

There are Spring violets under the snow.

So observed R.H. Newell. In the Northeast, then, there must be a sea of violets waiting for the melt.

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

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager of the bill. I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, the Senate has an obligation to approve a budget resolution that addresses the massive deficits and debt that now lie before us. Such a balanced resolution should rely on responsible restraint, on all three elements of the budget: revenues, mandatory spending, and discretionary spending.

The Senate has an obligation to approve a budget resolution that will permit the Congress to enact 13 fiscally responsible appropriations bills. This budget resolution utterly fails to meet those tests. Instead, the resolution puts the Congress on a course toward long-term deficits, higher debt, and an appropriations process that will inevitably produce gimmicks and delays.

The budget resolution puts us on a course that will prevent us from meeting the needs of the Nation. Rather than confront record deficits with responsible limits on mandatory and discretionary spending and reassessment of the revenue losses produced by the tax cut legislation of 2001 and 2003, the Budget Committee produced a myopic budget resolution that pretends to address the deficits with ridiculously low limits on domestic discretionary spending.

It is not the spending side of the budget that has put the Federal budget back into the deficit ditch. Rather than restoring some sanity to our revenue base, the budget resolution that is before us includes $144 billion in new tax cuts. According to the House Budget Committee, the tax cuts enacted since 2001 have or will increase our deficits by $2.6 trillion for the period from 2001 to 2013.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, taxes in 2004 are, as a percentage of gross domestic product, the lowest they have been since 1950. Every year, the IRS fails to collect hundreds of billions of dollars from delinquent taxpayers and corporations. In 2001, IRS data showed $49 billion in lost revenues from delinquent employment taxes, penalties, and interest owed to the Federal Government. The Joint Tax Committee estimates that the cost of tax preferences increased by twice the rate of spending during the last 10 years, from $488 billion a year to $730 billion a year, and none of it--none--is required to be reviewed annually by the Congress.

Yet there is nothing in the budget resolution to increase tax enforcement or to close tax loopholes. Instead, this budget resolution heaps more tax cuts on top of the huge back-loaded tax cuts already enacted. This budget resolution pretends to reduce deficits by focusing cuts on one very small piece of the budget pie, domestic discretionary spending. Unlike the Tax Code or mandatory programs, discretionary spending is the only piece of the Federal budget required to be reviewed every year by the Congress, and it is the only part of the budget that is squeezed routinely for savings, even though there is an abundance of potential savings from excesses in the other areas of the budget.

Here are the facts. Domestic discretionary spending comprises less than 17 percent of the Federal budget. No one should believe cutting domestic discretionary spending by itself can produce balanced budgets.

I remind Senators that according to the White House's own budget documents, if we were to eliminate every penny of nondefense spending in fiscal year 2004, we would still run a deficit of $65 billion.

The mathematics in this resolution just do not work. The budget resolution cuts discretionary budget authority for fiscal year 2005 by $1.9 billion and outlays by $12.1 billion below the request of the President. For nondefense, non-homeland security programs, the resolution cuts budget authority for fiscal year 2005 by $11.2 billion below the level necessary to keep pace with inflation. Outlays for nondefense programs face even deeper, unsustainable cuts; that is, $11.2 billion in cuts in education, health care, veterans medical care, job training, transportation, and other critical priorities. Such cuts do not have the support of the American people or their Representatives in Congress.

Just 2 weeks ago, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee called upon the House Budget Committee to increase veterans spending by $2.4 billion. Recently, the Senate passed a bill increasing funding above the President's request for highway and mass transit programs. The Senate Finance Committee has requested more funds for tax enforcement. The Senate Small Business Committee called for increases in small business loans. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee called for increases for the Coast Guard. None of these increases are included in this resolution. Yet we engage in this charade, framed by the Bush administration, about how discretionary spending is bloated and how funding cuts are the absolute one and only way to reduce the deficit.

Under the President's budget, by 2009, education and training programs will be cut 7 percent below levels necessary to keep pace with inflation. Environmental programs will be cut by 20 percent, law enforcement programs by 16 percent, veterans medical care by 17 percent. The President tells us that we are in the midst of an energy crisis, but his budget cuts energy programs by 27 percent in 2009.

Remember No Child Left Behind? In 2009, the title I program will be cut by $260 million below levels approved for 2004, adjusted for inflation. Overall, domestic programs would be cut by 12 percent in 2009.

Does this budget resolution restore those cuts? No. No. No. Instead, this budget makes it next to impossible for the Federal Government to meet its obligations to children, to seniors, and to veterans. It digs a deep hole for funding education; a deep hole for funding health care; a deep hole for funding environmental programs, such as clean and safe drinking water. This budget puts the President's political priorities

first and it puts the American people last. This budget resolution will force cuts to domestic discretionary programs by almost $1 billion below the President's totally inadequate request for fiscal year 2005. It is a slash-and-burn program. Ignore the consequences. We must cut, cut, cut.

The resolution is $11.2 billion below the amount necessary to keep pace with inflation. During the next 5 years, the budget resolution cuts domestic programs such as veterans, education, and transportation by $107 billion below the amount necessary to keep pace with inflation.

What is going on here?

This Nation is suffering from neglect--neglect. Our schools are breaking apart; our health care system is in disarray; Social Security and Medicare face bankruptcy; America's veterans have to wait for weeks upon weeks for basic medical care; our homeland security network is riddled with massive gaps. Even though terrorists struck our Nation 2\1/2\ years ago, this very day protections at home are little improved from that fateful day.

Why? Why do we face such major crises in so many critical areas? The answer is simple. The Bush White House and this Congress have failed to live up to the promises made to the American people.

Today, the President is scheduled to participate in the groundbreaking for the 9/11 memorial in New York City. It was 2\1/2\ years ago today that those planes struck the two towers, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania. But are we safer? Hardly. The security of this Nation is on thin ice. The Bush administration has held back support for critical investments in homeland security, in police officers, in firefighters, in border, airport and seaport security. As a result of this White House's foot dragging, America is woefully unprepared to prevent or respond to another terrorist attack.

Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics throughout this country have sent a clear message to this Capitol; namely, they need more Federal help to best do their job. Law enforcement grants are proposed to be cut by $1 billion.

The President, in his budget, puts first responders last in line for Federal funding. The President's budget proposes to cut grants that equip and train police, fire, and emergency medical services personnel by $733 million. Fire grants alone are to be reduced by 33 percent.

These cuts come despite continued warnings--from think tanks, from commissions, and from first responders themselves--that our Nation is not adequately prepared to respond to another act of terrorism.

Congress has a responsibility to protect the Nation. It must focus on the country's many serious vulnerabilities and invest dollars where they are most needed. But it seems as though the only time this Congress is willing to increase funding is for our defense forces overseas. Defenses here at home are left to scramble and scrape.

My amendment would increase the levels of the 2-year caps on discretionary spending contained in the resolution to sustainable levels. These levels would allow Congress to responsibly move forward on the appropriations process.

This amendment provides sufficient resources, including $11.2 billion in fiscal year 2005 and $7.4 billion in fiscal year 2006 to make sure that the level of activity for domestic programs that the Congress approved and the President signed into law for 2004, can be maintained in 2005 and 2006, after adjusting for inflation.

We will hear during the debate that spending is out of control. It really is not. We have seen an increase in the 3 years since President Bush took office, but what programs have received those increases? The increases have been for defense, homeland security, and the response to the September 11 attack. In fact, 91 percent of the spending increases since 2001 have been in those three categories. According to staff analysis, increases for domestic programs, excluding homeland security, have barely kept pace with inflation over the last 2 years.

If you think the Congress should restore the President's proposed cuts of $1 billion in State and local law enforcement grants, you should be for this amendment. If you voted for the Senate highway bill, you should be for this amendment. If you think that veterans should not have to pay special charges and membership fees for health care, if you think that veterans already paid their dues at Iwo Jima, Pork Chop Hill, and the Mekong Delta, then you should be for this amendment.

Anyone who wants to characterize this amendment as excessive spending is not paying attention to the needs of their constituents. Nor are they paying attention to the bottom line. This amendment would reduce the deficits below the levels assumed in the budget resolution. The amendment assumes additional revenues from the elimination of waste in tax expenditures, through increased tax enforcement and compliance, and through the partial repeal of the excessive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans enacted in recent years.

This Senate must not continue to tell the American people that we are enacting legislation to better educate our children and to provide adequate care for military veterans--- those men and women who are enduring service in the powder keg called Iraq and will need care-- because we are not providing the money. We do not pay for our promises and that is nothing short of flim-flam and fraud pulled on the American people. To starve basic domestic needs and feed the country only feel- good rhetoric is the worst kind of posturing. Let us stop misleading the taxpayer and deliver what we promise.

This amendment is balanced. It is fair. It is responsible. We should not ignore the needs of our constituents. I urge the adoption of my amendment.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

When may I briefly respond to Mr. Nickles?

Just briefly, if I may.

Thank you.

Mr. President, if I may resume and take a bit more of my time.

It is not spending that has put us back into the deficit ditch. Spending for 2005 is estimated to be about 20 percent of the gross domestic product. That is significantly less than during the Reagan administration or during the administration of President Bush's father. On the other hand, revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product are the lowest since 1950.

This amendment produces just enough spending to cover the levels approved by this Congress and signed by the President for fiscal year 2004, adjusted for inflation. This is a disciplined amendment that sets reasonable limits. This amendment is not about increasing taxes.

In July 2003, at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on waste, fraud, and improved uses for taxpayer funds, GAO Comptroller David Walker testified that tax compliance and collection activity declines are a ``high risk'' concern for the GAO.

As of September 2001, IRS data showed that employers owed $49 billion in delinquent taxes. IRS and Federal payment records indicate that 1 million taxpayers owed about $26 billion in delinquent taxes as of February 2002 and were still receiving some type of Federal payment.

Our own budget chairman, at a hearing this year with Treasury Secretary Snow, expressed his concerns about tax compliance and its effect on the revenue side of the budget.

The Senate should at least make some effort to ensure we are enforcing our current tax laws and that delinquent taxpayers are paying their fair share before we cut education, health care, and veterans programs for citizens who actually pay their taxes.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

Amendment No. 2804

Mr. President, the Senate should ensure that delinquent taxpayers pay their fair share of taxes before we cut vital domestic investments for citizens who actually pay their taxes.

With that savings, we can restore the spending for our schools, veterans, and homeland security that is cut by this budget resolution.

The Senate should adopt a budget resolution that will permit the enactment of the 13 fiscally disciplined appropriations bills without forcing the Congress to use gimmicks to meet unrealistic spending targets.

This amendment sets responsible limits on discretionary spending for fiscal years 2005 and 2006, just enough to fund the levels, adjusted for inflation, that were approved by the Congress earlier this year.

Mr. President, what does the amendment do?

Mr. President, this budget resolution contains a back-door cut that could result in an 8 percent cut in the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, the resolution contains a provision that will undermine the Pell Grant higher education program. This amendment, which is cosponsored by the chairmen and ranking members of the Homeland Security and Labor/HHS/Education Subcommittees, addresses these issues.

Project Bioshield is a new program, first requested by the President in February of 2003, that will expand the Federal Government's preparedness for a bioterrorist attack by making it easier to purchase the most effective pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

The fiscal year 2004 budget resolution, the discretionary limit for fiscal year 2005 was set at $814 billion. Above and beyond the $814 billion limit, the resolution assumed $5.6 billion for Project Bioshield as mandatory spending for legislation considered in the Senate. In the House, the budget resolution assumed that funding for bioshield would be discretionary.

To help resolve the difference between the House and the Senate, the President submitted a formal budget request on September 12, 2003 for $5.6 billion of advanced appropriations as discretionary spending in the fiscal year 2004 Homeland Security Appropriations Act. Congress approved the request and the President signed the first Homeland Security Appropriations Act into law.

Six months later, Chairman Nickles has decided to disregard that agreement. His budget resolution now assumes that the $2.5 billion of Project Bioshield funding that is available for the next 4 years will all count against the $814 billion limit for fiscal year 2005, forcing the Appropriations Committee to absorb the cost.

What this means is less funding for first responder grants, less funding of the Coast Guard, less funding for border security, less money for FEMA to respond to disasters and less money to implement our immigration laws. This is unacceptable. My amendment will restore the Project Bioshield scoring treatment that was requested by the President and approved by the Senate last September and strike the language in the resolution concerning Pell Grants.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am not yet ready to enter into an agreement on my amendment.

I thank the Chair. I call up my amendment.

Mr. President, for many years, I have been growing increasingly concerned about the Senate as a forum for debate. Senators at every turn seem bent upon undermining this institution and the vision of our constitutional framers embodied in this upper body of the Congress.

The Senate is the only forum in our Government where the perfection of laws may be unhurried and where controversial decisions may be hammered out on the anvil of lengthy debate. It may be slow; it may be unwieldy; it may be frustrating to some; but it is the best means to achieving compromise, to ensuring an informed citizenry, to protecting the rights of the minority. To shut out the minority by limiting the right to debate is to needlessly and detrimentally infuse partisanship into the legislative process. That is exactly what we are seeing in this budget resolution.

Included in the Budget chairman's resolution are reconciliation instructions to the Finance Committee to report $81 billion in tax cuts to extend the child credit, marriage penalty, and 10-percent bracket expansion that are scheduled to expire this year. If misused, there is no procedural mechanism in the Senate more contemptuous of debate than the budget reconciliation process, and it is being misused. It is a process that has morphed into an annual exercise where the majority party takes advantage of the limitations on amendment and debate allowed by the

Budget Act to shield controversial legislation from public discussion.

This budget resolution would use reconciliation to circumvent a debate in the Senate about the wisdom of allowing additional tax cuts to deepen the deficit.

I helped to craft the Budget Act in 1974, and I can tell Senators we never in that day contemplated reconciliation would be used to shield from debate legislation that spends the Social Security surplus and increases deficits. We, in that day, never one time envisioned these abuses of the process.

Senators regularly express their desire for less partisanship, longing for the days--the days almost beyond recall--when the Senate accomplished its business without the political acrimony that has marked recent debates.

One reason the Senate avoided such partisanship is because the leaders of the Senate respected the rights of the minority and allowed the Senate to work its will through open and vigorous debate.

In 1981, Republican leader Howard Baker of Tennessee had the opportunity to use reconciliation to pass President Reagan's tax-cut package. Did he use it to do so? No. He chose instead to allow the tax cut to be brought before the Senate as a freestanding bill and fully debated. He said at the time, and I quote Howard Baker:

Aside from its salutary impact on the budget,

reconciliation also has implications for the Senate as an

institution . . .

I believe that including such extraneous provisions in a

reconciliation bill would be harmful to the character of the

Senate. It would cause such material to be considered under

time and germaneness provisions that impede the full exercise

of minority rights.

Now, that was an extraordinary statement of extraordinary vision by an extraordinary Senator, Howard Baker of Tennessee. Let me read it again, and I quote him:

Aside from its salutary impact on the budget,

reconciliation also has implications for the Senate as an

institution . . . I believe that including such extraneous

provisions in a reconciliation bill would be harmful to the

character of the Senate. It would cause such material to be

considered under time and germaneness provisions that impede

the full exercise of minority rights.

That was a statement by a statesman. For almost 20 years, the Senate exercised restraint with regard to the reconciliation process, and until 1995 the reconciliation process served as a helpful mechanism for deficit reduction. Since then, the process has been twisted and contorted by those who find its limitations on debate and amendment too enticing to resist, using it to advance a partisan agenda.

The country is the worse for that legislative opportunism. Would that Howard Baker could again speak from these desks.

Today, the White House is projecting deficits at an alarming $521 billion for the fiscal year 2004. To pay for its tax cuts, the Bush administration is spending every dime of the Social Security surplus, money that the President and both parties pledged to set aside to save our retirement and disability system. According to the White House's own numbers, the gross debt just passed the $7 trillion mark on its way to $11 trillion in 2009, and there is no credible plan from this administration or this Congress to do anything about it.

In response to mounting budget deficit projections, President Ronald Reagan signed into law 12 bills to increase taxes, including legislation to repeal part of his 1981 tax cut. Similarly, in response to alarming deficit projections in 1990, President Bush's father made the courageous decision to break his no new taxes pledge.

State legislatures and Governors have been making similar decisions over the past 3 years in Alaska, Alabama, Connecticut, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, and Ohio. It is what is being debated right now in Richmond,

I ask unanimous consent to reserve the remainder of my time. How much time do I have?

I thank the Chair.

Will the Senator yield?

You know, my wife and I are the proud possessors of two great-grandchildren, just within the last month. The distinguished chairman's grandson, and Erma's and my great-grandchildren, each of them owes, as of this past Monday, $24,253.36 on the national debt of the United States. My amendment is for the purpose of keeping down this debt and not increasing the deficit.

I yield 3 minutes.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

I thank the Chair.

The distinguished chairman has alluded to the sometimes ill will that exists increasingly within our own premises. That ill will is often engendered by the meddling of the White House. The White House should not meddle in the business of the Congress. Congress should pass bills and the President can decide whether to sign or to veto them.

Last year, the President stepped in late in the debate on the Omnibus appropriations bill and forced the conferees to drop protection for workers to earn overtime. He forced us to change the media ownership rules in order to protect large corporate interests. We should not allow the President to force the Congress to consider legislation through reconciliation.

Moreover, I say to my friend from Oklahoma, this amendment is not about tax cuts. It is about paying for tax cuts. This budget resolution assumes that our gross debt will grow to $10.6 trillion by 2009. This resolution does nothing to address the staggering debt. In fact, it assumes $144 billion of additional tax cuts with $81 billion of tax cuts cloaked within the protection of reconciliation. We should insist on a full debate on whether these tax cuts should be paid for.

We do not need reconciliation to get things done. In 1981, we passed President Reagan's tax cuts without reconciliation. Reconciliation was designed to pass difficult legislation that would help to reduce the deficit. It was not designed to pass tax cuts. We are facing huge deficits. We should have an opportunity to actually debate whether additional tax cuts should be paid for.

May I say to my chairman, I respect him greatly. I am sorry he has voluntarily elected to leave the Senate and not chair the committee. I have tremendous admiration for him. I have always enjoyed his friendship and my associations with him, and I shall long miss him.

I hope, on the note on which we have been playing, Senators will support my amendment.

Does my chairman wish any further time?

I yield that time to my chairman.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I wanted to inquire if I might find a way to speak for not to exceed 2 minutes in opposition to the amendment that is offered by Senators Warner and Stevens.

Mr. President, the debate about budget deficits is taking place all across this country. Ironically, the one place where debate is discouraged on this matter is right here in the world's greatest deliberative body. My amendment would strike the tax reconciliation instructions to the Finance Committee that would shield tax cut legislation that worsens the deficit from a thorough debate in the Senate.

To use reconciliation to increase the deficit is an abuse of the budget process. It doesn't matter whether it is an $81 billion tax cut, a $350 billion tax cut, or a $1.35 trillion tax cut, the Budget Act framers--and I was one of them--did not contemplate all this difficulty, did not contemplate reconciliation would ever be used to worsen the deficit. Not until 1999, after 25 years of restraint, was this abuse of the process first perpetrated.

If this budget resolution passes with these reconciliation instructions included, the Senate will be denied the opportunity to forge a consensus that would allow it to extend these tax cuts and pay for them.

That is the issue on which we vote today. A vote to strike the reconciliation instructions is a vote to allow the Senate to work its will and to permit the further worsening of the deficit. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. President, I have the utmost respect for the two authors of this amendment. They know that.

The Defense Department is plagued with accounting problems so severe that the Secretary of Defense cannot account for billions of taxpayer dollars. The General Accounting Office estimates the very earliest the Defense Department could possibly pass an audit would be 2007, and that is optimistic. The administration does not even know how much time and how much money it will take to fix the accounting problems.

It is absurd that the administration is proposing to cut vital domestic investments while billions and billions of dollars are lost every year in the Pentagon's broken accounting system. Such waste would not be tolerated from any other Department.

I suggest the Pentagon would be more careful with its money if it had less of it to waste. The Defense Department's budget is already bloated at $414 billion. I cannot support this amendment to add another $6.9 billion to the budget resolution for the Pentagon when it cannot explain to the American taxpayers how their hard-earned money is being spent.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Yes.

Right.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

How much time was consumed on the last rollcall?

Nineteen minutes. I thank the Chair.

Madam President, on January 3, 1963, Daniel Inouye became a U.S. Senator. Today, 15,036 days later, he has become the fifth longest serving Senator in American history.

This is yet another accomplishment in the life and career of a remarkable man and outstanding American.

I must point out, however, that his has not been an easy or comfortable life. It has involved overcoming the trials and tribulations of immigration and discrimination.

Still, his has been a life of service to our country. During World War II, he served our country in the famed 442d Infantry Regimental Combat Team of World War II, the most decorated Army unit in U.S. history. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Congressional Medal of Honor, making him one of only seven Senators to have been awarded our Nation's highest military honor. His war-time heroics have now been documented in the film, ``Daniel K. Inouye: An American Story.''

His service to our country continued in the U.S. Senate where he became the first Japanese American ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, and served on the Senate Watergate Committee, the Congressional Iran Contra Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and as Secretary of the Democratic Conference. I am pleased to point out that Senator Inouye will soon cast his 14,000th vote.

Personally, I have always appreciated and respected his deep loyalty to the Senate and everything for which it stands. I will never forget his loyalty to me when I was the Senate Democratic leader. Whenever I needed his assistance, he was there. Whenever I needed his vote, he was there. Whenever I needed his friendship, he was there. In an address to the Senate last July, I referred to Senator Inouye as ``my hero in the Senate.'' I am confident that he always will be.

Senator Inouye is a dear colleague and a remarkable man. Therefore, I take great delight in congratulating him on achieving this momentous occasion.

I congratulate the Senator. His colleagues are proud of him as are the people of Hawaii.

Madam President, I thank the distinguished Democratic whip and I thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for his courtesy.

Independent Commissions on National Security Issues

Most of us are familiar with the Aesop's fables, having read some of them at one or more times during our lives. Aesop once told the story of a jaybird that ventured into a yard where peacocks used to walk. There the jay found a number of feathers fallen from the majestic birds when they had last molted. He tied them all to his tail and strutted toward the peacocks. His cheat was quickly discovered, and the peacocks harassed the imposter until all his borrowed plumes had fallen away. When the jay could do no more than return to his own kind, having watched him from afar, they were equally affronted by the jay's actions.

The moral of the story, said Aesop, is that it takes more than just fine feathers to make fine birds.

It is an age-old lesson that the Congress should hold in its mind as we consider how best to investigate the distorted and misleading intelligence that the administration used to build its case for war in Iraq.

On February 6, the President announced the creation of his own commission to investigate our intelligence agencies to find out, in the words of Dr. David Kay, why we were almost all wrong about the administration's prewar claims of huge Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. If Congress is serious about getting to the bottom of this apparent intelligence failure and the administration's rush to war, we must realize that once stripped of its dazzling plumage, the White House proposal for its own so-called independent commission is a real, honest to goodness turkey. It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

The President has described the panel that he created as being an independent commission. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. This commission is 100 percent under the thumb of the White House. Who created the panel's charter? The President. Who chooses the panel members? The President. To whom does the panel report? The President. Whom shall the panel advise and assist? The President. Who is in charge of determining what classified reports the panel may see? The President. Who gets to decide whether the Congress may see the panel's report? The President.

To describe this commission as independent is to turn that word's definition on its head. In fact, the deeper one delves into the text of the Executive order that creates the President's so-called independent commission, the more one finds that the commission is ill-equipped to discover just what went wrong with the prewar intelligence on Iraq.

At first glance, the charter of the President's commission appears very broad. It is to assess whether the intelligence community of the United States is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and resourced to tackle the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. As part of that goal, the commission is to compare prewar intelligence on Iraq with what has so far been discovered.

That mission sounds like a mouthful, but it really misses the point of why the American people are calling for a commission to investigate in this matter.

The public has a right to know why our intelligence on Iraq was so wrong, how the administration may have misrepresented its intelligence, who is going to be held accountable for misleading our country into war, and what will be done to fix the problems with our intelligence. Those are exactly the questions an independent intelligence panel should be investigating, and yet the President's commission only skirts those key issues.

What is more, even though the President promised that his commission will investigate current intelligence on North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, his Executive order, in fact, does not bother to direct the commission to review intelligence on those countries. Instead, the President's Executive order directs the commission to focus its energies on Libya and Afghanistan. Libya and Afghanistan are not countries that the President has labeled as part of his axis of evil. A real independent intelligence commission would shine new light on how we assess the threats of North Korea and Iran, not be distracted by sideshows that will keep the commission busy until March 31, 2005.

The President has carefully drafted this Executive order to allow himself to serve as the gatekeeper on what information the so-called independent commission might have access to. While the President directs Federal agencies to cooperate with this commission, he also has created a giant loophole that would prevent the most important intelligence products from being read by his commission.

The Executive order reads as follows: The President may at any time modify the security rules or procedures of the commission to provide the necessary protection to classified information.

I was born at night but not last night. All of America knows that the White House is in a dispute with the September 11 Commission over intelligence reports that were read by the President. The commission wants

them. The White House will not give them. The Executive order drafted by the President to create an intelligence commission makes sure that his own commission will never see documents that the President does not want them to see.

At least the 9/11 Commission has the power to issue subpoenas for critical information. The President's intelligence commission does not even have that power. The deck is being stacked against a full and open inquiry on the prewar intelligence on Iraq. Congress is not even assured of having access to the commission's report.

The President has required that the commission send its report to him in March 2005 and then within 90 days the President will consult with the Congress concerning the commission's report and recommendations.

Why can the Congress not simply read the commission's report? Why should the White House be given the opportunity to reword, reshape, redact, or even flat out censor the so-called independent commission's report before Congress can get their hands on it?

It is quite possible that if this so-called independent commission is allowed to proceed as the President has directed, Congress will never have the chance to review the commission's work.

Tucked away in the President's Executive order is a provision that intends to exempt this commission from judicial review. Let us not forget that the Office of the Vice President fought tooth and nail in Federal courts, and is still doing so, to keep the General Accounting Office, an arm of the Congress, from learning about the meetings of the Vice President's energy task force.

Could this provision be an attempt to hide the work of the President's intelligence commission from Congress? I would not put such a scheme beyond the White House, which has already demonstrated its zeal for secrecy.

The administration's case for war in Iraq appears to have been built upon cherry-picked intelligence, produced and massaged to hype the American people into going along with a war of choice. The President's so-called independent commission would allow the White House to do the exact same number on the commission's report as it did on prewar intelligence and analysis; namely, pick out only the parts that it wants the public to see and bury the rest.

It is bitter irony that a report on whether the administration covered up evidence that contradicted a rush to war might itself be covered up under the terms of the President's Executive order.

So what is next? An independent commission to investigate the President's own commission? Is that so? I wonder. Let us not make the mistake of ignoring the shortcomings of the White House's version of an intelligence commission on Iraq, only to be haunted by those problems later.

The revelation by Dr. Kay that he does not believe any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq has dealt a blow to the President's case for war. It has shaken the American people's faith in their Government. We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of what went wrong with our intelligence agencies and whether the administration misused the intelligence that it was provided.

The President has simultaneously promised a commission to investigate these matters and stacked the deck against the independence of his very own panel. That is not the right way to gain the confidence of the American people in their Government. It is yet another in a string of attempts by this White House to mislead the American people on issues of national security.

Congress must step in and correct the grievous error that the President has made in creating a commission that is not equipped properly to do its job. Congress should use the independent 9/11 Commission, a commission that has shown itself to be fair, independent, and bipartisan, as a starting point for how to create an independent panel to investigate the Iraq intelligence failures. If the administration is serious about getting to the bottom of this debacle, this new commission might even be created in just a matter of days.

The American people deserve answers on why the administration relied on faulty intelligence to take this country to war without presence of an imminent threat. A commission that is designed to keep the inquiry under the thumb of the same White House that misled Congress and the public about the nature of the threat from Saddam Hussein will never be able to operate independently. So Congress should not allow the President to get away with posting a fox at the door to the hen house.

The structure of the 9/11 Commission is a solid foundation upon which to conduct an inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence claims. The 9/11 Commission has been doing yeoman's work in digging into all of the events that led up to those catastrophic attacks on New York and Washington. In fact, the only real problem that the 9/11 Commission has faced is the lack of cooperation from the White House.

After refusing to meet with the full membership of the 9/11 Commission, the President and Vice President have reluctantly proposed to meet only with the chairman and vice chairman of the panel. And for how long? Just 1 hour.

The National Security Adviser has flatly refused to participate in any public discussions with the Commission. The White House position on dealing with the 9/11 Commission is so unreasonable that the administration is drawing criticism from both sides of that panel. There is even talk that former Senator Bob Kerrey, who once served as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, could resign because of the administration's refusal to let the Commission do its work. What could possibly be the reason for this stonewalling by the White House?

It is as if a whole swath of the Washington establishment has completely forgotten the horror of the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people. But the American people have not forgotten. The American people have their priorities straight. They place getting at the truth of how that tragedy was carried out above election year politics.

Enough with the stonewalling. Enough with the foot dragging. Enough with the election year politics. The Senate acted correctly a few days ago to extend the life of the 9/11 Commission so that it can get its work done, and the House should promptly follow suit. Now Congress should act quickly to create an independent Iraq intelligence commission. The confidence of the American people in their Government, the people's government, hangs in the balance.

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

Mr. President, will the distinguished Democratic whip yield?

About what time would it be possible for me to get the floor?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, with the release of the President's budget for the fiscal year 2005, and the upcoming markup of the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution, it is now clear the promises made by this administration during the 2000 election have not been kept. Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to ensure the Social Security benefits promised to our Nation's workers, our retirement and disability system has become more vulnerable.

Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to make health care more affordable, drug prices continue to rise and health insurance remains unobtainable for too many Americans.

Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to protect our Nation's vital industry, this administration's tax and trade policies have been an unmitigated disaster with an alarming number of jobs being lost overseas.

Contrary to those assurances that it could be trusted to act as a prudent and responsible manager of our Nation's fiscal policies, the Bush administration has demonstrated neither prudence nor fiscal responsibility.

In his February 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, the President promised to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. He said that is ``more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.''

The President has not kept that promise.

Since President Bush submitted his fiscal year 2002 budget, our gross national debt has increased from $5.6 trillion to $7 trillion, and deficits have risen to $521 billion in fiscal year 2004.

With the deficit projections mounting, the cries of alarm are growing steadily louder. The IMF--an international organization normally concerned with the debt problems of third world nations--has issued an alarming critique of the United States, pleading with the Bush administration to rein in its massive budget and trade deficits. Similar warnings have emanated from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and the U.S. Comptroller General, David Walker.

Even the administration's own political allies, ranging from the conservative Heritage Foundation to private sector economists who endorsed the President's tax cuts, have pleaded with this administration to get its fiscal act together. Yet these warnings fall on deaf ears in this administration.

After spending $1.7 billion to finance three enormous tax cuts in the last 3 years, the President's budget proposes an additional $1.24 trillion--in other words, that is one and a quarter trillion dollars-- for more tax cuts.

President Bush's assertion that his budget will cut the deficit in half by 2009 is one more in a litany of promises that will go unfulfilled.

The Bush administration's own budget documents show that if none of its proposals were enacted into law, the deficit would still be cut in half.

The President's budget actually makes the deficit worse in 2009 than if the Congress took no action at all.

For the fiscal years 2001 through 2010, this administration's policies have transformed a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit--and it just keeps getting worse.

The President's budget includes record deficit projections that will push our national debt to extreme limits never before seen in our Nation's history, or any other nation's history for that matter.

President Bush's budget is a wake-up call for working Americans. Under the guise of inviting middle class workers to sit at the table and share in the tax cut, this administration ran up a tab that won't be paid for by those with golden parachutes. It will be the working man--the man who works with his hands, in many instances, or most. It will be the working man who gets stuck with the bill--the working man, the forgotten man in this administration. In this administration's tenure, the working man is the forgotten man.

Instead of ensuring the Social Security benefits promised to workers--here me out there--the President's budget would spend the entire Social Security surplus over the next 5 years--all $1.1 trillion of it--to pay for the administration's tax cuts for the affluent and for the corporate elite. Not one thin dime would be allocated to save your Social Security.

I remember life in the coalfields life in southern West Virginia when there was no Social Security. We had the old Raleigh County poor farm. Raleigh County is in south-central West Virginia, a great coal- producing county over the years. I remember the old

county poor farm out at Shady Springs.

It used to be when folks became old--and there in those coalfields they became old early--when they became old, they could no longer get a job. A person who was 60 years old, I can remember when I was a boy, was an old man. Sixty years old, that was old. Fifty-five years of age or 60 years of age was considered old. There was no Social Security when they became old. Those men and women who had given their best years in the toil and labor had given their best years. And they could no longer get work. The only thing they could do would be to go to the gates of their children with their hats in their hand and hope their children could take them in. Many of them went to that old county poor farm. No Social Security.

Then like the rays of hope breaking away the shadows in those West Virginia mountains, a new President, a crippled President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to the helm of this shipless state. He and a Democratic Congress enacted a law bringing to the country and to the old folks Social Security. I remember when those first Social Security checks came. A check came to my house where my old coal miner father--he was not my father, he was my foster father--received a check. And my mom, who was my aunt, had taken me to raise when my mother died in the great influenza in 1918. So the Byrds took me in and raised me and they drew a Social Security check.

So I know what it meant for those who had to depend upon Social Security, and those out in the plains, mountains, the prairies, and the valleys of America, who still depend upon Social Security.

But even the enormous surpluses in the Social Security accounts cannot cover the colossal cost of the administration's tax cuts. President Bush's budget would also cut the funding for those Federal programs that most benefit working families: Federal student aid, unemployment and job training programs, health care initiative for veterans and the poor and the elderly by a whooping $50 billion to pay for the administration's tax cuts. Hear me, out there. And still it is not enough.

After Draconian spending cuts on the loss of the entire Social Security surplus, the President's budget proposes to borrow an additional $1.4 trillion. How long does it take to count $1 trillion? At the rate of $1 per second, how long would it take to count $1 trillion? A thousand years? Two thousand years? Thirty-six thousand years.

The President's budget proposes to borrow an additional $1.4 trillion, much of it from countries such as China and entities like OPEC, to pay for what? To pay for its tax cuts, tax cuts for the well- to-do, tax cuts for the wealthy. I say to the people from West Virginia who may be watching, there are not many of you included in that group.

When you look at the promises of this administration on the one hand versus the performance on the other hand and the massive increases in the national debt necessary to finance their ill-conceived fiscal policies, our Nation would be left with a Bush debt gap of $4.5 trillion.

The administration is forcing working class Americans not only to shoulder a massive debt burden but also to give up those Federal programs and services from which they most benefit. The President's tax cuts are squeezing State revenue, forcing increases in tuition rates. The cost of attendance at a 4-year public college or university has gone up 26 percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of $8,418 in the year 2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Let me say that again: The cost of attending a 4-year public college or university has gone up 26 percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of $8,418 in 2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Interest rates on student loans will increase, while Pell grant moneys and Federal student aid programs are rolled back.

Drug prices will continue to increase and veterans and senior citizens--the old folks; I can call them senior citizens; I can call them old folks because I am one of them, thank God--veterans and seniors will continue to see their savings depleted while cuts are made in those programs that help to provide them with basic health care.

Workers' pensions will remain underfunded and vulnerable while this administration stands passively mute. Social Security's financing problems will continue to worsen as money that should be saved to ensure the benefits promised to workers is wasted on an ideological fiscal policy that advocates tax cuts above all else.

The financial perils underlying the Social Security Program were brought to light this week when Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan forced the President to confront the fact that his administration has been for 3 years hiding from the facts. Namely, if we continue on the fiscal course set by this administration, we will lose the only opportunity that we will have left to save Social Security. Congress has a responsibility to better educate the public about their Social Security system.

The panic--have you ever heard panic in the voice of someone? The panic in the voices of my constituents as they called my office yesterday made it clear that more must be done to keep the public informed.

What is regrettable is that the real problems confronting future Social Security retirees have only recently surfaced in the Presidential debates--how about that--only recently surfaced in the Presidential debates.

What is unforgivable, however, is if it were not for Chairman Greenspan's comments, this administration may not have even raised it as an issue this year. The President's evasive remarks have been to assure the American people that he will not cut the benefits of retirees or those near retirement. But what does that mean for 59-year- olds? What does that mean for 60-year-olds? Oh, I wish I could say I was 60 again. Maybe not. Maybe not.

What does that mean for 59-year-olds or 60-year-olds? Will the President try to cut their Social Security benefits or not? To cut Social Security benefits, without first engaging the public about its intentions, should tell us a great deal about the fiscal priorities and methods of this administration.

In the face of this dismal reality, the administration does not offer solutions, it offers excuses--just excuses. This administration can only argue that their budgetary decisions are not their fault. The recession and out-of-control spending is to blame for massive deficits. Corporate accounting scandals are to blame for weak pension funds. The September 11 terrorists are to blame for the shoddy economy.

All of these arguments are belied by the facts.

Our investments in education, health care, transportation, and other domestic discretionary programs are not the source of this administration's deficit problems. Domestic discretionary comprises only 9 percent of the increase in spending over the last 3 years, and it represents only 17 percent of all Federal spending. President Bush's budget does not even look at mandatory expenditures for savings even though they comprise two-thirds of the Federal budget. While the President's proposed spending cuts would significantly undermine our education and health care investments, it would barely make a dent in the administration's deficit projections.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is plagued with accounting problems so severe that the Secretary of Defense cannot account for billions of taxpayers' dollars. The General Accounting Office estimates that the very earliest that the Defense Department could possibly pass an audit would be the year 2007, and that is optimistic. The administration does not even know how much time and how much money it will take to fix the accounting problems.

It is absurd that the administration is proposing to cut vital domestic investments while billions and billions and billions of dollars are lost every year in the Pentagon's broken accounting system. The administration's deficits have exploded, and they have exploded in large measure because revenues as a percentage of our gross domestic product have declined to their lowest levels since 1950--1950. According to the House Budget Committee, the three Bush tax cuts have increased the deficit by nearly $2.6 trillion from 2001 to 2013.

The notion that the administration's deficits were created by a poor economy and increased spending is pure fantasy. It is made all the worse by this administration's efforts to hide these facts from the public--from you,

you. They say it is your money. The administration is touting the tough choices it is making to cut the deficit in half over 5 years. Yet its budget is full of ``magic asterisks'' that assume an initiative will be offset, such as the $65 billion health care tax credit but provides no information on from where that savings will come.

Contrary to the Bush administration's past budgets, with surplus projections extending out 10 years to justify their tax cuts, this year President Bush proposed a 5-year budget--a 5-year budget. It hides from the public the alarming long-term deficits projected by the Congressional Budget Office. It hides the real cost of the administration's proposals, such as the $1.1 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts. Further, President Bush's budget includes no additional funds for Iraq, even though the administration reportedly will submit another supplemental request for Iraq--when? After the November elections.

Not many of you, perhaps, are old enough to remember the old vaudeville shows, where they would tell you, ``Watch this hand,'' while they were doing something they did not tell you about with the other hand, or, ``Now you see it; now you don't.''

So they do not tell us how much money they need for Iraq, but they reportedly will submit another supplemental for Iraq after the November elections.

Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, is where the budget deficit is the most deceptive.

To date, contrary to the modern tradition of an administration funding large-scale, ongoing wars, at least in part, through the regular appropriations process, the Bush administration has refused to request funds for the war in Iraq in its annual budget.

Why? They do not want you to know. They want the American people to be fooled. The administration waits until funds for the troops are almost exhausted before requesting additional funds through a supplemental--through a supplemental. The Bush administration's purpose is clear. What is it? To limit debate, to limit discussion, to limit having to explain to those people out there who are watching the Senate through those electronic lenses--to limit having to explain to the American people how much this war will cost. This unnecessary war, how much will it cost, this war which the American people should never have fought, never. They were fooled, then, into believing there were weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq and that we were in danger of seeing a mushroom cloud. But to date there have been none found. This administration, which will argue until they are blue in the face that black is white and white is black, will still say: Oh, there are still weapons of mass destruction there; we just have not found them yet. They are there. Well, who knows? Maybe they will be. But that is not the way it was when the administration proposed our invasion of Iraq early last year.

How much will it cost, to say nothing of how many lives will be lost before it is over? How many lives? On how many doors will that knock fall before the war ends?

See, we have two wars. We have the war in Afghanistan, which resulted from the attacks upon us on the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon--the attacks by al-Qaida, by the 19 hijackers, not one of whom was an Iraqi. Not one was from Iraq. That is the war that is still going on in Afghanistan. That is the war I support. That is the war I have supported from the beginning. But I have never supported the other war, the Bush war, the war still going on in Iraq, the war that comes under the rubric of the doctrine of preemptive strikes. That is another war. That is the Bush war in Iraq. That is the war in which the American people should never have had to spill a drop of blood. The American people should never have had to send one of their sons or daughters to fight. That is the Bush war, and nobody knows how many more lives will be lost before that war is over.

This year, the political posturing has gotten worse. Not only did the President not include any funds in his budget for the ongoing operations in Iraq, the administration has announced no supplemental will be sent to the Congress until after the November election, depriving the American voters of any opportunity to judge the President based on his promises about the cost of a war in Iraq. This is a budget of gimmicks, false promises, unrealistic expectations. It is a budget of misdirection, canards, speciousness, spuriousness, sophistry, equivocation, fallacies, prevarications, and flatout fantasy.

Worse, under the guise of reining in budget deficits, this administration is continuing its assault on the values of the working class. This is an administration of corporate CEOs and Texas oil men. The corporate elite of this administration did not grow up wondering if their parents could afford to send them to college. Their parents did not have to choose between paying for groceries and paying for health care. Their parents did not have to stay up late at night worried about whether they would lose their pension benefits or whether Social Security would be enough to provide for their retirement.

When the administration proposes to cut these programs or fails to provide adequate resources for them, it is because it has no personal understanding of the plight of American workers and how much the President's budget cuts affect middle-class Americans.

Only a President who never had to apply for unemployment benefits would oppose extending them when so many workers are without a job. Only a President who never needed overtime pay would advocate taking it away from those workers who rely on it to make ends meet. Only a President who never needed Federal aid to attend college would advocate cutting it back for those students who cannot attend college without it.

When this administration leaves office--and I hope it won't be long-- its legacy will be an enormous debt, an enormous debt burden that will weigh heavily on the middle class. In the process, it will have severely weakened their safety net and will have left little means for fixing it. But it won't matter to this President. At that point, he will just move back to Texas, back to good old Crawford, TX, knowing that his pension and his health care benefits are secure, and that corporate CEOs and Texas oil men are wealthier and more comfortable than ever before. He will never have to rely on the safety net his administration has worked so hard to dismantle.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

If the Senator will yield, I apologize for interrupting his remarks. I thank the Senator for his words. I thank him, however, far more for his wisdom and for his courage, and for his insight, and for his constructive contributions that are made so often to the debates in the Senate. I marvel at his talent. He is not one who has hidden his talents. He is out front, outspoken, and I listen always with great admiration. May he long continue to serve the people of the United States in this Senate in the capacity which he now serves, in which capacity he would have no peer; I have not seen a peer yet. I thank him again.

I share the concern of my chairman, Senator Stevens, on this matter and join with him in insisting that the Senate attend to this matter on a legislative vehicle that will be enacted into law very soon. This matter is of the utmost urgency, if we are not to create confusion at the Federal Highway Administration as to how this program is to be implemented.

Mr. President, I am concerned about the increasing costs of malpractice insurance and a lack of access to medical providers in West Virginia and other States. The current challenges facing the medical malpractice system are complex and require a multifaceted solution.

Unfortunately, this issue has become highly politicized with powerful interests pitted against each other. Patients and their doctors are being squeezed in the middle. It is long past time to give some peace of mind to patients and doctors alike who are caught in this political tug of war. We ought to have a wide-ranging debate in the Senate on how to best reform the medical liability and insurance system and also prevent medical errors.

I am disappointed that the administration and the Senate leadership have adopted a take-it-or-leave-it and one-size-fits-all approach to this issue.

Especially in more rural areas of this country, there is a serious shortage of doctors and a lack of access to quality medical care close to home. Too often, families must travel long distances to see a physician, and even farther if specialized care is required. I hope that, by proceeding to the medical malpractice bill, the Senate can have a constructive debate and reach a commonsense concensus on this important issue.

Mr. President, in 1999, I helped enact the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program to give American steel companies in difficult financial circumstances ready access to capital to enable them to restructure their operations, improve their productivity, and ensure a future for their hard-working employees.

For more than 4 years, this program has successfully granted Federal loan guarantees to companies like Hannah Steel in Fairfield, AL, and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation in my home State of West Virginia. Without the benefit of these Federal loan guarantees, it is almost certain that these

companies would have gone out of business. Today, however, they are vibrant companies continuing to support thousands of workers, their families, and entire communities.

The fiscal year 2004 omnibus appropriations bill, has included a 2- year extension of the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program, which otherwise would have expired on December 31, 2003. The extension was included, without objection, in the omnibus appropriations bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives; it was strongly supported by the full Senate Appropriations Committee; and it is now awaiting final action in the fiscal year 2004 omnibus bill now pending before the Senate. A separate provision was included under Division B of the fiscal year 2004 omnibus directing the Department of Commerce to rescind $100 million in prior year unobligated balances. It is my understanding that the provision was included in order for the CJS Subcommittee to meet their allocation.

Mr. President, I understand and respect the very tough decisions the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee had to make in order to meet their allocation, but now, I understand that the U.S. Commerce Department intends to use that provision to rescind $17.7 million for the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program even though they do not have the legal authority to do so.

Receiving reports that, only a few weeks ago, the U.S. Commerce Department was pursuing this particular rescission, I wrote to the Comptroller General of the United States, who heads the General Accounting Office and issues decisions in the area of Federal appropriations law. I wrote to the Comptroller General, David Walker, on December 22, 2003. I inquired as to whether the Commerce Department would have the legal authority to rescind funds from the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program under the terms of H.R. 2673, the fiscal year 2004 omnibus appropriations bill. On January 15, 2004, I received a definitive response from the General Counsel of the GAO, which states that the U.S. Commerce Department is without legal authority to rescind the balance of unobligated funds from the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program. The GAO stated that the unobligated funds for the steel loan program, by law, are available only to the Board of the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program, and those funds are not available to the Commerce Department.

The exact words of the legal opinion that I have received from the GAO are as follows:

The Secretary of Commerce may not legally rescind $17.711

million as planned from the unobligated balance of

appropriated funds in the Emergency Steel Guarantee Loan

Program to satisfy the rescission mandate in the fiscal year

2004 omnibus appropriations bill.

The GAO legal opinion further states:

Accordingly, we conclude that the unobligated balance of

the $140 million appropriation from the 1999 Steel Act is not

``available to the Department of Commerce'' and thus would

not be subject to the section 215 rescission. Thus, the

Secretary of Commerce may not legally rescind $17.711 million

as planned from the unobligated balance of appropriated funds

in the Emergency Steel Guarantee Loan Program.

So, I would ask my friend and colleague, Senator Hollings, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary, if he agrees that the Commerce Department has no legal authority to rescind the unobligated balance of funds from the Emergency Steel Loan Guarantee Program in light of the legal opinion I have just obtained on this matter?

Absolutely. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the Comptroller General, David Walker, dated December 22, 2003, and the GAO legal opinion dated January 15, 2004, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, is time controlled?

I thank the Chair.

Is the distinguished senior Senator from Massachusetts a manager of the bill?

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator. I always like to be on God's side, and then I like to be on Senator Kennedy's side. If there is a choice between the two, why, I think I will pass for the moment.

Mr. President, it is not hyperbole to suggest that the sky is falling for too many American workers. You could also say that the ship is sinking. You could say that the mine wall is collapsing, that the dam is giving way, or use any number of metaphors for a looming disaster to describe the current state of America's private pension system.

The entire system is wobbling under assaults from every direction. On the one side, the stock market plunge has left the pensions for over 44 million workers underfunded by an estimated $350 billion. Last year, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation had to assume the pension obligations for scores of bankrupt companies, ranging from airlines to steelmakers, pushing the PBGC's balance sheet into the red by an alarming $11.2 billion.

On the other side, the assault is coming from historically low interest rates that have triggered painful new funding requirements for employers. Even companies that want to provide for their employees find themselves unable to compete in a global marketplace against competitors unencumbered by the legacy costs of pension and health care benefits.

U.S. employers are warning they will be forced to freeze their pension plans or terminate them unless the Congress provides them with relief from their pension obligations. Yet, with $350 billion in underfunded pensions and a growing deficit, the Federal pension insurer is warning that unless those pension obligations are funded, a massive taxpayer bailout, akin to the 1980s savings and loan crisis, is just over the horizon.

At a time when working families are looking for assurances that their pensions will be protected and their retirement will be secure, the Congress is offering neither assurances nor security. This legislation provides funding relief to employers, but it does little to ensure that the pension benefits promised to workers will be there when they retire.

While this short-term patch may be necessary to keep the ship afloat for a while longer, it does not change the fact that the ship is sinking, and the Congress has not yet readied the lifeboats.

The Congress is telling workers that once the needs of business have been addressed, then it can act to ensure their pensions are fully funded. The Congress is wagering that the pension system will stay afloat that long. It is a theme I have noticed repeatedly during the tenure of this administration. While the top of the economic pyramid receives immediate relief, the hard-working middle class is given only vague promises, uncertain promises of uncertain relief and delayed benefits. I have seen it over and over and over. The corporate elite receives immediate tax cuts, while America's working-class families, the people who work with their hands, the people who get their hands dirty, the people who are soiled in grime when it is time to go home and have supper, are told to wait, wait for the economy to survive.

The pharmaceutical industry receives billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while middle-class families wait endlessly for lower drug prices.

Corporate profits continue to increase while middle-class families wait for those profits to trickle down to them. In asking middle-class Americans to wait for the economy to improve, wait for health care costs to go down, wait for their wages to rise, it confirms that this administration of

corporate CEOs and Texas oilmen do not have the slightest comprehension of the plight of American workers, the people who work with their hands, who get their hands dirty, who get their fingernails dirty, whose shirt sleeves are dirty. They are the American worker.

It is a grim, bleak time for working Americans. Two and a half million jobs have disappeared under this administration's economic stewardship. Most of them are in our once powerful manufacturing sector, which has lost jobs for 41 consecutive months. Just come to West Virginia and see what has happened. The glass plants have gone. The pottery works have gone. The steel mills, to a large degree, have gone. The coal industry, which used to employ 125,000 men when I first came to Congress, today employs perhaps 15,000, 16,000, 18,000 workers who mine just as much coal as in the days when there were 125,000 men working in the mines.

Yes, 1 million jobs have been lost. Where have they gone? They have gone overseas. Eight million workers are unemployed, without hope for tomorrow, listening to their children, listening to their spouses, saying: Where will we go? What will we do? What will happen to us?

Eight million workers are unemployed. Half a million discouraged workers have dropped out of the labor pool saying there is no hope; hope is gone; the hope to which I held for these many days, these many weeks, these many months is gone. Three and a half million workers are collecting unemployment benefits, with an average 350,000 workers signing up for benefits each week. At the same time, 80,000 jobless workers are exhausting their unemployment benefits each week, forcing them to cut back on health care, forcing them to cut back on food purchases. Workers are losing their health insurance. Two and a half million more people joined the ranks of the uninsured last year, the largest single increase in a decade. Think of that.

Put yourself in the shoes of these who go to bed hungry, who go to bed with heavy burdens, the burdens of forlorn hopes. With health care costs spiraling out of control, 44 million people must do without health insurance. Retired workers are forced to do without lifesaving drugs, without digoxin, without Coumadin, without Singulair. For those workers with health insurance, the out-of-pocket costs are soaring, more than doubling for employees of large companies since 1998. Costs are up sharply and going up more, too, for workers who pay monthly premiums but rarely see a doctor. Worker pensions are in danger, with the Federal pension insurer taking over 122 plans last year, slashing the pension benefit promised to over 200,000 workers. Two million additional Americans fell into poverty in 2002.

Yes, we can afford to rebuild the oil pipeline, the oil wells in Iraq. Yes, we can afford to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq. What about our own people? What about our own workers, who with their sweat and their toil have built this country and made it the wonder of the world? Not coincidentally, almost 2 million workers earn wages at the statutory minimum, $5.15 per hour. These are real people. It may be hard to comprehend that there are people who are working for that minimum wage, and that that minimum wage is the only thing that stands between them and their children and starvation. These are real people. These are real stories about working people in this land of the free, this home of the brave. These people earn their wages at the statutory minimum of $5.15 per hour. Think of it. Their wages are eroded every year by inflation, with the real value of the minimum wage dropping. While the wealthiest taxpayers receive tens of thousands of dollars in tax cuts, the administration denies a meager $1.50 per hour raise to our most impoverished workers. These administration people who oppose an increase in the minimum wage come from the other side of the tracks.

To quote President Franklin Roosevelt, the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

After three colossal tax cuts, this administration has denied much to those who have little in order to provide more to those who have much. The American worker--have you ever been a worker? The American worker has once again become the forgotten man. While the administration is offering only vague promises of hope, the American workforce is forced to endure the most hostile assault in decades. The Bush administration has tried to repeal the 40-hour workweek and strip workers of their right to overtime pay. Think of that. It has attacked the civil service system. It has repealed the safety rules necessary for the protection of America's workers. It has neglected their health and safety in the workplace. Now the administration is blocking an increase in the Federal minimum wage.

It is blocking efforts to provide unemployment benefits to jobless workers. It is trying to push through a rule to strip 8 million workers of their hard-earned overtime pay. And it does so always with the promise that these benefits for businesses and the corporate elite will one day trickle down to the middle class. This is not the record of an administration that understands the needs of working families.

Yes.

Mr. President, the very able Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, has led this fight to increase the minimum wage time and time and time again. I admire him for it.

Yes, this administration has joined in the maiming and the raping of the Constitution and the rules of the Senate and in doing as it did with respect to the items that were changed in conference, the items that were added in conference, the items that passed each of the two Houses and were deleted in conference. What a shame. What a disgrace. I have been a Member of Congress 51 years, going into 52 years, and I have never seen such a disgraceful act as that which was done while you, the American working people out there, were asleep--were asleep. These changes were being made behind closed doors. The minority was not present.

What would John Taber, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee when I came to the House--what would he think of this underhanded method of operating? What would Joe Martin, Speaker of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts in that day--what would he think? The Republicans of that day would not have stood for it. They believed in the American system. They believed in the Constitution. This is a disgrace. It is a shame, the way this Congress has acted, the way the Republican leadership in both Houses, and the White House, has acted in dealing with the taxpayers' money, the working people, the common people.

You know, I say to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, I came into this world and was an orphan after 1 year.

I grew up in a coal miner's home. I married a coal miner's daughter. Some leaders of this administration ought to know what it is to have to buy a stick of pepperoni, a piece of longhorn cheese and a box of crackers, sit down on railroad rails and eat that humble fare, and what is left put into a paper bag to eat the next morning for breakfast. This crowd down here in the White House doesn't know what it is. They come from the other side of the tracks. They do not know what it is to get their hands dirty working long hours at night, working to scratch out a living for their spouses and their children. They do not know what it is to walk into a coal miner's home and go to the cupboard and look and see what that family has left to eat. No. They grew up in the corporate boardrooms of this country. They do not know what it is.

When God turned man out of the Garden of Eden and told him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, that has been the lot of the workingman. Then to see that workingman further trampled by the policies and programs of this thoughtless administration is a story in itself.

This is not the record of an administration that understands the needs of working families. American workers are sinking on the Titanic and this administration can only promise workers to send back the lifeboats once the first-class passengers have been taken to safety.

I recall the great Titanic. It went down I believe on April 15, 1912. I believe 1,517 passengers and workers on that great Titanic went to their deaths in the depths of the deep blue ocean. Now this administration promises workers to send back the lifeboats, but only after the first-class passengers have been taken to safety.

Americans would have to look back to the Hoover administration during the nadir of the Great Depression to find an administration that has treated workers more shabbily. I grew up in that Hoover administration. The first 20 years I was in politics, I campaigned against the Hoover administration. It was gone but not forgotten. I have seen those window shades, those boarded-up windows on the store buildings and business places and homes of people in southern West Virginia. They were called ``Hoover window shades.''

In 1932, Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt blasted the Hoover administration and blasted the Republican-controlled Congress for ignoring the plight of American workers, workers who Roosevelt claimed had become the ``forgotten man'' under the Hoover administration's top- down economic policies.

I am glad I lived in the Great Depression. I am sorry we had to have one, but since we had one, I am glad I lived in the Great Depression. I am glad that there are a few people still alive in this country who remember the Great Depression.

The ``present condition of our Nation's affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes,'' the future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charged. ``These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans . . . that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.'' The forgotten man.

I urge Senators to heed those words and to offer workers more than just ideologically based promises that would have us view the plight of America's workers from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

This year, the Congress must extend unemployment benefits. It must protect workers' pensions. It must increase the minimum wage. It must protect the overtime pay of our Nation's workforce.

The administration has invested its energies, its resources, its political fortunes in those at the top of the economic pyramid, and this administration has abandoned--abandoned--the workers at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The elected representatives of the people in this Chamber must not do the same.

I close with Edwin Markham's poem.

The Right To Labor in Joy

Out on the roads they have gathered,

A hundred-thousand men,

To ask for a hold on life as sure

As the wolf's hold in his den.

Their need lies close to the quick of life

As rain to the furrow sown:

It is as meat to the slender rib,

As marrow to the bone.

They ask but the leave to labor

For a taste of life's delight,

For a little salt to savor their bread,

For houses water-tight.

They ask but the right to labor,

And to live by the strength of their hands--

They who have bodies like knotted oaks,

And sinews like iron bands.

And the right of a man to labor,

And his right to labor in joy--

Not all your laws can strangle that right,

Nor the gates of hell destroy.

For it came with the making of man,

And was kneaded into his bones,

And it will stand at the last of things

On the dust of crumbled thrones.

I yield the floor.

I thank the very distinguished Democratic whip for his gracious comments. He has been an inspiration to me. I once served as the majority whip in the Senate. I counted myself a good whip, but remember those lines: You are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Well, this whip from Nevada is the best whip that I can recall in my long service in this Senate, and I am a former whip.

The distinguished Senator from Nevada mentioned ball games. No ball game ever changed the course of history. With all due respect to those who like football, basketball, and baseball--and I like them, too. I used to enjoy playing baseball in the sandlot back in the days when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were in that great murderous lineup, the New York Yankees. I can remember September 1927 when the sultan of swat, Babe Ruth, broke the record with 60 home runs that year.

The Senator's mention of the line-item veto is of interest. I was right in what I had to say about the line-item veto. I know certain Senators whom I personally asked to vote against that line-item veto, and they did not. They did not heed my admonishments, but the Supreme Court of the United States called that law invalid. Thank God for the Supreme Court of the United States in that instance.

I thank the distinguished Senator.

Mr. President, this afternoon I want to talk about the 2004 omnibus conference report on those bills. The Senate opened the second session to the 108th Congress not many hours ago. While the year on the calendar has changed from the last time we met in this Chamber, the Senate finds itself handcuffed by the same authoritarian dictates from the same Bush administration that last year led to some of the most fierce partisan passions that this Senate has seen in decades. Gone is the traditional spirit of cooperation. Yes, the man in the White House who said that he was going to change the

tone in Washington, he changed that tone all right. It is the worst that I have seen in my more than 51 years in Congress. Gone is that traditional spirit of cooperation. Gone is the belief that the needs of the Nation are above the needs of any political party. In their place is an agenda driven by pure rank, raw partisanship. This is a tragic turn for this historic Chamber, a tragic turn for these United States of America.

Hope for a bipartisan Medicare prescription drug benefit was bright at the start of this Congress, but by the time the conference report returned to the Senate for final passage, all that was left was a prescription for protecting the pharmaceutical industry and a drug benefit that is a sham for American seniors.

Progress on an energy strategy for the country began in a cooperative effort but quickly the Democrats were locked out while industry lobbyists were welcomed in to write the conference report with the executive branch.

The fiscal year 2004 appropriations bills have suffered a similar fate. Between June 26 and September 4 of last year, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported all 13 appropriations bills, bills that were the result of bipartisan cooperation between the chairman and the ranking member of each subcommittee and those subcommittee members. The bills were tight and lean because of unrealistic budget limits, but Senators worked in tandem to craft balanced legislation. Despite the efforts of the chairman of the committee, the senior Senator from State of Alaska, progress on the bills waned, and as a result we faced the grim Frankenstein aberration of an Omnibus appropriations conference report.

I warned the Senate that such an Omnibus appropriations bill could grow limbs like trees, limbs like an octopus, limbs that never were contemplated by the Senate. I warned Members on both sides of the aisle that they could not control the outcome when the seed of an omnibus bill was planted in a closed conference. I warned that a Senator's right to debate controversial legislation would be lost. Finally, I warned that such an omnibus bill would invite the White House to the table.

Never was the White House invited to the table when I was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee--never. It is all right for them to be in an outside room but not at the table, no. I warned that such an omnibus bill would invite the White House to the table and that the Congress would once again forfeit its constitutional right to write legislation. Negotiations on that legislation started well enough. The House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees worked on their respective pieces of this mammoth bill. The conferees held an open session under the able leadership of Senate Chairman Ted Stevens and House Chairman Bill Young, and several of the chapters of this behemoth bill were settled. But this tale does not have a happy ending. No, this chariot, drawn by tall horses, quickly turned into a pumpkin. Have you heard that before? It quickly turned into a pumpkin, pulled by rats before the clock struck midnight.

The White House decided--the White House--the White House decided that bipartisan negotiations were unacceptable. The White House pulled the plug on the conference and took it behind closed doors. The Republican congressional leadership bowed, bowed down to White House pressure. Suddenly, Democratic Members of Congress had no voice in the legislation. Senator Graham, the Democrats had no voice, suddenly, in the legislation they had only days before helped to move to the verge of passage.

In the back rooms of the Capitol, the White House sat down with the Republican leadership and with fat-cat lobbyists representing big corporations and produced an unamendable 1,182-page, $328 billion conference report. They produced a conference report that turned the legislative process on its head.

You think Speaker Joe Martin, Republican Speaker of the House--Joe Martin of Massachusetts--would have stood for that when he was Speaker of the House? Do you think John Taber of New York, Chairman of the Senate-House Appropriations Committee, would have stood for that in his day? No.

Four of the bills contained in this omnibus did not have a recorded vote in the Senate. That is all right. A voice vote or a vote by division are just as legal and legitimate as is a rollcall vote. But one of the bills, the Commerce-Justice-State bill, was never even debated, never even debated in the Senate, let alone adopted by a vote of the Senate.

Shame. Shame on us for letting that happen.

So there you have it. The Commerce-Justice-State bill was never even debated in the Senate, let alone adopted. Scores of provisions were included in the so-called Miscellaneous Appropriations Act portion of the conference report that were never debated, never debated in this Senate. What has happened to the legislative process here under the leadership of the Republican administration, the Bush administration? Under pressure from the White House, provisions that were approved by both the House and Senate have been dropped. Get that. Under pressure from the White House, provisions that have been included, that were provisions included in both the House and Senate, have been dropped.

A point of order could be made under rule XXVIII that would kill this conference report. Under pressure from the White House, controversial provisions that were written as 1-year limitations when they were before the House or Senate have been mutated into permanent changes in authorization law. This conference report includes an across-the-board cut never debated here in this Senate, an arbitrary cut that would apply to legislation already signed into law. It would cut homeland security. It would cut counterterrorism efforts. It would cut education and health care. This across-the-board cut would reach back into laws that agencies have been operating under for 4 months.

In the view of the White House, the United States can afford $1.7 trillion in tax cuts. When it comes to the Medicare bill, we can afford $12 billion for subsidies for private insurance companies. When it comes to the Energy bill, we can afford over $25 billion of tax cuts and $5 billion of mandatory spending for big energy corporations. But when it comes to initiatives funded in these appropriations bills, initiatives that help ordinary Americans every day, the President insists on cuts.

He didn't say anything like that in his big speech last night. No, he didn't say anything about that, a cut of 0.59 percent would reduce funding for No Child Left Behind programs by more than $73 million, resulting in 24,000 fewer children being served by title I. The across- the-board cut would reduce veterans medical care funding by $159 million, resulting in 26,500 fewer veterans receiving medical care.

The President lauds the military, as he should. He applauds the soldier, the sailor, the airman, the marine. But when it comes to veterans, 26,500 fewer veterans will receive medical care, or 198,000 veterans not getting the prescription drugs they need. Was anything said about that in the speech last evening? Not a word.

The across-the-board cut will chop funding for homeland security initiatives. How many more baggage screeners will be laid off, resulting in longer lines and less security at the airports? How many fewer flights will have air marshals on board? Nothing said about that in the State of the Union speech. No, no, no. How many more containers will come into this country uninspected? How many more illegal aliens will be able to remain in this country or how many more will be able to sneak into this country? Not a word said. How many potential terrorists will never be investigated because of cuts in the FBI? The Bush tax cuts will cost $293 billion in the calendar year 2004. More than $1 out of every $4 being spent on those tax cuts is going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country. They didn't put me in office. No, those on that side of the track didn't put me in office. The Bush tax cuts-- let me say it again--the Bush tax cuts will cost $293 billion in the calendar year 2004.

More than one out of every four dollars being spent on those tax cuts is going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country. Are you in that category? Are you, Senators, in that category? I don't know. But I know a lot of people who sent me here who are not in that category.

Taxpayers with incomes that average about $1 million per year will receive an average tax cut of $85,000 in the year 2010, while those taxpayers earning less than $73,000 will receive at best 1 percent of what a millionaire will receive and at worst a paltry $98 in the year 2010.

How will we pay for this? Oh, that will be somebody else's problem. This President will be back on his ranch in Crawford, TX, living it up and having it good. What about your children and my children? They are going to be left to pay for this.

How will we pay for it? With cuts in education, cuts in veterans' programs, and cuts in homeland security.

In the dark of night, behind closed doors, the White House filled this conference report with favors for big corporations. Everywhere you look, you find the interests of corporate America coming first and the needs of working Americans coming in last.

The Senate approved a provision to block for 1 year the administration's plan to take away the rights of as many as 8 million employees to earn time and a half for extra hours worked. This administration produced a rule so biased toward industry that it even included advice to corporations on how to avoid additional wages.

Yet the Senate provision--what happened to it? What happened to that Senate provision? It is gone, obliterated under the darkness of night, taken out.

At the request of the food marketing industry, rules to allow Americans to know where their food, such as beef and vegetables, is grown are delayed for 2 years, breaking the balance crafted as part of the 2002 farm bill.

During the consideration of the 2002 farm bill, the Senate included a provision--the Senate; that is, us--included a provision to ensure that American consumers were provided with information about where their food originates--where it comes from. This so-called country-of-origin requirement became law and was immediately attacked by industry forces. When the smoke of the agriculture conference cleared, we found that industry forces had worked overtime to slip out of their statutory requirements. The country-of-origin issue was not even allowed to be discussed at the conference. The decision whether to keep or whether to kill the country-of-origin requirement was made behind closed doors after the conference was adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. I was in that conference. It was adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. They didn't have any use for me anymore. I was locked out. Senator Byrd can go home now. He will not be in on the decision. We don't need you there. You can go home now subject to the call of the Chair. Of course, the call never come.

Roy Acuff used to sing, ``I called and I called but nobody answered. I called and I called but nobody answered.''

Democrats of either the House or the Senate were not in the room.

I wonder how many of our listeners remember the first question that was ever asked in the history of man. What was the first question that was ever asked? It was asked in the cool of the day when God walked through that garden of paradise, the Garden of Eden, which we think was located somewhere between the two great rivers in old Mesopotamia, the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. God walked in that garden looking for Adam and Eve. But he couldn't find Adam. So he asked the question: Adam, Adam, where art thou? That is the first question ever recorded. Adam, where art thou? Well, Adam and Eve were hiding behind bushes and figleaves. Adam, where art thou?

Well, Democrats in either the House or the Senate were not in that room. So when their constituents ask, where were you, where were you, Senator Graham? Where were you, Senator Byrd, you who has been in Congress 51 years, where were you then? Where were you on that day?

The Democrats were locked out. We were locked out. We weren't included.

I will tell you one thing. That was never done when I was chairman.

Now we find that the delay in implementing the country-of-origin law is not just for 1 year, as the House provided and the Senate opposed, but 2 years. And that is not all. The House provision only placed a limitation on the labeling requirement for meat products. Now the agreement coming out of conference expands the limitation to all the other commodities covered by the law such as fruits and vegetables. American consumers may have thought they were going to know where their food came from, but the majority has made sure that those facts will remain a hidden secret in the deep freeze.

Also, the 1-year limitation on the FCC media ownership rule was turned into a permanent cap at 39 percent. The practical effect of changes demanded by the White House is to protect Rupert Murdoch's FOX television network and CBS-Viacom from having to comply with the lower 35 percent ownership caps, the congressional version of the bill that was put in place.

The White House is boosting special corporate interests. Why not? Look at the millions that are poured into political coffers by those special corporate interests. The White House is boosting special corporate interests at the expense of the people's interest for balanced news and information. Protections for Federal workers that were agreed to on a bipartisan basis in the public conference that would ensure fair competition with the private sector disappeared in the backroom.

The White House sent its troops to the Hill last week to press the Republican leadership to reject entreaties from Members on both sides of the aisle to make any changes to this Frankenstein of a bill.

This ``my way or the highway'' roughshod politics over the principled approach to Congress is incredible, especially from a White House that has done so much to undermine the credibility of this Nation and its Government.

One year ago, the President used the State of the Union Address before this Congress, this Nation, and the world to make his best case for taking the Nation to war in Iraq under the doctrine of preemptive strikes, under the doctrine of preemption.

In the State of the Union Address and in other speeches, he and others in the administration told Congress and the Nation that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were an imminent threat to this Nation. We were told that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons. We were told that American troops would be received as liberators. We were told that Saddam Hussein was aiding terrorists, such as the al-Qaida. What an incredible tale. What an incredible squandering of the credibility of our Government in the eyes of the world.

For this President, there seems to be no limit to his appetite for rhetoric, no recognition that there is a difference between his rhetoric and reality.

Yes, he promised Americans to leave no child behind, but this omnibus bill would cut funding by $6 billion below the level authorized for title I in the No Child Left Behind Act which this President signed with such promise in January of 2002. This omnibus bill would leave behind 2.1 million children who are eligible for title I educational services.

The President promised to secure our homeland and yet this bill would cut funding for port security and border security. On November 14, 2002, the Senate passed the Maritime Transportation Security Act without a dissenting vote. The vote was 95 to 0. The bill was signed into law by President Bush on November 25, 2002, during a celebratory White House ceremony. On that day, the President said: We will strengthen security at our Nation's 361 seaports, adding port security agents, requiring ships to provide more information about the cargo, crew, and passengers that they carry.

Despite these requirements, the President has requested no funding for port security grants and this omnibus bill would cut the funding that Congress added last fall. Sixteen million cargo containers arrive in the United States by ship, truck, and rail each year. One hundred forty million passengers travel annually by ship each year. Thousands of employees work at our ports each day. Millions of citizens live in and around our port community. A terrorist attack through our ports would produce billions of dollars of losses to our economy.

Was a thin dime requested by this President? No. No, the President did not request a dime.

On November 19, 2001, the President signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The act created the Transportation Security Administration and mandated that all cargo on passenger aircraft be screened. The administration has never requested sufficient funding to meet the goals of the law. In order to bridge a $900 million funding shortfall that it created for fiscal year 2003, the administration proposed delaying advanced firearms training for Federal air marshals at the same time that intelligence reports indicated an enhanced threat to aviation and the potential for hijacking planes transiting the United States.

Regarding air cargo security, the administration has met the requirement of screening air cargo by expanding a program referred to as the Known Shipper Program. This program does not actually physically screen cargo going into the bellies of jumbo passenger aircraft but relies on paperwork to protect our citizens. Congress added $35 million above the President's request to enhance the deployment of detection equipment, research other methods to screen cargo and otherwise expand air cargo security. This omnibus bill would reduce that funding.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, Public Law 101-173, was signed into law by President Bush on May 14, 2002. The act authorized funding for enhanced hiring of immigration inspectors and agents as well as for improvements to immigration facilities. The President did not request the authorized funds to hire additional immigration personnel, nor did he request funds to make the authorized improvements to immigration facilities or to hire the required number of Border Patrol agents. The omnibus bill would reduce funding for Border Patrol efforts.

Just last month, 4 days before Christmas, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that the Nation's terror alert level was being raised to orange. He said the strategic indicator, including al-Qaida's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, was perhaps greater than at any time since September 11. He went on to say that information indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will rival or exceed the scope and impact of those we experienced in New York.

The President promised a safer nation when he created the new Homeland Security Department. But his Secretary says we are in greater danger than at any time since September 11, 2001. At the same time, the administration urged Congress to cut funding for Homeland Security.

In May of this year the President signed into law a bill authorizing $15 billion over 5 years for international programs to combat HIV/AIDS. On July 12, while in Nigeria, the President said: The House of Representatives and the Senate must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa.

To ``fully fund this initiative'' requires $3 billion. The authorization bill, which the President explicitly referenced in his speech, authorized $3 billion in fiscal year 2004. Yet the President only requested that the Congress provide $2 billion for the program. This omnibus bill, after the across-the-board cut, would provide less than $2.4 billion for the Global AIDS Program, over $600 million below the level promised.

Democratic Senators, including myself, on three separate occasions offered amendments that would have ensured that HIV/AIDS funding reached the $3 billion level. All three of these amendments were defeated by the Republican leadership working with the Bush administration.

Rhetoric and reality are two different things. Now we understand that the President will be promising to put a man on Mars. Somewhere along the way the tail has begun to wag the dog.

The legislative process is being steered from the Oval Office. The legislative branch is being used not as the Framers envisioned, to serve as a check on the executive branch, but instead as a tool to check off accomplishments on the President's political agenda.

Whose fault is that? Shame on us for letting ourselves be used. Shame on us for letting ourselves be used. Shame on us for putting political party against the best interests of the Nation. Shame on us for putting political party above the Constitution of the United States. This is not the way the Senate should operate.

I fault no individual Senator for bringing us to this point, but I do fault the system that places meaningless message votes and staged photo-op debates before the business of the Nation. I fault politicians for their weakness, for their failure to uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Shame on us. In my 50 years in this Congress, I have never, never before seen such a Milquetoast Congress, a Congress that would cede power.

This Constitution says Congress shall have power to declare war. Yet this Senate stood speechless--speechless--when we voted in 2002 to shift this power to determine when, where, and what military forces should invade a sovereign Nation. The Senate had little to say.

That was not the Senate that was here when I came here. No, not the Senate that was here when I came here. Everett Dirksen stood at that place. Lyndon Johnson stood at that desk. There was Norris Cotton, George Aiken, Jacob Javits. Those were men. There was Senator Russell of Georgia, who stood at this place, right here at this desk, Richard Russell. Lister Hill stood there. John Pastore of Rhode Island stood here. No, not those men. They are gone.

But the Constitution is not gone. The Constitution is still with us. And many times have I stood at that desk where the Presiding Officer sits today, put my hand on the Bible, as it were, and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States--not to support this President or that President, this party or that party. I did not have any oath of that kind. I did not take any oath of that kind. I never will take an oath of that kind.

How many of us can say we have stood by that Constitution? How many of us would have to say: Oh, I have bent--I have bent, when my party, when my President--the President is the President for all of us. He is not just my President.

But I say that we have become far too deferential to all Presidents, too deferential to all Presidents. Presidents are just hired hands like the rest of us. They are here only for a while. Then they go. I have seen 11 administrations go, and I hope I get to see another one. But we act, when we come here, as though we swear to support this President or that President, a President from the Republican party or a President from the Democratic party. Why? They are mere hired hands who are here for a little while, like the rest of us.

No President sends the Presiding Officer here. No President can send that Presiding Officer home. Why so deferential to Presidents?

Under the Constitution, we have three separate but equal branches of Government. How many of us know that? How many of us know that the executive branch is but the equal of the legislative branch--not above it, not below it, but equal? Why do we treat Presidents as though they were kings, clothed in royal purple?

The real losers in this scenario are the American people. They are not well served by a Congress that fritters away opportunity after opportunity to probe, to analyze, to exercise its independent judgment on the urgent issues of the day in favor of rushing to do the bidding of the executive branch. Shame on us. Fie on us.

The people of West Virginia and this Constitution that I hold in my hand have made me a U.S. Senator. No President made me a U.S. Senator. I came to Congress when Harry Truman was President. He did not make me a Member of Congress. Of course, I was indebted to him for coming to West Virginia and speaking on my behalf and on behalf of my colleague, Jennings Randolph, at that time. But I did not expect that to make him my boss. I admired Harry Truman. I did not like him for some of the language that he used in public, but I still admired him, and admire him to this day as a President who had courage. But he was just a President.

So I have served with 11 Presidents--not under any of them. No, no President sends me here. And by what right do the people of West Virginia send me

here if I am going to bow and scrape to a President? They expect me to speak up, and that is what I have tried to do, in the presence of Presidents, yes, but they put their pants on just like I put mine on; the same old way, no different.

Under our Constitution, our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to establish three separate, equal, coordinate branches of Government. That is under this Constitution. This Constitution--perhaps one does not think about it often, but when one stops to think about it, this Constitution has something to do with every minute, every hour, every day of every life in this country in one place or another, and in some instances more than one place.

This Constitution impacts your life, your life, and your life. Every day that you are here on this planet, this Constitution has a bearing on it. And then some would treat this as a piece of paper and put political party above the Constitution of the United States. When I do that, send me home and say: Good riddance.

This is the Constitution of the United States. Many times I have sworn by oath before God and man, with my hand on the Bible, the King James version of the Holy Bible, to support and defend this Constitution. Yet we treat it as a piece of paper. We use it only when it is of a particular benefit to us. But every day, in some way or in some ways, this Constitution bears upon your life. It may be in the delivery of your mail. It may be in the hard surfacing of the roads upon which you drive. It may have something to do with the flights that you are about to depart upon. Yes, it is this Constitution.

In this country, we don't say: God save the King. God save the King. God save the President of the United States. No. We say: God save the Constitution of the United States. This Constitution saved Congress from its error when it passed the Line-Item Veto Act. This Constitution did that.

Under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws. The President executes the laws. Under the Constitution, the power of the purse rests here, right here--not downtown, not down at the other end of the avenue, but here.

Most of the people who were in the Thirteen Colonies, in the 13 States, when the Constitution became a constitution, were British subjects. It took hundreds of years and blood spilled at the tip of the sword for Englishmen in 1688 to write that meetings of Parliament that should be held often, that there would be freedom of speech in the Parliament and in the House of Commons. Those were the men who placed the powers of the purse in the hands of the elected representatives of the people of England in Parliament. That is where the power of the purse rests, here in the legislative branch. We ought never to let the executive branch forget it. Yet we cower. We act like poodles when it comes to standing up against the Chief Executive of the United States.

Who is he? With all due respect, whether he is Republican or Democrat, this is the Congress of the United States. This is the people's branch, this body and the other. Under the Constitution, the Congress determines how to write our laws, how to protect Members' rights to debate the important issues of the day. This omnibus bill leaves those pillars of our constitutional system in shambles. It is our duty as the people's representatives to protect those pillars of our constitutional system of government.

In 1999 and in the year 2000, when President Clinton, a Democratic President, a President of my own party, supported efforts by the Republican Congress to produce Omnibus appropriations bills, I came to this floor to decry our loss of our right and our duty to write legislation. I came to this floor to stand up for Congress's power of the purse. It made no matter to me--not any, no matter--that this was a Democratic President calling for omnibus spending legislation. I stood up for the rights of this Senate as I do today.

In 1993, there was a great effort to include President Clinton's comprehensive health care reform plan in a reconciliation bill. Proponents of the President's proposal hoped that such an approach would shelter the proposal from extended debate in the Senate. My own majority leader, George Mitchell, came to me. I said, no. My own colleague from West Virginia in the Senate pleaded with me. I said, no. President Clinton, a Democratic President, called on the telephone, called on me to support this effort. I said, no. I said, no. Without regard to party, I felt compelled to protect Members' rights to a full debate.

I said: This is a comprehensive health bill. The people need to know what is in it. We Members of the Senate need to know what is in it. That is why we have the Senate, to debate and to amend. No.

And so I turned my face like flint to the request of my own friend and the President of my own party. No.

Did he think less of me? I doubt it. He thanked me. He understood what I was saying. I will say it again. How many on that side would say that to a President of their party? But with President Bush, he insists that members of his party march with him step by step. I can remember a great Republican Senator who refused to march step by step. That was Senator Mark Hatfield. He was scorned by many on that side of the aisle because he stood alone against a political party, his party. He was no coward for doing that. He was a man.

President Bush insists that members of his party march with him step by step. Today, on the other side of the aisle, voices for a strong and equal Congress fall silent.

Last week Senator Frist wrote to Senators and urged them to vote for the omnibus conference report because if the omnibus fails, then the only alternative, he said, is a full-year continuing resolution that would force the agencies for the seven outstanding appropriations bills to operate at last year's level. He argued that such a continuing resolution would produce deep cuts for food safety, veterans medical care, highway funding, and the Global AIDS Programs.

However, the Senator presents the Senate with a false choice. If the omnibus is not approved, the Senate has other options to move forward. If the only alternative is a full-year continuing resolution, then that is the choice of the Republican leadership. It would be another example of putting political posturing before the needs of the American people.

There is a clear alternative, and that is to sit down and work out a compromise that can overwhelmingly pass the Senate. If our distinguished and illustrious majority leader, Mr. Frist, had the will to do so, such negotiations could be completed, who knows, maybe even in 1 day. However, in its current form, I cannot vote for this bill. I cannot vote for this conference report that so ravages our constitutional process and puts corporate interests ahead of the people's interests. I cannot vote for a bill that undermines our credibility, undermines the credibility of the United States Senate with the American people. I urge Members to vote no when the Senate votes on the adoption of the conference report.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.