Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 569, a resolution introduced earlier today.

Madam President, I further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to this measure be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 570, which was submitted earlier today.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor of the Senate during consideration of the conference report on the 2009 concurrent resolution on the budget.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, May 20, at 12 noon, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations, with the debate time equally divided and controlled between the chair and ranking member or their designees until 12:30 p.m.: Executive Calendar No. 537, the nomination of Michael G. McGinn; Executive Calendar No. 538, the nomination of Ralph E. Martinez; finally, Executive Calendar No. 574, the nomination of G. Steven Agee; that the nominees be debated concurrently; that at 2:15 p.m., there be 15 additional minutes, equally divided and controlled between Senators Webb and Warner or their designees; that at 2:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to vote on confirmation of the nomination of G. Steven Agee; that upon confirmation of the Agee nomination, Calendar Nos. 537 and 538 be confirmed by consent and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, no further motions be in order, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 20; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business until 12 noon, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the next 30 minutes; that following morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session under the previous order. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus luncheons.

Madam President, under a previous order, the first vote of the day will occur at 2:30 p.m. on the confirmation of the nomination of G. Steven Agee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit. Following executive session, we are expected to turn to the consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 2642, the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, for much of last year, as many of us will remember, the Senate Judiciary Committee was engaged in a very troubling inquiry. We were trying to determine whether the Bush administration had fired several U.S. attorneys for political reasons; not because they were not good U.S. attorneys but because they were not loyal ``Bushies,'' to use the phrase a Department of Justice official used.

That inquiry continues at the Department of Justice, but over its course, we already know the incompetence and misjudgments that it uncovered have cost numerous Department of Justice officials their jobs, and properly so, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who made clear that he put loyalty to the President before the faithful exercise of that important office.

Unfortunately, it also cost that proud Department the morale of its officials and, to a sad degree, the trust of the American people, many of whom have been left to wonder whether Federal prosecutions in this country arise from the pursuit of justice or whether under the Bush administration they arise from the pursuit of political advantage.

Here we go again, perhaps. This morning, we awoke to the news that

the Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator for the Midwest, Mary Gade, was forced to resign in the midst of a heated debate over dioxin contamination in waters near Michigan.

Dioxin is an extremely dangerous chemical. According to a report by the Chicago Tribune, Ms. Gade invoked emergency powers last year to force Dow Chemical, headquartered in Michigan, to clean up several areas saturated with this toxic chemical, a dangerous carcinogen which was a byproduct, among other things, of Agent Orange, with which we are sadly familiar.

Ms. Gade later broke off negotiations with Dow Chemical on a more comprehensive cleanup, citing concerns that Dow had been reluctant to take steps to protect health and wildlife. That put the company in a tough position.

At that point, the Tribune's report says the company asked EPA officials in Washington to intervene, although Dow said it had nothing to do with Ms. Gade's dismissal. The paper wrote that Ms. Gade said that high-ranking EPA officials ``repeatedly questioned her aggressive action against Dow.'' It quoted Ms. Gade as saying, ``There is no question that this is about Dow.''

We do not yet know all the details of Ms. Gade's firing or everything that may have gone on between her office and Dow Chemical. But from everything we have heard and seen so far, it looks like deja vu all over again from an administration that values compliance with its political agenda more than it values the trust or the best interests of the American people.

Last year, we learned this is an administration that would not hesitate to fire capable Federal prosecutors when they would not toe an improper party line. Today it seems the Bush administration might have once again removed a highly qualified and well-regarded official whose only misstep was to disagree with the political bosses.

Unfortunately, the story of Mary Gade is not only a distressing signal that the Bush administration may again be making hiring and firing decisions based on political loyalty, it is also a piece of evidence in a growing pile of evidence of a troubling and destructive force at work within our Government, one with serious consequences for our environment, for our natural resources, and for the health of Americans, for us, for our families.

We have also known that the Bush administration was no friend to the environment. Over and over again for 7 long years, this administration has put forward under false flags policies that would do great harm to the environment. Remember the Clear Skies Initiative that would increase air pollution? Remember the national energy policy written with Dick Cheney by oil industry lobbyists? The Bush approach to environmental protection has not only been wrong, it has been Orwellian. That pattern continues even to this day.

Not long ago, President Bush stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced what his administration characterized as a ``new strategy'' to address climate change. As the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania well knows, Americans all over this country are crying out for a bold and visionary plan to tackle the looming threat of global warming, a problem that threatens to engulf this Nation and the entire world within generations if nothing is done.

So we looked to the Rose Garden for leadership from our President. And what did we find? We found a proposal that was neither new nor even a strategy. Instead, the President announced what he called a new national goal: voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

Let me say that again. Voluntary action to reduce emissions by 2025, 17 years from now, 17 years of increases.

There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, the obvious problem is if you are allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise for 17 years, you are not doing much effectively about them, even though overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that unless we take immediate action to cut global warming pollutants, we might be too late to prevent the most serious impacts of global climate change.

Mr. President, you and I are in our fifties. We may be gone when it gets bad. I have met your girls. I have a girl and a boy of my own. I look at the young pages here who are gathered in the well. This will be their world, and the responsibility is on us to take action now while we can to protect the world in which they will live.

On that score, President Bush failed again. He literally offered zero initiatives, none, that might reduce emissions now or in the future. He made it clear that, on what is left of his watch, the U.S. Government will never require polluters to make such reductions. As every American who is not working in the Bush administration understands, voluntary action without strength of will or force of law simply is not enough to tackle a problem of this magnitude.

Finally, even if the President announced this empty so-called renewed commitment to fighting global warming, his administration indicated it would oppose a specific detailed plan for addressing the climate change problem the Senate will likely take up after our Memorial Day recess, the Warner-Lieberman plan Chairman Boxer has worked so hard to get out of our Environment and Public Works Committee.

This trifecta of failure from the White House would be laughable if it were not that the problem itself is so serious. It raises, actually, the distasteful possibility, given this administration's long and destructive history of disregard for environmental concerns, that the President's new strategy is not just a complete failure, a complete nothing, it is actually a stalking horse, intended to prevent real progress on climate change, a way to leave this problem, similar to so many others, for the next President to have to solve.

Regrettably, the President's announcement is also a stunning failure of leadership in a world community that is quickly growing unaccustomed to American leadership--not a good habit for the world to adopt.

We have known for a long time that politics of special interests is at the bottom of this and the Bush White House has repeatedly interfered with the decisionmaking process of the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, in thrall to the checkbooks of the oil companies, the gas companies, the chemical companies, the timber companies, the coal companies, the auto companies. If you have a corporate checkbook, they are for you.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw new evidence of how deeply this corrosive political influence has seeped within EPA, the primary Federal agency charged with protecting our environment and our people's public health. A report issued April 23 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, entitled ``Interference at the EPA,'' is a truly scathing indictment of the decisionmaking process at EPA from those who know it best, the scientists inside the Agency. The report consisted largely of a survey of EPA scientists. It found that 60 percent of those surveyed had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference during the past 5 years--60 percent of the scientists. The report documents, among many other things, that many EPA scientists have been directed to inappropriately exclude or alter information from EPA science documents, or have had their work edited in a manner that resulted in changes to their scientific findings. The survey also revealed EPA scientists have often objected to or resigned or removed themselves from EPA projects because of pressure--pressure to change their scientific findings.

The conclusion could not be much clearer: EPA is an agency in crisis. Once upon a time, anyone working at EPA could be proud of their agency's reputation. It was the international gold standard in the area of environmental protection. Indeed, for most of its 40-year history, all Americans could place their trust in EPA's independent, science- based leadership to safeguard our natural resources and our public health.

If you go back to the founding of the Agency, in a 1970 press release by its first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, he stated this role unequivocally:

EPA is an independent agency. It has no obligation to

promote agriculture or commerce, only the critical obligation

to protect and enhance the environment.

Administrator Ruckelshaus was a Republican appointed by President

Nixon. Yet both he and the President who appointed him intended EPA to be immune from political pressure; to be guided by the twin lodestars of law and science in discharging that critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment.

In recent years, and especially during the tenure of Administrator Johnson, we have seen the EPA's leadership, in cahoots with its White House allies, despoil these basic principles of independence and scientific integrity. Here are only a few examples from the long bill of particulars that indicts the leadership of this once-vaunted agency.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency falsified data and fabricated results of studies regarding the safety of the air around the site of the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency selectively edited Government reports, including the EPA's 2003 report on the environment, to support uncertainty in climate change science, placing the imprimatur of the Government of the United States on fringe views, soundly rejected by the vast majority--essentially the entire world scientific community.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has routinely tampered with regulatory and scientific processes to achieve results sought by, guess what, industry--at the expense of our public health and the environment. For example, in 2004, EPA allowed North Dakota to alter the way it measured air quality. That is the way they brought the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in compliance with national air quality standards, not by cleaning up the air but by allowing them to change the way they measured air quality. The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has hidden, suppressed and delayed the release of scientific findings in order to affect the impacts of EPA decisions. If they have two things going on, if you can slow one down and get the other out first, if it is helpful to industry, there they are--as in the case of a 2002 report on the effects of mercury on children's health that EPA delayed for 9 months and released only after it had been leaked to the media.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has disregarded legally mandated scientific and administrative procedures, as in the case of the Agency's failure to abide by the Supreme Court's recent decision on regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has stacked the EPA's leadership and its advisory committees with industry allies, removing respected scientists who argued for stronger public protections. A prime example of this is the removal, at the request of the industry lobbying group the American Chemistry Council, of toxicologist Deborah Rice from an EPA toxics advisory committee. Dr. Rice had argued for more stringent EPA standards for regulating certain chemicals used in commercially available plastic products. Not only was Dr. Rice removed from the panel, but her remarks on the panel were retroactively stricken from the record. EPA essentially took the fact that Dr. Rice had ever been on the panel and struck it from the panel's records. They, I guess, administratively ``disappeared'' her. It is not the kind of thing that happens in the country I know.

The George Bush Environmental Protection Agency has ignored the recommendations of career staff and scientists when they collide with White House political imperatives, as in the case of the Agency's decision on the so-called California waiver--first time ever not to grant the waiver.

The George Bush EPA has reduced enforcement of environmental regulations by opening fewer criminal investigations and filing fewer lawsuits against corporate polluters.

The George Bush EPA has not only failed to protect but sought reprisals against agency employees who pointed out problems, reported legal violations, and attempted to correct factual misrepresentations made by their superiors.

Amazingly, the EPA's Office of General Counsel has invoked the doctrine of sovereign immunity against whistleblowers suing the agency because of actions taken by the agency in reprisal for their whistleblower activity. And, as a lawyer, as somebody who spent a good deal of his life as a government lawyer, it pains me to see how the George Bush EPA has had its lawyering literally mocked, mocked by the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, which, in one case, condemned the EPA's defense of its regulation as possible ``only in a Humpty-Dumpty world,'' and in another case accused the agency of ``deploying the logic of the Queen of Hearts'' from ``Alice in Wonderland'' in the agency's interpretation of the law.

It makes one's skin crawl to see the ways in which EPA's leadership under the Bush administration has put the interest of big business and their lobbyists before the health and welfare of our environment and the American people. This has dire consequences.

First, in a world that presents complex challenges to our public health, to our environment, and to our national security, the elevation of corporate interests over independent, science-based decisionmaking threatens America's very ability to respond effectively and to provide the kind of leadership on complex problems that the world expects and that Americans deserve.

Second, the administration's conduct has demoralized EPA's professional workforce--the scientists, the lawyers, the regulatory experts to whom EPA owes its reputation as a champion of environmental protection. And time and time again during this administration they have seen their expert counsel set aside in favor of a partisan political agenda.

Third, President Bush and this administration have compromised the faith of the American people in the integrity of their Government. We can disagree. This is a Chamber that is built for disagreement. We can disagree on policy considerations; we can argue about what the right or the wrong decision is to make. But it is a tragedy when we doubt the integrity of the process of America's agencies of Government.

The President's eagerness to do the bidding of the special interests and the Administrator's willingness to kowtow to the White House, to the detriment of sound public policy, only confirms what too many consider fear that the United States of America is no longer governed by and for the people.

When policy is made for special interests and not for public good, America is left weaker. No matter our partisan or ideological standings, no one in this great Chamber, I hope, would want to do such a thing to this great country.

The Bush administration has done lasting harm both to our environment and to the confidence of the American people. Next Wednesday, May 7, at 9:30 a.m., I will join Senator Barbara Boxer, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, for an oversight hearing to look into the actions by this Bush administration and the EPA Administrator which seem to be so badly at odds with the recommendations of the agency's scientists and the best interests of the American people.

Chairman Boxer--we can be so proud of her--has been dogged, relentless in her pursuit of the truth behind the screen of machinations of the EPA's leadership and the Bush White House. And her leadership will continue to be critical as we try to get to the bottom of this issue. We plan to ask the tough questions, and we will expect honest answers because the American people deserve an Environmental Protection Agency that lives up to that name.

I will yield.

I thank my good friend from Florida.

I will close with the following point, which my friend Senator Nelson, the distinguished Senator from Florida, calls to mind, because of his extraordinarily distinguished service to our country. He was willing to put himself at great risk in the extraordinarily challenging pursuit of becoming an astronaut for the United States of America. I mean, talk about the best and brightest. As we know from many tragedies, it is not only an extraordinarily challenging pursuit, it is one where you do put your life very much at risk on behalf of the progress of this country. He, in that very important way, and I, in a much slower way, share an important belief, which is that the Government of the United States of America, our American system of government which has been passed down to us after a revolutionary war, a civil war, two great world wars, the Great Depression, essentially intact and, indeed, improving through the decades and generations, is one of God's great gifts to humankind. It is now in our hands, particularly as we represent our States in this body. It is to be treasured. It is to be viewed with respect. It is, indeed, to be viewed with reverence.

The thing that, to me, is worst of all from his politics, from his corruption, from his debasement of public service, is the lack of respect, the lack of reverence for what we have been given, for what we hold in trust for ourselves and future generations. It has never been as low as it is now. But the light still burns, and we will continue to call attention to the miscreancy that we find. Soon, in January, it will be over.

I thank my friend from Florida and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the matter before the Senate now that is currently being blocked by the minority is a bill that would permit work to proceed on hundreds of highway and transportation infrastructure projects, creating tens of thousands of construction jobs, and pouring $1 billion into our economy. This is timely legislation to repair our roads and bridges now, while our economy needs the work. Yet this bill is stalled in this body because Republicans in the Senate will not allow it to move forward.

Unfortunately, we have seen this movie too many times. The minority has engaged in no less than 65 filibusters in this Congress--an astounding number that lays bare the minority's lack of interest in solving the real problems America faces. What a record--65 filibusters, the most ever. That is what the minority has to contribute to the problems America is facing.

A number of our Republican colleagues have come to the floor of the Senate to speak today, but we have

heard very little in the way of substantive or reasonable objections to the highway bill. Instead, what we have heard is a lot of talk about taxes. Of course taxes are on the minds of many Americans today. It is, after all, April 15, filing day, the deadline for Federal and State tax returns to be filed. Today, we should remember that the work of Government does not just cost money, it costs our money. For that reason, we should ask how this Government is spending our hard-earned money and whether the priorities reflected in the Federal Government's spending are truly the right priorities for our people and for our time.

These are difficult days. Today, families throughout my State of Rhode Island and all across this country are reading their bank statements, opening their bills, reading their local newspapers, and finding that the looming downturn in the economy leaves them struggling to make ends meet. Everywhere we look, prices are rising, from the groceries that feed our families to the gasoline that fuels our cars. Every day, more Americans face the disaster of foreclosure. Every day, more Americans face the nightmare of catastrophic health care bills.

In these days of insecurity, the people of this country are looking for answers, for solutions, for a new direction. Democrats in the Senate are working overtime to provide that new direction. We passed an economic stimulus package, legislation to address the housing crisis, and a budget plan to put our Government back on the path to surplus and cut taxes for middle-class families. We know we need a change of course and, most particularly, a change of leadership in the White House to get our country back on track.

But Senate Republicans today are making it clear that they do not agree. Instead of putting working families first, instead of getting our infrastructure repaired, they want to protect the massive Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a fiscally irresponsible policy that has left our country trillions of dollars in debt. Instead of a budget that focuses Federal Government spending on our children and our veterans, Republicans want to stick us with the status quo, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an endless war in Iraq without spending a dime here at home to fix the problems that face American families.

Senate Democrats support tax cuts for middle-class families, including targeted help for families with children or seeking to adopt a child. Indeed, the budget resolution this year would provide those tax cuts in a fiscally responsible way, without digging our country deeper into debt. But President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate want to extend the extravagant portions of the 2001 to 2003 Bush tax breaks that are weighted heavily toward the wealthiest Americans.

Mr. President, 71 percent of the value of the tax cuts in 2009 will go to the wealthiest fifth of Americans, and 28 percent of the value of the tax cuts goes to the top 1 percent, a group whose incomes average around $1.5 million a year--clearly people who are hurting and need a lot of help from our Government right now. Almost nothing at all goes to the lowest earning fifth, families who earn $15,000 a year or less. This is the George Bush idea of fair tax policy.

The President's insistence on forcing through these cuts without making up for the lost revenue, to defer that pain to later generations--to our children, to our grandchildren--was not only cowardly leadership, it left our budget in precarious straits. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 cost a staggering $1.9 trillion, and they account for 25 percent of the $7.7 trillion Bush Debt. The $7.7 trillion Bush Debt is the difference between the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projections as President Clinton left office compared to the budgetary nightmare George Bush created--$7.7 trillion.

I am from Rhode Island. One trillion dollars is an unthinkable amount of money in a small State such as Rhode Island. I do not know what $7.7 trillion is. So I have tried to scale it for myself. I have here in my hand a simple penny. A simple penny. If this simple penny were $1 billion--now, even in Rhode Island $1 billion is big money--if this simple penny were $1 billion, $7.7 trillion is a stack of these simple billion-dollar pennies that is 39 feet high, takes us right to the top of this room with a simple penny being a full billion dollars.

It is an astonishing burden for this country to have to bear. It is the responsibility of George Bush and the Republicans, and we have to get serious about it. But are the Senate Republicans willing to get serious about it? No. If they have their way, the wealthiest Americans will continue to profit to the tune of trillions of borrowed dollars while those most in need receive virtually nothing. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the poorest Americans--the lowest 20 percent of income earners would receive less than 0.5 percent of the value of extending Bush tax cuts between 2009 and 2018. The top 20 percent, on the other hand, would receive a staggering 74 percent of the value, a total of nearly $4 trillion over that 10-year period.

And, of course, this is Bush tax policy, so the higher the income, the greater the benefit. Close to $1.2 trillion in Bush tax cuts would accrue to the top 1 percent of American households. Households with annual incomes of more than $1 million a year, those alone receive $834 billion, $834 billion in extended Bush tax cuts.

The reckless fixation on tax cuts for our wealthiest folks that the Bush administration has pursued is driving us to a bad place, to a divided America with two economies, a gilded economy for the wealthy, and a worried struggle for everyone else. That is not good for America. In fact, that is not America. But this does not seem to bother our Republican friends. They have hitched their wagons to the big winners in the gilded economy: the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the billionaires. The two economies, well, that is fine with them so long as their friends are winning. But that is not good for America.

In fact, that is not America, not the one we know. The tool they have used over and over and over is the filibuster. With a $7.7 trillion Bush Debt foundering us, with families across the country in their home States, everyone struggling, you would think they would want their role to be more productive than being the biggest filibusters in American history. You would think they would want a more productive record and legacy than that. But, no, they want to dig a $7.7 trillion hole and then filibuster the folks who are trying to get America out of it. It is so clear that Senate Republicans would prefer to engage in overheated and overhyped tax rhetoric than they would roll up their sleeves, sit down, and get to work on legislation solving the real problems working Americans are facing across our country each day.

I will tell you, it is clear and it is disappointing.

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

Mr. President, I thank all of my colleagues who have worked so hard this week on the housing stimulus bill. I particularly want to commend my friend from Rhode Island--Senator Jack Reed--for his tireless work on simplifying mortgage disclosures so that mortgage applicants will have in plain English--not fine print or jargon--the most important terms of the loan including the maximum monthly payment possible. This provision was included in the bipartisan substitute amendment and I congratulate Senator Reed.

For months, as America has sunk deeper and deeper into economic distress, hard-working people all over this country have wondered what they are going to do to make ends meet--and why their Government wasn't doing more to help.

For families already strained by rising health care and gasoline costs, and with many struggling to care for an elderly parent or put a child through college, the latest economic downturn is fast becoming the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

In my State of Rhode Island, where affordable housing was already in scarce supply, thousands of families face foreclosure, eviction, and an uncertain future. For the 12-month period ending in December 2007, the foreclosure rate in Rhode Island increased by a staggering 238 percent. More than 12 percent of subprime loans in my State were in foreclosure in December 2007. The foreclosure rate among subprime loans in Rhode Island is 15 times higher than the prime loan foreclosure rate.

This is a crisis that strikes at the most vulnerable. As I talked to Rhode Islanders during the recent recess, I heard over and over again about the difficulty of making ends meet in this fragile economy. And as they watch things get worse, they wonder why our Government would do so much to keep the investment bank Bear Stearns from going under, but so little for them and their neighbors.

There are some in this city, and in this building, who believe that if we simply let the markets correct themselves, all will be well. I have great faith in market forces, and I've seen firsthand the power of American industry and American ingenuity to work great good in our country and our world. But we in Government should know by now that market forces need disciplined constraint, and that the American people deserve better than to see their homes swept away by a financial typhoon while Congress stands idly by. They need our help.

Earlier this week, after hard work and good-faith negotiations, Senators Dodd and Shelby reached a compromise on legislation to soften the blow of the residential real estate collapse. In addition to Senator Reed's disclosure provision, the bill now before us includes $4 billion in funding for community development block grants to assist States and municipalities in purchasing and rehabilitating homes that have been foreclosed upon, and $100 million for pre-foreclosure counseling. It also includes Federal Housing Administration reform that will increase the availability of FHA-backed mortgages, offering an alternative to the subprime market for more middle- and lower-income families for whom buying a new home might otherwise be out of reach.

This agreement is a strong start, but it failed to include a provision authored by Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois that would permit bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of a primary residence mortgage. I was proud to cosponsor Senator Durbin's amendment, which included this provision, and was disappointed that the amendment lost a procedural vote yesterday. I plan to support my colleague from Illinois as he continues his efforts to enact this important change to the bankruptcy code.

As my colleagues know, unlike most contracts, including mortgages on vacation homes and family farms, bankruptcy judges cannot currently modify the terms of the very contract most dear to families facing bankruptcy, their principal residence: the place they call home, where they raise their children, know their neighbors, and live their lives.

Simply put, this provision would fix this glaring anomaly in section 1322(b)(2) of the bankruptcy code so that primary residence mortgages are treated like most other secured debts. Like any secured creditor, the mortgage holder would be entitled to adequate protection of his or her property interest during the chapter 13 case. The modification of the mortgage would be limited by market prices and rates and to a repayment term of no longer than 30 years.

Given the cost of foreclosures--which may average as high as $50,000 per incident--it would seem that this amendment to the bankruptcy code would benefit all parties to a mortgage. Passing this measure could help more than 600,000 families facing bankruptcy stay in their homes.

As we continue to consider this housing stimulus package, we have an opportunity to help millions of families weather this crisis and get their lives back on track. I will continue to fight for meaningful relief for middle-class families threatened with the loss of their homes.

Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the extraordinary life of Dith Pran, who risked his life to expose the terrors of the Khmer Rouge regime in his native Cambodia, and who later became the subject of the Oscar award-winning film, ``The Killing Fields.'' Mr. Dith died March 30, 2008, in New Jersey, surrounded by relatives and friends. He

was a defender of human rights, a journalist, a teacher, and a hero.

As many fled Cambodia during the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Mr. Dith sent his wife and children to safety abroad but stayed behind with investigative journalist Sydney H. Schanberg to help ensure that news of the events there reached the outside world. He believed his country and people could only be saved from the Khmer Rouge if individuals in other countries understood the tragedy gathering in his homeland.

Amidst the crisis spreading throughout Southeast Asia in the years following the Vietnam war--a crisis my father, Charles Whitehouse, also saw firsthand through his work as U.S. Ambassador to Laos and Thailand in the 1970s--Dith Pran was a witness to, and a fierce critic of, the greatest atrocities men have inflicted upon their fellow men.

Against all odds, Mr. Dith survived the Cambodian genocide in which 2 million Cambodians, one-third of the population, were killed. Most of his extended family were also killed. He suffered through 4 years of hard labor, living on just one teaspoon of rice a day and whatever animals and insects he could find. Mr. Dith finally escaped from a commune and travelled 40 miles to the Thai border through what he coined ``the killing fields,'' past the bodies of those killed by the Khmer Rouge, before reaching safety.

After reaching the United States, Mr. Dith became a photojournalist for the New York Times. He founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate individuals around the world of the horrors he survived in order to prevent future genocides. He was appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1985.

For his efforts to educate the world, Mr. Dith was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1998. He also received the Award of Excellence from the International Center in New York.

Dith Pran said: ``Part of my life is saving life. I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.'' Dith Pran has been a powerful and compelling voice for his countrymen and the land he loved. His willingness to share his story brought light to dark places and hope to millions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:15 p.m., Tuesday, April 1, the Senate proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221; that the motion to reconsider be agreed to; further, that the time until 2:30 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders with the majority leader controlling the final 7\1/2\ minutes; that at 2:30 p.m, without further intervening action or debate, the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order of December 19, 2007, with respect to S. 1974, be vitiated and that S. 1974 remain at the desk.

I send a resolution to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table without interviewing action.