Floor Statements

Mr. President, I speak today to honor the public service of four great Ohioans--Dr. Woodrow Whitlow, Jr., Jo Ann Charleston, Dr. Rickey Shyne, and Dr. Yolanda Hicks. I am proud to honor these four NASA Glenn engineers for their achievements in the fields of science, engineering, and technology.

On the Shores of Lake Erie, just outside the city of Cleveland, OH, world class scientists and engineers at the NASA Glenn Research Center are conducting world class research. Dr. Wilson, Ms. Charleston, Dr. Shyne, and Dr. Hicks, each of whom has contributed meaningfully to NASA Glenn's important work, are rightfully being honored at this year's Black Engineer of the Year Awards ceremony.

It is the pragmatic, yet creative, approach taken by researchers like Dr. Whitlow, Ms. Charleston, Dr. Shyne, and Dr. Hicks that will allow this country to remain at the forefront of aerospace and space exploration technology. It is the work of the many dedicated scientists and engineers like them that drives our economy and ensures our country's future prosperity.

I am proud to honor these great Ohioans, the work of the NASA Glenn Research Center, and the many other award recipients at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards ceremony. In this new global economy, American innovation in the fields of math, science, and engineering is critical. The hard work and dedication of these four serve as an inspiration for the next generation of American innovators.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate up to 10 minutes in morning business.

This past week, President Bush submitted to Congress his last budget for the Federal Government. It is a revealing document that pretty clearly demonstrates the priorities of this administration. It used to be that budgets were designed to rein in the Federal deficit. Under this administration, budget after budget has been submitted that would, if enacted, widen the deficit.

We know 7 years ago, when President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, we had a huge Federal surplus. Today, we have a huge Federal deficit that will be a burden on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

While funding for programs to help middle-class families hard hit by stagnant wages would be slashed by the President's budget, he gives enormous tax cuts to people who don't need them--and generally didn't ask for them--the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. They simply don't need a tax cut.

In 2009, the President will give tax cuts of $51 billion to those people making over $1 million a year--again, that is $51 billion for those making over $1 million a year. Yet he is cutting $15 billion from many of the programs that I am going to mention.

Perhaps most disconcerting are the President's cuts in Federal programs that serve rural America. The President has failing grades on his budget and what it does. He gets an F in health care, an F in education, an F in law enforcement, and an F in economic development. With faltering infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, disappearing jobs, underfunded schools, and spotty access to health care, rural areas in Ohio, southeast Ohio--and

northwest Ohio especially--and across our Nation, these areas are fighting an uphill battle without anywhere near the Federal support they used to get or that they need now.

More than one-half of Ohio's counties are rural as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Of the top 10 counties in Ohio--and there are 88 counties--with the highest unemployment, every 1 of them is rural. Of the top 10 counties in Ohio with the highest proportion below the poverty line, 9 out of 10 are rural. Of the top 10 counties in Ohio with the highest percentage of residents eligible for Medicaid, 9 are rural.

Seven rural Ohio counties make all three of these lists: Vinton Pike, Scioto, Adams, Meigs, Jackson, and Morgan--all counties in southeast Ohio. Citizens of this counties need our help, and they need it today.

Yesterday, I spoke with about two dozen officials and activists in those counties in southern Ohio--people from the chamber of commerce, the county commissioners, the mayors, health department directors, community development people--and the stories they told about the President's failure on health care, education, law enforcement, and economic development will be devastating and are devastating for southeast Ohio.

Despite the alarming statistics and the crucial role rural America plays in our Nation's self-sufficiency and in our cohesiveness and culture, the President chose to slash funding for rural economic programs, slash funding in rural health care, in rural law enforcement, in rural education--all so that he could give a tax cut of $51 billion in 2009 to people making over $1 million a year and look what happens to health care, education, law enforcement, and economics development.

While communities in rural Ohio struggle to keep jobs, President Bush proposes to wipe away established rural development programs that these people with whom I talked yesterday--Republicans and Democrats alike, conservatives and liberals alike, public health people, chamber of commerce people, mayors, commissioners, community development people-- these programs matter to their well-being, to the economic vitality of these rural areas. These housing programs, for instance, support the construction, purchase, and rehabilitation of single-family homes, giving struggling rural Ohioans a chance to own their own homes. With all the problems we have with foreclosures, they are not just urban problems, suburban problems, or rural problems; they are every year. But the President takes special attention to wiping out rural programs that can make a big difference in people's lives.

These programs encourage rural business expansion, job creation, and grants to extend broadband access across Ohio.

These are critical programs that provide water and sewer infrastructure. The EPA comes in and says to these communities: You need major renovation--major replacement in some cases--of a lot of these water and sewer systems, and then they simply do not help them do that. It means higher sewer and water rates for unemployed people and higher sewer and water rates for people struggling, middle-class families who are proud and struggling to stay above water.

In places such as Vinton County in southeast Ohio, a third of the people are on Medicaid. Medicaid is not a luxury; it is a crucial support system for children, the disabled, and the elderly living in poverty. Medicaid covers about one in every three nursing home residents. What is to be become of seniors under the President's Medicaid cuts? Medicaid cuts: F in health care. What is to become of the seniors without this successful insurance program? The President's budget cuts $18.2 billion from Medicaid over 5 years. These cuts touted by the administration as ``savings'' will be primarily achieved by shifting costs to States, regardless of whether States can actually shoulder these costs. Again, these $18 billion cuts to Medicaid are to pay for a tax cut for people making over $1 million a year.

The Bush budget slashes other programs designed to help rural communities address unique health care challenges. People who have to go to the emergency room have to drive 30 minutes, 45 minutes. A lot of people go to emergency rooms in southeast Ohio because they cannot afford any other care, and they go in hoping to get charity care. These are not people who are lazy. These are not people without a decent work ethic. These are people who work hard, have jobs, are barely making it, they go to food banks, in too many cases, they are on Medicaid, and they have to rely on the Government because they are struggling, working hard, working a couple of jobs, and simply cannot make it.

Rural Ohio is experiencing unprecedented challenges in law enforcement as meth labs multiply and threaten families and communities. Yet, since 2001, President Bush has cut funding for State and local law enforcement programs by over 50 percent. Law enforcement: The President gets an F in rural Ohio for his budget. This year's budget would slash funding 63 percent for all State and local law enforcement programs in the Department of Justice. That is $1.6 billion, again, so the President can give tax cuts to people making over $1 million a year.

The budget also eliminates funding for the COPS Program. Talk to people in Windham, Athens, Gallipolis, Chillicothe or Blair, communities that need the COPS Program to keep these communities safe. It is a program that has worked for 10 years. So the President wants to eliminate it so he can give tax breaks to people making over $1 million.

I sound like a broken record, but it is morally outrageous to do tax cuts for people making over $1 million a year and then earn an F on health care, F on education, F on law enforcement, and F on economic development for these struggling communities, the same kind of rural areas in the Preside Officer's State of Missouri, rural areas where I know she has spent a lot of time, rural areas where I have spent a lot of time, where people are struggling, trying to stay in the middle class, trying to support their kids, and trying to just get along.

The President's proposal shortchanges overall education funding by $826 million. This budget would cut or eliminate programs to support educational opportunities for rural Ohio families, particularly programs such as career and technical education, for elementary school counseling, for Safe and Drug-Free Schools--the kinds of jobs many of these people, young people in southeast Ohio, want to get--career education, tech education, elementary school education. They want to teach, they want to be nurses, they want to be occupational therapists, they want to be physical therapists. They want to work in their communities. They don't want to go off to big cities and leave home. They want to raise their children where their parents are so their parents can see their grandchildren. And they need jobs in Chillicothe, in Zanesville, in Cambridge, and all over southern Ohio.

Our Nation's future depends on our actions now. We can either address barriers to our children's success in education, we can address the issues of law enforcement, we can address the needs of health care, or we can abdicate responsibility and watch our rural areas continue to decline. If our rural areas decline--and we know the strength of our rural areas in building our country in the last 200 years--if they decline in Missouri, Ohio, and around this country, it means our country declines, and we cannot stand for that.

As my State's first Senator to serve on the Agriculture Committee in four decades and a member of the HELP Committee, which has jurisdiction over health and education programs, I will continue to fight to ensure that our Nation invests in rural America. It is the smart thing to do for our future. It is the right thing to do for our families.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of amendment No. 4023, which would halt draconian new rules that would hamstring cost- effective case management services under the Medicaid Program.

In March of this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to implement a regulation designed to limit case management services: For children in foster care; for the elderly, who, if not for case management, would be in nursing homes; for Americans with disabilities; and or individuals with severe mental illness.

These are Americans who not only live with severe health or mental disabilities, they live in poverty.

This administration is nothing if not consistent.

This administration consistently woos those with wealth and neglects those in need.

Ohio has worked over the past 24 years to develop and fine tune an effective system for providing case management to Medicaid beneficiaries who meet a nursing home level of care but want to remain in their homes.

Enabling these Ohioans, most of whom are elderly, to live independently is not only right, it is smart.

Per capita nursing home care is more expensive than per capita home health care.

And home and community-based care fosters independence, self- determination, and rehabilitation.

Case managers are the foundation of this system of care. It cannot work without them.

But case managers cannot do their jobs if they are hung up by rules that just do not make sense.

CMS is attempting to chop the case management system into pieces, wrap it in red tape, and sit back as it withers on the vine.

They are limiting case management, as if the lack of it is in some way a reasonable solution to rising health care costs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

At a time when our health care system is overburdened and our economy is in a slump, why would we introduce chaos into cost-effective, coordinated care?

If the administration hamstrings effective case management, Medicaid costs will not drop, they will likely balloon. Without solid case management grounded in seamless administration and service delivery, state Medicaid Programs will lose ground.

They will forsake precious progress they have made toward eliminating duplicative or unnecessary care, reducing hospitalizations, and improving outcomes.

This rule is bad for Ohio and bad for the nation.

It is misguided, and frankly, it is cruel.

Whether your vote arises from compassion or common sense, I urge every Member to support this amendment.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, 99 years ago today, a group of courageous individuals came together to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The year of 1909 was the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Fewer than 50 years removed from the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the carnage of the Civil War, the promise and price of that struggle must have still been fresh on the minds of many Americans.

The ``Call for the Lincoln Emancipation Conference in 1909'' was designed to take stock of the progress since the end of the Civil War.

The conclusion of the 60 organizers, among them the mayor of Toledo, and the president of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the conclusion was that Lincoln would have been disheartened by the Nation's failure to secure equality of law and equality of opportunity without respect to color. They faced rampant Jim Crow discrimination, conducted with the blessing of the Supreme Court. The country was plagued by race riots and lynchings in every region, even in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, IL.

The founders of the NAACP understood that if true equality was to be had, the spirit of the abolitionists must be revived. So long as the North remained silent about the conditions in the South, it was supplying tacit approval.

They wrote:

Discrimination once permitted cannot be bridled. Recent

history shows that in forging chains for the Negroes, the

white voters are forging chains for themselves.

They met, they organized, and they spoke out. For almost a century the NAACP has led the fight for equality, continually working to ensure political and educational and social and economic equality for persons of all races.

Whether it was the fight to desegregate public schools or to secure equal voting rights or the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the NAACP has remained at the forefront of the struggle for justice. Even when this body, this Senate, did not do the right thing, the NAACP continued to fight for equal rights and equal opportunity.

This is a struggle that continues today. Discrimination in housing has continued a legacy of segregation in many of our neighborhoods and many of our schools. Discrimination in housing finance has led to disproportionate numbers of African-American and Latino borrowers being stuck with predatory loans that are falling into forclosure at record rates.

Black young people are more likely than their peers to attend failing schools. A new wave of barriers to voting rights has appeared in the form of vote caging, deceptive practices, and unreasonable voter ID laws. I saw some of those in the 1980s as Ohio Secretary of State. They happened in New Jersey, they happened in Louisiana, they happened in the North, they happened in the South. They are still happening.

African Americans make up about 13 percent of our population but account for over 50 percent of the prison population.

In times such as these, the NAACP is needed more than ever. Fortunately, in my home State of Ohio and across the Nation, NAACP chapters continue their fight for justice and equality. In Lorain, in Mansfield, in Toledo, in Cleveland and Columbus, they continue that fight.

The Ohio NAACP Prison Program is changing the lives and helping to rehabilitate hundreds of inmates. NAACP members across the State are registering voters and run afterschool programs.

The Cincinnati NAACP chapter is holding public forums to foster a better relationship between the community and the police department. Through programs such as these, our communities are stronger, our neighborhoods are stronger, our Nation is stronger.

As a life member of the NAACP, I am proud to support its efforts to protect our rights to increase opportunities for all Americans. As the founders observed 99 years ago, this Government cannot exist half slave and half free any better today than it could in 1861. I hope my colleagues will join me today in commemorating the NAACP's 99th anniversary.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Menendez.) The clerk will call the roll.

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

Madam President, 98 years ago today, William Dickson Boyce created one of this country's longest standing and most important community organizations--the Boy Scouts of America. Today, we join Scouting groups across the country and Ohio--Toledo and Cincinnati, Chillicothe and Lakewood--in celebrating Boy Scout Day.

The Boy Scouts of America has a rich tradition of teaching valuable skills to the young men of this country. The values which Scouting instills--fairness, honor, courage, and respect for others--prepare young men to serve their families and their Nation.

There are more than 3 million boys in the Scouting program, and in the past year alone Scouts have earned nearly 2 million merit badges and completed more than 33 million hours of community service.

As an Eagle Scout, I recognize the hard work involved in Scouting and commend the dedication and commitment of Boy Scouts and the Scouting movement across our country. The journey to Eagle is sometimes difficult, often fun, occasionally disappointing, and always rewarding. My time as a Boy Scout, in the end, provided me with opportunities to develop leadership and organizational skills, helped me to clarify and articulate my guiding principles, and instilled a commitment to public service.

The emphasis on community service I learned with Troop 110 in Mansfield, OH, has strongly influenced my lifelong commitment to public service. The memories and lessons of Camp Avery Hand and Philmont Scout Ranch, of success and failure in earning merit badges, will always remain with me.

The Scout Law is a framework that continues to inspire my work to this day:

A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly,

Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean,

and Reverent.

I am a proud supporter of the Boy Scouts of America. I hope my colleagues will join me in celebrating Boy Scout Day.

Madam President, the United States should not be playing

Russian roulette with our Nation's economy and our Nation's future. We need to craft trade policies that deliver the long-term results we need, not just the short-term profits which a few multinational corporations want and which those multinational corporations incessantly lobby this institution to get.

In his State of the Union Address, the President advocated signing more free-trade deals. Given where past trade deals have led this country, the President's dogged pursuit of outdated trade deals would be perplexing if it weren't simply more of the same and par for the course. When it comes to trade, it is often the case that ideology trumps outcomes, and it is always the case that special interests trump American interests. Looking at where our Nation is headed, advocating common sense is a luxury we can no longer afford. We need to confront the problems our lax trade policies have engendered, and we need to do it now.

We are running a huge trade deficit. When I was elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, our trade deficit was $38 billion. In 2007, it exceeded $800 billion. The first President Bush said that a billion- dollar trade deficit translated into 13,000 jobs. Do the math and see what damage these trade deficits--from $38 billion a decade and a half ago to over $800 billion today--have caused us. We are bleeding jobs, and we are letting dangerous products cross our borders and land in the hands of our families and children.

When we write trade deals that favor gains for multinational corporations over evenhanded competition for both trading partners, we shouldn't be surprised when U.S.-based companies are crippled. Our current trade policy betrays our Nation's middle class, it cripples America's small business--especially manufacturing--and it destroys communities across the country.

I was recently in Tiffin, OH--a community of about 20,000 people about an hour from Toledo in northwest Ohio--talking with workers from American Standard. American Standard is a company that makes plumbing fixtures and that most Americans are familiar with. These workers' jobs have recently gone to Mexico and China. A venture capitalist--in this case, Bain Capital out of Boston, MA--came in and bought the company, shut it down, and moved the production overseas. Many workers lost much of their pension and their health care that they had worked for decade after decade. Many of these workers are in their fifties and won't be able to find jobs in Tiffin that pay anything close to the money they had earned. Many of them lost their pensions, their health care, while enriching Bain Capital to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

These are not trivial matters. These are workers in Ohio and across the country, workers who are often in small towns and don't have the option of finding comparable jobs anyplace nearby to support their families and ultimately to benefit from the pension and the health care they have earned--they have earned.

Free trade is a dangerous myth--a false idol. Trade has never been free. Even the most basic of barter systems have been guided by rules. Today's free-trade agreements are ripe with rules, rules that are clearly producing the wrong results for our Nation--deficits, job loss, dangerous imports, and compromised manufacturing capabilities.

Again, there are rules. The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to us a decade and a half ago simply by saying this will reduce tariffs and open markets in Mexico and in Canada for U.S. goods. But it was 2,000 pages. So it wasn't simply a free-trade agreement; it was a trade agreement replete with rules that supported and helped those special interests--special interest investors and companies that wanted to privatize, that wanted to outsource, that wanted to use these rules to make more money for the companies at the expense of workers in Mexico, in Canada, and in Gallipolis, Portsmouth, and Cleveland, OH.

I am proud to join with Senator Dorgan of North Dakota, who has been a leader on trade policy. He even wrote a book called ``Take This Job and Ship It'' about trade and is proposing that we take a far more pragmatic approach to U.S. trade policy, one based on achieving positive results and on accountability. Thanks to his leadership, we have legislation that would focus trade policy away from the blind adherence to outdated trade agreements and toward policies that increase U.S. trade, that bolster U.S. jobs, that lift our communities, and that will reinforce U.S. manufacturing in the days and years ahead, and toward a trade policy that builds our Nation's middle class.

His bill establishes concrete benchmarks for trade bills. It is a commonsense idea, a prescription for U.S. success in a global trade arena that will help us bring back the manufacturing base in this country. We should pass this bill and also take immediate steps to address the dysfunction that has infiltrated virtually every aspect of our trade relationship with China.

China is manipulating its currency, it is low-balling the price of its exports through Government subsidies, it is sending our Nation dangerous toys and contaminated food, it is generating unheard of levels of pollution, and the list goes on and on.

Last month, New Page, a paper manufacturing company based in Miamisburg, a town in southwest Ohio, announced it was shutting down plants in Wisconsin, in Maine, and in my State of Ohio, in the city of Chillicothe, once the State capital.

Heavily Government-subsidized Chinese paper producers account for 50 percent of the world's market. Fifty percent of the world's paper producing is in China and is heavily Government subsidized in China. It has meant the loss of jobs in places such as Chillicothe and Dayton and all over my State and this country. It is not free trade. The Chinese have benefited. And when I say the Chinese, I don't mean Chinese workers, I mean the Communist Party of China, the Government, the People's Liberation Army, and too often U.S. investors who are so often complicit with the Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Government. Think about that. It is not free trade with China; it is a wreck.

These factors, in addition to low wages, in addition to unsafe working conditions, and the absence of worker rights have contributed to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and our country's reliance on imports.

What does that mean for the future? When I look around this Chamber, I see seven young pages, high school students who work here--and several on the other side, too, whom I can't see; I apologize--and I think about what their world is going to look like in 20 years. Are we going to look back and say: Why did we give away our country? Why did we sacrifice our national security and our economic security and outsource all these jobs and outsource all this wealth and watch a middle class decline? Is that what we are going to look back on in 20 years and say? Why did we let this happen? How did we let this happen?

Madam President, restoring sanity to our trade relationship with China should be an immediate, No. 1 domestic and international priority for this Nation.

Last week I was joined by seven freshmen colleagues affirming that our trade policy should focus on China; that is, our trade priority. We need to imagine 20 years from now, as I said, what is manufacturing in our country going to look like? This country's wealth--much of it--has been dependent on manufacturing, on making everything from newsprint to airplanes, being able to manufacture and create wealth in small towns and large cities alike.

Instead of littering our Nation's path with more flawed trade agreements, we should say: Time out. No more trade agreements. Look back, establish this commission we have discussed that will look at both parties, both houses, look back at what our trade policy--what NAFTA, what CAFTA, PNTR with China, what our other bilateral smaller trade agreements have done, what they have done to our country, what have they done for our country, make that analysis and then fix those trade agreements and move forward.

It is not in the Nation's best interests to rely on other nations for our defense infrastructure, for our transportation infrastructure, for our industrial infrastructure, for creating the wealth in our communities that manufacturing does. In this country, we do

the best research and development in the world. Yet multinational corporations often take that research and development and do the production in other countries.

Sure, there are great jobs in research and development. It is good for our country. We should continue to give tax incentives for that research and development, but it is more than that. It is also what do you do afterwards, in commercializing, in producing and manufacturing those products the research and development has generated? That is the larger number of jobs, that is the greater part of the wealth creation, that is what is essential to providing the goods and services in our communities for police and fire and education and all of what that means.

We cannot simply continue to do the R&D and then farm out the production to exploit low-wage workers, exploit the consumer product and food safety net. Because that is what happens. When this research and development is done in the United States, and the production is moved to China, it is moved there to exploit low-wage labor, and it is moved there as a way, frankly, in many cases, or at least it becomes that, that we end up with inferior, less safe, less high-quality products back into our country.

We need to take responsibility for the consequences of our inaction when it comes to trade policy and take responsibility for the mistake we have made in formulating trade policy. We need to do it now.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Salazar.) The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I appreciate the words of the Senator from Arkansas. They are good words.

We have an opportunity to both jump-start our economy and solve the problems staring us right in the face. It is the difference between investing in our Nation's economy and investing wisely in our Nation's economy. Of course, we should invest wisely.

We have an opportunity to put money into the pockets of almost every American or just some Americans. We can exclude retirees, we can exclude disabled veterans, or we can include them. Obviously, we should include them.

The Reid amendment incorporated in the Finance Committee proposal sends rebates to the homes of 21 million senior citizens, 250,000 disabled veterans, and thousands of unemployed who don't get a dime in the House bill.

Now, some decided they wanted to label this bill a Christmas tree. It is always what you do if you don't like the provisions in something. Anyone who thinks it is Christmas morning in these households is sadly mistaken.

The Reid amendment is inclusive and sends money to individuals who will spend it. In a stimulus package, you stimulate the economy, and in times of recession you help those who have been hardest hit by the recession. It is smart and it is right.

The Finance Committee package provides extended unemployment benefits for those who are looking for jobs in a sluggish economy. Thousands of Ohioans lost their jobs not because they wanted to, but they have lost their jobs and they are looking for some help as they try to return to the workforce. Economists have confirmed that is the most potent strategy for stimulating the economy. You put money into the economy to stimulate the economy, you particularly put money into the pockets of those who will spend it--disabled veterans, senior citizens, and unemployed workers who need extended benefits. It makes sense and it is the right thing to do.

I thank the Chair.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now stand in recess under the previous order.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and that the time I use not be counted against debate on the pending amendments.

My home State of Ohio is deep into a foreclosure crisis. Gas prices are going up, and all energy prices and transportation costs are going up. More Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, some not even that lucky. Congress is now working on an economic stimulus package, one that is desperately needed. Let me tell the story about something that happened last month in my home State of Ohio to illustrate how this recession, which has clearly already swept across my State, has had an impact on families, on middle-class families, on families who consider themselves middle class and sometimes do not--a couple of stories.

One is from Tim in Cleveland. Tim told us that for some time, he and his wife had volunteered at a food bank. They donated money to this food bank. Over time, as his budget got tighter, his pay wasn't keeping up with the cost of gasoline, heating, the increasing cost of food, and he no longer contributed to the food bank, but he and his wife kept working there. More recently, Tim said that he began to go to the food bank for food. He said he was a bit embarrassed by that, which he should not have been, and said: I used to consider myself middle class. Now I do not. He has held the same job, worked the same long hours, but he is simply not able to keep up with an economy under the rules of globalization, where wages are stagnant and prices continue to go up.

Perhaps a more tragic story, only because it involves a larger number of people, perhaps, than Tim: In Hocking County in Logan, OH, a community about halfway between Columbus, in the center of the State, the capital in Athens, the home of Howard University, a city on the Ohio River, a town of Logan in the County of Hocking, a county of about 30,000 people, at 3:30 in the morning on a cold December night, the people began to line up at the United Methodist Church to go to a food pantry. The doors opened at 8. People in cars were snaked around the whole area in Logan, and by 1 in the afternoon, 2,000 people--7 percent of the population of Hocking County, an Appalachian county where people work hard, have raised their kids proudly, have taken care of themselves and their neighbors--2,000 people in this community of 30,000 had visited this food bank, many of them driving 25 or 30 minutes to get there.

Congress, in response, is working on an economic stimulus package that is desperately needed. The Finance Committee has passed a proposal that puts cash in the hands of working Americans and doesn't turn its back on those in need.

A stimulus package is two things: One, it is to stimulate the economy by putting money in the hands of people who will spend it. Second, it is helping those people most victimized, hardest hit by the recession. That is why the Finance Committee, better than the President's version and the House version, will do those two things. It will stimulate the economy better, and it will put money in the hands of those who have suffered, who have been hardest hit. I applaud the committee for taking the plight of every American, retirees and disabled veterans, into consideration.

The Finance Committee package aims at jump-starting this stalled economy. For those who are facing in too many cases heat or eat, whether they can afford food or paying the heating bills, it will provide immediate assistance.

Importantly, the Finance Committee package provides relief to 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled Americans who were left out of the other package under consideration, the package most of my Republican friends are supporting, the one without help for 250,000 disabled and 20 million seniors. Some Republicans, those who are a bit more courageous and more willing to break with the President and their Senate leadership, are supporting the package that includes 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled Americans.

The Finance Committee package includes an extension of unemployment insurance, which is a crucial and commonsense response in an economic downturn. An awful lot of Ohioans, in Toledo and Lima and Dayton and Hamilton and Middletown, have seen their unemployment compensation run out. They have been unemployed for 26 weeks or longer--a situation they didn't ask to be in, a situation where they involuntarily were laid off. They haven't been able to find a job in this economy. Many of them now are in those food banks in Dayton and Cleveland and Toledo, and many of them are looking for help. That is why it is so important that we put money directly into the pockets of people, through seniors, disabled Americans, and with the extension of unemployment compensation benefits.

About a week ago, I met with seven or eight religious leaders representing several Christian denominations, a rabbi and a leader in the Muslim community who came to my office to talk about what we need to do to answer the call for social justice, the call that preaches that regardless of one's faith, we have a responsibility, those who are more privileged, to those who are less privileged. This economic stimulus package does this. These leaders from the faith community who visited me last week spoke passionately about how, with the LIHEAP program, the program for the elderly indigent who can't afford their heating bills, with food banks and food stamps and the extension of unemployment benefits, what we need to do in this stimulus package, putting money in the pockets of middle-class Americans, including 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled, how that is so very important to celebrate American values. As these religious leaders were discussing with me, to celebrate our Nation's values and to celebrate our faith, it is particularly important that we pass a stimulus package that not just stimulates the economy but helps those people most in need who have most been hurt by this recession.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 5, 2008, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in order to hear testimony on the President's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal.

Committee on Veterans' Affairs

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 5, in order to conduct an oversight hearing entitled: Review of Veterans' Disability Compensation: Rehabilitating Veterans.'' The Committee will meet in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 5, 2008, at 10 a.m. in order to hold an open hearing.

Select Committee on Intelligence

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 5, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a closed hearing.

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

Mr. President, yesterday I met American heroes--dozens and dozens of American heroes--citizen soldiers who had returned from service in Iraq. Out of Brooklyn, OH, High School near Cleveland, 81 soldiers in the 256th Combat Support Hospital were honored at the Warriors Citizen ceremony.

Many years ago--200 years or so ago--George Washington talked about farmers putting down their plows and serving their country. Yesterday I met nurses, teachers, doctors, farmers, and small business owners, all of whom had returned from Iraq last October, and all of whom we were honoring yesterday in Brooklyn, OH. MAJ Michael Evarts trained Iraqi soldiers. MAJ Michael Evarts, a citizen soldier, returned to Ohio; he works every day supporting his family as a pharmaceutical representative.

Bryan Block from Zanesville left his restaurant for a year to serve his country. He left Charlie's Subs to his son-in-law in Zanesville and last October returned to a growing, prosperous restaurant. Bryan Block is a citizen soldier.

LTC Shirley Koachway spoke with an infectious enthusiasm and with an obvious dedication to the veterans she serves. Not only is she in the Army Reserve, but she told me about her work in Sandusky--a city just west of Lorraine where I live--in a community-based outreach clinic serving veterans--a citizen soldier.

CPT Dionne Moore is an optometrist who works for the Department of Veterans' Affairs in a community-based outreach clinic in Lorraine, OH. Captain Moore told me with some pain in her eyes how she is seeing more and more diabetic veterans who have not gotten their medicine or not often enough kept up with taking their medicine, which is causing a decreased use of their vision and an increase in blindness in all too many veterans.

CWO Ron Kuntz, who directed the choir for the ceremony, spoke passionately not just about his service for our country but spoke passionately about his students whom he has as a music teacher in the Cleveland city schools--another citizen soldier.

I also spoke with COL Ron Dziedzicki, who was a nurse and is now a hospital administrator who has been working with these men and women, with these soldiers in Europe and in Asia and all over the world in his many years--more than two decades--of service to our Nation--all citizen soldiers.

Now, when I think of whom I met yesterday, when I think of these soldiers--men and women of all races, of all ages--when I think of these soldiers who give up their lives or time away--more than a year away from their families--one of these soldiers told me his child was born when he was overseas--when I think about them, I think about the duty we have to them.

I know the Presiding Officer has spoken about this many times. The President and this Congress, for too many years in the past, have simply not taken care of veterans the way we should take care of them. For the kind of service we have asked of them and sacrifice we have asked them to make for our country, we haven't--even in a small way in too many cases--paid them back.

That is why I come to the floor today just for a few more minutes to talk about the GI bill: the post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007. A whole generation of Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, a whole generation of soldiers and sailors and marines were educated because of the GI bill. They were people who came back without much money, enrolled in school, and the Government--paying them back for their service for winning World War II, for Korea, for all of their service to our country--the Government decided the most important thing to do was to give them the kind of educational opportunity that they earned and that they deserved.

Do we know what happened? It wasn't just that the GI bill helped thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, a few million returning veterans, it is also what it did for the prosperity of our Nation because without the GI bill in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, we would not have had the educated workforce, we wouldn't have the kind of educated citizens this country, the ``greatest generation,'' gave to us.

That is why a government program such as this, a program that is all about opportunity to give these veterans the GI bill, give these veterans an opportunity, an education, will not only help them personally and help their families, it will help their neighborhoods, it will help their communities, and it will help us to make our country even more prosperous. That is the whole point of programs such as the GI bill. It should help those veterans whom I met yesterday, those returning soldiers, some of them still in the Reserve, some of them having served their time and left. But that GI bill will spark the kind of economic growth and expansion for a whole generation of Americans.

With programs such as this one, when we provide opportunities to college students, when we provide opportunities through Head Start, when we provide opportunities with helping families through the earned- income tax credit, not only does it help those individuals and help those families, it helps our communities, it helps our States, it helps our country.

That is the story of the GI bill. That is why we need a new GI bill that really does pay those veterans back, pay those soldiers, sailors, and marines back for the service they gave our country. It is the smart thing to do. It is the morally right thing to do. It is the best thing to do for our country.

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

Madam President, Mr. Irving Herrman, member to the ``greatest generation,'' will be 90 years old on February 5, 2008. He was born in Akron, OH, the second of three sons of Armand and Therese Herrman and a first-generation American. His parents were Eastern European Jews who came to this country at the end of the 19th century.

Mr. Herrman graduated from South High School in Akron and attended the University of Akron. He began working for Mr. Milton Radney until he joined the Army Air Corps and served during World War II; he was stationed in England. It was in England where he met his wife, Vera Grace Cressey. They married on March 19, 1945, and returned to Akron and then Cuyahoga Falls after the war, where they raised a beautiful family together.

Upon returning to the Akron area, Mr. Herrman resumed his position with the Radney Cigarette Company where he managed the office. He remained with the company until he retired in 1982. He then worked parttime for H.R. Block until 1998. Mrs. Herrman died in 2000. Mr. Herrman loves his family dearly. He has two daughters and sons-in law, Brenda H. and Steven Lipp and Judith H. and Fred Jenkins; he has six grandchildren: Emily Lipp Sirota, Zach Lipp, Nate Lipp, Jake Plattner, Rachel Plattner and Maggie Plattner.

Mr. Herrman is an active and beloved member of the community. He has been a member of Temple Israel for over 50 years. He has been a longtime member of the Hakoah Club at the Jewish Community Center, holding every office in that organization, including president. He is also a member of the Jewish War Veterans, holding offices in that organization, as well. In his retirement, he volunteered at local hospitals. One of Mr. Herrman's favorite pastimes is bowling. He won many competitions and rolled a 300 game in league play. He is also an avid ping-pong player and continues to enjoy golf and travel. But his favorite activity of all is spending time with friends and family.

Mr. Herrman's life is one that represents the ``greatest generation:'' a life of family and service to country and community. It is people like Mr. Herrman who have built this country and made it great.

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

Mr. President, I understand H.R. 5140 is at the desk and due for a second reading.

Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings at this time.

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