Floor Statements

Mr. President, all along our Nation's coasts there are harbors that were once full of the hustle and bustle associated with the fishing industry. Unfortunately, there has been an erosion of the vital infrastructure, known as our working waterfronts, that is so critical to our commercial fishing industries. To better preserve these waterfront areas, I have drafted legislation that will help to protect commercial access to our waterfronts and to support the fishing industry's role in our maritime heritage.

When constituents have called asking me to help them in their efforts to stop the loss of their fishing businesses and the communities built around this industry, I realized more needed to be done to preserve and increase waterfront access for the commercial fishing industry. Currently, there is no Federal program to promote and protect the working waterfronts other than identifying some grant programs that might apply. There is an immediate need to protect our working waterfronts since we are losing more of them every week, and quite simply, once lost, these vital economic and community hubs of commercial fishing activity cannot be replaced.

I rise today to re-introduce a bill I originally proposed in the 109th Congress--the Working Waterfront Preservation Act. This legislation would create a program to support our Nation's commercial fishing families and the coastal communities that are at risk of losing their fishing businesses.

I can illustrate the need for such a program by describing the loss of commercial waterfront access occurring in Maine. Only 25 of Maine's 3,500 miles of coastline are devoted to commercial access. We are continually seeing portions of Maine's working waterfront being sold off to the highest bidder--with large vacation homes and condominiums rising in places that our fishing industry used to call home.

The reasons for the loss of Maine's working waterfront are complex. In some cases, burdensome fishing regulations have led to a decrease in landings, hindering the profitability of shore-side infrastructure, like the Portland Fish Exchange. In other cases, soaring land values and rising taxes have made the current use of commercial land unprofitable. Property is being sold and quickly converted into private spaces and second homes that are no longer the center of economic activity.

Maine's lack of commercial waterfront prompted the formation of a ``Working Waterfront Coalition.'' This coalition is comprised of an impressive number of industry associations, non- profit groups, and state agencies, who came together to preserve Maine's working waterfront. The coalition identified eighteen projects that would increase Maine's available working waterfront. These eighteen sites would create or preserve more than 875 jobs.

I'm pleased to note that the Working Waterfront Coalition has been successful in contributing to the creation of two programs in Maine. The first is a State tax incentive for property owners to keep their land in its current working waterfront condition. The second is a pilot program for grant funding to secure and preserve working waterfront areas. I am proud that the State of Maine has taken positive action to save its waterfront infrastructure and is a model for other States in the country facing this problem.

However, we must press on with this priority. The loss of commercial waterfront access affects the fishing industry throughout all coastal States. Pick up a newspaper in one of our coastal States, and you will read about this struggle. Fishermen in Galilee, RI are being pushed away from the waterfronts as their profitability shrinks and land values soar. The Los Angeles Times ran a story on the disappearance of working waterfronts in Florida. That State has also since enacted a law to protect their working waterfronts. Washington State struggles to balance working waterfronts with increased development pressure. Another region of the country that this bill would benefit is the Gulf Coast. This legislation would assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina in rebuilding their shore-side infrastructure destroyed in the storm.

And modest federal investment could do so much to save these areas. Preservation of the working waterfront is essential to protect a way of life that is unique to our coastal States and is vital to economic development along the coast. This bill targets this problem, as no Federal program exists to assist States like Maine, Florida, Washington, and Louisiana.

The Working Waterfront Preservation Act would assist by providing Federal grant funding to municipal and State governments, non-profit organizations, and fishermen's cooperatives for the purchase of property or easements or for the maintenance of working waterfront facilities. The bill contains a $50 million authorization for grants that would require a 25 percent local match. Applications for grants would be considered by both the Department of Commerce and state fisheries agencies, which have the local expertise to understand the needs of each coastal State. Grant recipients would agree not to convert coastal properties to noncommercial uses, as a condition of receiving federal assistance.

This legislation also has a tax component included. When properties or easements are purchased, sellers would only be taxed on half of the gain they receive from this sale. Taxing only half of the gain on conservation sales is a proposal that has been advanced by the President in all of his budget proposals. This is a vital aspect of my bill because it would diminish the pressure to quickly sell waterfront property that would then, most likely, be converted to noncommercial uses, and would increase the incentives for sellers to take part in this grant program. This is especially important given that the application process for federal grants does not keep pace with the coastal real estate market.

This legislation is crucial for our Nation's commercial fisheries, which are coming under increasing pressures from many fronts. This new grant program would preserve important commercial infrastructure and promote economic development along our coast. I am committed to creating a Federal mechanism to preserve working waterfronts and will pursue this legislation during the 110th Congress.

Mr. President, I have only had a brief time to look at the amendment offered by the Senator from California, but it would, in my judgment, enhance certain provisions in the underlying bill on the visa waiver program. There are discussions going on with key Senators on our side of the aisle, such as Senator Kyl of Arizona, who has also a great interest in this area.

We are not prepared on this side to proceed with a full discussion of the amendment at this time or to dispose of it at this time, but I would inform my colleagues that I am optimistic that the discussions will produce a fruitful result. At this time, we cannot proceed to disposing of the amendment, however.

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

Mr. President, to clarify for our colleagues, the objection or the clarification I mentioned earlier has been resolved on this side of the aisle. I know of no objection to adopting the amendment of Senator Feinstein. I believe it strengthens the provisions in the underlying bill and I urge its adoption.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce an amendment to address the growing concern among States regarding the implementation of the REAL ID Act of 2005. This law requires States to meet minimum security standards before citizens can use their driver's licenses for Federal purposes, such as boarding an airplane. I am very pleased to have several cosponsors of this amendment, including Senator Alexander, Senator Carper, Senator Cantwell, Senator Snowe, and Senator Mikulski. All of them have expressed concerns about the impact on their States. I particularly wish to single out Senator Alexander,

who has long been a leading voice in raising concerns about the costs imposed upon States by the REAL ID Act.

As the deadline for compliance for the REAL ID Act rapidly approaches, States are beginning to send a very clear message that they are deeply concerned they simply will not be able to meet these standards. The amendment I introduce today recognizes those concerns by allowing more time to devise a way to make driver's licenses more secure without unduly burdening State governments and without threatening privacy and civil liberties.

To begin with, perhaps some background information would be useful. The 9/11 Commission's investigation found that all but one of the 9/11 terrorists had acquired some form of U.S. identification--in most cases a State driver's licenses. The Commission recommended that the Federal Government should set standards for the issuance of driver's licenses to make them more secure, to ensure the person was, in fact, entitled to a driver's license, and to make certain the driver's license has certain security features to ensure the individual is who he or she claims to be.

To implement that recommendation, which was indeed in response to a very real concern identified by the 9/11 Commission, I worked with a bipartisan group of Senators, most notably my colleague, Senator Lieberman, to craft a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act that would accomplish the goal of the Commission. It called for the creation of a committee of experts from the Federal Government, from State governments, from privacy groups, from technology information organizations, to come together in a negotiated rulemaking process and to develop a means of providing secure identification, while protecting privacy and civil liberty rights, and also respecting the role of the States, which have always had the primary responsibility in this area.

The language we came up with also provided for some grants that would help the States bear this cost--not the whole cost but to help them out.

This committee was indeed appointed--indeed, at my recommendation, Maine's secretary of state was one of the members--and they began diligently working on this task. Unfortunately, before the committee could complete its work, the House of Representatives attached the REAL ID Act of 2005 to an emergency war supplemental, a bill that was truly urgent. There was not a lot of consideration in the Senate nor debate over this provision. It was inserted into the emergency war appropriations bill.

The effect of that was to repeal the negotiated rulemaking provisions that we had worked so hard to craft and to put into the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. The further effect, therefore, was to halt the very productive and worthwhile progress this committee was making in devising standards to improve security without imposing unnecessary burdens and costs on State governments.

Unlike our Intelligence Reform Act, the REAL ID Act of 2005 did not include States and other interested parties, whether privacy advocates or technological experts, in the rulemaking process. Instead, the REAL ID Act simply instructed the Department of Homeland Security to write its own regulations. It has been almost 2 years since the REAL ID Act was passed, and the Department has yet to issue the detailed guidance the States need to comply with the law. We expect these regulations are just about to be published, that they are about to be issued under the formal notice and comment period later this week.

The problem is, the States are facing this looming May of 2008 deadline for being in full compliance with the REAL ID Act. That is an enormously constricted period for the States to comply, when the regulations have not yet been issued.

As States begin work this year on their 2008 budgets, they still have no idea what the final regulations will require of them, but they do know that the costs are likely to be substantial based on a study released in 2006 by the National Governors Association. The NGA estimated that the costs to States to implement the REAL ID Act could total more than $11 billion over the next 5 years. This is a substantial amount. Perhaps the cost will be less than that, but the point is, we don't know because the regulations with the detailed guidance have still not been issued, even as we speak.

The State of Maine reports that the costs of implementation of the REAL ID Act could total $158 million. The Secretary of State tells me that is more than six times the normal operating budget of the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

The result has been an increasing rebellion by States over this unfunded, very difficult mandate. Some States, including my home State of Maine, have passed resolutions that have sent the message to Washington that they cannot and will not implement the REAL ID Act by the May 2008 deadline. So what do we do?

Here is what my amendment proposes. I have had extensive consultations with the National Governors Association, the National Council of State Legislatures, and other experts on this issue.

My amendment has two primary objectives. The first is to give the Federal Government and States the time and flexibility they need to come up with an effective but practical system to provide secure driver's licenses.

Second, my amendment would ensure the involvement of experts from the States, from the technology industry, and privacy and civil liberties advocates, by bringing them back to the table and giving them a chance to review these regulations and make them work.

There are three major provisions in the amendment we are offering. First, the amendment provides that States would not have to be in full compliance with the REAL ID Act until 2 years after the final regulations are promulgated. That is reasonable. This is a difficult task, and it is important that we get it right. It is important for our security, but it is also important for the States that have been burdened with the task. That means no matter how long it takes for the Department of Homeland Security to finish these regulations, States will have a full 2 years to implement them. Most likely, the impact of that is to delay from May of next year to May of 2010 the compliance date. That is the likely timeframe about which we are talking.

Second, the amendment would give the Secretary of Homeland Security more flexibility to waive certain requirements of REAL ID, if an aspect of the program proves to be technically difficult to implement. I have talked with some technology experts. Some of them say it can be done. Some of them say this is an enormous task because we are talking about having interlocking databases so that States can check with other States on whether an individual is licensed there. That is a very complex project because, not surprisingly, each State has its own system. So there are questions about the technology and the feasibility of all of the requirements of the REAL ID Act. We want to give the Secretary some flexibility in that area.

It is possible that some of the technological links necessary for REAL ID may not be fully in place at the time that compliance is required. On the other hand, if the technology is there and the systems are up and running, it will be easier for the States to proceed. That is another advantage of the extension in time. The technology is only going to get better and become more effective.

This also gives us more time to address privacy concerns because there are a lot of questions, if you have people throughout the country working in motor vehicle bureaus who are now going to have access to databases and are going to need training in evaluating the underlying documents, whether they are birth certificates or visas, in determining their validity. So this is a complicated task.

Third, the amendment reconstitutes the committee that we created in 2004, and that was making such good progress in its deliberations before these provisions were repealed by the REAL ID Act. This committee would be required to look at the regulations published by the Department of Homeland Security and to make suggestions for modifications to meet the concerns of States, privacy advocates, and other interested parties. Within 120 days of convening, the committee would report its recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security and to Congress. So we are not throwing out

the work that has already been done by the Department of Homeland Security. It doesn't make sense to go back to square one, to go back to scratch, as the 2004 bill had proposed. Instead, we create this committee, bringing all the stakeholders to the table. They would take a rigorous look at the regulations that are issued, and they would make recommendations to the Department and to us so that we could exercise our oversight.

The Department of Homeland Security would then either have to make the recommendations recommended by this committee or explain why it chose not to. So we would have much more transparency and accountability in the process.

In addition, the committee could recommend to Congress, if they believed that statutory changes are needed to mitigate concerns that could not be addressed by modifications to the regulations. That is an important safeguard as well.

The amendment we are offering would give us time, the information that Congress and the Department of Homeland Security need to better implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in order to make our driver's licenses secure so that they cannot again be used to facilitate a plot to attack our country.

There is a real problem. The 9/11 Commission was correct in identifying the ease with which the hijackers were able to secure driver's licenses. But let's come up with not only an effective solution to the problem identified but also a practical one. We don't have to choose one versus the other. We can come up with a cost- effective, efficient, effective way to achieve this goal. This bill does so in a way that does not rewind the clock 3 years but instead keeps us moving to a more secure America.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address REAL ID and to put us back on the right track to protect our country, to protect our privacy, to protect our liberty, and to do so in a practical way.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, what is the pending business?

Madam President, it is actually a Collins-Alexander amendment, along with several of our colleagues. I am very pleased to note the Senator from Tennessee, who has been such a leader and such an early voice raising concerns about the implications of the REAL ID Act for State governments, is here on the floor. As a former Governor, he has a better appreciation than many of us of the burden this act imposes on the States. So I am very pleased the Senator is here and I yield to him such time as he may need.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his excellent statement. He outlined the issue very well.

I emphasize two points the Senator made. First is the cost. The National Governors Association has estimated that compliance with the requirements of the REAL ID card will impose $11 billion of costs on State governments over the next 5 years. Yet we have appropriated only $40 million to be used toward that cost, and of that amount the Department of Homeland Security has only allocated $6 million, so only a tiny fraction of the expected cost.

The second point I emphasize is the Department of Homeland Security has yet to issue the regulations detailing how States are to comply with the law.

So to expect the States to comply by May of next year with regulations that have yet to be issued is simply unfair and will add another layer of costs because of the short time for compliance. This 2 years will allow a more careful review. It will allow more input by the States when DHS does issue the regulations, and it will allow us to devise a cost-effective way of achieving a goal all of us have, and that is to make driver's licenses more secure.

I am very grateful for the insights of the Senator from Tennessee, for his support, and for his very early leadership on this issue.

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

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia for his support and his excellent comments. This is a carefully drafted amendment. It doesn't rewind the clock in terms of throwing out the work that the Department has done, but it recognizes that it is simply unreasonable to expect States to comply by May of next year with complex and costly regulations that the Department has yet to issue. The Department has yet to issue the detailed guidance that the States need.

It also recognizes that the quality of the final regulations will be improved by the formation of a committee with State officials, privacy advocates, technological experts, and Federal officials sitting down, looking at the regulations, and providing input to the Department on their proposed regulations and also providing that input to us.

The third provision of the amendment would increase the waiver authority that the Secretary can have if it proves that there are technological barriers to complying with certain provisions of the law. I think this is a reasonable approach to a real problem.

Finally, let me say to my colleagues, the estimates for the cost of compliance with this law are as high as $11 billion over the next 5 years. This is a huge unfunded mandate on the States. My hope is through our approach we can come up with more practical, cost-effective means of achieving a goal that all of us share and that is improving the security of driver's licenses that are used for Federal identification purposes, such as boarding an airplane. There is a real need to have a secure driver's license, but let's do it in a practical, collaborative way, and let's make sure there is adequate time to comply.

I thank the Senator from Georgia for his support and for his excellent comments.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, be added as a cosponsor of the Collins amendment, No. 277.

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

Mr. President, knowing the Senator from California as I do, I am certain a lot of the issues she has raised are serious ones, deserving of

scrutiny. They are, however, under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee and not the Homeland Security Committee. As such, I don't feel that I, at this time, have the expertise or the knowledge to evaluate the amendment that has been filed by the Senator from California. That is why I am objecting to the amendment. It is not because of its merits but because it is not relevant to this debate. I have not had a chance to look at it, and it is not in the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee.

I will say to my colleagues that the Senator from Connecticut and I have been working very hard in a bipartisan way to try to keep the focus of this bill on issues to improve our homeland security. We were very pleased that, despite the overwhelming importance of the debate on Iraq, there had been an agreement by our leaders to try to keep that debate for the next issue to come before the Senate, rather than having it tied in with this bill. Similarly, the families of the victims of 9/ 11 have made a plea to all of us to focus on this bill and to keep extraneous issues off this bill and rather focus on issues the 9/11 Commission raised. That is what we are attempting to do. I have no doubt this is an important issue, an issue that is worthy of debate, an issue that is worthy of scrutiny by the Judiciary Committee, based on the explanation of the Senator from California, for whom I have a great deal of respect. But it is an issue that is completely outside the jurisdiction of the Homeland Security Committee.

For that reason, my hope is the Senator from California will look at this as an opportunity to educate us on the issue but will not proceed with this amendment because it is not at all relevant to the bill before us.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add Ms. Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, as a cosponsor to the Collins amendment No. 277.

Madam President, speaking of the Collins amendment on REAL ID, cosponsored by Senators Alexander, Mikulski, Carper, Cantwell, Snowe, Chambliss, and Murkowski, I bring to my colleagues' attention the several groups representing Governors, State legislatures, and others who are now speaking in favor of passage of this amendment. In addition, as the Presiding Officer so ably represents the State of New York, there was a Newsday editorial today also endorsing the amendment with its 2-year delay.

The National Governors Association has also issued a statement that says:

Senator Collins' bipartisan amendment recognizes the need

to give state officials and other interested parties the

right to review regulations and suggest modifications.

It goes on to say:

This proposal would provide states a more workable time

frame to comply with federal standards, ensure necessary

systems are operational and enhance the input states and

other stakeholders have in the implementation process.

We have also heard from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, which has written a letter as well. It says:

It is clear that the states do not have the capacity to

comply with the REAL ID Act by the 2008 deadline and that a

number of serious concerns related to privacy must be

addressed. The Collins amendment provides the opportunity to

address these matters.

Similarly, another group with whom we have worked closely is the National Conference of State Legislatures. In fact, it was a high- ranking official of the NCSL who sat next to me on a plane going to Maine some time ago and suggested that what States needed most was a delay in the compliance time. I worked very closely with the NCSL in drafting our amendment. I am very grateful for their advice.

I ask unanimous consent that the letters and editorials I have mentioned be printed in the Record so we may share them with our colleagues.

I thank the Chair.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:20 today, the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Inouye amendment No. 285, to be followed by a vote in relation to the DeMint amendment No. 279, as modified; with the time until then for debate to run concurrently on both amendments, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators Inouye and DeMint or their designees; that no amendments be in order to either amendment prior to the vote and that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between the votes.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, to clarify the unanimous consent request, I believe there were 2 minutes between the votes, am I correct, for debate?

Mr. President, if the Senator from West Virginia is seeking an explanation of the amendment, I believe I can provide that.

The amendment offered by the Senator from South Carolina would give authority to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to add certain advances to the list of disqualifying crimes that would prevent someone from working at our seaports.

Mr. President, I yield back the remaining time on this side.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Stevens, I ask unanimous consent that Pamela Friedmann and John Hennigan, both detailees to the Commerce Committee, be granted floor privileges for the duration of the 110th Congress.

Mr. President, I rise in support of invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 4, the Improving America's Security Act of 2007. This legislation will strengthen our homeland security and will do so in the spirit that shaped the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

I have worked very closely with the committee's chairman, Senator Lieberman, as well as with the Presiding Officer, a valued member of the committee, and with all of our committee members to shape this important legislation. Indeed, the committee voted unanimously on February 15 to report this bill. The bill before the Senate now is the product of careful collaboration among the members of our committee, State, local, and tribal governments, emergency response providers, the private sector, the administration, and other stakeholders. It has produced legislation that builds on the earlier work of the Committee on Homeland Security over the last 3 years.

During that time, the committee has produced numerous pieces of legislation implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and otherwise strengthening our homeland security. In the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Congress enacted many significant measures to achieve the goals of the 9/11 Commission. In fact, that bill implemented the most sweeping changes in our intelligence community in more than 50 years.

More recently, in the last Congress, we passed measures that greatly strengthened protections for America's cargo ports and chemical facilities--again addressing vulnerabilities highlighted in the Commission report. We also approved an overhaul and reform of FEMA that will help improve our emergency response and prepared negotiation, whether it is through terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

As reported by the Homeland Security Committee, S. 4 builds upon these past successes. It would authorize a comprehensive homeland security grant program that includes four vital programs to assist State, local, and tribal governments in safeguarding our lives and property. Our approach to this bill reflects our belief that homeland security is a partnership and that our State and local partners are vital to accomplishing this goal.

I will have much more to say about this bill as the debate proceeds. I will reserve the remainder of my time, if any does remain, and I urge my colleagues to vote to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to this important bill.

As always, it has been a great pleasure to work with the committee chairman and others, including the Presiding Officer.

I yield back the remaining time on this side.

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

Madam President, I rise to support S. 4, the Improving America's Security Act of 2007. This legislation would strengthen our homeland security and would do so in the spirit that shaped the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

As my colleague and friend Senator Lieberman has already indicated, the Committee on Homeland Security voted unanimously on February 15 to report this bill. The bill before us is the product of careful collaboration among members of our committee; State, local, and tribal governments; emergency response providers; the private sector; the Administration, particularly the Department of Homeland Security; and other stakeholders. This collaboration has produced legislation that builds on the work of the Homeland Security Committee over the last 3 years. During that time, the committee has produced numerous bills implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and otherwise strengthening our homeland security. This bill helps to complete the picture.

The vast majority of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations were enacted in 2004 as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. There were, however, some recommendations that did not make it through the process or were not incorporated into that bill, and those are reflected in the legislation before us.

The Intelligence Reform Act was a bipartisan effort by the Homeland Security Committee, and it made possible the most significant reforms in the structure and operations of our intelligence community in more than 50 years--in fact, since the CIA was created after World War II. Indeed, approximately 39 of the 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations have been acted on in one form or another. More recently, Congress passed measures that greatly strengthen the protections for America's cargo ports and its chemical facilities--again addressing vulnerabilities highlighted in the Commission's report and by other experts on terrorism. So during the past 3 years, in fact, a great deal has been done to help make our Nation more secure and to improve our defenses and capacity to respond to terrorism attacks.

The Homeland Security Committee also conducted a comprehensive, bipartisan investigation of the Federal, State, and local preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina, our country's first real test of its homeland security apparatus since the attacks on September 11 of 2001. Our investigation found significant failures in emergency planning, preparation, and response at all levels of government. As a result, we issued a comprehensive report that summarized our investigation. Our investigation included 24 public hearings, interviews of more than 400 people, and the review of literally hundreds of thousands of investigations. It also included the issuance of subpoenas because we wanted to make sure we had access to all the information we needed. As a result of this investigation, the committee issued a detailed report and drafted legislation based on those recommendations. That legislation was incorporated into the Homeland Security appropriations bill which the President signed into law last year.

The FEMA Reform Act built upon the 9/11 Commission recommendations already enacted by reforming the structure of FEMA, enhancing its regional role throughout the country, and giving FEMA a primary place within the Federal Government for planning, training, and exercising with State and local officials.

As reported by the Homeland Security Committee then, S. 4 builds upon our past successes. The legislation before the Senate would authorize a comprehensive homeland security grant program. It includes four vital grant programs to assist State, local, and tribal governments in safeguarding our lives and properties in all catastrophes, whether natural or manmade. Taken together, these four grant programs--the Urban Area Security Initiative, the State Homeland Security Grant Program, the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, and the Emergency Communications and Interoperability Grant Program--will ensure significant and predictable Federal funding for our State and local partners.

The program will support error-prevention activities such as fusion centers, all-hazards planning, training exercises, and the installation of reliable interoperable emergency communications systems. The bill will help to strengthen emergency preparedness and response. It also strikes the right balance between targeting funding to jurisdictions the Department determines to be at the highest risk and ensuring a baseline of adequate funding for prevention and preparedness across the country because we know that our Nation's homeland security is only as strong as its weakest link.

Let me comment in more detail on these programs. With respect to the Urban Area Security Initiative, also known as UASI, the bill retains the current practice directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to award

grants based solely on risk of terrorist attacks. Clearly, our largest urban areas present attractive, high-value targets to terrorists. Our legislation, the Lieberman-Collins legislation, recognizes that fact, but it makes one sensible change. The Department's eligibility criteria for UASI grant applications has been, to say the least, arbitrary and controversial. For that reason, our bill would expand the potential pool of applicants beyond the current limit of 45. Instead of requiring the Department to select which cities are eligible to apply, S. 4 would expressly permit the largest 100 metropolitan areas to make their case for funding.

Unfortunately, terrorist attacks do not respect city limits. A major attack could affect--or at least require--responses from many neighboring or regional jurisdictions. We also know that when we take a more regional approach, we have a more effective response. Our bill raises funding for the State Homeland Security Grant Program to $913 million from the $525 million appropriated in fiscal year 2007. This funding increase would also correct a serious deficiency in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2008. Unfortunately, the administration is calling for only $250 million for this important program. As with the UASI grants, each State would receive funding on the basis of risk but with a minimum award of 0.45 percent of the program funds. This will, once again, ensure a baseline level of preparedness and response activities across the country.

Hurricane Katrina illustrated that many of the actions required to respond to terrorist attacks are identical to those required for natural disasters. That is precisely why S. 4 would expand the emergency management performance grants. The EMPG has been a vital part of our national preparedness for years. Our bill seeks to increase its stature and importance by providing more funding and by authorizing States to use EMPG funds to construct and enhance emergency operation centers. The EMPG emphasizes all-hazards preparation, and the .75 percent minimum allocation and the population-based distribution of the remainder ensures that every State will receive assistance with planning, training, and exercises for vital functions such as evacuation, logistics, continuity of operations of government, and recovery. Those are skills which all States need to develop. Those are minimal levels of preparedness and response essential for every State. Every State has the potential for either a natural disaster or a terrorist attack or some other catastrophe or emergency. That is why it is important we develop that capacity in every State.

It is important for me to emphasize that S. 4 does not change EMPG's allocation formula; it merely codifies existing practice. The EMPG is basic insurance. As the DHS manual for the program observes:

An all hazards approach to preparedness, including the

development of a comprehensive program of planning, training,

and exercises, encourages an effective and consistent

response to any threatened or actual disaster or emergency

regardless of the cause.

This view is consistent with the expert testimony before the Homeland Security Committee during our investigation of the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

Now, some people have suggested that guaranteeing minimum funding for State and local preparedness is just another example of pork barrel politics. These people could not be more mistaken. As the Rand Corporation noted in a 2004 report on the preparedness of State and local law enforcement after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

Homeland security experts and first responders have

cautioned against an overemphasis on improving the

preparedness of large cities to the exclusion of smaller

communities or rural areas.

Again, I make the point that we need to bring up all areas to a certain baseline level of preparedness. That doesn't mean we don't factor in risk; we do. Indeed, the majority of the funds in this bill would be allocated based on risk, and we provide more risk-based funding than is the case in current law.

The RAND report went on to recognize that much of our Nation's infrastructure and potential high-value targets are located in rural areas. We also cannot assume a precise calculation of risk. A Federal building in Oklahoma City was not an obvious target for a terrorist bombing. Yet, we know a tragic attack occurred in that city. Rural flight schools were not obvious training grounds for hijackers, nor was the Portland, ME, jetport an obvious departure point for terrorist pilots as they began their journey of death and destruction on September 11.

My point is that terrorists can shelter, train, recruit, prepare, or attack in unlikely places. In view of this cold reality, our bill requires that at least 25 percent of the funding from the UASI and State homeland security grant programs--that is at least $548 million-- be used for terrorism prevention activities by law enforcement agencies.

Sometimes I think we forget the basic truth that if we can prevent a terrorist attack from happening in the first place, that is the best possible approach. We do need to be prepared to respond effectively, but how much better if we can detect and interdict the attack before it occurs. We know from experience here, as well as in other countries, that terrorists can be spotted and attacks intercepted by well-trained local police. The prevention of attacks through better policing must be a focus of our grant programs. The last grant program our bill creates is an emergency communications and interoperability grants program. These grants will help to close the alarming and persistent gaps in our first responders' ability to simply communicate with one another. As the tragic events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, this is often not the case.

Before the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11, the police received a radio message to evacuate, but, tragically, the firefighters never received that message because they used different radios and an incompatible frequency. The result was even more loss of lives. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the first responders resorted to the use of runners to carry messages by hand from one command center to another because the communications infrastructure was so badly damaged. Well, the events of the magnitude of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, fortunately, do not occur every day. There are daily incidents, such as fires, rescues, and hazardous material spills that require different agencies and different jurisdictions to communicate with one another in real time and on demand. This is precisely why the emergency communications grants program is so important.

I will tell you it was very disturbing to hear, during our investigation of Hurricane Katrina, the same kinds of interoperability problems that occurred during 9/11. This is a problem we simply must solve.

Let me comment on some other important features of the bill. It improves protection against terrorists traveling to our country under the visa waiver program by requiring more timely notice from participating countries of lost or stolen passports. It also requires those countries to share more information about travelers who could pose a threat to our security. The bill improves information sharing, establishes multijurisdiction fusion centers in order to encourage information to be shared, and allows the assignment of DHS intelligence analysts to those centers. The bill expands upon a requirement in the Homeland Security Act by requiring DHS to create a prioritized list of critical infrastructure and highest risks for terrorist attacks and other disasters. This list will help protect these critical assets from attacks and enable more effective response when disaster strikes.

The bill also requires that risk assessments be completed for each sector of the economy. Recognizing the need to exercise good stewardship of our taxpayers' money, our bill also includes strong protections against waste, fraud, and abuse. By now, we have all heard the disturbing stories of misspent homeland security grants. In fact, when I was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, we held hearings looking at how homeland security grants have been spent in some States. Along with Senator Lieberman, I asked the GAO to do an investigation into this area, and GAO testified before our committee. At a time when the needs are so great for equipment, for training, and for more preparedness to strengthen our homeland security, it was very disturbing to

hear the GAO testify that money had been wasted.

Let me give you a couple of examples. In the District of Columbia-- yes, right here in Washington, DC, surely a high-risk area, an area attacked on 9/11--we found that leather jackets were purchased for the local police using homeland security grant money. In Newark, NJ, homeland security funds were used to purchase air-conditioned garbage trucks. This is totally inexcusable, when we have such great needs for new communications equipment, for training and exercises, and for help for our first responders. We simply cannot afford to have money frittered away. It is outrageous.

Our bill would help to eliminate those abuses. It would strictly prohibit the use of grant funds on items that don't relate to securing our homeland. It requires States to have an approved plan and for funds to be allocated, distributed, and spent according to that plan, and to achieve certain baseline preparedness goals. It requires DHS to set minimum performance standards for agency grants, and it provides for audits to ensure accountability.

I know that last safeguard is near and dear to the Presiding Officer's heart and that she understands, perhaps better than anyone in this body, the importance of regular, thorough, and timely audits.

Madam President, I acknowledge the work of Senator Coburn, and many other members of our committee, to strengthen the provisions of our bill. I offered an amendment to make sure that homeland security funds were not used for social or recreational purposes. In short, I think we have tightened up the safeguards and put new measures in to ensure accountability.

I mentioned earlier that our bill proceeds in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission; its provisions for increased and more effective information sharing, for strengthening the privacy and civil liberties oversight board, and for disclosing the total sums requested, authorized, and appropriated for intelligence programs all testified to that amendment.

There are many provisions of the bill reported by the Homeland Security Committee that will improve our security in other ways. I want to note once again, however, that this bill is not a sudden, new, or unusual manifestation of congressional determination to strengthen our security. The bill before us today continues the work of Congress in taking proper notice of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. I am proud to be part of the bipartisan deliberations that shaped this bill, and I urge all of my colleagues to support it.

I want to also acknowledge the tireless efforts of the families of the victims of 9/11. They have worked with Senator Lieberman and me every step of the way when we were drafting the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act in 2004. They were our inspiration and they kept us going. They ensured that the bill got through to the President's desk and signed into law. They have continued to work with us on the bill before us today. I want to publicly thank them for their effort. They inspired our work.

Our legislation's broad-front attack on the threats we face will ensure good value for every dollar our Nation spends to improve our defenses at the Federal and State and local levels. It will provide appropriate transparency and accountability into the Government's security decisions, and it will strike an appropriate balance between increased security and our cherished civil liberties. The passage of this bill will benefit every American.

Let me close by saying I am certain this bill will be improved even further as we proceed with the deliberations this week. I do not support every single provision in this bill. But on balance, it is yet another step forward as we seek to protect the American people.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Commercial Fishermen Safety Act of 2007, a bill to help fishermen purchase the life-saving safety equipment they need to survive when disaster strikes. I am pleased to be joined by my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, in introducing this legislation.

Everyday, members of our fishing communities struggle to cope with the pressures of running a small business, complying with burdensome regulations, and maintaining their vessels and equipment. Added to these challenges are the dangers associated with fishing.

Year-in and year-out, commercial fishing ranks among the Nation's most dangerous occupations. Last August, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the most recent National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, fishing was the most dangerous occupation. While the national rate of occupational-related fatalities dropped by 1 percent in 2005, I am saddened to say that the fishing community saw an increase of almost 14 percent from the previous year. I have introducd similar measures in previous sessions of Congress, but these tragic statistics illustrate why this piece of legislation is absolutely needed right now.

And as we know, these statistics have a very real face to them. And sadly, the New England fishing community is certainly no stranger to the pain and loss of their own.

Last November, the small fishing community of Port Clyde saw the tragic loss of one their own. The Taylor Emily, a 48-foot fishing boat, capsized and sank about 80 miles east of Portland, ME. Tragically, long-time fisherman Jim Weaver perished in this incident. Another fisherman aboard the boat, Christopher Yattaw, was saved when the Taylor Emily sank. Chris treaded the frigid waters for almost an hour, but finally, the boat's life raft inflated. Almost 8 hours later, Chris was rescued from the life raft by a passing fishing vessel. This incident could have been even more tragic if the critical live-saving equipment had not been aboard.

Coast Guard regulations require all fishing vessels to carry safety equipment. The requirements vary depending on factors such as the size of the vessel, the temperature of the water, and the distance the vessel travels from shore to fish. Required equipment can include a life raft that automatically inflates and floats free, should the vessel sink. This is what saved Christopher Yattaw's life. Other live- saving equipment includes: personal flotation devices or immersion suits which help protect fishermen from exposure and increase buoyancy; EPIRBs, which relay a downed vessel's position to Coast Guard Search and Rescue Personnel; visual distress signals; and fire extinguishers. When an emergency arises, safety equipment is priceless. At all other times, the cost of purchasing or maintaining this equipment must compete with other expenses such as loan payments, fuel, wages, maintenance, and insurance.

The Commercial Fishermen Safety Act of 2007 provides a tax credit equal to 75 percent of the amount paid by fishermen to purchase or maintain required safety equipment. The tax credit is capped at $1,500. Items such as EPIRBs and immersion suits cost hundreds of dollars, while life rafts can reach into the thousands. The tax credit will make life-saving equipment more affordable for more fishermen, who currently face limited options under the Federal tax code.

We have seen far too many tragedies in this occupation. Please, let us support fishermen who are trying to prepare in case disaster strikes. Safety equipment saves lives. By providing a tax credit for the purchase of safety equipment, Congress can help ensure that fishermen have a better chance of returning home each and every time they head out to sea.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Commercial Fishermen Safety Act of 2007, a bill to help fishermen purchase the life-saving safety equipment they need to survive when disaster strikes. I am pleased to be joined by my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, in introducing this legislation.

Everyday, members of our fishing communities struggle to cope with the pressures of running a small business, complying with burdensome regulations, and maintaining their vessels and equipment. Added to these challenges are the dangers associated with fishing.

Year-in and year-out, commercial fishing ranks among the Nation's most dangerous occupations. Last August, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the most recent National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, fishing was the most dangerous occupation. While the national rate of occupational-related fatalities dropped by 1 percent in 2005, I am saddened to say that the fishing community saw an increase of almost 14 percent from the previous year. I have introducd similar measures in previous sessions of Congress, but these tragic statistics illustrate why this piece of legislation is absolutely needed right now.

And as we know, these statistics have a very real face to them. And sadly, the New England fishing community is certainly no stranger to the pain and loss of their own.

Last November, the small fishing community of Port Clyde saw the tragic loss of one their own. The Taylor Emily, a 48-foot fishing boat, capsized and sank about 80 miles east of Portland, ME. Tragically, long-time fisherman Jim Weaver perished in this incident. Another fisherman aboard the boat, Christopher Yattaw, was saved when the Taylor Emily sank. Chris treaded the frigid waters for almost an hour, but finally, the boat's life raft inflated. Almost 8 hours later, Chris was rescued from the life raft by a passing fishing vessel. This incident could have been even more tragic if the critical live-saving equipment had not been aboard.

Coast Guard regulations require all fishing vessels to carry safety equipment. The requirements vary depending on factors such as the size of the vessel, the temperature of the water, and the distance the vessel travels from shore to fish. Required equipment can include a life raft that automatically inflates and floats free, should the vessel sink. This is what saved Christopher Yattaw's life. Other live- saving equipment includes: personal flotation devices or immersion suits which help protect fishermen from exposure and increase buoyancy; EPIRBs, which relay a downed vessel's position to Coast Guard Search and Rescue Personnel; visual distress signals; and fire extinguishers. When an emergency arises, safety equipment is priceless. At all other times, the cost of purchasing or maintaining this equipment must compete with other expenses such as loan payments, fuel, wages, maintenance, and insurance.

The Commercial Fishermen Safety Act of 2007 provides a tax credit equal to 75 percent of the amount paid by fishermen to purchase or maintain required safety equipment. The tax credit is capped at $1,500. Items such as EPIRBs and immersion suits cost hundreds of dollars, while life rafts can reach into the thousands. The tax credit will make life-saving equipment more affordable for more fishermen, who currently face limited options under the Federal tax code.

We have seen far too many tragedies in this occupation. Please, let us support fishermen who are trying to prepare in case disaster strikes. Safety equipment saves lives. By providing a tax credit for the purchase of safety equipment, Congress can help ensure that fishermen have a better chance of returning home each and every time they head out to sea.

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

Mr. President. I rise to introduce the Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007. This bill, which I am delighted is cosponsored by Senators Lieberman, Coleman, Carper, and McCaskill, will improve our stewardship of taxpayers' money by reforming contracting practices, strengthening the procurement workforce, reforming our IG community, and including other provisions to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. It will also provide increased oversight and transparency in the Federal Government's dealings with its contractors.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy estimates that the Federal Government purchased approximately $410 billion in goods and services last year--more than a 50 percent increase in Federal purchases since 2001.

As the administration's proposed budget suggests, the costs of war, natural disaster, homeland-security precautions, and other vital programs will drive those expenditures to even higher levels in the years ahead.

Each of us in this Chamber knows that the Federal Government's prodigious purchasing can create abundant opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse. Whether the problem is purchases of unusable trailers for hurricane victims, shoddy construction of schools and clinics in Iraq, or abuse of purchase cards by Government employees, we must do a better job of protecting taxpayer dollars and delivering better acquisition outcomes.

Recognizing that imperative requires that we also recognize the obstacles in our path. Such obstacles include resource constraints, inexcusable rushes to award contracts, poor program administration, and perverse incentives.

Other challenges to fair, effective, and open competition and oversight include inadequate documentation requirements, overuse of letter contracts that fail to include all the critical terms until after performance is complete, excessive tiering of subcontractors, and insufficient publicly available data on Federal contracts.

Too often, the problem of waste, fraud, and abuse stimulates floods of outrage and magic-bullet proposals that lean more toward symbolic gestures than practical reforms. The Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007 confines itself to sensible, practical reforms that will really make a difference.

Competition for Government contracts clearly helps to control costs, encourage innovation, and keep contractors sharp. It is basic economics--and it's the law, as Congress provided in the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984. This bill promotes more open competition for Government contracts--a positive step for both contractors and taxpayers.

Unfortunately, the tide has been running the wrong way. Competition, intended to produce savings, has sharply diminished. While the dollar volume of Federal contracting has nearly doubled since the year 2000, a recent report concluded that less than half of all ``contract actions''--new contracts and payments against existing contracts--are now subject to full and open competition: 48 percent in 2005, compared to 79 percent in 2001. This is inexcusable.

The dangers inherent in sole-source contracting are on full display in Iraq. For example, the Kellogg, Brown, and Root unit of Halliburton designed and was awarded a multi-year sole-source contract for the Restore Iraqi Oil project. A Defense Department audit concluded that the firm later over-charged the government $61 million for fuel. Incredibly, the Army Corps of Engineers permitted the overcharge.

According to a January 2007 Congressional Research Service report, Kellogg, Brown, and Root's contract work in Iraq included billing for $52 million to administer a project that entailed only $13 million in actual project work, piping unpurified water into showers and laundries used by our troops, and billing for 6 months of failure while using an unsuitable technique to lay oil pipeline beneath a river.

As these examples suggest, we need more competition, less sole source contracting, and tougher management in Federal contracts. The bill I introduce today extends a practice adopted in the fiscal year 2002 Defense Authorization Act government-wide, mandating competition for each task or delivery order over $100,000, the Simplified Acquisition Threshold.

The bill would promote more informed and effective competition for orders over $5 million by requiring more information in the statement of work. At minimum, contractors would be given a clear statement of agency requirements, a reasonable response period, and disclosure of significant evaluation factors to be applied. For awards to be made on a best-value rather than lowest-cost basis, the agency must provide a written statement on the basis of the award and on the trade-off between quality and cost.

To increase the quality of competitive bids, the bill mandates post- award debriefings for task or delivery orders valued over $5 million. Debriefings improve the transparency of the Federal acquisition process by providing information that contractors can use to improve future offers.

Competition helps secure good value for taxpayers' money, but there are exceptions, and they should be the exception and not the rule, when sole-source contracting is appropriate. Sole-source contracting heightens the importance of effective oversight, but oversight is often hampered by a lack of publicly available information on sole-source contract awards.

The bill addresses that problem by requiring publication at the ``FedBizOpps'' website of notices of all sole-source task-or-delivery orders above $100,000, within 10 business days after the award.

I shall note some other important provisions of the bill.

The bill will rein in the practice of awarding contracts missing key terms, such as price, scope or schedule, and then failing to supply those terms until the contractor delivers the good or service--thereby placing all risk of failure on the government. In Iraq and Katrina contracting, we saw the perils of failing to supply the ``missing term'' promptly. For example, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction last July identified 194 individual task orders valued at $3.4 billion that were classified as ``undefinitized contract actions.''

This is entirely too much money and too many contract actions to linger in this status. The bill corrects this flaw by requiring contracting officers to unilaterally determine all missing terms, if not mutually agreed upon, within 180 days or before 40 percent of the work is performed, with the approval of the head of the contracting agency, and subject to the contract disputes process.

Contracting for Hurricane Katrina and Iraq has also involved excessive tiers of subcontractors, driving up costs and complicating administration. The bill extends a tiering-control rule we placed in the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, preventing contractors from using subcontracts for more than 65 percent of the cost of the contract, not including overhead and profit, unless the head of agency determines that exceptional circumstances apply.

To further decrease the Government's reliance on large single-source

service contracts, the bill strengthens the preference for multiple awards of Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity, or IDIQ, contracts by prohibiting single awards of IDIQ contracts for services over $100 million. The Government would therefore have at least two contractors for these large service contracts, who would then be required to compete with each other for all task and/or delivery orders, unless strict grounds for exceptions applied.

To ensure that agencies' increasing use of interagency contracting is producing value, we require the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to collect and make publicly available data on the numbers, scope, users, and rationales for these contracts.

But increased competition will not solve all our ills. We must also address the lack of personnel to award and administer Federal contracts. We moved into the 21st century with 22 percent fewer Federal civilian acquisition personnel than we had at the start of the 1990s. The Department of Defense has been disbursing enormous amounts of money to contractors since the first gulf war, but has reduced its acquisition workforce by more than 50 percent from 1994 to 2005.

Among the current, attenuated Federal acquisition workforce, nearly 40 percent are eligible to retire by the end of this fiscal year. Meanwhile, the number and scale of Federal purchases continue to rise, making this human-capital crisis even more dire.

Therefore, the bill would help Federal agencies recruit, retain, and develop an adequate acquisition workforce. Its mechanisms include acquisition internship programs, promoting contracting careers, a government-industry exchange program; an Acquisition Fellowship Program with scholarships for graduate study, requirements for human-capital strategic plans by chief acquisition officers, and a new senior- executive-level position in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to manage this initiative.

In keeping with earlier Senate action, the bill also targets wasteful use of purchase cards by seeking better analysis of purchase-card use to identify fraud as well as potential savings, negotiate discounts, collect and disseminate best practices, and address small-business concerns in micro-purchases.

Such information is clearly necessary. In a hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, GAO detailed how a FEMA employee provided his purchase card number to a vendor, who agreed to provide the government 20 flat-bottom boats. Besides the fact that FEMA agreed to pay $208,000 for the boats, about twice the retail price, the vendor used the FEMA employee's purchase card information to make two unauthorized transactions totaling about $30,000. Neither the cardholder nor the approving official disputed the unauthorized charges. As if this was not bad enough, FEMA failed to gain title to the boats. It did not even enter 12 of the 20 boats into their property system. Eventually, one of the boats was later found back in the possession of the original owner.

The bill restricts the de-facto outsourcing of program-management responsibility when a large contractor becomes a ``lead systems integrator'' for a multi-part project. The bill requires OFPP to craft a government-wide definition of lead systems integrators and study their use by various agencies.

The bill also specifically addresses demonstrated problems in contracting for assistance programs in Afghanistan. Numerous reports of fraud, waste, and abuse in that country, such as the shockingly poor construction of schools and clinics by the Louis Berger Group, echo the findings of the SIGIR in Iraq.

The Louis Berger Group was awarded a contract to build schools and clinics to help restore a decent life for the people of Afghanistan. Of the 105 structures they erected before their work was stopped, 103 suffered roof collapses after the first snowfall. Here was a case that combined a waste of taxpayer funds, damage to the U.S. image we were trying to enhance, and an actual danger to the people we were trying to help.

This bill requires the Administrator of USAID to revise the strategy for the agency's assistance program in Afghanistan to include measurable goals, specific time frames, resource levels, delineated responsibilities, external factors bearing on success, and a schedule for program evaluations. All of these things should have been done from the outset, not after billions in Federal funds were expended.

Title II of the bill introduces targeted reforms of the Inspector General system. IGs play a vital role in preventing and detecting waste, fraud, and abuse. We must attract more of these specialists to government service, and make the career attractive.

One vital provision in our bill might appear to run counter to that aim but the provision, in fact, preserves the independence of our Inspector Generals. It prohibits IGs from accepting any cash award or cash bonus from the agency that they are auditing or investigating. This codifies the honorable practice of most IGs of declining to accept such awards because of the inherent conflict of interest they present.

The balancing mechanism for that prohibition is to increase the salaries of Presidentially appointed IGs from Senior Executive Service Level III to Level IV. This also corrects a common anomaly wherein Deputy IGs collecting performance pay earn more than their supervising IG. The bill removes the inequity and the disincentive to accepting a promotion.

The bill makes other reforms that will increase the quality of IG reports and audits. For example, it clarifies that IGs' subpoena power extends to electronic documents. It also sets out professional qualifications for the designated Federal entity IGs, or DFE IGs. These IGs work in our smaller Federal agencies and are not subject to confirmation. This is no excuse for this failure to supply minimum professional qualifications for these important positions.

This bill also corrects a serious problem that has left millions of fraudulently disbursed dollars un-recouped. Currently DFE IGs do not have the power to institute lawsuits to recover claims under $150,000, even if they have a compelling case. This is unacceptable. DFE IGs need the power to pick this ``low hanging fruit,'' whose cumulative cost can be huge. The bill corrects this problem by giving DFE IGs the same authority that Presidentially appointed IGs have to investigate and report false claims, and to recoup losses resulting from fraud below $150,000.

I believe this summary shows how the Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007 combines practical, workable, and targeted reforms to improve a complex process that expends hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars every year. It will pay recurring dividends for years to come in higher-quality proposals, in more efficiently administered projects, and in better results for our citizens. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President. I rise to introduce the Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007. This bill, which I am delighted is cosponsored by Senators Lieberman, Coleman, Carper, and McCaskill, will improve our stewardship of taxpayers' money by reforming contracting practices, strengthening the procurement workforce, reforming our IG community, and including other provisions to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. It will also provide increased oversight and transparency in the Federal Government's dealings with its contractors.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy estimates that the Federal Government purchased approximately $410 billion in goods and services last year--more than a 50 percent increase in Federal purchases since 2001.

As the administration's proposed budget suggests, the costs of war, natural disaster, homeland-security precautions, and other vital programs will drive those expenditures to even higher levels in the years ahead.

Each of us in this Chamber knows that the Federal Government's prodigious purchasing can create abundant opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse. Whether the problem is purchases of unusable trailers for hurricane victims, shoddy construction of schools and clinics in Iraq, or abuse of purchase cards by Government employees, we must do a better job of protecting taxpayer dollars and delivering better acquisition outcomes.

Recognizing that imperative requires that we also recognize the obstacles in our path. Such obstacles include resource constraints, inexcusable rushes to award contracts, poor program administration, and perverse incentives.

Other challenges to fair, effective, and open competition and oversight include inadequate documentation requirements, overuse of letter contracts that fail to include all the critical terms until after performance is complete, excessive tiering of subcontractors, and insufficient publicly available data on Federal contracts.

Too often, the problem of waste, fraud, and abuse stimulates floods of outrage and magic-bullet proposals that lean more toward symbolic gestures than practical reforms. The Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007 confines itself to sensible, practical reforms that will really make a difference.

Competition for Government contracts clearly helps to control costs, encourage innovation, and keep contractors sharp. It is basic economics--and it's the law, as Congress provided in the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984. This bill promotes more open competition for Government contracts--a positive step for both contractors and taxpayers.

Unfortunately, the tide has been running the wrong way. Competition, intended to produce savings, has sharply diminished. While the dollar volume of Federal contracting has nearly doubled since the year 2000, a recent report concluded that less than half of all ``contract actions''--new contracts and payments against existing contracts--are now subject to full and open competition: 48 percent in 2005, compared to 79 percent in 2001. This is inexcusable.

The dangers inherent in sole-source contracting are on full display in Iraq. For example, the Kellogg, Brown, and Root unit of Halliburton designed and was awarded a multi-year sole-source contract for the Restore Iraqi Oil project. A Defense Department audit concluded that the firm later over-charged the government $61 million for fuel. Incredibly, the Army Corps of Engineers permitted the overcharge.

According to a January 2007 Congressional Research Service report, Kellogg, Brown, and Root's contract work in Iraq included billing for $52 million to administer a project that entailed only $13 million in actual project work, piping unpurified water into showers and laundries used by our troops, and billing for 6 months of failure while using an unsuitable technique to lay oil pipeline beneath a river.

As these examples suggest, we need more competition, less sole source contracting, and tougher management in Federal contracts. The bill I introduce today extends a practice adopted in the fiscal year 2002 Defense Authorization Act government-wide, mandating competition for each task or delivery order over $100,000, the Simplified Acquisition Threshold.

The bill would promote more informed and effective competition for orders over $5 million by requiring more information in the statement of work. At minimum, contractors would be given a clear statement of agency requirements, a reasonable response period, and disclosure of significant evaluation factors to be applied. For awards to be made on a best-value rather than lowest-cost basis, the agency must provide a written statement on the basis of the award and on the trade-off between quality and cost.

To increase the quality of competitive bids, the bill mandates post- award debriefings for task or delivery orders valued over $5 million. Debriefings improve the transparency of the Federal acquisition process by providing information that contractors can use to improve future offers.

Competition helps secure good value for taxpayers' money, but there are exceptions, and they should be the exception and not the rule, when sole-source contracting is appropriate. Sole-source contracting heightens the importance of effective oversight, but oversight is often hampered by a lack of publicly available information on sole-source contract awards.

The bill addresses that problem by requiring publication at the ``FedBizOpps'' website of notices of all sole-source task-or-delivery orders above $100,000, within 10 business days after the award.

I shall note some other important provisions of the bill.

The bill will rein in the practice of awarding contracts missing key terms, such as price, scope or schedule, and then failing to supply those terms until the contractor delivers the good or service--thereby placing all risk of failure on the government. In Iraq and Katrina contracting, we saw the perils of failing to supply the ``missing term'' promptly. For example, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction last July identified 194 individual task orders valued at $3.4 billion that were classified as ``undefinitized contract actions.''

This is entirely too much money and too many contract actions to linger in this status. The bill corrects this flaw by requiring contracting officers to unilaterally determine all missing terms, if not mutually agreed upon, within 180 days or before 40 percent of the work is performed, with the approval of the head of the contracting agency, and subject to the contract disputes process.

Contracting for Hurricane Katrina and Iraq has also involved excessive tiers of subcontractors, driving up costs and complicating administration. The bill extends a tiering-control rule we placed in the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, preventing contractors from using subcontracts for more than 65 percent of the cost of the contract, not including overhead and profit, unless the head of agency determines that exceptional circumstances apply.

To further decrease the Government's reliance on large single-source

service contracts, the bill strengthens the preference for multiple awards of Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity, or IDIQ, contracts by prohibiting single awards of IDIQ contracts for services over $100 million. The Government would therefore have at least two contractors for these large service contracts, who would then be required to compete with each other for all task and/or delivery orders, unless strict grounds for exceptions applied.

To ensure that agencies' increasing use of interagency contracting is producing value, we require the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to collect and make publicly available data on the numbers, scope, users, and rationales for these contracts.

But increased competition will not solve all our ills. We must also address the lack of personnel to award and administer Federal contracts. We moved into the 21st century with 22 percent fewer Federal civilian acquisition personnel than we had at the start of the 1990s. The Department of Defense has been disbursing enormous amounts of money to contractors since the first gulf war, but has reduced its acquisition workforce by more than 50 percent from 1994 to 2005.

Among the current, attenuated Federal acquisition workforce, nearly 40 percent are eligible to retire by the end of this fiscal year. Meanwhile, the number and scale of Federal purchases continue to rise, making this human-capital crisis even more dire.

Therefore, the bill would help Federal agencies recruit, retain, and develop an adequate acquisition workforce. Its mechanisms include acquisition internship programs, promoting contracting careers, a government-industry exchange program; an Acquisition Fellowship Program with scholarships for graduate study, requirements for human-capital strategic plans by chief acquisition officers, and a new senior- executive-level position in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to manage this initiative.

In keeping with earlier Senate action, the bill also targets wasteful use of purchase cards by seeking better analysis of purchase-card use to identify fraud as well as potential savings, negotiate discounts, collect and disseminate best practices, and address small-business concerns in micro-purchases.

Such information is clearly necessary. In a hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, GAO detailed how a FEMA employee provided his purchase card number to a vendor, who agreed to provide the government 20 flat-bottom boats. Besides the fact that FEMA agreed to pay $208,000 for the boats, about twice the retail price, the vendor used the FEMA employee's purchase card information to make two unauthorized transactions totaling about $30,000. Neither the cardholder nor the approving official disputed the unauthorized charges. As if this was not bad enough, FEMA failed to gain title to the boats. It did not even enter 12 of the 20 boats into their property system. Eventually, one of the boats was later found back in the possession of the original owner.

The bill restricts the de-facto outsourcing of program-management responsibility when a large contractor becomes a ``lead systems integrator'' for a multi-part project. The bill requires OFPP to craft a government-wide definition of lead systems integrators and study their use by various agencies.

The bill also specifically addresses demonstrated problems in contracting for assistance programs in Afghanistan. Numerous reports of fraud, waste, and abuse in that country, such as the shockingly poor construction of schools and clinics by the Louis Berger Group, echo the findings of the SIGIR in Iraq.

The Louis Berger Group was awarded a contract to build schools and clinics to help restore a decent life for the people of Afghanistan. Of the 105 structures they erected before their work was stopped, 103 suffered roof collapses after the first snowfall. Here was a case that combined a waste of taxpayer funds, damage to the U.S. image we were trying to enhance, and an actual danger to the people we were trying to help.

This bill requires the Administrator of USAID to revise the strategy for the agency's assistance program in Afghanistan to include measurable goals, specific time frames, resource levels, delineated responsibilities, external factors bearing on success, and a schedule for program evaluations. All of these things should have been done from the outset, not after billions in Federal funds were expended.

Title II of the bill introduces targeted reforms of the Inspector General system. IGs play a vital role in preventing and detecting waste, fraud, and abuse. We must attract more of these specialists to government service, and make the career attractive.

One vital provision in our bill might appear to run counter to that aim but the provision, in fact, preserves the independence of our Inspector Generals. It prohibits IGs from accepting any cash award or cash bonus from the agency that they are auditing or investigating. This codifies the honorable practice of most IGs of declining to accept such awards because of the inherent conflict of interest they present.

The balancing mechanism for that prohibition is to increase the salaries of Presidentially appointed IGs from Senior Executive Service Level III to Level IV. This also corrects a common anomaly wherein Deputy IGs collecting performance pay earn more than their supervising IG. The bill removes the inequity and the disincentive to accepting a promotion.

The bill makes other reforms that will increase the quality of IG reports and audits. For example, it clarifies that IGs' subpoena power extends to electronic documents. It also sets out professional qualifications for the designated Federal entity IGs, or DFE IGs. These IGs work in our smaller Federal agencies and are not subject to confirmation. This is no excuse for this failure to supply minimum professional qualifications for these important positions.

This bill also corrects a serious problem that has left millions of fraudulently disbursed dollars un-recouped. Currently DFE IGs do not have the power to institute lawsuits to recover claims under $150,000, even if they have a compelling case. This is unacceptable. DFE IGs need the power to pick this ``low hanging fruit,'' whose cumulative cost can be huge. The bill corrects this problem by giving DFE IGs the same authority that Presidentially appointed IGs have to investigate and report false claims, and to recoup losses resulting from fraud below $150,000.

I believe this summary shows how the Accountability in Government Contracting Act of 2007 combines practical, workable, and targeted reforms to improve a complex process that expends hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars every year. It will pay recurring dividends for years to come in higher-quality proposals, in more efficiently administered projects, and in better results for our citizens. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, in introducing legislation to prohibit health insurers from denying benefits to plan participants if they are injured while engaging in legal recreational activities like skiing, snowmobiling, or horseback riding.

Among the many rules that were issued at the end of the Clinton administration was one that was intended to

ensure non-discrimination in health coverage in the group market. This rule was issued jointly on January 8, 2001, by the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service and the Health Care Financing Administration--now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services--in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, of 1996.

While I was pleased that the rule prohibits health plans and issuers from denying coverage to individuals who engage in certain types of recreational activities, such as skiing, horseback riding, snowmobiling or motorcycling, I am concerned that it would allow insurers to deny health benefits for an otherwise covered injury that results from participation in these activities.

The rule states that ``While a person cannot be excluded from a plan for engaging in certain recreational activities, benefits for a particular injury can, in some cases, be excluded based on the source of the injury.'' A plan could, for example, include a general exclusion for injuries sustained while doing a specified list of recreational activities, even though treatment for those injuries--a broken arm, for instance--would have been covered under the plan if the individual had tripped and fallen.

Because of this loophole, an individual who was injured while skiing or running could be denied health care coverage, while someone who is injured while drinking and driving a car would be protected.

This clearly is contrary to Congressional intent. One of the purposes of HIPAA was to prohibit plans and issuers from establishing eligibility rules for health coverage based on certain health-related factors, including evidence of insurability. To underscore that point, the conference report language stated that ``the inclusion of evidence of insurability in the definition of health status is intended to ensure, among other things, that individuals are not excluded from health care coverage due to their participation in activities such as motorcycling, snowmobiling, all-terrain vehicle riding, horseback riding, skiing and other similar activities.'' The conference report also states that ``this provision is meant to prohibit insurers or employers from excluding employees in a group from coverage or charging them higher premiums based on their health status and other related factors that could lead to higher health costs.''

Mr. PRESIDENT, millions of Americans participate in these legal and common recreational activities which, if practiced with appropriate precautions, do not significantly increase the likelihood of serious injury. Moreover, in enacting HIPAA, Congress simply did not intend that people would be allowed to purchase health insurance only to find out, after the fact, that they have no coverage for an injury resulting from a common recreational activity. If this rule is allowed to stand, millions of Americans will be forced to forgo recreational activities that they currently enjoy lest they have an accident and find out that they are not covered for needed care resulting from that accident.

The legislation that we are introducing today will clarify that individuals participating in activities routinely enjoyed by millions of Americans cannot be denied access to health care coverage or health benefits as a result of their activities. The bill should not be controversial. In fact, it passed the Senate by unanimous consent at the end of the 108th Congress.

I am therefore hopeful that we will be able to move quickly on this legislation this year, and I urge all of my colleagues to join us as cosponsors.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, in introducing legislation to prohibit health insurers from denying benefits to plan participants if they are injured while engaging in legal recreational activities like skiing, snowmobiling, or horseback riding.

Among the many rules that were issued at the end of the Clinton administration was one that was intended to

ensure non-discrimination in health coverage in the group market. This rule was issued jointly on January 8, 2001, by the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service and the Health Care Financing Administration--now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services--in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, of 1996.

While I was pleased that the rule prohibits health plans and issuers from denying coverage to individuals who engage in certain types of recreational activities, such as skiing, horseback riding, snowmobiling or motorcycling, I am concerned that it would allow insurers to deny health benefits for an otherwise covered injury that results from participation in these activities.

The rule states that ``While a person cannot be excluded from a plan for engaging in certain recreational activities, benefits for a particular injury can, in some cases, be excluded based on the source of the injury.'' A plan could, for example, include a general exclusion for injuries sustained while doing a specified list of recreational activities, even though treatment for those injuries--a broken arm, for instance--would have been covered under the plan if the individual had tripped and fallen.

Because of this loophole, an individual who was injured while skiing or running could be denied health care coverage, while someone who is injured while drinking and driving a car would be protected.

This clearly is contrary to Congressional intent. One of the purposes of HIPAA was to prohibit plans and issuers from establishing eligibility rules for health coverage based on certain health-related factors, including evidence of insurability. To underscore that point, the conference report language stated that ``the inclusion of evidence of insurability in the definition of health status is intended to ensure, among other things, that individuals are not excluded from health care coverage due to their participation in activities such as motorcycling, snowmobiling, all-terrain vehicle riding, horseback riding, skiing and other similar activities.'' The conference report also states that ``this provision is meant to prohibit insurers or employers from excluding employees in a group from coverage or charging them higher premiums based on their health status and other related factors that could lead to higher health costs.''

Mr. PRESIDENT, millions of Americans participate in these legal and common recreational activities which, if practiced with appropriate precautions, do not significantly increase the likelihood of serious injury. Moreover, in enacting HIPAA, Congress simply did not intend that people would be allowed to purchase health insurance only to find out, after the fact, that they have no coverage for an injury resulting from a common recreational activity. If this rule is allowed to stand, millions of Americans will be forced to forgo recreational activities that they currently enjoy lest they have an accident and find out that they are not covered for needed care resulting from that accident.

The legislation that we are introducing today will clarify that individuals participating in activities routinely enjoyed by millions of Americans cannot be denied access to health care coverage or health benefits as a result of their activities. The bill should not be controversial. In fact, it passed the Senate by unanimous consent at the end of the 108th Congress.

I am therefore hopeful that we will be able to move quickly on this legislation this year, and I urge all of my colleagues to join us as cosponsors.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation, the ``Growing Our Manufacturing Employment Act, or ``GoME,'' which is aimed at reinvigorating the manufacturing sector, boosting the level of domestic manufacturing, and preventing the further loss of manufacturing jobs.

Few issues are as important to the American people than the availability of good jobs in their communities. Manufacturing jobs have long provided quality employment for generations of Americans. But in recent years, employment in the manufacturing sector has dropped, and over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since the year 2000.

Few States have been hit harder by the loss of manufacturing jobs than my home State of Maine. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, Maine has lost 22,000 manufacturing jobs--nearly 28 percent of our total--since the beginning of this decade. These jobs once provided lifelong employment to Mainers in towns like Millinocket, Wilton, Waterville, Fort Kent, Dexter, Westbrook, and Sanford. Here is but one example of the tragic results of this ongoing trend, from my home State of Maine: For 60 years, Moosehead Manufacturing produced furniture of the highest quality--beautiful designs and quality materials combined with expert craftsmanship. Last week, Moosehead closed its doors. More than 120 skilled workers have lost their jobs. A traditional Maine business, built from the ground up by a Maine family, is gone.

Why are American manufacturing jobs disappearing? Three years ago, the National Association of Manufacturers released a study showing that American manufacturers face ``structural costs'' that makes it 22 percent more expensive to manufacture goods here than overseas. Last fall, NAM updated this study, and found that these costs are escalating, with American manufacturers now facing a cost differential 31 percent higher than our nine leading trading partners.

While it would surprise no one that U.S. manufacturers face a higher cost-of-doing business than manufacturers in countries like China and Mexico, it would be a mistake to assume that wage rates alone explain this difference. They do not. In fact, the productivity of American workers is unrivaled, allowing American workers to receive more value, in wages, for the goods they produce. As the original NAM study states, if wages were the only factor, then ``U.S. manufacturers would be much more dominant . . . in the global markets than the current trade situation suggests.''

It is other ``structural costs'' that make it more expensive to manufacture goods in the U.S. relative to the

cost elsewhere. Indeed, the NAM study shows that most of the ``structural costs'' facing American manufacturers are higher than those facing manufacturers in industrialized nations like Japan, Germany, and France. This fact illustrates the critical impact these high ``structural costs'' have on our ability to compete.

In essence, these costs have the same effect as imposing a 31 percent additional tax on making goods here rather than overseas. To stay in business, American manufacturers must somehow do more with less, move operations overseas, or get out of manufacturing altogether. The end result is fewer jobs, a weaker economy, and a manufacturing sector in crisis.

I believe a healthy manufacturing base is essential to our Nation's future. Not only is manufacturing a key source of skilled, high-paying jobs, but also it is crucial to our economic and national security that we have the ability to manufacture the goods we need right here in this country. For all these reasons, I am proposing the ``Growing Our Manufacturing Employment Act.''

This bill would help to lessen the 31 percent cost differential that American manufacturers face by providing a variety of tax incentives. For example, a jobs tax credit would be provided to manufacturers that employ displaced workers who are receiving benefits under the Trade Adjustment Act, as well as those who are receiving benefits under the Alternative TAA program. That would help get those workers back to work. In Maine alone over 4,700 workers have been deemed eligible for benefits under TAA since November of 2002, and nationally, the number is nearly 600,000.

The jobs credit I am proposing in this bill would only be available to manufacturers that increase their employment level. The availability of this credit would provide a powerful incentive to hire workers who are receiving benefits because they are displaced.

This bill is designed to ensure that only companies that are helping to build America's manufacturing base obtain its benefits. It has both a carrot and a stick approach. Companies that move jobs offshore will see their benefits under this proposal reduced, and companies that chose to ``invert'' their corporate structure to avoid U.S. taxes will not be eligible for this credit at all.

As important as it is to assist workers who are eligible for benefits under TAA and ATAA, however, this alone is not enough to address the crisis facing American manufacturers. That is why my bill also includes a 5-year extension of the research and development tax credit we passed last year. R&D is critical to our manufacturers, because it is the basis of the breakthroughs we need to keep our economy on the cutting edge. The credit also creates jobs--it can only be claimed on R&D performed in the United States, and 75 percent of each dollar claimed goes to cover salaries of employees engaged in R&D. But despite its importance, the R&D tax credit is scheduled to sunset at the end of this year. Extending this credit would be a powerful tool that will help manufacturers keep their operations in America, and help offset the cost disparity American manufacturers face.

I am hopeful that, working together on this and other proposals, we can take the important steps needed to strengthen American manufacturers, preserve our manufacturing capacity, and most of all, help ensure that hard-working Americans have the jobs they need and deserve.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the No Child Left Behind Flexibility and Improvements Act. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe. Our legislation would give greater local control and flexibility to Maine and other States in their efforts to implement the No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB, and provides common sense reforms in keeping with the worthy goals of NCLB.

Since NCLB was enacted in 2002, I have had the opportunity to meet with numerous Maine educators to discuss their concerns with the law. In response to their concerns, in March 2004, Senator Snowe and I commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the implementation issues facing Maine under both NCLB and the Maine Learning Results. Our task force included members from every county in the State and had superintendents, teachers, principals, school board members, parents, business leaders, former State legislators, special education experts, assessment specialists, officials from the Maine Department of Education, a former Maine Commissioner of Education, and the Dean from the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development.

After a year of study, the Task Force presented us with its final report outlining recommendations for possible statutory and regulatory changes to the Act. These recommendations form the basis of the legislation that we are introducing today.

First, our legislation would provide new flexibility for teachers of multiple subjects at the secondary school level to help them meet the ``highly qualified teacher'' requirements. Unfortunately, the current regulations place undue burdens on teachers at small and rural schools who often teach multiple subjects due to staffing needs, and on special education teachers who work with students on a variety of subjects throughout the day. Under the bill, provided these teachers are highly qualified for one subject they teach, they will be provided additional time and less burdensome avenues to satisfy the remaining requirements.

Second, our legislation would provide greater flexibility to States in the ways that they demonstrate student progress in meeting State education standards. Specifically, it would permit States to use a cohort growth model, which tracks the progress of the same group of students over time. It would also permit the use of an ``indexing'' model, where progress is measured based on the number of students whose scores improve from, for example, a ``below-basic'' to a ``basic'' level, and not simply on the number of students who cross the ``proficient'' line.

Third, our legislation would provide schools with better notice regarding possible performance issues, allowing schools a chance to identify and work with a particular group of students before being identified. It would expand the existing ``safe-harbor'' provisions to allow more schools to qualify for this important protection. The changes made in our bill are in keeping with what assessment experts and teachers know--that significant gains in academic achievement tend to occur gradually and over time.

Fourth, our legislation would allow the members of a special education student's IEP team to determine the best assessment for that individual student, and would permit the student's performance on that assessment to count for all NCLB purposes.

One reason this change is so important for Maine is that we have small student populations and Maine has chosen a very small subgroup size--only 20 students. I was very concerned to hear reports that in some schools, special education students fear that they are being blamed for their school not making adequate yearly progress. While the statute explicitly prohibits the disaggregation of student data if it would jeopardize student privacy, I am concerned to hear that this is not working out in practice.

This legislative change is also based on principles of fairness and common sense. Many times, it simply does not make sense to require a special needs student to take a grade-level assessment that everyone knows he or she is not ready to take. Many special education students are referred for special education services precisely because they cannot meet grade-level expectations. Allowing the IEP team to determine the best test for each special student will bring an important improvement to the Act.

Fifth, the legislation addresses my concern about the statute's current requirement that all schools reach 100 percent proficiency by 2013-2014. Our bill would require the Secretary of Education to review progress by the States toward meeting this goal every 3 years, and would allow her to modify the timeline as necessary.

Our legislation is a comprehensive effort to provide greater flexibility and commonsense modifications to address the key NCLB challenges facing Maine, and other States. I look forward to working with my colleagues on these issues during the upcoming NCLB reauthorization process.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to address the growing concern among States regarding the Real ID Act of 2005, which requires States to meet minimum security standards before citizens can use drivers' licenses for Federal purposes. As the deadline for compliance with Real ID rapidly approaches, States are beginning to send a very clear message that they are deeply concerned that they will not be able to meet these standards. The bill I introduce today recognizes those concerns by giving everyone more time to devise a way to make drivers' licenses more secure without unduly burdening State governments and without threatening privacy and civil liberties.

To begin, some background may be useful. The 9/11 Commission, finding that all but one of the 9/11 hijackers had acquired some form of U.S. identification, recommended that the Federal Government should set standards for the issuance of drivers' licenses. Taking up that recommendation I worked with a bipartisan group of Senators, especially Senator Lieberman, to craft a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act that would accomplish this goal. This provision called for the creation of a committee composed of experts from the Federal Government, from State governments, and from other interested parties such as privacy and civil liberties advocates and information technology groups. This committee was charged with developing a means of providing secure identification that protected privacy and civil liberties and respected the role of States in issuing these documents.

The committee diligently began meeting, but before it could complete its work, the House of Representatives attached the Real ID Act of 2005 to an emergency war supplemental bill, thus halting this productive effort. Unlike our intelligence reform bill, the Real ID Act of 2005 did not include States and other interested parties in the rulemaking process and instead instructed the Department of Homeland Security to simply write its own regulations. Nearly 2 years later, we still have not seen these regulations in spite of a looming May 2008 deadline for States to be in compliance with the Real ID Act.

As States begin work this year on their 2008 budgets, they still have no idea what the regulations will require of them. They do know, from a study released in 2006 by the National Governors Association, that the cost to States to implement Real ID could total more than $11 billion over the first 5 years. As a result, many States--my home State of Maine included--have passed resolutions that have sent the message to Washington that they cannot and will not implement Real ID by the May 2008 deadline.

My bill has two primary objectives: 1. It gives us the time and flexibility we need to come up with an effective system to provide secure drivers' licenses; and 2. it gets the experts from the States and from the technology industry and from the privacy and civil liberties advocates back at the table and gives them a chance to make these regulations work.

There are three main provisions in this bill: First, the bill provides that States will not have to be Real ID compliant until 2 years after the final regulations are promulgated. This means that no matter how long it takes the Department of Homeland Security to finish these regulations, States will have a full 2 years to implement them. Most likely that will mean an extension from 2008 to 2010.

Second, the bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security more flexibility to waive certain requirements of Real ID if an aspect of the program proves technically difficult to implement. Under the current law, the Secretary of Homeland Security has the discretion to waive the requirements for Real ID on a State-by-State basis if the State cannot comply for justifiable reasons. Because it is possible that some of the technological advances necessary for Real ID may not be in place when compliance is required, the bill will provide the Secretary specific authority to waive compliance with specific requirements if these technological systems are not up and running-- relieving the States from the burden of seeking exemptions from Real ID for technological reasons not within their control.

Third, it reconstitutes the committee that we created in 2004 and that was making good progress in its discussions. The committee would be required to look at the regulations published by the Department of Homeland Security and to make suggestions for modifications to meet the concerns of States, privacy advocates, and the other interested parties. The committee would report these suggestions to the Department of Homeland Security and to Congress. The Department of Homeland Security would either have to make these modifications or explain why it chose not to do so. In addition, the committee could recommend to Congress statutory changes that would mitigate concerns that could not be addressed by modifications to the regulations.

This bill gives us the time and the information that Congress and the Department of Homeland Security need to better implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in order to make our drivers' licenses secure so that they cannot be used again as a part of a plot to attack our country. This bill does this in a way that does not rewind the clock three years but instead keeps us moving forward to a more secure America.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address Real ID and to put us back on track in protecting our privacy, protecting our liberty, and protecting our country.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the No Child Left Behind Flexibility and Improvements Act. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe. Our legislation would give greater local control and flexibility to Maine and other States in their efforts to implement the No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB, and provides common sense reforms in keeping with the worthy goals of NCLB.

Since NCLB was enacted in 2002, I have had the opportunity to meet with numerous Maine educators to discuss their concerns with the law. In response to their concerns, in March 2004, Senator Snowe and I commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the implementation issues facing Maine under both NCLB and the Maine Learning Results. Our task force included members from every county in the State and had superintendents, teachers, principals, school board members, parents, business leaders, former State legislators, special education experts, assessment specialists, officials from the Maine Department of Education, a former Maine Commissioner of Education, and the Dean from the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development.

After a year of study, the Task Force presented us with its final report outlining recommendations for possible statutory and regulatory changes to the Act. These recommendations form the basis of the legislation that we are introducing today.

First, our legislation would provide new flexibility for teachers of multiple subjects at the secondary school level to help them meet the ``highly qualified teacher'' requirements. Unfortunately, the current regulations place undue burdens on teachers at small and rural schools who often teach multiple subjects due to staffing needs, and on special education teachers who work with students on a variety of subjects throughout the day. Under the bill, provided these teachers are highly qualified for one subject they teach, they will be provided additional time and less burdensome avenues to satisfy the remaining requirements.

Second, our legislation would provide greater flexibility to States in the ways that they demonstrate student progress in meeting State education standards. Specifically, it would permit States to use a cohort growth model, which tracks the progress of the same group of students over time. It would also permit the use of an ``indexing'' model, where progress is measured based on the number of students whose scores improve from, for example, a ``below-basic'' to a ``basic'' level, and not simply on the number of students who cross the ``proficient'' line.

Third, our legislation would provide schools with better notice regarding possible performance issues, allowing schools a chance to identify and work with a particular group of students before being identified. It would expand the existing ``safe-harbor'' provisions to allow more schools to qualify for this important protection. The changes made in our bill are in keeping with what assessment experts and teachers know--that significant gains in academic achievement tend to occur gradually and over time.

Fourth, our legislation would allow the members of a special education student's IEP team to determine the best assessment for that individual student, and would permit the student's performance on that assessment to count for all NCLB purposes.

One reason this change is so important for Maine is that we have small student populations and Maine has chosen a very small subgroup size--only 20 students. I was very concerned to hear reports that in some schools, special education students fear that they are being blamed for their school not making adequate yearly progress. While the statute explicitly prohibits the disaggregation of student data if it would jeopardize student privacy, I am concerned to hear that this is not working out in practice.

This legislative change is also based on principles of fairness and common sense. Many times, it simply does not make sense to require a special needs student to take a grade-level assessment that everyone knows he or she is not ready to take. Many special education students are referred for special education services precisely because they cannot meet grade-level expectations. Allowing the IEP team to determine the best test for each special student will bring an important improvement to the Act.

Fifth, the legislation addresses my concern about the statute's current requirement that all schools reach 100 percent proficiency by 2013-2014. Our bill would require the Secretary of Education to review progress by the States toward meeting this goal every 3 years, and would allow her to modify the timeline as necessary.

Our legislation is a comprehensive effort to provide greater flexibility and commonsense modifications to address the key NCLB challenges facing Maine, and other States. I look forward to working with my colleagues on these issues during the upcoming NCLB reauthorization process.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to address the growing concern among States regarding the Real ID Act of 2005, which requires States to meet minimum security standards before citizens can use drivers' licenses for Federal purposes. As the deadline for compliance with Real ID rapidly approaches, States are beginning to send a very clear message that they are deeply concerned that they will not be able to meet these standards. The bill I introduce today recognizes those concerns by giving everyone more time to devise a way to make drivers' licenses more secure without unduly burdening State governments and without threatening privacy and civil liberties.

To begin, some background may be useful. The 9/11 Commission, finding that all but one of the 9/11 hijackers had acquired some form of U.S. identification, recommended that the Federal Government should set standards for the issuance of drivers' licenses. Taking up that recommendation I worked with a bipartisan group of Senators, especially Senator Lieberman, to craft a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act that would accomplish this goal. This provision called for the creation of a committee composed of experts from the Federal Government, from State governments, and from other interested parties such as privacy and civil liberties advocates and information technology groups. This committee was charged with developing a means of providing secure identification that protected privacy and civil liberties and respected the role of States in issuing these documents.

The committee diligently began meeting, but before it could complete its work, the House of Representatives attached the Real ID Act of 2005 to an emergency war supplemental bill, thus halting this productive effort. Unlike our intelligence reform bill, the Real ID Act of 2005 did not include States and other interested parties in the rulemaking process and instead instructed the Department of Homeland Security to simply write its own regulations. Nearly 2 years later, we still have not seen these regulations in spite of a looming May 2008 deadline for States to be in compliance with the Real ID Act.

As States begin work this year on their 2008 budgets, they still have no idea what the regulations will require of them. They do know, from a study released in 2006 by the National Governors Association, that the cost to States to implement Real ID could total more than $11 billion over the first 5 years. As a result, many States--my home State of Maine included--have passed resolutions that have sent the message to Washington that they cannot and will not implement Real ID by the May 2008 deadline.

My bill has two primary objectives: 1. It gives us the time and flexibility we need to come up with an effective system to provide secure drivers' licenses; and 2. it gets the experts from the States and from the technology industry and from the privacy and civil liberties advocates back at the table and gives them a chance to make these regulations work.

There are three main provisions in this bill: First, the bill provides that States will not have to be Real ID compliant until 2 years after the final regulations are promulgated. This means that no matter how long it takes the Department of Homeland Security to finish these regulations, States will have a full 2 years to implement them. Most likely that will mean an extension from 2008 to 2010.

Second, the bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security more flexibility to waive certain requirements of Real ID if an aspect of the program proves technically difficult to implement. Under the current law, the Secretary of Homeland Security has the discretion to waive the requirements for Real ID on a State-by-State basis if the State cannot comply for justifiable reasons. Because it is possible that some of the technological advances necessary for Real ID may not be in place when compliance is required, the bill will provide the Secretary specific authority to waive compliance with specific requirements if these technological systems are not up and running-- relieving the States from the burden of seeking exemptions from Real ID for technological reasons not within their control.

Third, it reconstitutes the committee that we created in 2004 and that was making good progress in its discussions. The committee would be required to look at the regulations published by the Department of Homeland Security and to make suggestions for modifications to meet the concerns of States, privacy advocates, and the other interested parties. The committee would report these suggestions to the Department of Homeland Security and to Congress. The Department of Homeland Security would either have to make these modifications or explain why it chose not to do so. In addition, the committee could recommend to Congress statutory changes that would mitigate concerns that could not be addressed by modifications to the regulations.

This bill gives us the time and the information that Congress and the Department of Homeland Security need to better implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in order to make our drivers' licenses secure so that they cannot be used again as a part of a plot to attack our country. This bill does this in a way that does not rewind the clock three years but instead keeps us moving forward to a more secure America.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address Real ID and to put us back on track in protecting our privacy, protecting our liberty, and protecting our country.

Mr. President, I am very pleased to join with the distinguished senior Senator from Virginia--a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, an individual who has devoted his life to the support of our military--in offering, along with a number of our colleagues, this very important resolution as an amendment to the continuing resolution. There are many differing views in this body on the road ahead in Iraq, and those views are legitimate but they deserve to be debated. There is no more pressing issue facing this country than Iraq. The public is disappointed to see the Senate avoid the debate on the most important issue of our day. The current stalemate is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to the American people. Regardless of our views on the appropriate strategy for Iraq, we have an obligation, we have a duty as Senators to fully debate this issue and to go on record on what we believe to be the appropriate strategy, the road ahead in Iraq.

I am very disappointed that the procedural wrangling on both sides of the aisle prevented that kind of full and fair debate last week. I believed strongly that we should go ahead with that debate, and I am sorry that did not occur. I hope our leaders on both sides of the aisle will work together to come up with a fair approach to debate this most important issue.

Just this last weekend, the State of Maine lost another soldier in combat in Iraq. The American people deserve to know where each and every one of us stands on the President's strategy, on whether to cut off funding, on the important issues related to this very pressing issue. There are legitimate arguments on both sides. There are those who agree with my position that a surge of 21,500 troops would be a mistake. There are those who believe that the surge is the right course to follow. I respect the views of Senators on both sides of the aisle and, indeed, this is not a partisan issue. But surely--surely this is an issue that deserves our full debate in the best traditions of this historic body. Surely--surely our constituents deserve to know where we stand.

I think this is so important that nothing should prevent us from going to this debate prior to our recessing. I think we should make this so important that if it is not done, perhaps we should reconsider our plans for next week. I think we should proceed with this most important debate without further delay. There are a number of worthwhile resolutions that have been brought forward. Let the debate begin.

Finally, I want to add just a couple of comments to those made by the distinguished Senator from Virginia and the distinguished Senator from Nebraska, and that is about the importance of these resolutions. They are by no means unprecedented, as both of my colleagues have so articulately pointed out. They offer guidance to the administration. It remains my hope that if the Senate passes the resolution that I have helped to coauthor that the President will accept our invitation to take a second look at his plan. We urge him to explore all alternatives and to work with us on a bipartisan strategy to chart a new road ahead in Iraq.

As a result of my trip to Iraq in December, I concluded that we face a number of different challenges in Iraq and the strategy depends on where you are in Iraq. In Baghdad, the capital is engulfed in sectarian violence. Yes, Baghdad is in the midst of a civil war between the Shiites and the Sunnis. To insert more American soldiers in the midst of this sectarian struggle would, in my judgment, be a major mistake. Only the Iraqis can devise a solution to the sectarian strife that is gripping Baghdad, and I think if the Iraqis had taken the long overdue political steps, if they more fully integrated the Sunni minority into the power structures, if they had passed an oil revenue bill that more equitably distributed oil revenues, if they had held the long overdue provincial elections, we would not be in the crisis in which we are today.

Indeed, that is not just my opinion, that was the opinion of General Petraeus when I asked him that question during his nomination hearing before the Armed Services Committee.

By contrast to the sectarian strife that is plaguing Baghdad, the battle is very different in Anbar Province to the west. There the fight is with al-Qaida and with foreign jihadists, and there and only there did I hear an American commander ask for more troops--only in Anbar Province--and he did so in order to capitalize on a recent positive development in which some of the local Sunni tribal leaders are now backing the coalition forces against al-Qaida.

My conclusion is that we do need more troops in Anbar, but we should reallocate from troops already in the country. I personally would choose to take troops out of Baghdad and send them west, to Anbar Province, and put the Iraqis in charge, fully in charge of security in Baghdad. I fear that by inserting thousands of additional troops into the midst of the sectarian strife in Baghdad, ironically we will ease the pressure on the Iraqi leaders to take the long-overdue steps to quell the sectarian violence, for I am convinced that the sectarian violence in Baghdad requires a political, not a military, solution.

In Basra, the third stop on our trip, I heard a British commander, a British colonel, give an excellent presentation to us. He said that initially the British and American troops were welcomed in Iraq, but as time has gone on, what he called the consent line has declined and their presence has been less and less tolerated and more and more resented.

I think perhaps the only issue on which all Members of this body can agree is that our troops have served nobly and well in Iraq, and that we need a new strategy. We disagree on the road ahead, but that is what democracy and the traditions of the Senate are all about. We should not be afraid of this debate. We should debate this issue fully and openly and let our constituents and the administration know exactly where the Senate stands.

Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator from Virginia, I remember very well General Abizaid's testimony before the Armed Services Committee in mid-November. And as the Senator has pointed out--and he presided over that hearing--it could not have been clearer General Abizaid said that he consulted with all the American commanders and that the effect of bringing in more American troops would be to relieve the pressure on the Iraqis to step up and take control of the security themselves.

Indeed, and ironically, General Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, had written an article for the Military Review in January of 2006 in which he said that one of the lessons from his tours of duty in Iraq was that you should not do too much, that you should call upon the Iraqis to take responsibility for themselves. Indeed, my experience was just as the Senator's was. About a month after General Abizaid's testimony, I was in Iraq. I talked with the commanders on the ground, and I would like to share with the senior Senator what one American commander told me.

He said that a jobs program for Iraqis would do more good to quell the sectarian violence than the addition of more American troops. He told me that some Iraqi men are so desperate for money because they have been unemployed for so long that they are joining the Shiite militias. They are planting roadside bombs simply for the money because they are desperate.

I thought that was such a telling comment, I say to my distinguished colleague, because this was from a very experienced commander who had been in Iraq for a long time. At that moment he was not calling for more troops. None of the American commanders with whom I talked in Baghdad called for more troops. The only place where we heard a request for more troops was in Anbar Province, and as I have explained, the situation

in Anbar is totally different. It is not sectarian violence. The violence is with al-Qaida, the foreign jihadists, mainly Sunni versus Sunni, and it requires a different strategy.

So my experience, when added to the distinguished Senator's, shows a consistent pattern. Whether it was the distinguished Senator's trip in October or the testimony of General Abizaid in November or my journey in December, we heard exactly the same themes, exactly the same answers to the questions of whether we needed more troops.

Finally, let me say I went to Iraq with a completely open mind on this issue, and I came back convinced that sending more troops to Baghdad would be a colossal error.