Floor Statements

Mr. President, I used to serve on the Amtrak board of directors. We have a lot of trains running up and down the Northeast corridor. I have ridden on them since I was a little boy. The trains run about every hour. You can catch a train in Boston to come to DC pretty much every hour; between New York and DC, the frequency is even more. They run from 5 in the morning and go well into the night.

The reason a lot of people don't ride trains across the country is there are 15 different long-distance trains, which only run 2 or 3 days in a lot of cases. It may come in at 1, 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning, and it is not very convenient. It is hard to build ridership. I agree with Senator Sununu. I am not interested in spending $200 or $150 per passenger to subsidize long-distance trains. We don't do it in the Northeast corridor.

We have addressed this in a more thoughtful way, and I want to share that. I commend Senator Lautenberg and Senator Lott and our staffs for working on it for years. The legislation calls for the Federal Railroad Administration to actually study every year, for the next 3 years, five long-distance train routes to figure out why they lose money and what can we do to reduce the cost of the train routes. I think they will find this in places in the Midwest. These numbers are out of the Midwest. There is a lot of investment, particularly in the Illinois area. Ridership is up on the Chicago-St Louis corridor in the last year. Ridership between Chicago and Carbondale is up 46 percent. For the Chicago-Galesburg-Quincy route, ridership has increased 33 percent. They have actually added frequency and provided better service and more on-time service, and they have worked with the freight railroads that control the tracks to get better support so that they let the passenger trains run on time.

I think there is a better way to skin this cat than our friend, Senator Sununu, has proposed. I believe the answer is in the legislation. If you look at the country as a whole, today we have probably over 50 percent of the population living within 50 miles of one of our coasts. Think about that. What that means is we have these densely populated corridors up and down the east coast, the gulf coast, and on the west coast. They are perfectly suited for high-passenger corridor rail service.

Think about the other places around the country, and there is an example of the St. Louis-to-Chicago route. That part of America is where densely populated corridors also exist. My suspicion is if we provide them the kind of service we are providing on these coastal corridors, we would see the increase in ridership that we are seeing in Illinois and also in Missouri.

Again, to my friends who want to make sure we take some affirmative action to provide better train service but reduce the kind of subsidies now being paid for folks riding trains that run every 2 or 3 days, coming through communities at all hours of the night, as well as the day, there is a smarter way to do this, and it is in the legislation.

I encourage my colleagues to oppose this particular amendment, however well intended it is. I think there is a better way to get to the legitimate issue raised. It is the language Senators Lott and Lautenberg and our staffs and I have crafted and included. The first year, we would take five long-distance train routes and scrub their performance and find out a smarter way to provide the service. The second year, we would do five more, and the third year, five more. So over 3 years we would scrub 15 of these.

A lot of people are starting to ride trains who would not have thought about it before. That is because of congestion on the roads and highways, in airports, bad pollution in the air, and our dependence on foreign oil. The passenger rail service can address all those issues. Amtrak is not the whole answer, but it begins to get at the answer.

The language in the underlying bill answers the question Senator Sununu raises. I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and support for the underlying legislation.

Will the Senator yield?

I would invite the Senator from New Hampshire to engage in a brief colloquy. I have been listening to his comments. I think we have a couple of options, and there may be a better path for it than the one we are assuming today. We are talking about an amendment that the Senator had offered to the Amtrak bill, bringing the Internet tax issues to the reauthorization of Amtrak, and others of us would offer a second-degree amendment to that. There will be a cloture vote that will proceed either of those two amendments.

I think there is another alternative that I would ask my friend to consider, and that would be the chance--I think all along the Senator from New Hampshire has wanted an up-or-down vote on his proposal, which is fair game. I think our own leadership, and I think in consultation with your leadership, including with Senator Lott, has suggested maybe one day next week we have an up-or-down vote--your proposal and the alternative of our proposal that Senator Alexander and I and others would offer, which would provide for a 6-year extension for a moratorium on Internet taxation. For another 6 years we would provide for a 6-year extension of the grandfather--

Mr. President, while Senator Sununu is still on the floor, if I could add one other comment. Senator Lott said at the beginning of the debate on this bill that folks are welcome, Democrats and Republicans, to come and offer their amendments, nongermane, if they are. But when we get to conference, he said: I will warn you right from the get-go, nongermane amendments that are offered to this bill might be attached to this bill when we get to conference, but they will not be in this bill when we come out.

So I would suggest to Senator Sununu that we consider the approach

I just outlined; that next week, maybe in the middle of next week, he would have the opportunity, with time for debate, to offer his proposal to make permanent the moratorium on taxing Internet access, and we would have the opportunity to offer an alternative, which would be a 6- year extension of the moratorium.

I will tell you why we think it is important. Five years ago, I never heard of VOIT, voice over Internet protocol. I had no idea what it was. I don't think anybody around here did. That is the ability to send telecommunications, telephone messages, over the Internet. It is a major change in the way we communicate on the telephone. The problem with making permanent this legislation is we assume there are not going to be any more technological changes. We are learning how to send cable TV, movies, and all kinds of stuff over the Internet. Traditionally, State and local governments have had the right to raise revenues as they see fit. In fact, we have an unfunded mandates law that says State and local governments have protection from us in Congress telling them how to spend their money or telling them how to raise their money. We passed a law that says we can't do that. I was Governor, actually, in 1995. I was Governor when we pushed for that sort of protection. Who are we in the Federal Government to tell States how they have to spend their money or how they can raise it? That is what was adopted in the unfunded mandates legislation in 1995.

We turned around in Congress 3 years later and said: By the way, we don't want folks to tax access to the Internet, and if you are already doing that in the United States, we are going to grandfather you in for a while, but we put in place, starting in 1998, this 3-year moratorium on other States beginning to tax access to the Internet--really trying to tax people's AOL bills.

The concern as we go forward, as we learn to do other things over the Internet other than sending e-mails and instant messaging and stuff, if we allow the bundling of services, including telephone services, including cable services, television services, the sort of thing that State and local governments have traditionally used to pay for education, pay for schools, pay for fire, pay for police, or pay for paramedics, if we aren't careful, we are going to basically preclude or reduce their ability to raise the revenue they need for the problems in their States.

So we are not smart enough--I am not smart enough, and I don't think any of us here are smart enough--to know for certainty what the technology is going to be in 5 years, 4 years, or 10 years. That is why we want the extension of the moratorium, to make sure people's access to the Internet is not going to be taxed, but what we don't want to do is to do something permanently because of the changing nature of technology.

So I think it makes sense next week for us to have the opportunity for Senator Sununu to come to the floor, offer his permanent moratorium amendment, and have the same opportunity for Senator Alexander and myself, and Senator Dorgan, Senator Feinstein, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Enzi, and Senator Voinovich, and others who believe that a 6- year moratorium may be the better alternative for now. I hope we will have that opportunity.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me add a couple comments with respect to the legislation we just passed by unanimous consent.

The adoption of this legislation comes after a very tough negotiation that goes back not just a couple days or a couple weeks or a couple months but literally years, almost a decade. In tough negotiations, not everyone is happy. But I think the American people basically want us to figure out how to get work done. The American people look for us to set aside partisan differences, and they want to see some results.

My hope is, for the most part, they come to understand what we have done here tonight and realize the House still has to speak on this matter. The American people will, if not applaud the actual results, some of which are not easily understood, at least say: Well, on this matter, at least, the U.S. Senate figured out how to work together. A couple guys from small States got together, along with the help of a bunch of others, including Senators Alexander and Enzi and Voinovich. I am grateful to them for all their good work on this too.

I think among the most important results that flow from the adoption of this legislation are, No. 1, we preserve the intent in the 1998 initial Internet moratorium legislation. What we wanted to do in 1998 was not to allow additional States and additional local governments to place a tax on access to the Internet, if you will, a tax on our AOL bills. That was part of the 1998 legislation that said for a handful of States--nine or so--that were already doing that, they were allowed to continue to do so but nobody else could pile on.

This legislation today makes sure we are not going to be allowing additional access taxes or additional taxes by State and local governments for access to the Internet. That protects the consumers, but it also does it in a way that I think is fair to the States. Because 3 years before the 1998 legislation was passed--3 years prior-- in 1995, this same Congress passed legislation saying that the unfunded mandates were a bad idea, and that the Federal Government was not going to tell State and local governments how to spend their money without providing that money, the Federal Government was not going to take away the ability of State and local governments to raise money without providing for funds to make up for the shortfall.

What we have done is we have protected the States that are already deriving revenues from access taxes on the Internet. We said we are not going to allow, as we go forward with new innovations--for, if you will, telecom companies, telephone companies--we are not going to allow them to bundle services and begin to offer those bundled services-- traditionally taxed by State and local governments, in some cases--and ship them over on the Internet to avoid all State and local taxes. So the States have spoken loudly: Do not take away our revenue base. We have been responsive to that.

As a Governor for 8 years in my State, and as, at one time, the chairman of the National Governors Association, I never liked it when the Federal Government came in and said: Spend your money this way or that way, without giving us the money. I never liked it when the Federal Government came in and said: We are going to take your ability to raise money away without providing for the shortfall. I think we are consistent here and true to the concerns that have been raised by State and local governments on that score.

The third thing we have done--I sort of alluded to it--the technology in this area continues to change dramatically. I like to kid, but I say 5 years ago I could not even spell VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol, which basically means sending telephone services over the Internet.

Actually, 5 years ago, the idea of being able to do that was, I think, a gleam in somebody's eye. Today it is common practice. Not only that, we have the ability to send something called IPTV, Internet Protocol TV, to send television signals over the Internet. In my State, we do not necessarily raise our revenues this way. But some places do. They raise some of the revenues for educational purposes, for paramedics, for fire services, for police services. They raise their revenues by taxing telephone services and cable services. It is inappropriate for us to come and say: You cannot do that, even as those services are somehow transferred and transmitted over the Internet.

So what we have done, by not making the moratorium permanent, is we have made sure we are going to come back and revisit this issue somewhere down the line. We say 7 years. The House says 4 years. We will have the opportunity and the requirement to come back and revisit this issue. If the technology changes--and it will. I can tell you one thing for sure, the technology that is in place today is not going to be same in 4, 5, 6, 7 years, just as it was not 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. It has continued to change. By virtue of this legislation, we will be better prepared for that change.

Again, I close with this: When I talk to people in our State, and in other States as well, when I hear about the low regard people have for the Congress and, frankly, for the administration--but we will stick with us right now--one of the things that people are most unhappy about is our seeming inability to work together, to hang in there, until we have been able to carve out, find a middle ground that is responsive to the concerns of most people. We have done that. It has not been easy, but we have been persistent, and I think ultimately--at least tonight, today--successful.

I am pleased to have been a part of this effort and to have had a chance to work with our Senators Alexander, Stevens, Inouye, McCain, and Senator Sununu.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me take one more minute on this subject to also extend my thanks and compliments to our staffs. On my staff, Bill Ghent and Chris Prendergast worked long and hard for many hours. Our Commerce Committee staff, both Democrat and Republican, did a terrific job under the leadership of Senator Inouye, and we are deeply grateful to him and to Senator Stevens' staff for the wonderful work they did. The Commerce staff works in a way I wish every committee staff and subcommittee staff would--Democrat, Republican, majority, minority--it is almost seamless the way they approach almost every issue, including this one. I think one of the things that happens when you work like that is you get something done. While it is not unanimous acclaim for what we have done here, I think for the most part it is good work.

If we live to see what happens over in the House, hopefully we will be able to resolve our differences with them.

Mr. President, the bill before us is the Amtrak reauthorization bill. Each year it seems we find ourselves fighting increasing gridlock on our highways, whether it is Iowa, Delaware, New Hampshire, or Vermont. We face growing threats of smog in our skies, polluted air, crowded conditions at our Nation's airports, and financial challenges facing our aviation industry. If we don't broaden our investment in transportation infrastructure across our Nation, we are headed for a crisis.

Each year an outfit called the Texas Transportation Institute releases something they call the Urban Mobility Report. It continues to show traffic congestion growing across our Nation in cities of all sizes, consuming more hours of the day and affecting more travelers and shipments of goods than ever before. The annual financial cost of traffic congestion has ballooned. In 1982 it was about $14 billion; today, $78 billion. There is a personal cost as well--the time lost to traffic.

The same Urban Mobility Report quantifies this loss at 4.2 billion lost hours. That is not commuting time. This is just sitting in traffic not going anywhere, 4.2 billion lost hours and almost 3 billion gallons of wasted fuel. That is the equivalent on the one hand of 105 million weeks of people's lives and 58 fully loaded supertankers.

Rail remains the most underdeveloped opportunity to reshape our national transportation network. Rail can efficiently move large numbers of people over moderate distances, anywhere from 100 to 400 miles, and requires a smaller right-of-way than highways.

I would also point out that to move a ton of freight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, DC, takes about 1 gallon of diesel fuel. So in a time and age when we are worried about the amount of oil we are importing, 1 gallon of diesel fuel can move a ton of freight from Boston to Washington.

But with respect to corridors, this is important in densely populated areas where there is not much land available to support new infrastructure, and the land that is available is mighty expensive.

States are starting to put their own funding toward rail corridor development as well. Several are using rail to relieve congestion at airports by investing in rail service in connection with their airports, much like we have at BWI, just north of here near Baltimore, much like we have at Newark, NJ, and other places. But what they are doing is using rail service to make a connection with airports as a substitute for the spoke portion of a hub-and-spoke air journey.

Early success stories include rail service between Boston Airport and Portland, ME, as well as increased service from the Milwaukee Airport to the Chicago region.

More and more people are taking the train in our country, and there are a variety of reasons for that. Trains are convenient, they are comfortable, they are reliable. When you ride the train, you have bigger seats, you have more leg room. You can also use the phone and access the Internet. If you want a place that is quiet, you can go to the quiet car. If you want to eat, you can go to the dining car.

Amtrak used to have an ad campaign that said: ``Amtrak: The Civilized Way to Travel.'' Compared to some of the adventures I have had in airplanes in the last year, it surely is the civilized way to travel.

When you arrive at your destination, in many cases the train station is in the center of town as it is here; as it is in Wilmington and Philadelphia, and as it is in New York City and a lot of other places as well. On-time performance is not great, but it is on par with the airlines nationwide. But in the Northeast corridor where some of us live, the train is even more reliable. The Acela Express has an on-time performance of almost 90 percent--not 100 percent but pretty darn good.

As a result, Amtrak ridership is starting to break records. In fiscal year 2007, a record-breaking 25.8 million people rode Amtrak. Total ticket revenues increased about 11 percent over fiscal year 2006 to some $1.4 billion; still less than the cost of running the train, but still a hefty increase.

Ridership has increased across the Nation. The Acela Express has seen a 20-percent increase over last year and the Northeast corridor's regional trains are up as well. Outside of the Northeast corridor, interestingly, the Keystone Service train, the train between Harrisburg, PA, and Philadelphia and New York, experienced about a 21- percent increase in ridership; the Chicago-St. Louis corridor, 42 percent. California's Capitol Corridor, which is a train that runs from Auburn to San Jose, is up 15 percent, and the San Diego-San Luis Obispo Pacific Surfliner is up about 9 percent. I think what we need to do is to look at those corridors to see what is working and try to apply that to a whole lot of other Amtrak lines. What we do in this bill is just that.

The Passenger Rail Investment Improvement Act would require the Federal Railroad Administration to develop performance standards to evaluate the financial performance, on-time performance, and customer satisfaction of each Amtrak train.

Amtrak is then required to establish performance improvement plans for the five long-distance routes with their worst performance, including the worst financial performance. A year later, Amtrak must implement the plans and the Federal Railroad Administration may withhold funds for a route plan if the plan is not implemented. In future years, the remaining 10 long-distance

routes would undergo the same restructuring process.

Additionally, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act would require the Federal Railroad Administration to analyze Amtrak's routes and consider changes that would require cost recovery and on-time performance as well as address the transportation needs of communities that are not served by any other form of public transportation.

I expect when we analyze these long-distance train routes, we will find the factors that make a train--or any form of travel--appealing to travelers is the frequency, the reliability, and the travel time of that service. In the case of many of these long-distance trains, the train may only run a few days a week or at odd hours. I remember the first time my family and I--my mom, my sister, and I ever caught a train, we lived in Beckley, WV. We caught a train in a little nearby town called Prince where the train stopped. We caught the train about 3 o'clock in the morning. I was about 5 or 6 years old. We caught it at 3 o'clock in the morning. In a lot of places around the country, we have trains that are stopping at 3 o'clock in the morning, 2 o'clock in the morning, 1 o'clock in the morning, 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. No wonder people don't want to ride those trains, especially when they show up about every 2 or 3 days. But on-time performance can be an issue because the tracks outside the Northeast corridor are not owned by Amtrak, they are owned by the railroad companies, and capacity on the freight rail lines is constrained by increasing demand to move more freight by rail. The freight is on the track. Amtrak sometimes gets in the way. The freight railroads want to move freight, not necessarily passengers. What this does is it indicates, to me at least, the need for additional investment in rail infrastructure--something we also address in this bill that is before us.

I think it is particularly remarkable how many States are investing in rail today when you consider the fact that the Federal Government provides no support. I learned when I served as Governor of Delaware that if we wanted to build in my State or to expand an airport, the Federal Government put up 80 percent of the funds--80 percent. The State would do 20. Building or expanding a highway or bridge in my State would also yield that same 80 percent support from the Federal Government. If we wanted to invest in transit, as we do, those funds were more competitive and hard to come by. The Federal Government would still pony up about 50 percent of the expense and the State would do the rest. But we wanted in my State to invest, and we do it smart, to invest in passenger rail, but that was the wisest investment for the dollar, for the buck. We got nothing from the Federal Government. The State had to put up 100 percent. Think about it. If you are the Governor of a State or you are running a State and you can get matching funds for highways, you can get 80 percent on transit projects, 80 percent from the Federal Government for money on airports, but you can get zero for a city passenger rail service, which one would you vote for or choose? The answer I think is pretty obvious--not necessarily the right decision, the smartest decision, but oftentimes that is the decision that is made. It makes no sense.

So the Passenger Rail Investment Improvement Act bill changes that. It authorizes some $1.7 billion over the life of this bill for a new State and capital grant program to support States that wish to provide new or improved inner city passenger rail. The Federal match is 80 percent--the same as highways, same as roads, same as airports. I believe this step will create a long-term, sustainable Federal funding mechanism for States investing in inner city passenger rail capacity, with the same kind of capital support we currently provide again for airports, highways, and transit.

Last Congress, the Senate passed the bill we have before us by a vote of 93 to 6. It was added as an amendment to an appropriations bill and passed 93 to 6. It died in conference. It was taken out, dropped. The Senate then overwhelmingly recognized the wisdom of our approach in bringing the Northeast corridor to a state of good repair, requiring reforms to the long-distance lines, allowing freight railroads to compete with Amtrak on their rail lines, the rail lines and the freights, and providing Federal support for capital rail investment, much as we do for highways, airports, and transit.

I urge my colleagues to show the same strong support for this bill when we reconvene next week so we can respond to our constituents' calls for more rail investment and more transportation options, especially where that makes sense.

Let me close, if I can, with this. Having served for 4 years on the Amtrak board, as Congressman, Senator, and Governor, being very much involved in the passenger rail service in my State and across the country, I am not interested in running trains for people who don't want to ride them. I don't think any of us are. I am not interested in the Federal Government providing inordinate subsidies for trains for folks who don't want to ride or for people who have other perfectly good options. If you think about it, in this country of ours, over half the people live within 50 miles of one of our coasts, over 50 percent of the people live 50 miles from one of our corridors. We have these densely populated corridors up and down the east coast, the gulf coast, the west coast. They were made to order for trains. Some of those long- distance trains make a lot of sense too.

A lot of businesses will pay good money, premium money for those trains. Folks will take a train south of here and go down to Orlando, put their car behind them on the train or minivan or whatever, and they pay good money for those trains. They actually make money. What we have to do is to figure out how to work differently, to meet the need that is out there, to work smarter. The legislation that is before us will do that.

I know the hour is late and you have places to go and so do I. Let me yield back the floor and I thank you all for your patience.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I rise today with my mend from Maine to introduce the Volunteer Firefighter and EMS Personnel Job Protection Act.

Current law offers volunteer firefighters and emergency medical services personnel no protection against punishment by their employers should they miss work when called on to respond to a national emergency. This means that firefighters or EMS personnel volunteering their time, even during major disasters like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or even the current wildfires in California, can be disciplined or even fired for putting their lives at risk to save others.

We put forward this legislation today out of concern that volunteers faced with the prospect of losing their jobs and not responding to a call will choose the latter. Its passage would protect volunteers from having to make that choice when the call is to a Presidentially- declared disaster or emergency.

In order to receive the protections offered under the bill, a first responder would need to provide reasonable notice to their employer before missing time and would need to provide regular updates during the course of their absence. The bill also allows volunteer firefighters or EMS personnel to take legal action against businesses that fire or discipline an individual who gives appropriate notice before missing work due to a legitimate emergency situation.

In order to prevent abuse, the bill places a 14-day limit on the amount of time volunteer firefighters or EMS workers could take off from their jobs before being subject to disciplinary action. The bill also does not require employers to compensate volunteers for time away from work.

Communities across the country depend on volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel to respond to major disasters. My State is among them. In fact, most communities in Delaware rely almost exclusively on the work and sacrifice of volunteers to protect their citizens from fires to major disasters. This bill seeks to ensure that Delawareans can continue to rely on them.

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

Mr. President, I rise today with my mend from Maine to introduce the Volunteer Firefighter and EMS Personnel Job Protection Act.

Current law offers volunteer firefighters and emergency medical services personnel no protection against punishment by their employers should they miss work when called on to respond to a national emergency. This means that firefighters or EMS personnel volunteering their time, even during major disasters like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or even the current wildfires in California, can be disciplined or even fired for putting their lives at risk to save others.

We put forward this legislation today out of concern that volunteers faced with the prospect of losing their jobs and not responding to a call will choose the latter. Its passage would protect volunteers from having to make that choice when the call is to a Presidentially- declared disaster or emergency.

In order to receive the protections offered under the bill, a first responder would need to provide reasonable notice to their employer before missing time and would need to provide regular updates during the course of their absence. The bill also allows volunteer firefighters or EMS personnel to take legal action against businesses that fire or discipline an individual who gives appropriate notice before missing work due to a legitimate emergency situation.

In order to prevent abuse, the bill places a 14-day limit on the amount of time volunteer firefighters or EMS workers could take off from their jobs before being subject to disciplinary action. The bill also does not require employers to compensate volunteers for time away from work.

Communities across the country depend on volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel to respond to major disasters. My State is among them. In fact, most communities in Delaware rely almost exclusively on the work and sacrifice of volunteers to protect their citizens from fires to major disasters. This bill seeks to ensure that Delawareans can continue to rely on them.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 9 a.m. in room SR-328A of the Russell Senate Office building. The Committee will continue its markup of the 2007 farm bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to conduct a hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at 9:30 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

At this hearing, the subcommittee will examine sweatshop conditions in Chinese factories where toys and other children's products are manufactured.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in order to hear testimony on ``Small Business Health Insurance: Building a Gateway to Coverage.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct an Executive Business Meeting on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The agenda is attached.

Agenda

I. Bill

S. 1946, Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act (Leahy, Cornyn).

II. Resolutions

S. Res. 347, Designating May 2008 as ``National Be Bear Aware and Wildlife Stewardship Month'' (Baucus, Tester).

S. Res. 346, Expressing heartfelt sympathy for the victims of the devastating thunderstorms that caused severe flooding during August 2007 in the States of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. (Coleman, Durbin, Grassley, Feingold, Kohl).

III. Nomination

John Daniel Tinder, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Seventh Circuit.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 25, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at 2:30 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Single Audits: Are They Helping to Safeguard Federal Funds?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security, and Water Quality, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct a hearing on effectiveness of Federal drunk driving programs.

Mr. President, I understand there are four bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading, en bloc.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request, all en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Friday, October 26; that on Friday, following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of Calendar No. 158, S. 294, Amtrak authorization; that at 10 a.m., the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; that during morning business, Senator Dodd be recognized for up to 20 minutes, Senator Dorgan up to 30 minutes, and Senator Inhofe up to 2 hours.

Mr. President, if there is no further business, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, if there is no pending business before the Senate, I wish to be recognized to speak for a few minutes on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which we call affectionately SCHIP. I was privileged to be chairman of the National Governors Association in the late nineties, when Governors and a lot of other folks negotiated with the Congress and the Clinton administration to create the State Children's Health

Insurance Program. I am pleased--as I know a lot of people are in this country--to see all of the good it has done.

We know that in America today we have roughly 45 million Americans who have no health care coverage. It is like a quilt that fits over a bed, if you will, and the quilt has different patches to it. One of the big patches on the quilt providing health care coverage to a lot of Americans is employer-provided coverage, another is Medicare, and then there is Medicaid for low-income folks. Another piece of the quilt would be the federally funded community health centers; and another piece might be veterans health care, or DOD health care. Altogether, they add up to provide enough to cover 85 percent of the American populace that needs health care coverage. For the folks who are not covered, a large part of the 15 percent who have no coverage is people who live with families where somebody works every day, every week. The problem for those families is they don't have employer-provided health care coverage or enough disposable income to pay their share of that employer-provided coverage, and they end up doing without.

Most of those people still get health care eventually. That health care coverage comes too frequently in an emergency room of a hospital in their community. When somebody gets sick enough, that is where they go to get care.

My colleague in the chair and I are both familiar with the tragedy this year where a young boy in Maryland, I think, had a problem with a tooth that abscessed, and he ended up going into the hospital through the emergency room and being hospitalized for an extended period of time. The cost of the health care he received was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The greater cost is that he died; he lost his life. Another tragedy was in the case of a young man who was eligible for SCHIP and his family didn't know it. It is almost like the old question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, is there a noise? If you have a benefit such as SCHIP or Medicaid and a family doesn't know they are eligible, is there a benefit? I am tempted to say there probably is not.

A lot of people in this country who ought to be eligible for this program, who could be eligible for the program, would be if the President had not vetoed the legislation we passed. I listened to Senator Grassley talk about the President's veto. I admire him a great deal and the way he stood up, stood tall on this issue, along with Senator Baucus and others, to craft the expansion of this program. That speaks volumes about Senator Grassley and his care for young people.

Among the criticism we hear of this expansion of this program is that it is more of a government fix for our health care woes in America. The coverage that most kids have under the SCHIP program is not provided by the Government. They actually go to a private program and it is provided through any one of a variety of programs. We also hear that this is more Government spending. This is actually Government spending where we pay for it. We have an offset here, and not everybody likes it, but it is an increase in the tax on tobacco, cigarettes, where we raise enough money to offset the cost of this program over the next 5 years.

Here is a chart. For the Children's Health Insurance Program, the cost over the next 5 years is about $35 billion. We raise the money to pay for it, and we are required to under the rules, which is a good thing. Our pay-go procedures require that. We have to come up with an offset to pay for that so it is deficit neutral. So this $35 billion is paid for. It doesn't make the deficit bigger and it provides health care coverage for about 4 million more kids. They will have a chance to have a primary health care home. They will not have to look for health care coverage in an emergency room of a hospital. They will not end up spending days or weeks or longer in a hospital as an inpatient trying to get better from something that could have been caught early on by a primary care physician.

A good comparison here is the SCHIP program expansion is paid for-- the $35 billion is fully paid for. There will be no increase in the deficit. Compare that to what the President is asking for an increase in spending with respect to the war in Iraq. The President is going to ask for additional money in the weeks ahead; he will ask us to appropriate $197 billion to pay for our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan for roughly the next year. It is not paid for. It is not offset by cuts in spending someplace else. It is not offset by increases in revenue somewhere else. That will be $197 billion in extra debt.

Some people think we can run up these deficits and we will print the paper to pay for them. We don't. We borrow money from folks all over this country--from investors, and from investors all over the world.

Some of those investors crop up in unlikely places. Our debt now to China is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and growing. We owe a fair amount of money to folks in South Korea. A lot of debt is held by the Japanese. You kind of wonder sometimes when you consider our inability to push back hard on the Chinese for currency manipulation and other issues such as the quality of the products, their lack of respect for patent rights and intellectual property rights, it is hard for us to push back when these people are holding hundreds of billions of dollars of our paper, money we owe them, because they have helped to fund programs for which we have not had the moral courage or fiscal discipline to raise the money to pay for ourselves.

We have a choice. The President is faced with a choice. He is asked on the one hand to increase the debt by almost $200 billion to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but not to pay for it, to basically put that burden on our kids and say, someday you will have the opportunity to pay this debt, and to compare that with the SCHIP program which is not cheap, but over the next 5 years, $35 billion, $7 billion a year to provide health care coverage for 4 million children who otherwise would not have it. But the difference is, it is paid for. We actually raise the money to pay for this program.

I said to a group of people yesterday, among the words that are most used around here, ``reform'' is one of them. We hear a lot about reform in almost everything about which we talk. Another thing we talk about around here is bipartisan--bipartisan this or bipartisan that. This is a place where sometimes bipartisan, a lot of times--the underlying appropriations bill on the floor today is actually a bipartisan bill, but we don't always see that.

SCHIP, the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, is about as bipartisan an effort as we can mount around here, especially when the administration has been fighting us tooth and nail. Again, to our Republican colleagues who stood up and joined a number of our Democrats, including Senator Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, I say: Good for you. Not just good for you because it is an example, a tangible example of bipartisan cooperation, but good for you because you put the concerns of our children ahead of those other issues and you are willing to pay for something we want to have.

Mr. President, in Delaware, we believe that programs worth having, for Government to pay for them, whether it is transportation, education, health care, programs worth having we ought to pay for. If we are not willing to pay for them, we shouldn't have as much of them as we otherwise would have. We have taken this principle and embodied this proposal under SCHIP.

I am proud of the stand we have taken and the House has taken. I am very disappointed in the decision the President has reached.

Madam President, I want to start where the Senator from North Dakota concluded his remarks, to express the gratitude of Delaware for the fine work the appropriations subcommittee has done, the leadership of Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens, their staffs, the other members of the committee. One of the letters I sent to Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens several weeks ago was a letter calling on them to not rescind, through legislative language in the appropriations bill, the 2004 Defense authorization language which said we were not going to allow the Air Force to retire any additional C-5 aircraft until the first three had been fully modernized, flight tested, and then evaluated. A number of us signed that letter and a number of us in the same letter also called for the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense to endorse the President's budget proposal for fiscal 2008 with respect to C-5 modernization. The subcommittee has done that. I thank them in a very public way for their attention to our request.

Today we are considering an important bill, one that provides funding for our troops, many in harm's way around the world, others in different phases of training or in some cases retraining or rest after they have been deployed abroad. As we vote to appropriate these funds for our Nation's defense, we are reminded of one of the fundamental duties of our military. Our Armed Forces are charged with providing our Commander in Chief and military leaders with flexible options for responding to a wide variety of threats. In Iraq, our Armed Forces are keeping the lid on civil war and protecting civilians from terrorists and literally from one another. In Korea, our Armed Forces are charged with guarding the ally's border and deterring aggression on the part of a large conventional military on the other side of the South Korean border. In the Pacific and the Persian Gulf, they protect America's interests through the projection of naval power and carrier-based air power.

At home our National Guard provides the Nation's Governors with critical response capability to cope with natural disasters such as Katrina. At times it can seem as though the demands on our military are almost limitless. Unfortunately, the resources available for equipping our military to meet these demands are not limitless. At a time when our Federal budget remains mired in red ink, we need to be looking for ways to effectively meet our military requirements but to do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

Last Thursday in the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, we spent 3 hours doing just that. In this hearing, which I chaired along with Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, we explored how we can best meet our Nation's strategic airlift needs and how we can do this in a way that is fiscally responsible. What I wish to do is take a few minutes this afternoon to remind us why airlift is important and to offer a little history of how we got into the position we are in today. Then I wish to share with my colleagues some of what we learned at our hearing last week.

The bottom line is that regardless of whether strategic airlift is performed by C-5s, by C-17s, or by some other capability, airlift is essential to our Nation's ability to project power and meet threats abroad. I would remind us that roughly 90 percent of the materiel we move around the world goes by sea. Maybe 10 percent goes by air. When it comes to moving military personnel, almost all of them are moved around the world by airlift. When you think of the 10 percent or so of cargo that is moved by aircraft, roughly half of that is moved by C-5s, C-17s, and by C-130s. The other half is moved by commercial aircraft the Air Force leases from time to time.

The bottom line is that regardless of whether we are moving goods or personnel by C-5, C-17, or some other capability, we have to have that capability when we need it and it has to be reliable.

Though the men and women of our strategic airlift fleet rarely get the attention they deserve, the reality is our military could not perform its missions if it were not for the hard work and dedication of the airlift. Strategic airlift involves the use of cargo aircraft to move personnel, weaponry, materiel over long distance, often to combat theaters on the other side of the globe. During the current war in Iraq, airlift sorties have made up the majority of the nearly 35,000 total sorties flown by U.S. aircraft. Strategic airlift enables our military to respond to threats wherever they occur in the world real time. Not only must our fighting men and women be transported to the fight, they must be continually supplied. Airlift helps to make that happen. Both the C-17 and the C-5 have fulfilled their lift duties admirably, and the United States owes much of its rapid deployment capability to these fine machines.

We are blessed in Delaware at the Dover Air Force Base to have both C-5Bs and a new squadron of C-17s. However, the problem is that over the past 10 years, the United States has reduced its Cold War infrastructure and closed two-thirds of our forward bases. I remember many of the bases my squad and I used to fly out of in Vietnam. A lot of the bases in Thailand from which we flew missions in Southeast Asia, Okinawa, and the Philippines have now been closed. We no longer fly from those particular places. As a result, our ability to project our troops by air power as well as by sea power is more important than ever.

One of the ways we have sought to keep the strategic airlift fleet healthy and ready to meet this challenge is by modernizing the C-5 through two unique programs. One is called the Avionics Modernization Program, where we take a 1960s, 1970s cockpit and turn it into a cockpit for the 21st century. The second is a program called the Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program, where we literally take old C-5 engines, take them out--they break down about every 5,000 flight hours anyway--and replace them with an engine that will give us 10,000 hours between engine changes; change out the hydraulic system, overhaul the landing gear system, fix some 70 systems in all, and, again, replace the cockpit.

Those are the kinds of things that are done with the modernization process that is underway. So far, three aircraft have been fully modernized; three C-5s have been fully modernized and are being flight tested as we speak here today. In fact, collectively they have been flown over 500 hours, and the full evaluation is to be completed--I think the flight evaluation will be done for the most part within the next 12 months, and some flight evaluations will be completed by June of 2010.

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor in the program. They are obligated to produce C-5Ms with a mission-capable rate that meets or exceeds 75 percent. That is well above where the C-5 is today. It is, frankly, slightly below where the C-17 is today.

Lockheed reports that nothing in the flight data to date, after over 500 hours of flight testing, suggests the 75 percent mission-capable rate cannot be met or exceeded. The Assistant Secretary for Acquisition of the U.S. Air Force last week in our hearing concurred in that opinion. Consequently, I was compelled, along with Senator Coburn, to hold a hearing to find out an answer to a very contentious question, and here is the question: At what price per aircraft could Lockheed or would Lockheed modernize all or part of the remaining C-5 fleet of 108 aircraft?

This past summer, Lockheed offered to modernize the C-5 fleet at what they call a flyaway cost of--a little less than $90 million per aircraft, whether the Congress and the administration decide to modernize half of the C-5 fleet, two-thirds of the C-5 fleet or all 108 C-5s. If Lockheed can deliver C-5s at a mission-capable rate of 75 percent or higher, at a flyaway cost of $85 million, $95 million or even $105 million, aircraft capable of flying another quarter of a century or more, we would be foolish not to modernize the remaining 108 C-5s. If Lockheed cannot deliver--cannot deliver aircraft that are 75 percent mission-capable rate or higher--if they can't deliver them at a cost we are willing to pay--then we need to find another alternative.

Now, the Air Force has questioned whether Lockheed will actually be able to deliver what the company has promised. The Air Force has suggested the cost of fully modernizing the C-5s may significantly exceed original expectations. This has led the Air Force to conclude that C-5 modernization may not be as cost effective as we all had originally thought and hoped.

I wish to take a moment and share with my colleagues three areas in which the Air Force and Lockheed appear to be in disagreement. As you can see from the chart beside me, the Air Force and Lockheed disagree on the modernizing of C-5s in three areas. No. 1, propulsion system, that is aircraft engine; No. 2, installation costs and what they call touch labor costs, or the amount of man-hours to be invested in these changes; and finally, overhead costs which include, among other things, the kinds of problems that might be uncovered as Lockheed goes through and conducts the modernization of the C-5s--problems that aren't even related to the modernization changes that are being installed.

Now, this disagreement yields a C-5 modernization cost discrepancy of over $4 billion--not a small amount of money. With this fundamental cost disagreement coming to light, our hearing tried to get into the true cost of C-5 modernization. What we found was a temporary stalemate. We also found what appears to be a way forward. In their cost calculations of the C-5 modernization, the Air Force determined the cost of the C-5 modernization has grown over its baseline, causing the view of at least some in the Air Force to trigger what we call a Nunn-McCurdy breach. The Nunn-McCurdy breach, as some will recall, is part of a law passed in 1983 that allows Congress to track the rising costs of Defense programs. A breach of Nunn-McCurdy occurs when a Defense program procurement cost goes beyond 50 percent of its baseline. When this happens, the Department of Defense has to notify the Congress and the program is more heavily scrutinized, in this case by the office of the Secretary of Defense. Interestingly enough, though, we found that part of the Air Force calculation includes costs of inflation due to the risks the Air Force may incur if Lockheed cannot meet its goals. Lockheed also stated they have a different calculation to show some growth but not enough to trigger a Nunn- McCurdy breach.

Lockheed's witness at our hearing last Thursday stated that the contractor--that is Lockheed--is ready to alleviate the Air Force's concerns and, therefore, to decrease the amount of cost growth that the C-5 modernization would realize by providing the Air Force with a firm, fixed price contract to modernize all 108 aircraft at a set cost. If Lockheed exceeds this price, then the cost is on them--on Lockheed. The only obstacle--major obstacle at least--that stands in Lockheed's way is the Air Force's decision on how fast they want to fully modernize the C-5s. The President's budget for 2008 calls for modernizing C-5s, one starting in fiscal 2008, ramping up from 1 to as many as 12 several years down the line. But the contractors need to know how many aircraft are going to be modernized, and in order for them to be able to be held or bound to a fixed cost, they have to have some reasonable assurance that what is being projected will actually be followed, in this case by the Air Force and by us in the Congress.

Let me mention a couple of things in closing. One, it says propulsion system. This is one of the three areas of disagreement between Lockheed and the Air Force. This involves engines--actually the same engine that goes on Air Force One and a whole lot of other aircraft around the world. The engine, made by General Electric, provides generally between engine changes about 10,000 flight hours. It would replace an engine that gets about 1,000 hours between engine changes. That is a miserable-performing engine that is on the C-5, and it has led to all kinds of problems. There is a question about what is GE going to charge Lockheed to sell them four new engines for 108 planes, plus 25 spares. I think that ends up being about 457 engines.

In our conversation offline with GE, they gave us a price well below what the Air Force is expecting or is calculating. If GE is good to their word and Lockheed is good to its word, then this $1.2 billion deficit--or in the case of the Air Force, ostensibly an overrun--that shouldn't be there. That shouldn't be there. The question is, Can GE and Lockheed be compelled--contractually bound--to provide these engines at the lower cost that was quoted to us by GE.

The second piece deals with labor, touch labor costs, the amount of man-hours that will be used to build these or rebuild these aircraft. The first of the C-5s that were modernized took 143,000 man-hours, the second took 125,000, the third took about 110,000 man-hours. Lockheed says they think they can bring it in at about 100,000 man-hours. The Air Force says, no, 116,000 man-hours. Lockheed has a learning curve in terms of better, faster work on the modernization that they believe they can adhere to. The Air Force says, no, that is too optimistic.

Interestingly enough, though, Lockheed has said to the Air Force and to us at our hearing, if we are wrong on the number of man-hours that we say it is going to take to modernize the fourth, fifth or sixth aircraft, if we are wrong on the learning curve and not as successful as we think we are going to be, we will eat the cost. They say they will eat the cost. That is great that they offer that, but what we need is a contract that can bind them to eat the cost if there is a failure to perform as otherwise would be suggested.

Those are the kinds of things that are in dispute. Ultimately, I would hope--and I can't speak for Senator Coburn, but I believe I would share his view that we need large cargo aircraft. We have C-5s. They can carry more than most cargo aircraft. Right now, we are using Russian aircraft, Russian-made aircraft, a big aircraft called the AN- 124, to supplement the work that the C-5 can do. We spend today almost $200 million leasing Soviet aircraft or Russian aircraft to do the work for us of the strategic airlift. Nothing against the Russians, God bless them, but I don't know how comfortable you feel--I don't feel all that comfortable--relying on Russian cargo aircraft to supplement our needs around the world.

My hope is that what we will do is have our friends from Lockheed and our friends from the Air Force step back, for a moment, and then reengage in a way that seeks to narrow this, what you call a $4 billion delta or difference, in the assumption of costs for completing this project.

If Lockheed can produce fully modernized C-5Ms that will perform at a 75-percent mission-capable rate or more and do that at a cost of $85 million, $95 million or even $105 million on a flyaway basis, we would be foolish to turn down that deal. If they can't do it, if they can't deliver aircraft at that kind of mission-capable rate, if they can't do it along the line that I quoted as a price that we can be assured of, then we need to look for another alternative.

My hope, coming out of our hearing last week, is that there is a way forward, and we need the best efforts of

the Air Force and the best efforts of Lockheed to find it. If we get those best efforts, we may end up with what in the end will not be just a good deal for our country and for our taxpayers at a time when we are running huge budget deficits but a good deal for the men and women of the Armed Forces who are depending on strategic airlift every day of their lives.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, earlier I asked for some time. I asked for 10 minutes, but I would like to have at least 5 minutes before the vote. If we can do that, I would appreciate it.

Madam President, I rise in support of the Webb amendment. I have had a chance to think about this issue that is before us today wearing a hat other than my hat as Senator. During my time in the Vietnam war, I served 5 years active duty as a naval flight officer. I spent 3 tours in Southeast Asia with my squad. I spent another 18 years after that as a Naval Reserve flight officer, staying current in the P- 3 aircraft and was made mission commander of that aircraft.

Then for 5 years before I came to the Senate, from 1993 to 2001, I wore another hat. I was commander in chief of the Delaware National Guard, a force that served in the last 15 years in two wars--the Persian Gulf war and the Iraq war to date.

So I have had a chance to think about this issue, not just as a person who helps set policy for our country but someone who has worn a uniform on active duty in a hot war, wore a uniform in the Cold War, and then as commander in chief of my State's National Guard.

When I first heard of this idea that Senator Webb had come up with of equaling the Active-Duty deployed time with the dwell time folks have to catch up, to retrain, reunite with their families for Active-Duty personnel, I had some questions about it. I know others do as well.

One of the questions I had was, what if the President or what if the Secretary of Defense felt a particular individual with certain skills or unit that brought certain attributes to a fight were needed. Could the President or the Secretary of Defense intercede and be able to say: We need this individual, we need this unit. As it turns out, that concern has been addressed.

What if you had an individual who said: I know I am entitled to 12 months downtime or 2 years downtime, dwell time back home. I don't want to use it. I want to go back and serve. The question is, Does this amendment allow that to happen? And it does.

A number of legitimate questions have been raised not just as to the intent but the practical effect of the legislation, and I believe they have been addressed in a good way.

Another concern was, if we adopt this amendment, if it is passed as part of a Defense authorization bill and the President signs it, does it take effect immediately. If this provision were to take effect immediately, I would not want to be Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Navy. I would want to have time to try to make this work. It is not going to be easy, but given a reasonable amount of time, it could work.

To his credit, Senator Webb changed the early language of the amendment, I think after consulting with Secretary Gates, in order to say we are going to provide, after enactment of this provision, after it is signed into law, 4 months during which the Secretary of Defense and our services have a chance to figure out how we actually work with this provision and make it work.

I thank the Senator from Virginia for providing the kind of flexibility that is needed if we are going to enact this kind of legislation. I think it is good policy. I believe some major concerns that I and others had have been addressed.

My last point is I wish to talk about what it is like to be a reservist or guardsman. My Active-Duty squad flew out of the naval air station at Willow Grove, PA, north of Philadelphia. I tell my colleagues, if the men--and we were all men in my squadron at that time--if we thought we were going to be deployed a year or two, come back and then go back a year or two, we would not have had much in terms of reenlistment and reupping. They would be gone. It is not a question of patriotism, that is the fact. They have families to support. They have jobs. In their own lives, they have businesses, in some cases, to run. They need the kind of break that is envisioned in this legislation to enable them to not just be a patriot, to be a reservist, to be a citizen twice over but to always keep commitments to their families, keep commitments to their employers, and keep commitments, in many cases, to their employees, to the businesses they have started and gone on to run.

This is a good provision. It is a good proposal. It is better actually than the proposal we voted on several months ago. I urge my colleagues, particularly those who are on the fence--most people have made up their minds--particularly those on the fence, they can vote for this amendment not just in good conscience but I think knowing the questions that needed to be addressed have been addressed and that the people who will benefit from this will very much appreciate our taking this step.

I yield back my time.

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

Madam President, I feel compelled to respond to the comments of my colleague and friend from Kentucky. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of organizations throughout the country that are loosely supportive of the Republican Party, just as there are hundreds of organizations in this country that are loosely supportive of the Democratic Party. If one of those Republican organizations makes a particular charge or assertion, that does not mean that every Member of the U.S. Senate or the House, Republican in nature, or the administration believes or agrees with that assertion any more than one should believe that an assertion--in this case by an advertisement paid for by MoveOn.org--is reflective of the views of all of us. It is not. I found the advertisement distasteful, disappointing, and, frankly, not reflective of the views I hold and I suspect the views that almost everybody in the Senate, Democrat or Republican, holds.

I don't know General Petraeus well, but I do know him to be a decent and honorable person, a good leader; someone who has given really the majority of his life to serve the people of our country, sometimes in dangerous and harmful situations; someone who is willing to spend not just months but years away, separated from his family, in support of our country and serving as he has pledged to do, as he has sworn to do. He is someone who, in my own experience with him, is a straight shooter. He calls them like he sees them. He gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly. He did 2 months ago when several of us were over in Iraq and met with him and Ambassador Crocker.

I wish to speak for a moment as a veteran, a Vietnam veteran. My friend, Senator Bunning, talked about the question of the lack of respect and support our troops receive maybe from those of us on this side of the aisle. I couldn't disagree more. I remember what it was like 30, 35 years ago when

those of us who served overseas in an even less popular war in Southeast Asia, the lack of support we received, not so much from the Congress but from the American people. That was then. This is now. I think as a nation we learned a lot from the way we treated veterans back at the end--during and at the end of the Vietnam war. We have vowed not to make that same mistake. There is great support and affection for our troops, the men and women who serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, as great now as I have ever seen it.

While not everybody supports the war this administration has gotten us into, we support our troops. We provided money again and again and again. The Presiding Officer has led the fight to make sure we not only provide our troops with what they need in Iraq or in Afghanistan but to make sure the Veterans' Administration has the money it needs to meet the needs of our veterans when they come back to us harmed, injured, and in some cases maimed for life. I am one of those who come here--and I know many others--who come here to work together, and I want us to get things done.

General Petraeus, when he has talked to me--and I have heard him testify, and he is literally testifying again today on the Senate side--what he has said over and over again is there is not going to be a military victory, definitive military victory in Iraq as we would think of having occurred in other wars we have fought. The victory is going to be a political victory, if there is to be one, and my earnest hope is that there will be one. In part, what the surge is about is to provide a space for the Iraqi political leaders to make some tough decisions they have been unwilling--unable to make for the last 2 years. How are they going to divvy up and share their oil revenue? The potential is enormous. How are they going to share power among the different factions? What will they give the Baathists, the civilian arm of Sadam's regime? What role will they have in terms of helping the country go forward? Are they going to have elections? Are they going to amend their Constitution, as they promised to do 2 years ago, to protect minority rights? Those are things the Iraqis need to do. Those are tough decisions they need to make. They have been unwilling to make them. We are providing for them, hopefully, a greater calm, a little bit less hostility in which they can meet and deliberate and hopefully reach some kind of consensus. That is what we are endeavoring to do.

One of the roles for us here in the Congress is we play an oversight role, overseeing the administration's conduct of the war after getting us into this war. That is appropriate, and that is our constitutional responsibility. We also have the responsibility and an opportunity to try to put pressure--hopefully in a positive way--on the Iraqi leaders to do what they need to do if they are going to have a country. We have been very forthright in telling them again and again and again. My hope is that they begin to listen. If they do, then all of the sacrifice, the lives, the injuries, the money we have spent will not have been in vain--will not have been in vain. If they don't take advantage of the opportunities they have now and in the months ahead, they will have squandered this opportunity because the American people, as generous as we are, as supportive as we are of democracies here and around the world, we are not going to stand by forever and give up our own lives-- the welcoming back of the dead, to care for those who have been maimed--we are not going to do this forever. There is a limited period of time.

Back to General Petraeus, basically what he has said--and I heard him say it as recently as today--is the Iraqis have an opportunity to save their country. We can't do it for them. We can help provide an environment where they can make those tough decisions. We are endeavoring to do that. We can open the door; they have to walk through it. My hope is that they will.

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

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

Mr. President, it is almost 9 p.m. on the east coast, and out in California, where I used to live when I was in the Navy, I guess it is almost 6 o'clock. For the most part, here on the east coast, people have made their way home from work and school and they have finished their dinners and are getting ready to call it a day. Out on the west coast, they are still stuck in traffic. Between here and there are different variations of those two conditions.

I wish to start off by expressing my thanks to Senator Murray and to Senator Bond and members of their subcommittee for putting together what I think is a strong and a thoughtful bill. It is a challenge because we don't have unlimited resources to do that. It was a lot of work. So thanks to you and your staffs for providing the leadership.

I wish to talk a little about the importance of investing in our infrastructure. Maybe it is a bit different from what others have said today and earlier this week on this matter. I used to serve on the Amtrak board of directors when I was Governor, nominated by President Clinton to serve, and I actually come from a family of railroaders. My grandfather, on my father's side, was a railroader, and he took me and my sister on our first train ride when we were about 5 years old in West Virginia. I have been interested in trains, I suppose, ever since.

I think a lot of people feel that passenger rail was in its heyday in the first part of the last century. I suppose, to some extent, that is true. To a lot of people, passenger rail service is something that was big then and not so important now. They might be right. But I have a hunch that in some ways the best days for passenger rail could lie ahead in this country.

Our oldest son came home a couple of weeks ago from visiting Europe with some of his friends, and they had a chance to travel throughout Europe and the continent and to ride some terrific trains and also to ride some that weren't so terrific. My family and I were in Italy last summer, and we had a chance to ride some terrific trains, too, but also some that were not so terrific. But in a place where populations are fairly dense, in a place where the geography is actually rather compact, a lot of folks ride trains, as we know, and they invest a lot of their money in rail service.

They do so for reasons we ought to consider. They invest in passenger rail because they have congestion on the highways. They invest in passenger rail because they have congestion around their airports and in their airspace. They invest in passenger rail because they have concerns about dependence on foreign oil. They want to reduce their dependence on foreign oil. They invest in passenger rail because they want to reduce the emission of harmful materials or substances into and foul their air.

When you think about it, we have similar concerns in this country too. We have congestion on our highways. We can see it all across the country tonight, from east to west, as people are heading for home after work. We can see it around our airports almost anytime we try to fly out of an airport. Whether it is an airport in Seattle or Columbus or Cincinnati or Cleveland or whether it is an airport in Philadelphia, which is a suburb of Wilmington, DE, we have concerns about congestion on our highways and in the air in America.

We have concerns about our enormous dependence on foreign oil. Almost 60 percent of our oil comes from places beyond our borders and a lot is controlled by people who don't like us very much and some places that are fairly unstable. I am convinced every time I fill up my old Chrysler Town and Country minivan, which now has 175,000 miles on it-- pretty dependable car--that I am putting money in the pockets of people around the world in some of those unstable places and who are going to use our money to hurt us. That is not too smart.

So we have that concern that we share with folks in other places around

the world that invest in passenger rail. We have problems with air quality. We have great concerns with climate change and global warming, and we need to address this sooner rather than later.

The answer to addressing all those concerns is not just passenger rail, but it is part of the tool in the toolbox. It is an arrow in the quiver. It is something we are starting to awaken to in this country and say, hey, maybe this is part of the answer.

One of the encouraging things to me about this legislation is it acknowledges that passenger rail is part of the answer and it provides a bit more money for Amtrak, certainly a good bit more money for Amtrak than the administration requested, and a good bit more than was provided in the current fiscal year. It allows Amtrak to continue to upgrade the Northeast corridor so we can take these trains that will go 125 or even 150 miles an hour and be able to use them more effectively at speeds approaching 125 or 150 miles per hour, to shorten the travel times between major destinations on the east coast and, by shortening U.S. travel times, to get more people to ride the trains.

Believe it or not, more people are riding the trains these days. I saw some ridership numbers the other day that I found encouraging. I saw an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal--not a big advocate of better passenger rail service--and they mentioned that ridership on Amtrak nationwide is up this year about 6 percent. Ridership on the Acela Express, the high-speed trains in the Northeast corridor, is up about 20 percent. In places in the Midwest, the Chicago to St. Louis run, ridership is up about 50 percent this year. Out on the west coast, where they invest a lot of money in passenger rail, not just Federal money but a lot of local money, State money, their ridership is up about 15 percent. So people are starting to wake up to the idea that passenger rail might be a part of the solution.

I think it is terrific in this legislation that we think the Federal Government has some obligation to be a part of helping us to capture that potential. One of the reasons why more people are starting to ride trains is because we get tired of sitting in airports waiting to get on an airplane. We get tired of sitting on the airplane at the gate. We get tired of waiting for our airplane to take off as we sit on the taxiway or the runway until we finally get released from air traffic control.

Ontime performance for Amtrak nationwide is about 70 percent, about the same as airlines. But ontime performance for Acela Express, the high-speed express service, is almost 90 percent. Almost 90 percent. A lot of those trains are being run full these days. Part of the success for Amtrak, not the whole solution but part of it, is to make the express service, the Acela Express service--which is very popular, very much in demand, and is a premium service that people pay a lot of money to ride--to use the monies generated from that service to use as a cash cow to help support the other train service Amtrak provides where, frankly, they don't make the kind of money or generate the kind of revenues such as those generated by the Acela Express.

There is a complement to the legislation that is before us tonight in terms of the Amtrak investment. There is complement legislation that has been offered by Senator Lautenberg, Senator Lott, myself, and others that is called the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2007. It is basically a reauthorization for Amtrak and says: Let us not worry about a line or let us not stop with a line in an appropriations bill, however important that is--and it is important-- but let us look at the whole system nationwide and come up with ways we can provide, on an ongoing basis, for a more cost-effective service, maybe better quality service, and to provide incentives for States to invest in that service as well as the Federal Government.

It is legislation I hope we will take up on the floor. Believe it or not, we passed it about year and a half ago as an amendment to an appropriations bill, but it died in conference. We hope to take it up on its own and pass it. Representative Oberstar, in the House, has indicated a strong interest in working with us on companion legislation, and my hope is we will do that.

One last thing I wish to mention. For the last couple years, Senator Voinovich and I have spent a fair amount of time talking with one another and with others, and having people talk to us, about the need for investing in our infrastructure--not just passenger rail but investing in our infrastructure. And not just highways and bridges but wastewater treatment systems, clean water systems, flood control systems, and levees--infrastructure in a broader context.

As a politician, I have been a State treasurer, a Congressman, a Governor, and now a Senator. I know from experience that we love having ribbon cuttings. We like to cut a ribbon on a new highway or to open a new bridge. We like to have a ribbon cutting on a new runway at an airport or a new terminal. We like to build things that are new. We don't always want to spend the money to maintain what is not new or what once was new and now has begun to degrade in its quality. Senator Voinovich and I have introduced legislation that has been passed without a dissenting vote in the Senate which says that even though maintaining our infrastructure isn't the sexiest of issues, it is an issue that demands our attention.

What we propose is to set the stage for the next administration and the next Congress in a way that will better ensure that we address our aging infrastructure. And for a couple of reasons: One, for health and safety reasons; two, for economic reasons; and, three, for competitive reasons, to enable us to have a more vibrant economy and be competitive with the rest of the world in which we are competing and cooperating.

One of my colleagues tonight was talking to us about delegating our responsibilities to commissions, and she expressed her dismay that we did so much of that. Sometimes creating a commission is not so good an idea; other times, it can be a very good idea, as we saw in 1982. Social Security was about to go under, and so we created a blue-ribbon commission, led by Alan Greenspan, with a lot of good people on it. That led to a nearly unanimous consent agreement in 1983 about what we needed to do to save Social Security, literally from its demise that year. So we know from experience that commissions can serve a most positive purpose. The Postal Reform Commission, which the President appointed a couple years ago, worked with us in the Congress, and we passed very good legislation to bring the Postal Service into the 21st century.

What Senator Voinovich and I came up with is an infrastructure commission that would hopefully tee up for the next President and the next Congress a game plan, if you will, for investing in our infrastructure. Our proposal would call not just for looking at roads, highways, bridges, not just rail transit, not just airports, not just wastewater treatment, not just levees and flood control systems, but really to look at our entire infrastructure broadly and see what needs to be addressed 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15, 20, 25 years from now, what the priorities should be and how might we pay for that.

Our legislation calls for this Commission, eight members: two appointed by the President, two by the leaders of the House and Senate, majority leaders in the House and Senate--Speaker of the House, majority leader in the Senate--and one each by the minority leaders of the House and Senate, eight in all. As it turns out, four would be appointed by Republican officials and four would be by Democratic officials, and their charge would be to come back to us after the 2008 election--really, I think, sometime into 2009--and say this is a game plan. By working on it for the next year and a half, trying to build consensus, we would have a starting-off point in that next administration, with hopefully some buy-in from the new President and from our new Congress, to get started.

In any event, our colleagues here in the Senate said that this idea had some merit. They were good enough to give it unanimous support. It was introduced in the House by a Representative from Minnesota named Ellison, Keith Ellison. We are hopeful the House will take up the measure and we can send it to the President before this year is out.

I would make a mistake before concluding if I didn't also express my

thanks to the chair, Senator Murray, and to our ranking member on the committee for supporting some of the projects that are important to our congressional delegation--Senator Biden, Congressman Castle and myself and others whom we are privileged to represent. A lot of people who drive through my State ride up and down on I-95. Sometimes they have to wait for a while to get through a toll booth. There is some money in here to reduce that congestion and those delays. There is money in here to widen I-95 a bit and enable traffic to move expeditiously through our little State. That is important. We have money for improving the transit service in the northern part of the State where there is a lot of congestion and helping to move traffic up and down the coastal part of our State where a lot of people come in the summer and even in the fall months to visit places such as Rehoboth Beach and Bethany and Dewey and Lewes.

We are grateful for all of those investments in Federal dollars and more. They will benefit us in the State of Delaware, but because so many people travel through our State--we are only about 50 miles wide and roughly 100 miles long, but a lot of people drive through Delaware, travel through Delaware on trains and other means of transportation, their own vehicles--we want to make sure they can move through more quickly, have less congestion, put less bad emissions into the air, and save some gas. We think this legislation will help do all of those things.

That is pretty much what I wanted to get off my chest tonight. I thank you for the opportunity to do it and look forward to tomorrow morning when we convene again and have an opportunity to vote on a few more amendments and hopefully then, as a body, rise up and pass this legislation and be prepared to go to conference with our friends from the House of Representatives.