Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to thank the Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Jeffords, the Banking Committee Chairman Shelby and Ranking Member Sarbanes, Finance Committee Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Baucus, and Transportation Subcommittee Chairman Bond for all their hard work in developing this bill and bringing it to the floor. We all know how important it is that we complete work on it and get it to the President as soon as possible.

We face many challenges in our transportation system. Traffic congestion continues to worsen. In the Philadelphia area--which includes Wilmington, DE--rush hour motorists spent 38 hours in traffic in 2003. The number of cities experiencing 20 hours of delay or more per year has increased from only 5 in 1982 to 51 in 2003. This kind of congestion costs this country approximately $63 billion a year and wastes nearly 2.5 billion gallons of fuel. We can do better.

This bill would provide Delaware with $793 million over 5 years to address our transportation needs. These needs include the replacement of the Indian River Inlet Bridge Replacement in Sussex County which carries 16,000 to 18,000 vehicles daily, not including the summer beach traffic. It also includes needed improvements to increase capacity at the I-95/SR-1 interchange, the busiest interchange in New Castle County.

Transit would receive around $46.5 billion over 5 years, funding the increasing demand for transportation choices, allowing people to get around without a car. This demonstrates our growing awareness that while roads and bridges and highways are important and we still love our cars in this country, more and more people are using transit.

With the congestion we have on our highways, with our increasing dependence on foreign oil, with our increasing problems with air pollution, it certainly makes sense to provide reliable transit for people to get to work, shop or attend a ball game. In the city of Wilmington, nearly 27 percent of households have no car and 44 percent have only one. This saves families money that can be better invested in home-ownership and their children's education.

In Delaware, we are responding to the demand for more transportation choices by making improvements to allow more SEPTA trains to serve Wilmington and Newark, and we hope to extend rail service to Middletown in the near future. Also, the State is investing in the replacement of our buses to improve transit statewide.

The transit title will also help states fund welfare-to-work transportation programs. In Delaware, our welfare-to-work program provides approximately 3000 welfare recipients with access to jobs by creating alternative transit services in cooperation with other social service providers. This is the only way these participants could access employment and training.

In this important legislation, we are also investing $5.8 billion in safety programs. This includes an incentive program for states to pass primary seatbelt laws like we now have in Delaware. Wearing a seatbelt is the most important step anyone can take to improve their chances of surviving a car crash, and primary enforcement seatbelt laws are the most effective way to increase seatbelt use. Since Delaware's primary seatbelt law became effective in 2003, seatbelt usage has increased from 75 percent in 2003 to 82 percent in 2004.

We are also creating in this bill a program to make it safer for children to walk to school. A recent national survey found that while 70 percent of parents walked or bicycled to school as children, only 18 percent of their children do today. Parents often say that walking to school is no longer possible because there are busy, fast-moving, multi-lane streets between home and school and often no sidewalks at all.

As more and more children are driven to school, we see traffic jams in school parking lots and increasing pollution around schools. Meanwhile, children lose this simple way to get a little exercise at a time when many American children are struggling with being overweight and 15 percent are now considered obese, putting them at risk of a number of chronic diseases. Through the Safe Routes to School program, states will be able to slow cars around schools, add crossing walks, build sidewalks and organize walking school buses where members of the community walk a school bus route to walk kids to school.

Unfortunately, this bill does not completely overcome the tradition of separating the different modes of travel and treating them as if they are separate systems. The users of the transportation system--the American people--don't use the system that way. The design of highways affects people's ability to access transit, walk to the store or go for a jog. The way we design our transportation system affects people's quality of life, the amount of pollution in the air, the amount of oil we need, and the amount of polluted runoff in our water.

In fact, when we develop our transportation network without proper consideration of other neighborhood needs, we find ourselves having to spend more money to retrofit streets so that kids may safely walk to school or to decrease the amount of pollution that runs off roads into our rivers and lakes. And when we keep roads separate from transit and transit separate from intercity rail and rail separate from air travel, we miss the opportunity to make the system work more efficiently.

Sadly, this bill, which is supposed to address the Nation's surface transportation policy, barely even mentions it. But later in the year we will have the opportunity to consider what kind of support the Federal Government should provide freight and passenger rail. This is an important area that we have neglected for too long.

I hope as we consider a national rail policy we look at what has worked for highways, transit and air and use it to develop a robust rail system. I also hope that we do not consider rail in a vacuum but rather look for opportunities to coordinate rail investment with other modes of travel--connecting airports to cities through rail for more seamless travel and connecting ports to rail to highways for more efficient shipment of freight.

Finally, because of the need to schedule a vote at 5:30 last Thursday, I was unable to make a statement in favor of Senator Harkin's complete streets amendment, an amendment that I cosponsored and strongly supported. So I would like to do so now.

First I would like to thank my colleague, Senator Harkin, for offering this amendment. I am proud to be a cosponsor. The adoption of the complete streets amendment would be an important step forward in providing safe transportation options for Americans. It would support active and healthy lifestyles and encourage people to get out of their cars. It would also reduce pollution and our reliance on foreign oil.

It simply requires State transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations to fully integrate the needs and safety of all road users into the design and operation of federal-aid roads and highways. In other words, as we design our roads, we must consider more than just the needs of cars. We must consider bicyclists, pedestrians, and everyone who uses our roads.

There are deadly consequences when this does not occur. Recently, a young woman from Poland who was working for a year in Lewes, DE, was killed while riding her bike. There are hundreds of young people from Europe who come to work near the beaches in Delaware. Many of them do not have or

cannot afford a car and get around by bicycle.

This particularly young woman, named Katarzyna Reteruk, was leaving her place of employment--Anne Marie's Seafood and Italian Restaurant on Route 1--and was about to turn onto Route 24, when she was hit by a woman leaving her place of employment. Katarzyna was thrown from her bike, struck the hood and windshield of the car, and died a short while later.

This tragic event took place in a rapidly growing area of the State and on a highway that has had increasing congestion over the years. This is a challenge many areas of the country are facing. But we have to ensure that we learn from this tragedy and others like it. We must make improvements to our roadways for motorists--but we must also address the safety and mobility needs of bicyclists and pedestrians.

We often say that we want to encourage people to get out of their cars and be more active. But when there is no place for people to safely walk or bike, we can't expect them to do so. In a time of increasing obesity, especially in our children, the time has come to ensure that opportunities to walk to school or to a friend's house or just for exercise are available in as many places as possible.

By considering the needs of non-motorists, we will improve mobility for those who cannot afford a car--including young people just starting out--and allow a family of 5 to more easily get by with only 2 cars.

We have already included in this bill a program called Safe Routes to Schools to retrofit our roads to make them safer for children to walk to school. This amendment is an excellent addition to that provision in that it would ensure that new road projects are built with pedestrians in mind, saving us from having to spend money to retrofit roads later.

Under the complete streets amendment, State departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations would have to: 1, fully integrate the needs of pedestrians and bike riders in the transportation planning process; 2, promote pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements, and 3, set goals for increasing non-motorized transportation.

Metropolitan planning organizations serving 200,000 people or more, such as the one in Wilmington, DE, would have to designate a bicycle/ pedestrian coordinator and account for the safety needs of pedestrians and bicyclists in their long term plans.

Finally, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation would report to Congress annually on the share of research funds allocated to directly benefit the planning, design, operation and maintenance of the transportation system for non-motorized users.

This amendment would build expertise in how we can make our roads safer for bicyclists and pedestrians, while improving our roads for drivers as well. I hope that we are able to encourage its adoption in conference.

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

Mr. President, in a time of war, nothing is more important than making sure that our fighting men and women have what they need to do their jobs well. It is with our troops in mind that I will vote in favor of this supplemental appropriations conference report.

Having said that, I do have some major concerns about how this bill has been put together and how the Congress has conducted its business with respect to such emergency spending requests over the past several years.

Thousands of brave Americans have been serving our country in war zones since shortly after that fateful day of September 11, 2001. But 4 years later, the President and those of us in this Congress continue to refuse to budget for these wartime expenses. Rather than incorporating the costs of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget, these important expenditures continue to be tagged as ``emergency spending.'' Emergency spending should be reserved, in my view, for unforeseen needs.

We know, however, that the need for additional funding for our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan is something we should expect and be able to budget for. Unfortunately, this is not new for this Congress or for the Bush administration. This is, I believe, the fourth consecutive time that funding for military operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan have been requested outside the regular budgeting and appropriations process.

By not taking into consideration the costs of these supplemental requests, which we all know are coming, the President and the Congress can more easily fudge the true nature of our Federal deficits and what our spending assumptions will be over the foreseeable future. In other words, by keeping the spending out of the budget, the President and this Congress can paint a fiscal picture that is, frankly, rosier than reality.

Contrast, if you will, what we are doing today with what we did during the Vietnam conflict, the conflict I served in and I know others of us did as well. After one supplemental appropriations in 1966, President Johnson and later President Nixon included the cost of our military operations in Vietnam in their annual budget requests, not in emergency supplemental after emergency supplemental. They requested them in their annual budget request. That approach was the right approach. Whether people approved of the war in Vietnam and our involvement there, at least the approach of budgeting for it was appropriate. I believe we owe it to the American people, who are very aware of the cost and nature of our operations, to be upfront about the true state of our country's finances.

To make a second point, there have been times in the last several years when the House has passed a bill, the Senate has passed a bill, we convene a conference committee, and the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, have a full and open opportunity to participate in that conference committee.

Concerns have been raised. I think the chairman of this committee is, quite frankly, as fairminded a person as I know. It is a real joy to serve with him. I have said it to him privately and I will say it to him publicly. But I have heard reports back from those who felt they did not have opportunity extended to them to actually offer amendments in committee that they felt they had been assured they would have a chance to offer. That is a matter of concern to me and I think it would be if the shoe were on the other foot.

Third subject, REAL ID. There was an amendment I alluded to offered by Senator Durbin that passed the Senate. It passed the Senate 99 to 0. The amendment would have helped to compensate Federal employees who were called to active duty who were making more money as a Federal employee than they were after they had been activated to active duty. We passed by a

99-to-0 vote a provision that said we should make up the shortfall in those instances. That particular amendment that was passed by a 99-to-0 vote was left out of the conference report. I know other items were never considered by the Senate. A prime example of that is the controversial REAL ID proposal somehow did find its way into the legislation. As I recall, we never had a chance on the Senate floor to even discuss the REAL ID issue. It was not part of our supplemental bill. Yet when the final bill comes up, we are looking at 55 pages of new immigration law that this body has never debated and which was inserted at the behest of the House Republican leadership.

I have a serious concern about whether these immigration provisions make sense. I know some feel they do, but I have some real concerns. The REAL ID Act, for example, would repeal the driver's license standards framework we created last year in the Intelligence Reform Act, which is based on the recommendations made unanimously by the 9/11 Commission. In place of the 9/11 Commission framework, REAL ID would create an entirely new and expensive Federal standard for the issuance of driver's licenses but provide no funding to my State, Mississippi, South Carolina, or any other State, for that matter. As a former Governor, I believe such unfunded mandates should not be considered lightly.

Furthermore, I have heard from a number of constituents in my own State who are concerned that the bill would make it more difficult for those fleeing religious persecution to gain asylum, while allowing the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive all laws in order to build a fence along our borders.

In this post-9/11 world we know it is vital to ensure security not only along our borders but also within our Nation. However, instead of thoroughly considering homeland security and immigration reform measures, the House has hastily tacked on legislation that could have potential negative consequences for the Latino and other immigrant communities in my State and across our country. I think we should have had a proper debate to ensure that this legislation would actually protect our Nation and make us more secure.

The last thing I want to mention deals with Israel and the peace process there. I returned from that part of the world about 5 weeks ago, convinced there is an opening, a possibility, however difficult to achieve, that Israelis and Palestinians may find common ground; that the Palestinians finally have a chance to end up with a homeland of their own and to live side by side in a separate state, in a geographical area with the Israelis, who would have peaceful and secure borders and reasonable economic and diplomatic relations with their Arab neighbors.

I came back and called Secretary Rice and said, we ought to be putting as much energy and time and attention into trying to forge a final compromise, a final peaceful resolution, in Israel. To the extent we can do that between the Palestinians and the Israelis, we would probably do more to reduce the ability of terrorists to raise money, to reduce the ability of terrorists to recruit new terrorists, to reduce their ability to convince people in some kind of unholy jihad to go out and blow themselves up and kill a lot of innocent people.

If the United States can somehow emerge from a peace process in the Middle East and Israel and be seen as the honest broker in helping the Israelis and the Palestinians get to a fair and peaceful permanent resolution, we would do more to set back the terrorists and end the war on terrorism, to make us safer in this country, to make people safer in Israel, in Palestinian-controlled areas, to make people safer in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

When I was in Israel, I had the opportunity to travel to Ramallah. During that trip, we were behind a flatbed truck. As that truck went from Israeli-controlled territory into the West Bank, it had to go through a checkpoint. At the checkpoint, literally everything on the flatbed truck had to be removed and moved on to another flatbed truck in order to make sure there was not contraband, explosives or something there that would represent an endangerment to other people.

One of the best ways to ensure that terrorists still have plenty of places from which to recruit new terrorists in that part of the world is to ensure that the rate of unemployment in Palestinian-controlled areas remains at about 50 percent. It is in our interest, it is in the interest of the Israelis, it certainly is in the interest of Palestinians who want peace and a better life, for us to help bring down the rate of unemployment.

The way to do that is not to have trucks go from one part of that area to stop at a checkpoint and offload on to a new truck. There has to be a free flow of people and a free flow of goods, a free flow of commerce in that part of the world in order to help get the Palestinian economy up and on its feet and to bring down unemployment.

My parents used to say to me, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. Well, people who do not have anything to do with their time are also prime for being recruited as terrorists. To the extent we can help bring down the unemployment rate in the Palestinian communities, we also bring down the likelihood they are going to be recruited to become terrorists.

In the bill that passed the Senate, there is a provision for some $200 million to support Palestinian political, economic, and security reforms. As we have gone through the process in conference, roughly the same amount of money has emerged, and it is not going directly to the Palestinian Authority. A portion of that, maybe $50 million, will end up going to the Government of Israel as they try to create high- security checkpoints which would allow that truck I talked about earlier to go through a high-tech security checkpoint and not have to be offloaded. It would enable people to move freely who are trying to get a job or going to a job from Palestinian areas to Israeli areas or vice versa, without being impeded from doing that, or having to spend hours trying to get through a checkpoint.

At the same time, we have the ability through the technology of today to stop the terrorists. People who are carrying contraband or explosives or stuff that will enable them to hurt other people can be stopped at these checkpoints. There is money in this bill that would enable the Israelis to help build terminals, checkpoints for folks to pass through, Palestinians or Israelis, for that matter, to reduce the likelihood of terrorist incidents that will grow out of that movement of people, and to better ensure that goods and services in commerce can move about freely. So that is a good thing.

There are some who will quarrel with whether the money should have gone directly to the Palestinian Authority or whether it is more appropriate to go through other organizations that we call NGOs. I am not going to get into that argument.

I say to my friend from Mississippi, we may have a chance later on-- maybe in the Foreign Affairs appropriations bill or the foreign operations bill--to come back and revisit this issue and decide whether, given the reforms that are being made in the Palestinian Authority through reduced corruption, to tamp down on terrorism within organizations such as Hamas, we may have the opportunity to come back and decide whether to allocate some additional money later this year to strengthen the position of President Abbas and to reward positive behavior on his behalf and that of other Palestinians.

So those are points I wanted to make. I am going to recap them again very briefly. First, the concern as we go forward for us to take as an example the budgeting approach used by earlier administrations, Democrat and Republican, President Johnson, President Nixon, at least in terms of funding the Vietnam war. After the first emergency supplemental appropriation, fiscal year 1966, they said we are going to make part of our regular budget request moneys to support that war effort. Again, we ought to do the same thing now going forward.

Second, I call on our Republican friends to remember the Golden Rule, to treat other people the way we want to be treated. As we go forward in these conference committees, to the extent we treat people fairly from our side, some day when we are in the majority--and some day we will be--more

likely we will end up with a situation where the minority, in that case the Republicans, will be treated fairly, too.

On REAL ID, it will be interesting to see what the States come up with in response to these unfunded mandates. I don't like unfunded mandates. I never liked them as a Governor. I don't like it now. Whenever we in Washington figure out that we ought to tell the States and local governments how to spend the money, we don't provide the money. We tell them how to raise the money, or not raise the money, but we do not provide an offset. That is a slippery slope. I think we are on that slippery slope with respect to this REAL ID provision.

Finally, on the Palestinian peace initiative, I think it is important to promote investments in the Palestinian areas to get their economy moving again, and it is important we help fund security measures that enable the free flow of commerce, of people and goods in and out of the Palestinian areas so they can reduce their unemployment rates and reduce the threats of terrorism.

With that having been said, I am going to stop here. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I appreciate that. I will miss my train, but go ahead. I yield to the Senator.

I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania, and I promise to be very brief.

Mr. President, I have been here 4 years. I have never placed a hold, as I recall, on any nomination for anyone to serve in this administration.

When Christie Whitman was nominated to head up EPA, I said: Congratulations. What can I do to help get you confirmed and to confirm the members of the team you want to surround yourself with? And I went to work on it.

When Mike Levitt was nominated to succeed her, I called Mike Levitt-- both him and Governor Whitman, with whom I served--I called Mike Levitt and I said: Congratulations. What can I do to help get you confirmed and the team you want to surround yourself with? And I went to work on it.

When Tommy Thompson was nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, I called to congratulate him and said: What can I do to help get you confirmed and confirm the team you want to surround you? And I went to work on it.

When Tom Ridge was nominated to be Secretary of Homeland Security, I called him and I said: Congratulations. What can I do to help get you confirmed and to confirm the team you want around you?

For me to stand here today in an effort to stop, at least for a short while, the nomination of Stephen Johnson to be Administrator of EPA is out of character for me. That is not the way I do business. I hope my colleagues realize that after 4 years I am a guy who likes to work across the aisle, and whether the issues are some of the issues Senator Reid just mentioned--class action reform, bankruptcy reform legislation, now asbestos, overhauling the postal system, comprehensive energy bill--I am one on the Democrat side who looks forward to working not only with my colleagues but with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

We have problems in our country, challenges we face on all fronts. Among those challenges we face is what to do to improve the quality of our air and how we can do that in a way that does not cost consumers an arm and a leg. What can we do to improve the quality of our air that does not encourage the shifting of utility plants from coal, which we have in abundance, to natural gas, which we don't.

We have had sort of a Hobson's choice in the last couple of years-- the administration's clear skies proposals, multipollutant bill dealing with reducing sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury from utility plants, compared to the proposal of our colleague from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, and others, who would propose to go further, a lot further, a lot faster than the administration on those three pollutants, and add a fourth, carbon dioxide.

The Presiding Officer, as well as my friend from Pennsylvania--we have all served in the House together. I don't know about them, but when I served in the House, I never liked it when I was dealt a Hobson's choice--a position over here and another position over here. I never liked it.

One of the great things about the Senate is we can craft something in the middle. What I sought to do in working with people such as Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, Lincoln Chafee from Rhode Island, and Judd Gregg from New Hampshire, was to come up with something in the middle, a centrist approach that we believe reduces the emission of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury from utility plants, gets a start in slowing down the growth of emissions from CO2, and does so in a way that does not cost consumers an arm and a leg and, frankly, does not lead to a lot of shifting off of coal and onto natural gas.

We introduced legislation the first time in 2002. That was the year I first asked EPA for comparative analysis, comparing the administration's clear skies proposal with our bipartisan bill with the Jeffords bill. In 2003 we got a lot of raw data and not much analysis from EPA. Along with the raw data and the limited analysis they sent us, they said some of the assumptions on which this analysis was conducted are, frankly, out of date and that the information we have shared with you is maybe not as valid as it otherwise would be.

We renewed the request and asked for the comparative analysis of the President's proposal of the clear skies with the Jeffords proposal and our proposal in the middle. We found out in 2004--we heard the information could not be provided because it looked as if Congress, the Environment and Public Works Committee, was not going to move to cleaner legislation in 2004, so they did not want the EPA to do the analysis.

We renewed our request in 2005 for the comparative analysis, and we were told that no, the EPA does not have time because we are moving so quickly toward enactment of clean air legislation.

We are now in a situation where the President's proposal was not approved by committee, and we are not moving anything. The only thing that is moving right now is lawyers--to file lawsuits on behalf of environmental groups or on behalf of utilities. It is not a good situation.

I came here to legislate. I didn't come here to litigate. I came here to get things done.

We have about 50,000 people in my State who suffer from asthma, and about 20,000 of them are kids. We have too much smog in my State--the ozone problem and too much smog--especially in the summertime, more than we do in other parts of the country. We have in my State too much mercury that has been ingested by fish, and pregnant women in Delaware and other places around the country eat those fish. There are high levels of mercury in those fish. We know what it does to the brains of the unborn those pregnant women carry.

Not everybody believes carbon dioxide leads to global warming and that we are actually seeing a temperature rising on this planet of ours. I will tell you NASA says this year will be the warmest year on record since we have been keeping records, and we have been keeping records for 150 years. We are told that 9 out of the last 10 years have been the warmest years since we have been keeping temperature records in this country.

The glaciers--I have seen some of them, and maybe others here have, too--are disappearing way up North and way down South. The snowcaps on some of the tallest mountains in the world are disappearing, too. We are actually seeing temperatures rise. We are seeing sea levels rise.

I am not going to get into an argument today about whether there is a real problem. I believe there is. I respect the views of others who disagree, but I think the preponderance of scientific evidence says we need to get started on this issue.

How does that lead us to the nomination of Stephen Johnson? I have been asking for 3 years, from the EPA, for scientific analysis that will enable our committee and, frankly, the Senate to decide what kind of clean air legislation, multipollutant legislation, to move out of committee to bring to the Senate floor. Frankly, we have not gotten an altogether satisfactory response.

The responses are getting a little better, but we are not quite where I think we need to be. Stephen Johnson is a good man. He will be a good administrator if this administration will let him do his job. If we do not have the scientific analysis we need to be able to use good science to decide how far, how fast to go in reducing the emissions of these four pollutants, we are not going to get a clean air bill. It is just that simple.

Someday, we will have a Democratic President. It could be in a couple years. It could be longer than that. Someday, we will have a Democratic majority in the Senate, maybe even in the House. I do not think it should matter who is in the White House or who is in the majority here in the Senate. We need to work across the aisle on issues such as this. If you look at the history of this body: clean air, bipartisan legislation; clean water, bipartisan legislation; brownfields, bipartisan legislation.

If we are going to find agreement, common ground on multipollutant legislation, it is going to be because we work together, not because EPA was compelled to withhold data or information from one side or the other, but because they shared that information, and we used that information and good science to go forward.

Let me close with this. There is going to be a vote on cloture--it could be tomorrow; it could be Friday--on Stephen Johnson. As much as I am convinced he is a good man and would be a good administrator of EPA, I am even more convinced we need not just a good person to head up EPA, but we need strong, balanced multipollutant legislation in this country. The only way I believe that legislation is going to move through our committee and through this Senate is if we have good, comparable analysis, good comprehensive analysis. It is not hard to get.

I spoke with Mr. Johnson twice today. He was good enough to respond to me in writing to my requests. We met and talked a number of times. He has suggested to me what he thinks might be a compromise on the amount of information they would be willing to share. I responded, in turn, with a counterproposal. In my judgment, it is eminently reasonable.

I would hope somebody on the other side--our Republican friends either here or down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue--would see that maybe the better part of valor and a way to get to a win-win situation is to simply say: We will provide the information that has been requested. We will stop squabbling about it and just provide it.

If they do that, we can negotiate in earnest this spring on a multipollutant bill; and we can pass, this year, that legislation. I would call that a win-win situation--a win-win because Stephen Johnson would be allowed, literally, to be confirmed this week to head up EPA; and our country would be on the road to having air that is cleaner to breathe and less polluted with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury; and we would have a world where the threat of global warming has been reduced a little bit as well. Those are two good outcomes.

My hope is, before we push this ball any further down the court, we can come to agreement and get those two things done.

Mr. President, I yield back my time and thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for his accommodation.

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

Mr. President. I rise today in recognition of Rachel Simon and her extraordinary book, Riding the Bus with my Sister. The book chronicles the time her developmentally disabled sister Beth spends riding the bus. It brings to light the world of adults with developmental disabilities, finds unlikely heroes in everyday life, and discovers unrealized inner strength.

Rachel Simon was born in 1959 in Newark, NJ, the second of four children. Her family moved around New Jersey and Pennsylvania several times when she was a child, and Rachel, who was always a very social, creative person, wrote mountains of letters to keep up with all her distant friends. She also wrote short stories, novels, and plays, which she enjoyed sharing with others.

Rachel graduated from Solebury School, a boarding school in New Hope, PA, in 1977. She then went on to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. During her years in college, she discovered the secrets of discipline and time management. She was also captivated by her courses in anthropology and graduated in 1981.

After college, Rachel moved to Philadelphia, where she spent the next 5 years at a variety of jobs, including paralegal, administrative assistant, and research supervisor for a television study. At 26, she entered a graduate program in creative writing.

In the next several years, Rachel wrote the story collection Little Nightmares, Little Dreams and the novel The Magic Touch. From her house in Abington, PA, she began teaching private classes in creative writing. In 1995, Rachel took a job running events at the Barnes & Noble in Princeton, NJ, and eventually moving to that area.

Around that time, Rachel also began writing commentary for the Philadelphia Inquirer and teaching at Bryn Mawr College, in addition to continuing with her private classes. In 1997, she published The Writer's Survival Guide and then worked on some long pieces of fiction.

As readers of Riding the Bus with my Sister know, Rachel's life changed when she wrote an article about her sister Beth's unusual lifestyle of riding the buses in the city where she lives. Over the course of riding with Beth for the next year, Rachel came to leave most of her jobs behind, found her way back to her sister, and rediscovered her friendships.

In May 2005, Riding the Bus with my Sister will be televised as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on CBS. Rosie O'Donnell is starring as Beth, Andie MacDowell is starring as Rachel, and Anjelica Huston is directing.

Both Rachel and her sister Beth are amazing women, and I rise today to honor them.

Mr. President, we have been joined this morning by the Senator from Colorado, and I yield to him such time as he may consume.

Mr. President, yesterday I was in my State capital, Dover, DE, before I came down here. I was a short distance from a place called the Golden Fleece Tavern. It no longer exists, but it was the site of the place where Delaware became the first State to ratify the Constitution. They did that on December 7, 1787. That action took place a couple of months after a Constitutional Convention about 75 miles up the road in Philadelphia.

Some of my colleagues may recall that one of the last issues resolved at the time of the Constitutional Convention was the question of how they were going to select these judges, the third branch of our Government. How do we select these judges? There were some at that time who were fearful of creating a Presidency that would be too strong, having had a bite of the apple of putting up with a king of England for a number of years. They did not want to create a king or someone of royalty in this country to be our leader. Our Founding Fathers worked diligently in any number of ways to create checks and balances to ensure that we didn't end up with a king but ended up with a President. Among the checks and balances they incorporated into our Constitution is one that deals with the selection of our judges. We all know how Presidents nominate and the Senate confirms or does not confirm nominees to lifetime appointments to the Federal bench.

Twice in our Nation's history we have seen instances where a President sought to stack the courts. Both were Democrats. One was Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of his second term as President, and a second was FDR at the beginning of his second term as President. Both times, both Presidents, both Democrats, were rebuffed. Today, Democrats no longer reside in the White House. Today, the Republicans are in the majority here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

With the election of last November, President Bush is in a position to see much--not all, but a good deal--of his legislative agenda approved; perhaps modified but ultimately approved. He is also in a position to leave an even more enduring legacy through his nomination of hundreds of judges in the Federal courts of almost every State. In President Bush's first term, he nominated over 200 men and women to the Federal bench, and 215 nominees were actually debated here on the Senate floor, and 205 were approved. That is an approval rate of about 95 percent. Of the 10 who were not approved, our side would say they were simply out of the mainstream.

As the 108th Congress concluded last year, the vacancy rate stood at the lowest, I believe, since the Reagan era. How did that compare with the Clinton era? In President Clinton's time as President for 8 years, 81 percent of his Federal nominees were approved, as compared to 95 percent of President Bush's in the last 4 years. It is kind of an irony, at least to me, that 81 percent for President Clinton was enough, it was OK, but 95 percent for President Bush is unacceptable.

While our Republican friends are prepared to change the rules of the Senate in an effort to make it a lot easier to confirm Federal judges, and are poised, I am told, to turn some 200 years of precedent on its head because 95 percent may not be enough, I think to do so would be a mistake.

We have a chance to pass not only class action legislation, but we have a chance to pass bankruptcy legislation, asbestos litigation reform, a comprehensive energy policy, restructuring of the postal system for the 21st century, and on and on. This could be the most fruitful legislative session in recent memory. I would hate to see us destroy that potential.

I say also that the slope we get on with respect to changing the way we close off debate on judicial nominations is a slippery one. Today, we may want to apply it to judicial nominations; later on we may want to apply it to nominees for Cabinet positions or nominations for other positions. It is a slippery slope.

My Republican friends would be wise to listen to former Republican Senators who served on that side of the aisle, people such as Senators Wallop, McClure, Danforth, and today Senator Dole, Robert Dole. They reminded today's Republican Senators, the majority in the Senate, that the bed we make today is one we may have to sleep in. There won't always be a Republican President. Some day there will be a Democrat President. It could be 4 years from now. There will not always be a Republican majority in the Senate. It goes back and forth.

I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, before we go down this road, keep in mind a couple of things. No. 1, we have the potential to get so much done this year. I would hate to see us blow that opportunity.

No. 2, this is a slippery slope--a policy change that may be designed initially to make it easier to confirm judicial appointments but could easily be applied to other appointments to other positions.

No. 3, some Democrats would take some consolation in the thought that we are not going to always be in the minority, and as there was a Democrat President for the last 8 years for the last century, there will be another one in the future.

My Republican friends, be careful of the bed you make because someday you will have to chance to sleep in it.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Richard Litsey, a fellow on the Finance Committee staff of Senator Baucus, be granted the privilege of the floor during consideration of H.R. 1268, the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental appropriations, and all rollcall votes thereon.

Mr. President, this is a simple amendment.

This is a straightforward amendment. If my colleagues agree with me, a U.S. Senator who wants to reduce taxes in a way that decreases the budget deficit, it is OK to do that.

For this Senator or any Senator who wishes to reduce taxes, we can do that under this amendment, but if those taxes increase the budget deficit and the debt for this country, we need to muster 60 votes. The moneys for the offset can come from other taxes or

they can come from reducing spending to provide the offset.

I urge a ``yes'' vote, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I would like to set aside a few moments today to reflect on the life of Stephen McGowan. Steve epitomized the best of our country's brave men and women who fought to free Iraq and to secure a new democracy in the Middle East. He exhibited unwavering courage, dutiful service to his country, and above all else, honor. In the way he lived his life--and how we remember him--Steve reminds each of us how good we can be.

A 1996 graduate of St. Mark's High School, Steve was the son of Ms. Bobbie McGowan, a personal friend of my family. Steve then attended the University of Delaware and Wilmington College, studying criminal justice. He joined the Army 3 years ago, wanting to serve in the Army partly because he could not find a job with enough challenge and adrenaline in other careers he had considered. According to his family, Steve enjoyed the challenge, especially physical challenge and the

mental challenge that went with a military career--the challenge to try harder, get stronger, and push the limits. That was true in all aspects of his life. He played soccer until he graduated from high school, but when that grew too tame for him, he switched to rugby.

Steve enlisted on September 17, 2002, and was selected for combat medic training, which he pursued with distinction at the U.S. Army Medical School at Sam Houston, Texas.

Before being deployed to Iraq, Stephen earned a parachutist badge at the U.S. Army Airborne School and served for approximately 15 months with the 2nd Infantry Division near the DMZ in Korea. Steve volunteered to join his unit's 2nd Brigade Combat Team to spare medics with spouses and children and arrived with the unit in Kuwait in early August 2004. Within a few weeks, he deployed to Ramadi, about 45 miles west of Baghdad, where his unit supported the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and was responsible for VIP escort, area security and other ``highly operated missions.'' He died when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle in Ramadi, Iraq. Before returning home, Steve was awarded the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Armed Service Ribbon, and Global War on Terror Expedition Medal. A Bronze Star will be awarded posthumously.

Steve was a highly regarded young soldier. He joined the military in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom because he felt that as a single person with no children, he could go and take someone else's spot. His family remembers him as the embodiment of pride, honor and dignity. He was admired by every man and woman he worked with and every commanding officer with whom he served. According to his sister, Michaela, ``Steve was raised with the values that you find in the military and he lived them. Steve touched so many lives and I'm so proud of the man he became.''

Despite the close calls and the fact U.S. forces in Iraq are fighting insurgents who wear civilian clothes and hide among the general population, Steve and his squad carried toys and athletic equipment with them when they went on patrol. Last year, he asked family and friends to send him small items that he could hand out as gifts for Iraqi children rather than Christmas presents.

In one e-mail, he said that Iraqi girls had become entranced by the sight of some Beanie Baby dolls the soldiers handed out. The story so touched his mother, Bobbie McGowan, that she organized a Beanie Baby drive at the Charter School of Wilmington, where she is dean of humanities. Students reacted so positively to her request for the dolls that she was swamped with them. Students donated so many dolls that she had to send them to her son in small lots because he did not have room to store them all. His mother, Bobbie, takes comfort in the fact that her son had not only saved lives in Iraq as a medic but that he had also touched many more lives by passing out toys to children. This was a true testament to the kind of soldier--the kind of man--Steve was.

He was a soccer, biking, and outdoor enthusiast and will be remembered especially for his rugby adventures with the University of Delaware, the Wilmington's Men League and the 2nd Infantry Division Rugby Club. In 2001, Steve took a trip to New Zealand while accompanying his rugby mate who was exploring professional rugby opportunities. Steve's favorite team was the All Blacks. Traveling in New Zealand gave him the opportunity to do what he loved--experience new cultures and have a new adventure.

This tragedy strikes particularly close to home. Stephen's mother, Bobbie, is a highly regarded member of the faculty at the Charter School of Wilmington, where our sons attend high school. Steve's death is a terrible blow to his family and a source of deep sorrow for those of us privileged to know his family. I rise today to commemorate Steve, to celebrate his life, and to offer his family our support and our deepest sympathy on their tragic loss.

Mr. President, I rise today to join my friend from Maine, Senator Collins, in introducing the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2005, legislation that makes the reforms necessary for the Postal Service to thrive in the 21st Century and to better serve the American people. This bill is almost identical to S. 2468, the version of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that was unanimously reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee last June on a 17-0 vote.

When I rose with Senator Collins to introduce S. 2468 last year, I noted that some of our colleagues may wonder why we need postal reform. Most of us probably receive few complaints from our constituents about the Postal Service. Most Americans like the Postal Service just the way it is and don't want to see it changed. We must keep in mind, however, that, despite the fact that the mailing industry, and the economy as a whole, have changed radically over the years, the Postal Service has, for the most part, remained unchanged for more than three decades now.

Senator Collins and I are re-introducing this bill today, then, because the Postal Service continues to operate under a business model created a generation ago.

In the early 1970s, Senator Stevens led the effort in the Senate to create the Postal Service out of the failing Post Office Department. At the time, the Post Office Department received about 20 percent of its revenue from taxpayer subsidies. Labor-management relations were at their worst, service was suffering and there was little hope the department would be able to muster the resources necessary to service a growing delivery network.

By all accounts, the product of Senator Stevens' labors, the Postal Reorganization Act signed into law by President Nixon in 1971, has been a phenomenal success. The Postal Service today receives virtually no taxpayer support. The service its hundreds of thousands of employees provide to every American, nearly every day is second to none. The Postal Service now delivers to 141 million addresses each day and is the anchor of a $900 billion mailing industry.

As we celebrate the success of the Postal Reorganization Act, however, we need to be thinking about what needs to be done to help the Postal Service continue to thrive in the years to come.

The Postal Service is clearly in need of modernization once again. Back in the early 1970s, none of the Postal Service's customers had access to fax machines, cell phones or pagers. Nobody imagined that we would ever enjoy conveniences like e-mail and electronic bill pay that could replace a First Class letter. That, of course, is no longer the case. Most of the mall I receive from my constituents these days arrives via fax and e-mail instead of hard copy mail, a marked change from my days in the House and even from my more recent days as Governor of Delaware.

This continuing electronic diversion of mail, coupled with a slow economy and the threat of terrorism, has made for some rough going at the Postal Service of late. In 2001, as Postmaster General Potter came onboard, the Postal Service was projecting its third consecutive year of deficits. They lost $199 million in 2000 and $1.68 billion in 2001. They were projecting losses of up to $4 billion in fiscal year 2002. Mail volume was falling, revenues were below projections and the Postal Service was estimating that it needed to spend $4 billion on security enhancements in order to prevent a repeat of the tragic anthrax attacks that took several lives. The Postal Service was also perilously close to its $15 billion debt ceiling and had been forced to raise rates three times in less than two years in order to pay for its operations.

A number of positive steps have been taken since 2001. General Potter has led a commendable effort to improve productivity and make the Postal Service more efficient. Billions of dollars in costs have been taken out of the system--some $4.3 billion since 2002--according to the Postal Service's most recent annual report. Thousands of positions have been eliminated through attrition and successful automation programs have yielded great benefits, resulting in the smallest workforce seen at the Postal Service since the early 1980s.

Perhaps most dramatically, the Postal Service learned in 2002 that an unfunded pension liability they once believed was as high as $32 billion was actually significantly lower. Senator Collins and I responded with legislation, the Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act, which cut the amount the Postal Service must pay into the Civil Service Retirement System each year by nearly $3 billion. This has freed up money for debt reduction and prevented the need for further rate increases until at least next year. The Postal Service's debt to the Treasury now stands at about $1.8 billion--the lowest it's been in more than 20 years--and rates have remained stable since the passage of the pension bill.

Aggressive cost cutting and a lower pension payment, then, have put off the postal emergency we thought was right around the corner just a few years ago. But cost cutting can only go so far and will not solve the Postal Service's long-term challenges. These long-term challenges were laid out in stark detail last year when Postmaster General Potter and then-Postal Board of Governors Chairman David Fineman testified before the House Government Reform Committee's Special Panel on Postal Reform. Mr. Fineman pointed out in his testimony that the total volume of mail delivered by the Postal Service has declined by more than 5 billion pieces since 2000. Over the same period, the number of homes and businesses the Postal Service delivers to have increased by more than 5 million. First Class mail, the largest contributor to the Postal Service's bottom line, is leading the decline in volume. Some of those disappearing First Class letters are being replaced by advertising mail, which earns significantly less. Many First Class letters have likely been lost for good to fax machines, e-mail and electronic bill pay.

Despite electronic diversion, the Postal Service continues to add between 1.6 million and 1.9 million new delivery points each year, creating the need for thousands of new routes and thousands of new letter carriers to work them. In addition, faster-growing parts of the country will need new or expanded postal facilities in the coming years. As more and more customers turn to electronic forms of communication, however, letter carriers are bringing fewer pieces of mail to each address they serve. The rate increases that will be needed to maintain the Postal Service's current infrastructure, finance retirement obligations to its current employees, pay for new letter carriers and build facilities in growing parts of the country will only erode mail volume further.

The Postal Service has been trying to modernize on its own. General Potter and his management team are making progress, but there is only so much they can do without legislative change. Even if the Postal Service begins to see volume and revenues pick up, we will still need to make fundamental changes in the way the Postal Service operates in order to make them as successful in the 21st Century as they were in the 20th Century.

This is where the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act comes in. First, our bill begins the process of developing a modern rate system for pricing Postal Service products. The new system, to be developed by a strengthened Postal Rate Commission, re-named the Postal Regulatory Commission, would allow retained earnings, provide the Postal Service significantly more flexibility in setting prices and streamline today's burdensome rate making process. To provide stability, predictability and fairness for the Postal Service's customers, rates would remain within a cap to be set each year by the Regulatory Commission.

The second major provision in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires the Postal Service to set strong service standards for its Market Dominant products, a category made up mostly of those products, like First Class mail, that are part of the postal monopoly. The new standards will improve service and will be used by the Postal Service to establish performance goals, rationalize its physical infrastructure and streamline its workforce.

Third, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act ensures that the Postal Service competes fairly. The bill prohibits the Postal Service from issuing anti-competitive regulations. It also subjects the Postal Service to state zoning, planning and land use laws, requires them to pay an assumed Federal income tax on products like packages and Express Mail that private firms also offer and requires that these products as a whole pay their share of the Postal Service's institutional costs. The Federal Trade Commission will further study any additional legal benefits the Postal Service enjoys that

its private sector competitors do not. The Regulatory Commission will then find a way to use the rate system to level the playing field.

Fourth, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act improves Postal Service accountability, mostly by strengthening oversight. Qualifications for membership on the Regulatory Commission would be stronger than those for the Rate Commission so that Commissioners would have a background in finance or economics. Commissioners would also have the power to demand information from the Postal Service, including by subpoena, and have the power to punish the Postal Service for violating rate and service regulations. In addition, the Regulatory Commission will make an annual determination as to whether the Postal Service is in compliance with existing rate regulations and service standards and will have the power to punish them for any transgressions.

Fifth, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act revises two provisions from the ``Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act in an effort to shore up the Postal Service's finances in the years to come. As our colleagues may be aware, that bill required the Postal Service, beginning in 2006, to deposit any savings it enjoys by virtue of lower pension payments into an escrow account. In this bill, we eliminate that requirement in order to allow the Postal Service to spend the money that would have gone into escrow to begin pre-funding on a current basis its $50 billion retiree health obligation. Leftover savings would be used to continue paying down debt to the Treasury and to maintain rate stability.

The bill Senator Collins and I are introducing today also reverses the provision in the Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act that made the Postal Service the only Federal agency shouldered with the burden of paying the additional pension benefits owed to their employees by virtue of past military service.

Finally, and most importantly, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act preserves universal service and the postal monopoly and forces the Postal Service to concentrate solely on what it does best-- processing and delivering the mail to all Americans. Our bill limits the Postal 'Service, for the first time, to providing ``postal services,'' meaning they would be prohibited from engaging in other lines of business, such as e-commerce, that draw time and resources away from letter and package delivery. It also explicitly preserves the requirement that the Postal Service ``bind the Nation together through the mail'' and serve all parts of the country, urban, suburban and rural, in a non-discriminatory fashion. Any service standards established by the Postal Service will continue to ensure delivery to every address, every day. In addition, the bill maintains the prohibition on closing post offices solely because they operate at a deficit, ensuring that rural and urban customers continue to enjoy full access to retail postal services.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, this bill that Senator Collins and I are introducing today is almost identical to the version of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that was unanimously reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee last June on a 17-0 vote. A similar bill was unanimously reported out of the House Government Reform Committee last year as well. Neither bill was considered on the floor of the Senate or the House, however, due--I'm told--to objections raised by the administration.

I was deeply disappointed that we were unable to complete action on postal reform last year. However, Senator Collins and I, our staffs and our colleagues in the House have had a series of discussions with administration officials since the 108th Congress adjourned last year and have narrowed our differences with them on these issues significantly. I'm pleased to report that this bill contains a handful of new provisions drafted to address specific concerns raised by the Administration.

First, we demand even greater financial transparency from the Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act gives the Postal Service more room to operate like a private business. For quite some time, however, it's been clear that the financial reporting required of the Postal Service has been lacking. It's difficult to look at the Postal Service's financial reports and learn as much as we'd like to learn about its current condition and its future liabilities. For this reason, our bill requires the Postal Service to begin filing the very same quarterly and annual Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure forms that private sector firms must file.

Second, we add language drafted at the request of the Treasury Department that would ensure that the Postal Service does its banking and investing with the Federal Financing Bank. Our original bill would have given the Postal Service almost total freedom to invest any revenue earned by its competitive products in the market as if they were a private business. Treasury feared this could have a negative impact on the markets and the issuance of federal debt.

Third, we give the Postal Board of Governors the ability to better reward top Postal Service executives for their performance and recruit top talent. We accomplish this by raising the cap on executive pay at the Postal Service to the level of compensation given to the Vice President. This will allow the Board to reward high-performing managers. It should also make it easier to recruit and retain qualified managers.

Fourth, we ensure that the rate cap to be developed by the Postal Regulatory Commission is truly workable by requiring that the cap be based on the Consumer Price Index. A CPI-based cap should guarantee that the Postal Service has the room to operate each year without breaking the cap or turning to the Treasury for assistance while still giving mailers the predictability they need.

This is significant progress but we still have our work cut out for us. I look forward to working in the coming weeks with Chairman Collins, my colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, our House counterparts and the administration to work out any remaining differences we have. It's vitally important that we succeed.

The Postal Board of Governors voted last month to go forward with a rate increase. If approved by the Postal Rate Commission, this increase will go into effect sometime next year. Thanks to increased productivity, this is expected to be a lower increase than many observers feared. Without postal reform, however, especially the language freeing the Postal Service from the escrow requirement and the military pension obligation, future rate increases will be higher. Probably much higher. This will only speed the flight from hard copy mail to electronic forms of communication. The impact of this flight will be significant, not just at the Postal Service but throughout the entire economy.

A recent study conducted by the Envelope Manufacturers Association Foundation's Institute for Postal Studies found that, if mail volume were to decline by 10 percent more than 780,000 mail-related jobs will be at risk across the country. More than 2,000 of those jobs are in Delaware. If mail volume were to decline by 20 percent more than 1,500,000 mailing industry jobs will be at risk across the country. More than 4,000 of those jobs are in Delaware. We need to act soon to prevent this from happening.

In closing, I'd like to point out how amazing it is to me to think that the Postal Service, something Senator Stevens was literally able to put together at his kitchen table at the very beginning of his career, could have lasted so long and had such an enduring impact on every American. I'm hopeful that the model Senator Collins and I have set out in this bill today can last at least that long and have just as positive an impact on our nation and our economy as the Postal Service has had over the past 35 years.

collins and gregg colloquy on postal reform

Mr. President, I rise today to join my friend from Maine, Senator Collins, in introducing the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2005, legislation that makes the reforms necessary for the Postal Service to thrive in the 21st Century and to better serve the American people. This bill is almost identical to S. 2468, the version of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that was unanimously reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee last June on a 17-0 vote.

When I rose with Senator Collins to introduce S. 2468 last year, I noted that some of our colleagues may wonder why we need postal reform. Most of us probably receive few complaints from our constituents about the Postal Service. Most Americans like the Postal Service just the way it is and don't want to see it changed. We must keep in mind, however, that, despite the fact that the mailing industry, and the economy as a whole, have changed radically over the years, the Postal Service has, for the most part, remained unchanged for more than three decades now.

Senator Collins and I are re-introducing this bill today, then, because the Postal Service continues to operate under a business model created a generation ago.

In the early 1970s, Senator Stevens led the effort in the Senate to create the Postal Service out of the failing Post Office Department. At the time, the Post Office Department received about 20 percent of its revenue from taxpayer subsidies. Labor-management relations were at their worst, service was suffering and there was little hope the department would be able to muster the resources necessary to service a growing delivery network.

By all accounts, the product of Senator Stevens' labors, the Postal Reorganization Act signed into law by President Nixon in 1971, has been a phenomenal success. The Postal Service today receives virtually no taxpayer support. The service its hundreds of thousands of employees provide to every American, nearly every day is second to none. The Postal Service now delivers to 141 million addresses each day and is the anchor of a $900 billion mailing industry.

As we celebrate the success of the Postal Reorganization Act, however, we need to be thinking about what needs to be done to help the Postal Service continue to thrive in the years to come.

The Postal Service is clearly in need of modernization once again. Back in the early 1970s, none of the Postal Service's customers had access to fax machines, cell phones or pagers. Nobody imagined that we would ever enjoy conveniences like e-mail and electronic bill pay that could replace a First Class letter. That, of course, is no longer the case. Most of the mall I receive from my constituents these days arrives via fax and e-mail instead of hard copy mail, a marked change from my days in the House and even from my more recent days as Governor of Delaware.

This continuing electronic diversion of mail, coupled with a slow economy and the threat of terrorism, has made for some rough going at the Postal Service of late. In 2001, as Postmaster General Potter came onboard, the Postal Service was projecting its third consecutive year of deficits. They lost $199 million in 2000 and $1.68 billion in 2001. They were projecting losses of up to $4 billion in fiscal year 2002. Mail volume was falling, revenues were below projections and the Postal Service was estimating that it needed to spend $4 billion on security enhancements in order to prevent a repeat of the tragic anthrax attacks that took several lives. The Postal Service was also perilously close to its $15 billion debt ceiling and had been forced to raise rates three times in less than two years in order to pay for its operations.

A number of positive steps have been taken since 2001. General Potter has led a commendable effort to improve productivity and make the Postal Service more efficient. Billions of dollars in costs have been taken out of the system--some $4.3 billion since 2002--according to the Postal Service's most recent annual report. Thousands of positions have been eliminated through attrition and successful automation programs have yielded great benefits, resulting in the smallest workforce seen at the Postal Service since the early 1980s.

Perhaps most dramatically, the Postal Service learned in 2002 that an unfunded pension liability they once believed was as high as $32 billion was actually significantly lower. Senator Collins and I responded with legislation, the Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act, which cut the amount the Postal Service must pay into the Civil Service Retirement System each year by nearly $3 billion. This has freed up money for debt reduction and prevented the need for further rate increases until at least next year. The Postal Service's debt to the Treasury now stands at about $1.8 billion--the lowest it's been in more than 20 years--and rates have remained stable since the passage of the pension bill.

Aggressive cost cutting and a lower pension payment, then, have put off the postal emergency we thought was right around the corner just a few years ago. But cost cutting can only go so far and will not solve the Postal Service's long-term challenges. These long-term challenges were laid out in stark detail last year when Postmaster General Potter and then-Postal Board of Governors Chairman David Fineman testified before the House Government Reform Committee's Special Panel on Postal Reform. Mr. Fineman pointed out in his testimony that the total volume of mail delivered by the Postal Service has declined by more than 5 billion pieces since 2000. Over the same period, the number of homes and businesses the Postal Service delivers to have increased by more than 5 million. First Class mail, the largest contributor to the Postal Service's bottom line, is leading the decline in volume. Some of those disappearing First Class letters are being replaced by advertising mail, which earns significantly less. Many First Class letters have likely been lost for good to fax machines, e-mail and electronic bill pay.

Despite electronic diversion, the Postal Service continues to add between 1.6 million and 1.9 million new delivery points each year, creating the need for thousands of new routes and thousands of new letter carriers to work them. In addition, faster-growing parts of the country will need new or expanded postal facilities in the coming years. As more and more customers turn to electronic forms of communication, however, letter carriers are bringing fewer pieces of mail to each address they serve. The rate increases that will be needed to maintain the Postal Service's current infrastructure, finance retirement obligations to its current employees, pay for new letter carriers and build facilities in growing parts of the country will only erode mail volume further.

The Postal Service has been trying to modernize on its own. General Potter and his management team are making progress, but there is only so much they can do without legislative change. Even if the Postal Service begins to see volume and revenues pick up, we will still need to make fundamental changes in the way the Postal Service operates in order to make them as successful in the 21st Century as they were in the 20th Century.

This is where the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act comes in. First, our bill begins the process of developing a modern rate system for pricing Postal Service products. The new system, to be developed by a strengthened Postal Rate Commission, re-named the Postal Regulatory Commission, would allow retained earnings, provide the Postal Service significantly more flexibility in setting prices and streamline today's burdensome rate making process. To provide stability, predictability and fairness for the Postal Service's customers, rates would remain within a cap to be set each year by the Regulatory Commission.

The second major provision in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires the Postal Service to set strong service standards for its Market Dominant products, a category made up mostly of those products, like First Class mail, that are part of the postal monopoly. The new standards will improve service and will be used by the Postal Service to establish performance goals, rationalize its physical infrastructure and streamline its workforce.

Third, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act ensures that the Postal Service competes fairly. The bill prohibits the Postal Service from issuing anti-competitive regulations. It also subjects the Postal Service to state zoning, planning and land use laws, requires them to pay an assumed Federal income tax on products like packages and Express Mail that private firms also offer and requires that these products as a whole pay their share of the Postal Service's institutional costs. The Federal Trade Commission will further study any additional legal benefits the Postal Service enjoys that

its private sector competitors do not. The Regulatory Commission will then find a way to use the rate system to level the playing field.

Fourth, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act improves Postal Service accountability, mostly by strengthening oversight. Qualifications for membership on the Regulatory Commission would be stronger than those for the Rate Commission so that Commissioners would have a background in finance or economics. Commissioners would also have the power to demand information from the Postal Service, including by subpoena, and have the power to punish the Postal Service for violating rate and service regulations. In addition, the Regulatory Commission will make an annual determination as to whether the Postal Service is in compliance with existing rate regulations and service standards and will have the power to punish them for any transgressions.

Fifth, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act revises two provisions from the ``Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act in an effort to shore up the Postal Service's finances in the years to come. As our colleagues may be aware, that bill required the Postal Service, beginning in 2006, to deposit any savings it enjoys by virtue of lower pension payments into an escrow account. In this bill, we eliminate that requirement in order to allow the Postal Service to spend the money that would have gone into escrow to begin pre-funding on a current basis its $50 billion retiree health obligation. Leftover savings would be used to continue paying down debt to the Treasury and to maintain rate stability.

The bill Senator Collins and I are introducing today also reverses the provision in the Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding Reform Act that made the Postal Service the only Federal agency shouldered with the burden of paying the additional pension benefits owed to their employees by virtue of past military service.

Finally, and most importantly, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act preserves universal service and the postal monopoly and forces the Postal Service to concentrate solely on what it does best-- processing and delivering the mail to all Americans. Our bill limits the Postal 'Service, for the first time, to providing ``postal services,'' meaning they would be prohibited from engaging in other lines of business, such as e-commerce, that draw time and resources away from letter and package delivery. It also explicitly preserves the requirement that the Postal Service ``bind the Nation together through the mail'' and serve all parts of the country, urban, suburban and rural, in a non-discriminatory fashion. Any service standards established by the Postal Service will continue to ensure delivery to every address, every day. In addition, the bill maintains the prohibition on closing post offices solely because they operate at a deficit, ensuring that rural and urban customers continue to enjoy full access to retail postal services.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, this bill that Senator Collins and I are introducing today is almost identical to the version of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act that was unanimously reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee last June on a 17-0 vote. A similar bill was unanimously reported out of the House Government Reform Committee last year as well. Neither bill was considered on the floor of the Senate or the House, however, due--I'm told--to objections raised by the administration.

I was deeply disappointed that we were unable to complete action on postal reform last year. However, Senator Collins and I, our staffs and our colleagues in the House have had a series of discussions with administration officials since the 108th Congress adjourned last year and have narrowed our differences with them on these issues significantly. I'm pleased to report that this bill contains a handful of new provisions drafted to address specific concerns raised by the Administration.

First, we demand even greater financial transparency from the Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act gives the Postal Service more room to operate like a private business. For quite some time, however, it's been clear that the financial reporting required of the Postal Service has been lacking. It's difficult to look at the Postal Service's financial reports and learn as much as we'd like to learn about its current condition and its future liabilities. For this reason, our bill requires the Postal Service to begin filing the very same quarterly and annual Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure forms that private sector firms must file.

Second, we add language drafted at the request of the Treasury Department that would ensure that the Postal Service does its banking and investing with the Federal Financing Bank. Our original bill would have given the Postal Service almost total freedom to invest any revenue earned by its competitive products in the market as if they were a private business. Treasury feared this could have a negative impact on the markets and the issuance of federal debt.

Third, we give the Postal Board of Governors the ability to better reward top Postal Service executives for their performance and recruit top talent. We accomplish this by raising the cap on executive pay at the Postal Service to the level of compensation given to the Vice President. This will allow the Board to reward high-performing managers. It should also make it easier to recruit and retain qualified managers.

Fourth, we ensure that the rate cap to be developed by the Postal Regulatory Commission is truly workable by requiring that the cap be based on the Consumer Price Index. A CPI-based cap should guarantee that the Postal Service has the room to operate each year without breaking the cap or turning to the Treasury for assistance while still giving mailers the predictability they need.

This is significant progress but we still have our work cut out for us. I look forward to working in the coming weeks with Chairman Collins, my colleagues on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, our House counterparts and the administration to work out any remaining differences we have. It's vitally important that we succeed.

The Postal Board of Governors voted last month to go forward with a rate increase. If approved by the Postal Rate Commission, this increase will go into effect sometime next year. Thanks to increased productivity, this is expected to be a lower increase than many observers feared. Without postal reform, however, especially the language freeing the Postal Service from the escrow requirement and the military pension obligation, future rate increases will be higher. Probably much higher. This will only speed the flight from hard copy mail to electronic forms of communication. The impact of this flight will be significant, not just at the Postal Service but throughout the entire economy.

A recent study conducted by the Envelope Manufacturers Association Foundation's Institute for Postal Studies found that, if mail volume were to decline by 10 percent more than 780,000 mail-related jobs will be at risk across the country. More than 2,000 of those jobs are in Delaware. If mail volume were to decline by 20 percent more than 1,500,000 mailing industry jobs will be at risk across the country. More than 4,000 of those jobs are in Delaware. We need to act soon to prevent this from happening.

In closing, I'd like to point out how amazing it is to me to think that the Postal Service, something Senator Stevens was literally able to put together at his kitchen table at the very beginning of his career, could have lasted so long and had such an enduring impact on every American. I'm hopeful that the model Senator Collins and I have set out in this bill today can last at least that long and have just as positive an impact on our nation and our economy as the Postal Service has had over the past 35 years.

collins and gregg colloquy on postal reform

Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, the amendment I offer this evening is actually a fairly simple one. It strikes the section of the budget resolution that gives reconciliation protection to some $70 billion in tax cuts. The amendment doesn't prohibit those cuts. It simply says if we are going to cut our taxes by another $70 billion, we either need to come up with a way to pay for that or to sort of offset that with the Treasury or we need to be able to produce 60 votes here in the Senate.

At a time when deficits are already high, I, for one, believe we should not make it any easier to dig the hole deeper.

Sometimes I like to quote a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, a British fellow, who used to say this, talking about the theory of holes:

The theory of holes is when you find yourself in a hole,

stop digging.

The amendment we offer here tonight is based in part on that theory of holes made famous by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Faced with the kinds of deficits that we do face when we are cutting domestic programs, reconciliation should not be used for tax cuts that dig the deficit hole even deeper. Our Nation should be getting its fiscal house in order, not undermining the foundation of that house.

If proponents of additional tax cuts wish to cut taxes further, they should pay for them. They should offset them, in my view. We already have that requirement on the spending side of the Federal ledger. I believe we need to apply the same principle to the tax side. Now, the Senate voted on Senator Feingold's and Senator Voinovich's amendment to reinstate pay-go requirements that require Congress to find offsets to pay for any new tax cuts or spending on any entitlement programs. My amendment takes the area of this budget resolution where we are actually spending more money--and that is $70 billion in tax cuts--and applies the pay-go standard.

As demonstrated by my vote on the Feingold-Voinovich amendment, I favor applying pay-go standards universally, both on the spending side and on the tax side. My views are pretty basic. I think when we are faced with budget deficits that are in the area of $400 billion again this year, if I or anybody else wants to raise spending, in effect making the deficit larger, I would have to come up with an offset for it.

If I can, I have to muster 60 votes for that offset. Similarly, in an era of $400 billion deficits, if I want to cut taxes, as well intentioned as that might be, but if doing so simply raises the budget deficit, I should be able to offer that amendment. My amendment says that anyone seeking to do so would have to muster 60 votes to cut taxes in a way that raises the budget deficit even further.

The reconciliation process is a fast-track procedure that was designed to facilitate the passage of deficit reduction legislation in the Congress. The process was intended to protect hard-to-pass deficit reduction legislation from a filibuster and to ensure that such legislation could pass with 51 votes rather than 60 votes in the Senate. In recent years, however, Congress has used these special procedural protections to make it easier to cut taxes, to increase deficits, and to increase our Nation's debt.

Tax cuts enacted in reconciliation bills in 2001 and again in 2003 cost the Treasury nearly $2 trillion over 10 years. The current tax reconciliation instruction would make it easier to pass an additional $70 billion in tax cuts without requiring that they be offset or paid for. This is the very opposite of the way these fast-track procedures were intended to be used, and the consequences for our fiscal situation have been mounting deficits and mounting debt.

When President Bush took office some 4 years ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the next decade and that virtually all publicly held debt would be paid off by 2008. However, if we adopt the policies in this budget resolution, including these tax cuts, debt in 2008 will total $5.7 trillion based on CBO's estimate of this budget proposal. In a span of 4 years, we have really moved from a CBO projection of surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the next decade that would have enabled us to have paid off publicly held debt by 2008 to where we see ourselves in a situation where CBO says, no, forget that; rather, our debt in 2008 will be in $5.7 trillion--not paid off, it will have grown to $5.7 trillion.

This is not about being against tax cuts but about making the decision that at a time of unprecedented Federal budget deficits, if we are going to cut taxes further, those cuts ought to be offset.

Reconciliation evolved during the last period of large deficits to help Congress take the difficult steps necessary to balance the budget. It worked then and it can work again if we use these procedures to reduce deficits, not to make them larger.

My first tour of duty to Congress was at the beginning of 1983 as a Member of the House of Representatives. I had a lot to learn then. I still do. Among the things I needed to learn in 1983 was how the budget process worked because I did not understand it very well. I had been the treasurer of the State of Delaware for 6 years before that, and I was familiar with the budget process in my State, one that was similar to budget processes in many other States. In the State government in Delaware, the Governor proposes a budget sometime in the early part of a calendar year for a fiscal year that starts on July 1. There are hearings on the Governor's proposal. The legislature debates the Governor's proposal both for an operating budget and for a capital budget. Sometime before July 1, the legislature usually adopts an operating budget and a capital budget. We go out. We run the State. We use those budgets that have been adopted.

When I got here, I found out it was not that way at all. Sometime in the early part of the calendar year, the President proposes a budget that now kicks in around the beginning of the new fiscal year, around October 1. There are hearings before the Budget Committees in the House and the Senate on the President's budget proposal.

The next step is for the Congress to adopt a budget resolution, which is not a real specific budget; it is sort of a skeleton or a framework for the budget--roughly, we are going to spend our money in these areas, we are going to raise our money from these areas, and in the end hopefully it will all balance.

After we have adopted a budget resolution, we come back and put the meat on the bones, the meat being the 13 appropriations bills we have traditionally enacted that provide the real detail of the budget resolution.

At the end of the budget process, usually sometime in September, ideally, we do some cleanup in order to make sure that we are going to hit our balanced budget target or deficit reduction target. At the end of the process, we pass a reconciliation.

When the Budget Act was adopted in the mid-1970s, the notion was that budget reconciliation would be used to help make sure we made the tough decisions to cut spending or to raise revenues in order to balance our budget or to get us closer to a balanced budget. So keep in mind the initial idea, the reason we had reconciliation, was to ensure that the Congress made the tough decisions to reduce budget deficits--in fact, to try to balance our budget.

One of the great ironies today, is budget reconciliation has come to be used in an entirely different way. It is not used to help us make the tough decisions to reduce deficits, but, sadly, it is being used to make the deficits larger.

My point of view is this: Things are worth paying for whether they are veterans benefits, defense programs, education, or transportation. If they are worth having, we ought to pay for them. If we are not willing to raise the taxes to pay for them, we simply should not have as many or any of those programs in this country.

At the very least, I believe if we are going to allow a Member of the Senate to stand up and say, I want to raise spending on my favorite program, and we know that doing so makes the deficit bigger, there ought to be an offset. If they cannot come up with the offset to pay for that spending increase, they ought to be able to muster 60 votes to do so. I believe the same should apply if this Senator or any other Senator wants to come in and cut taxes, however well intentioned that might be. If doing so simply raises the deficit, we ought to have the right to offer that proposal, but if it is going to raise the deficit, we ought to also have to muster 60 votes just like we would on the spending side. So that is my amendment.

Will the Chair inform me as to how much time I have remaining?

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I would like to make a comment, and then I will yield time to Senator Conrad.

For 8 years immediately before coming to the Senate I was privileged to serve as Governor of my State. During those 8 years we cut taxes 7 years out of 8. However, for 8 years in a row we also balanced our budget.

Tonight, as we gather here, we face a budget deficit for the year probably in the range of $400 billion again. We came off a budget deficit for last year of over $400 billion. Our Nation's trade deficit this year is expected to exceed $600 billion.

I say to my friends, that kind of lifestyle is not sustainable. We are not going to enjoy the standard of living that we do today if we continue down this path of spending ever more money as a country than we raise, and forever buying more from abroad than people buy from us-- not by just a little bit but by a lot.

Our trade deficit for the month of January was, as I recall, about $60 billion. We can go back only as recently as 1990, and I think our trade deficit for the whole year was about $30 billion.

We are on a dangerous path. For us to continue willy-nilly along the same course is playing with fire. Again, the principle that is part of this, that really underlies this amendment, is if you have a big budget deficit and you want to cut taxes further, and it has the effect of raising the budget deficit, you can do that. But when you have a budget deficit of over $400 billion and as far ahead as we can see there is more red ink, we ought to make it a little more difficult to cut taxes and, frankly, we ought to make it more difficult to raise spending.

I yield to my friend from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, for however much time he wishes to consume.

How much time remains?

My friend from Colorado has reflected on the fiscal behavior of his State and I reflected earlier on the fiscal policies of my own State of Delaware. We like to cut taxes from time to time in my State. We also understand that at the end of the day we need to balance the amount of money that is coming in with the amount of money we are spending.

There was a time when Delaware did not do such a good job of reaching that kind of balance. We were best in the country at spending more than we anticipated and writing in less than we estimated. In fact, we were the best in the country in that and ended with the worst credit rating in the country in 1977.

Whether it is Delaware, Colorado, or actually a country, we cannot forever live beyond our means. It is one thing to run budget deficits, which are a very small percentage of our gross domestic product, maybe for a short period of time. It is another matter when we run budget deficits which are a significant portion of our gross domestic product. When we look forward to the future, we do not see those deficits getting any smaller unless we assume we will not spend any money on Iraq or unless we assume we will not spend any money on Afghanistan and unless we assume things like we are not going to fix the alternative minimum tax.

We ought to fix the alternative minimum tax. I would like to extend the R&D tax credit. There are other provisions of the Tax Code I would like to extend as well. I am sure most of us would.

The point I am trying to make is this: If we elect to do those things, they have the effect of making our budget deficits larger and to increase our need to borrow money, then we ought to provide for an offset. We ought to provide for an offset by reducing the growth in spending in other portions of the budget or we need to collect more taxes, do a better job of collecting the taxes that are owed but not collected. We need to close some tax loopholes if there are things that are abusive that are part of our Tax Code in order to come up with the offset.

We cannot sustain this forever. As a nation, we cannot continue going around the world and borrowing ever larger sums of money to fund our national debt. We certainly cannot continue to buy so much more from other places around the world. This month alone $60 billion more we will buy from the rest of the world than we will sell. It is not sustainable. We need to instill a bit of old-fashioned common sense and fiscal discipline.

I started earlier talking about the Chancellor of the Exchequer theory of holes; my friends, we need to stop digging.

Mr. President. I rise today to recognize Fair Housing Month and the efforts of Housing Opportunities of Northern Delaware, HOND. On April 4, 2005, HOND will hold their 22nd Annual Proclamation Signing Ceremony. Their theme for this year will be ``Diversifying our neighborhoods with quality by building relationships through culture and lifestyles.''

In April 2005, the nation will observe the 37th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the groundbreaking legislation that affirmed in this country the right of every citizen to obtain the housing of their choice without being limited by race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or familial status.

Housing Opportunities of Northern Delaware, Inc. is a non-profit organization promoting fair and equal housing opportunities in the sale and rental of housing in Delaware. HOND also provides housing programs which support the mission of equal access to housing and provides information about the law and housing programs available to Delaware residents. HOND is governed by a board of directors composed of a cross-section of business and community representatives.

HOND is unique in that they were created primarily to provide fair housing law education to Delaware residents. Their mission is to eradicate housing discrimination through education, advocacy, and enforcement of local and national laws, and to promote fair and equal access to housing in rental, sales, homeowner insurance, and mortgages wherever one may choose to live.

It is well known that fair housing opens doors of opportunity. To communicate this belief, HOND focuses its activities around six functions. The first is education. HOND provides current information about housing and fair housing practices to existing community groups and counseling agencies. A variety of workshops, seminars and literature are developed for consumers, community groups, housing professionals and private business persons.

The second is compliance. HOND works with and encourages realtors, bankers, apartment managers, landlords and others to comply with fair housing regulations. HOND also works closely with government agencies including FDIC, HUD, State Human Relations Office and Commission, the City of Wilmington and New Castle County.

Direct assistance is the third function. HOND provides assistance and counseling to individuals who believe they are victims of unfair housing practices. HOND works with community groups and counseling agencies that are interested in fair housing.

The fourth function is advocacy. HOND monitors legislation of local, State, and national levels and serves as an advocate for fair housing.

Research is the fifth function. HOND develops and conducts research projects to eliminate inequitable housing practices. Consumers, community groups, and public and private housing organizations participate in these research projects.

Finally, there are special projects. HOND works with community groups, agencies, and others who have projects in mind to promote fair housing.

I rise today to thank Housing Opportunities of Northern Delaware, Inc. for all that they do in Delaware to better the lives of our residents. Their focus on serving our community is laudable, and I look forward watching their continued success and the impact it has on the people of Delaware.

Mr. President, I start by asking unanimous consent Senator Inouye's name be added as a cosponsor to this amendment.

Mr. President, I start today by going back in time to the first time I ever rode a train. I was about 6 or 7 years old, visiting my grandparents in Beaver, WV, a bedroom community outside of Beckley, WV. The fellow who had been the delegate in the West Virginia legislature for Raleigh County, WV, which is where my grandparents lived and where I was born, was Robert Byrd. By that time he had left the West Virginia legislature and was serving in the Senate after having served in the House.

The first time I ever rode a train was a B&O Railroad train that stopped in front of my grandparents' house and picked me and my sister up and drove a couple hundred yards on a train of which my grandfather was a crew member.

It is ironic that some 50 years later I stand in the Senate to support the amendment offered by Senator Byrd to support continuing passenger rail service. He is literally from the same place I was born. My first personal experience in riding a train goes back to his old representative district and certainly his Senate district. I say to Senator Byrd, thank you very much for the leadership you have shown for bringing us to the Senate today to express our support for passenger rail service in the 21st century.

Fast forward a little bit to 1970. I was a naval flight officer on my first couple of tours in Southeast Asia. I remember picking up one day a Newsweek or Time and reading that somebody in the Congress had worked with the Nixon administration to create a passenger rail service for our country. At the time, the private railroads could not make money carrying people. They wanted to be relieved of that responsibility and only carry commodities, not people, from place to place in this country. An agreement was struck whereby if the for-profit private railroads would contribute their old rolling stock, their old locomotives, their old passenger cars, their old dining cars, and old track bed from Washington to Boston, overhead wires and old signaling system, old repair shops and old terminals, and kick in a little bit of money on top of that, we would somehow come up with a new passenger rail service called Amtrak.

After that couple of years and a couple of years of subsidy from the Federal Government, this new entity called Amtrak would start making money, something the private sector cannot do in carrying people. A couple years went by, and after running those old trains on the old tracks, with the old overhead rail wire and the old maintenance shop and the old signalling system and not a whole lot of Federal support to improve the capital infrastructure, Amtrak didn't make money.

If you look across the world at countries where they invest a lot of money in their passenger rail system, they don't make money either. They don't pay for the full cost of their passenger systems out of the fare box any more than we have been able to do.

Since 1970, passenger rail service, intercity passenger rail service in this country has been starved for capital. Railroads are inherently capital intensive. Passenger rail, as freight rail, needs significant capital investments and we have literally starved Amtrak for capital investments since its creation. And that continues today.

What has changed since 1970? Among the things that have changed, we import a lot more oil today. I don't recall exactly what we were importing as a percentage of consumption in 1970. It was not much. This year almost 60 percent of the oil we use in America will come from places outside the United States.

Our trade deficit in 1970 was not much at all. We were pretty much in balance. In the month of January of this year, our trade deficit reached about $60 billion in 1 month. Back to 1990, that is twice our trade deficit in 1990, and a quarter of our trade deficit each month and year is attributed to oil imports. One of the things that changed since 1970 is a greater trade deficit and greater dependence on foreign oil.

What else? Congestion on our roads and in our airports. Today, riding down I-95 to catch the train to come down here, bumper-to-bumper traffic. I-95 was a parking lot through Delaware. And that is not the only interstate highway that was a parking lot this morning or this afternoon. The same is true of roads across our country. The same is true of airports across our country.

What else is the difference from 1970? The quality of air is a little bit better. Not as good as it can be and not as good as it would be if we got more people to get out of their cars and take transit.

The other thing that is different, 25 million people rode intercity passenger rail in this country last year. That is not commuters; that is people who rode Amtrak. That is the highest number we have ever seen in the last 35 years.

My friends, if we try to cobble up enough money for Amtrak to live another year and run the old business model we have worked with for a number of years, that is not good enough. We shouldn't do it. I don't know if the administration is serious about trying to force Amtrak into bankruptcy, but I would suggest we go down two tracks. I suggest one track we go down, we adopt the amendment to provide a reasonable amount of money to run the trains in the Northeast corridor and across the country, but also do the necessary work that is needed under a 5-year capital investment plan to fix tracks, fix overhead wires, and fix signaling systems, and be able to run the trains to their capacity and on time.

At the same time we do that, we need to have a debate and a good robust discussion on what the future of passenger rail service should be in this country. I am not sure exactly what the future business model for Amtrak ought to be, but I suggest that it include a couple of these things: One, a focus on providing high-speed passenger rail service in distantly populated corridors, not only in the Northeast corridor from New York to Boston, but densely populated corridors in the Southeast, the west coast, hubs from Chicago. There are corridors we could exploit for passenger rail where folks travel 200 or 300 or 400 miles.

Today, another thing that is different from 1970 is that 75 percent of the people in America live within 50 miles of one of our coasts. Think about that. Seventy-five percent of the people in America today live within 50 miles of one of our coasts. There are all kinds of densely populated quarters that could be well served by intercity passenger rail.

Another aspect of the business model, aside from developing high- speed rail service in densely populated quarters, can be what I call trains that people pay a premium to ride because they like to ride them, because it is a neat thing to do, because it is convenient.

The Auto Train. People get on the Auto Train. They got on it about an hour ago, just south of Washington, DC. They pay a lot of money to ride a train down to Orlando, FL. They have great food on the train, watch movies, sleep on the train. It is a nice train, modern and convenient. They will get off tomorrow morning near Orlando, FL, and have their cars right there with them to go wherever they want to go. There are trains out on the west coast--Pacific Starlight--where people will pay extra money just for the beauty of the ride. Some trains across the great northern part of this country are the same.

Amtrak can make money actually running some of those trains. Amtrak can make money carrying people in a high-speed Acela Express in the Northeast corridor. Amtrak can make money carrying the mail. Amtrak can make money renting the Northeast corridor to freight for their uses, to rent out part of the right-of-way to the folks who want to run other kinds of information through the right-of-way.

Those are some elements of a business plan that I think might make some sense for passenger rail in the 21st century. Freight railroads need to be a part of that. We need to be investing in the freight railroads as well.

The last thing I will say is this. Senator Schumer is here to comment as well. I will finish and add this comment. A friend of mine, a senior official in the Bush administration, said to me a couple years ago, knowing of my interest in passenger rail service, that we should follow the airline model. With passenger rail service, we should do the same kind of model we follow with respect to the airlines. And I said, with tongue in cheek: Does that mean we ought to follow the Pan Am model? Should we follow the Eastern Airlines model? Should we follow Braniff? Should we follow U.S. Air? Should we follow United? Is that the model we should follow into bankruptcy, because they have all gone bankrupt? And now the administration is suggesting a path that will lead to bankruptcy for Amtrak. The Surface Transportation Board, if they were given $300 million--they can't run the Northeast corridor. That is not their ability. That is not their talent.

This does not make sense. What does make sense is going forward on two tracks. I would suggest we adopt this amendment and we simultaneously have a full and robust and rich debate on this floor and in committees and elsewhere to decide what 21st century passenger rail service ought to be in this Nation.

Last word. In a country where almost 60 percent of the oil we are using in this year comes from other places around the world, where, frankly, a lot of people don't like us, and I am convinced they take our money to hurt us, keep this in mind: To carry 1 ton of freight by rail from Washington DC, to Boston, MA, uses 1 gallon of diesel fuel. Let me say that again. To carry 1 ton of freight by rail from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA, takes 1 gallon of diesel fuel. In a country that is awash in foreign oil and that has huge trade deficits, a lot of which are attributable to our dependency on foreign oil, we are foolish to ignore that reality.

Mr. President, I yield back my time.