Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as I understand the order, we now have 1 hour; is that correct? Am I correct we have 1 hour divided up in 15- minute blocks?

Mr. President, I yield myself my 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I urge all Senators to support the Labor- Health and Human Services appropriations conference report. The Senate version of this bill passed, as we all know, a couple weeks ago. We had 75 votes in favor of it. We would have had 80 votes if all Senators had been here. So it was a strong bipartisan endorsement of a bill that reflected priorities on both sides of the aisle.

I am here today to say I am pleased the conference report we are considering is even stronger than the bill the Senate approved 2 weeks ago. Much has been added to the bill. I thought what I might do, for the benefit of other Senators, is sort of run through the priorities in this bill and what our appropriations bill does compared to the President's budget. I think it will give everyone a good idea of how strong this bill is, why we garnered so much support in the first place and why I hope we will garner even more support with the conference report.

Right now, the conference report invests about $8.2 billion more than last year in education, health, and labor programs. The President's budget cut $3.5 billion--cut $3.5 billion--from these

programs. I will run through those now, and I will give you a good idea what those are.

Let's take home energy assistance. This is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. At a time when we have record high energy prices, the conference report boosts it by $250 million. The President's budget cut the LIHEAP program by $379 million. It is a clear contrast between the President's budget and where we are.

Student aid. Since this covers education, what we did is have the biggest increase ever in support for Pell grants for kids who are at the lowest rung on the economic ladder who need these grants in order to even go to college. So what we did in our bill is we boosted the maximum award to $4,925. The President's budget limited it to $4,550, which is far short of the amount needed to even begin to pay for higher tuition.

Strengthening the poor. Now, here again, in the conference report, we have provided $2.4 billion in the block grants for the Social Services Block Grant Program and the Community Services Block Grant Program. These are the things that go for housing for the poor. It goes for things such as Head Start Programs, all that helps to shore up our social services system and also community systems--as I said, whether it is housing, homeless aid, things such as that for the country.

We have provided $2.4 billion for that. The President's budget cut both of these. In fact, it cut the community services block grants to zero. They absolutely zeroed it out. Then they cut the social services block grants by about a third. So when you add them together, he cut them both by about 50 percent--at a time when we have more poor people in this country than we had in the last several years, when, again, the cost of housing is up, all the other things are up for poor people to pay. Yet he wants to cut it by 50 percent. Unconscionable. Well, we met our obligations. We put in $2.4 billion for that.

The next one is medical research. Now, again, this Senate has been on record time and time again supporting healthy, good increases for the National Institutes of Health for the research needed for overcoming Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and for the research that is being done at the National Cancer Institute and all the basic research that is funded that goes out to all our colleges and universities and other entities around the country.

We made such great progress in breaking the genetic code. We are making such great progress in understanding a lot of the illnesses. We are on the threshold with stem cell research and others of entering into a whole new era of uncovering the causes and the therapeutic treatments and cures for a lot of these illnesses. So we are right on that threshold.

The President's budget cut the National Institutes of Health by $279 million--actually cut it. Our conference report has added $1.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health. Actually, it is slightly more than what we had in the Senate when we passed the bill a couple weeks ago.

On special education, this Congress, about 40 years ago, said we were going to provide up to 40 percent of the difference in the cost of educating kids with disabilities when they were mainstreamed in our schools. We wanted to put behind us the dark history of the segregation and isolation of kids with disabilities who were taken away from their homes, taken away from their neighborhoods, and sent away across the State to schools for the deaf, schools for the blind or maybe a lot of times were not even given an education.

So about 40 years ago, this Congress decided we were going to meet our constitutional requirements and make sure kids with disabilities had equal and appropriate education. But in doing so, we were going to help the States by providing up to 40 percent of the additional costs of special education.

Well, the high mark has been about 18 percent. That was about 3 or 4 years ago, if I am not mistaken--3 or 4 years ago. Since then, we have gone backward. We are now down, under the Bush budget, to 16 percent. So we are going in the wrong direction. So what President Bush's budget did is slashed $291 million for special education. What we have done is add $509 million to State grants to help our beleaguered property taxpayers in New Jersey and Iowa and all across this country, to help them meet the educational needs of our kids with disabilities. So we met our obligations there. The President did not.

On Social Security, we now know people are waiting as much as 15 months to get their cases heard. There is a backlog of several hundred thousand right now. If we do not add the necessary personnel, people are not going to get it, and maybe some of them will die in the meantime. I don't know. People keep getting more and more backlogged and get frustrated by this system. They should not have to do that. People paid in all their lives to Social Security. They ought to get their cases heard in a timely manner. So what we did is we added enough to cut down on the delays. The President's budget would not do that.

On community health centers, again, the President, when he became President, said he wanted to have a community health center in every poor area in the country. I applauded loudly for that. I thought at least here is something the President and we could agree on.

Well, what does the President's budget do? There is no increase at all for community health centers, not a dime. So we put in $225 million more to increase funding new community health centers in some of our poorer areas of this country. So we met our obligation there, also, in terms of meeting health care needs of people who do not have anywhere else to go.

The Head Start Program, which has proven its worth clear back to the Great Society. It is one of the Great Society programs. The President's budget cut Head Start by $100 million--cut it by $100 million--leaving thousands of kids behind. In our conference report, we have increased it by $153 million--not nearly what we need to meet the needs of all the kids who want to get into Head Start, but at least under our tight budget requirements, we were able to increase it substantially. So we met our obligations there in Head Start.

So these are some parts of the budget I want Senators to know about. There is a lot of other stuff, too, but these items kind of highlight the difference between where we are in this conference report and where the President's budget is.

Again, I thank Senator Specter for the close working relationship we have had. This has been a bipartisan effort from the beginning to right now. Again, that is why I urge all Senators to support this conference report.

Now, the President said he is going to veto it because he said our bill had too much social spending. I would like to ask him to define what he means by ``social spending.'' The way he said it was almost like we were funding ice cream socials or something like that in this bill. Again, this is out of bounds, out of touch. It shows how isolated President Bush has become. Every additional dime we have put in goes to bedrock, essential programs and services this Congress and this President and other Presidents have always supported.

It is interesting that in the last 5, 6 years, the President has not vetoed any appropriations bills. When the Republicans were in charge, the President did not veto an appropriations bill, even though they were over what his budget requests were.

Lo and behold, the Democrats, because of the last election, now control the House and the Senate, and the President said he is going to veto every one of them, except Defense, I guess, maybe Military Construction-VA. All the other ones he is going to veto. He is going to veto the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill because it has ``too much social spending.'' Yet he signed all the other bills before this year.

I find that more than passing strange that the President, this year, says he is going to veto it. Well, it all adds up to politics. Evidently, the President and his advisers think somehow they are going to get some kind of political gain--some kind of political gain--by vetoing our bill for Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor.

Well, I do not know what kind of calculus goes into that, but it is bad calculus. It is bad calculus if the President thinks he might make some political gain by cutting Head Start Programs or by cutting special education or by cutting funding for the National Institutes of Health because it is over his budget, it is ``too much.'' Well, he never said that before. He never said that before to any Republican appropriations bill that passed in the last 5 years. I guess only because the Democrats are in charge he wants to veto it.

I would say to the President: This is not a Democratic bill. Yes, we may be in charge because of the election last year, but I still point out that this bill passed the Senate with 75 votes. As I said earlier, there were five missing who would have voted for it. It would have been 80 to 20. You cannot get much more bipartisan than that. It is not a Democratic bill.

Senator Specter and I and other people worked very hard on this bill. So I do not see where the President comes across in saying he is going to veto it. I think the President is so isolated, so out of touch that someone said: Well, this is over your budget, so you have to veto it. And he said: OK. Fine, I will do it.

Well, again, the other thing is, when the President sent down his first veto message on this bill, he said he was going to veto it because of two things. He was going to veto it because we had included a provision dealing with stem cell research, which he was opposed to and because it was over his budget.

Well, both Senator Specter and I agreed in the beginning--even though we both feel very strongly about overcoming the President's dictates on stopping funding for stem cell research--even though we feel strongly about that, we were willing to go halfway to meet the President. We said: OK, we will take the stem cell portion out of here. So we would like to meet you halfway. Well, what we heard from the White House was: That is not enough. It has to be all his way, all the President's way.

Well, that is not the way we do things around here. We compromise. The art of democratic rule is to make our compromises. So I figured, if we gave up on our stem cell, then he might give up a little bit on his. But that is not the way the President sees it. It has to be all his way or no way.

Again, we do not do business like that around here. As I said, we have a farm bill on the floor this year that I am also chairing, and it is not all I want, it is not all anybody wants. In the farm bill, we have to make our compromises and agreements to get the job done.

But this President is unwilling--unwilling--to compromise, unwilling to sit down with us and hammer out some kind of a reasonable compromise. So we are left with only one course of action. We have to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities as appropriators to fund the Government, to fund that which Senators and Congresspeople think are priorities and, yes, that the administration also thinks are priorities. So our constitutional obligation is to work these things out and get the best bill we can that people agree upon. As I said, with 75 votes, you can't get much better than that. So I guess we are left with only one course of action: Pass our bill and get it to the President, and I guess he will veto it. It doesn't make sense to me. It makes no sense for the President to veto this bill. As I said, I can't figure out what he--and then to veto it without saying: Let's sit down and work and maybe we can get some agreement. That has not happened. So, again, we are left with only one course of action: Pass the bill, the conference report. I hope Senators will support it as strongly, if not more strongly, than they supported the original bill that passed in the Senate.

Finally, let me say this: Even with this conference report, we have met all of our pay-go requirements. This bill does not add a single dime to the deficit of this country--not a dime. But by cutting a little bit here and adding there to certain priorities, we were able to get a bill that we basically all agree upon. Would I have liked to have had more in NIH? You bet I would. Would I have liked to have had more in the Head Start Program? Yes, I would have. Would I have liked to have had more for special education? Yes. The President wanted less than that, so we tried to meet him halfway. Yet the President says no, he wants it all his way.

So I hope Senators will support this conference report on Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor overwhelmingly, send it to the President, and hopefully he will change his mind. Hopefully, between now and then, he will think: Well, you know, maybe I should sign it, after all. Hope springs eternal. We will just have to wait and see. If he signs it, God bless him. That is good. We will be done with it, and we will move on to next year. If he vetoes it, well, we will just have to come back and hopefully, with the 75 or 80 votes we have had for it, we will override the veto. It is just not a good way to do things, and it causes the kind of confrontation and it causes the kind of bad things happening in Washington that the people of this country want us to end. They want us to work things out and move things along. We have done it here in the Senate. We have done it in the House with Republicans and Democrats. Now it is up to the President to also sit down and negotiate in good faith.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to waive the point of order and ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes as in morning business, with the time coming from the majority leader's time.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to strongly condemn General Musharraf's declaration of martial law in Pakistan, his decision to suspend that country's constitution, and his brutal suppression of freedom and democracy and human rights.

Since Saturday, General Musharraf of Pakistan has ordered the police and military to arrest thousands of lawyers, human rights activists, and political workers. At this very moment, as we dither in Washington, Musharraf's thugs--thugs--are cracking down on democracy advocates across that country. Lawyers in coats and ties are being viciously beaten in the streets and thrown into jail. One out of four lawyers in Pakistan has been arrested since Saturday--one out of every four. In Lahore, police are being given cash bonuses for beating and arresting lawyers. Any of us who have watched television have seen the scenes of lawyers being picked up by plainclothes policemen, pushed into vans, and the plainclothes thugs beating them on the heads and backs as they pushed them into vans. This is especially sad and ironic inasmuch as the founder of Pakistan, the much revered Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was himself a lawyer trained at Lincoln's Inn in London.

Since 9/11, the United States has given General Musharraf and Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, supposedly to crack down on the terrorists, the Taliban, and al-Qaida in their sanctuaries in Pakistan. Instead, General Musharraf is cracking down on lawyers, political opponents, and human rights activists or anyone who dares to stand in his way of total power in Pakistan.

Pakistan's Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, is under house arrest, and the widely admired chair of the Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir, with whom I have met twice when I was in Pakistan--on two of the occasions I have been in Pakistan, I met with Asma Jahangir. She is a wonderful, lovely woman fighting for human rights for people in Pakistan. Her house has been declared a ``subjail'' by the Government.

What crimes have these people committed? They are guilty only of speaking out against General Musharraf's claim of absolute, unchecked power.

These are truly the actions of a desperate man. Obviously, General Musharraf is worried that the supreme court would rule in favor of those opposing his latest attempt to hold on to the Presidency and to remain a general in charge of the military at the same time. This is a blatant violation of international human rights standards enshrined in Pakistan's own constitution. General Musharraf has also cracked down on the independent media, shutting down all private television channels and radio stations.

What has been the reaction from our President and Secretary of State to this brazen violation of human rights and the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people? President Bush has said he is ``deeply disturbed.'' He has pointedly refrained from saying anything or condemning General Musharraf's actions.

I guess what set me off today was Negroponte. Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte told Congress on Wednesday that President Pervez Musharraf is an `` `indispensable' ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. . . .'' I am sorry, Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Musharraf is not an indispensable ally. The Pakistani people are an indispensable ally in our fight against terrorism. What a double standard.

Look at how the administration responded when Myanmar's military regime cracked down on prodemocracy protesters in September. Oh, my gosh, we condemned them to the high heavens--rightfully so. Now here is General Musharraf doing the same thing in Pakistan and barely a peep from this administration. And then we have Negroponte, who has shown his colors in the past by calling dictators in Latin America in the past, now coming out saying Musharraf is indispensable. What does that say to the Pakistani people? What a double standard. No wonder the United States is held in such low esteem around the world today when we have President Bush and Mr. Negroponte taking after the brutal dictators in Myanmar, but, oh, not General Musharraf.

This is a profound mistake. This is the time to stand with the Pakistani people and not with the dictator who is dismantling their democracy. This is the time for the President to announce that he is suspending all U.S. aid to Pakistan except for humanitarian assistance directly related to the health, education, and human needs of the Pakistani people.

As of yesterday, President Bush has not even placed a call to General Musharraf. He should do so immediately. He should demand that the general immediately return the country to constitutional rule, restore freedom of the press, and unconditionally release the lawyers, human rights activists, and opposition leaders who have been arrested since Saturday, and he should inform General Musharraf that the United States is suspending all assistance to Pakistan, except for humanitarian aid, until such action is taken.

The world's greatest democracy, the United States, cannot turn a blind eye to the tragedy unfolding in Pakistan today. The time to act is now, and if the President will not act, I am prepared to work with my colleagues in Congress to suspend all assistance, except humanitarian aid, to Pakistan and to do it as soon as possible.

As I said, since 9/11, we have provided more than $10 billion in aid to Pakistan. The overwhelming amount of this went to the military to boost its capacity to fight terrorism. But, unfortunately, the Pentagon and OMB have very little transparency or oversight of just how that money is being used or has been used.

In fiscal year 2007, Pakistan received an average of $83 million a month at a time when Musharraf had negotiated a so-called peace arrangement with tribal leaders and was not even conducting counterterrorism operations in tribal areas. I think it is time for our GAO to look into where this money went, and I will be working with my colleagues on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to ensure that Congress is provided an accounting of all these expenditures. There are too many rumors, too many stories being told around Pakistan that a lot of this money has found its way into the pockets of high-ranking people surrounding General Musharraf.

Now I am told that some of our military money is being spent by Pakistan

on Harpoon missiles. These are antiship missiles used in naval warfare. Why in the world do they need these missiles? Is al-Qaida operating major surface warships? Hardly.

While this administration and Mr. Negroponte say that Musharraf has been a partner in the war on terror, the evidence is different.

Recently, Musharraf entered into a peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud, a well-known Taliban supporter and sympathizer who operates in south Waziristan. This is the tribal area bordering Afghanistan where it is thought that maybe Osama bin Laden is hiding out. General Musharraf agreed to withdraw all Pakistani troops from the area and release 25 Taliban militants.

Additionally, Mr. Mehsud would not even agree to stop dispatching fighters to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings against American and NATO forces have dramatically increased this year. Just yesterday, there was a horrific Taliban bombing in northern Afghanistan, with dozens of people killed, including at least six members of the Afghan Parliament.

I ask: Why is General Musharraf making deals with the sponsor of attacks such as this? Is General Musharraf helping or hurting our fight against militant Islamic extremists in Pakistan? He makes an agreement with a known Taliban supporter, but he won't make any agreements with lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan.

It is time for the Bush administration to make our efforts in Pakistan more effective. We need a real partner in this fight, not General Musharraf. He has severely undercut his ability to effectively fight terrorism. It is time to understand that only a government that is supported by its people will actually have the ability to crack down on extremists who seek to hurt and harm American interests.

The people of Pakistan have spoken out. They do not want Musharraf, but he is not listening. He is a dictator, and he is going to stay there, and he is going to trash the Constitution, he is going to jail lawyers and human rights activists and members of the supreme court.

Just remember, Musharraf came to power in a coup d'etat in 1999, ousting the democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He assumed the title of chief executive. Later, he assumed the office of President of Pakistan, all the while remaining commander in chief of the military. Now he is seizing absolute power.

I have come to the floor many times in the last 13 years to speak about America's relationship with Pakistan, to praise Pakistan and the Pakistani people as a steadfast ally going back for more than half a century. I have been to Pakistan many times. Make no mistake, I am a friend of the people of Pakistan. I admire them greatly. They have been great, strong friends of the United States for over 50 years. In the fight against communism and in every war we have ever conducted, they have helped us out. But at this time, I must speak out about the grave injustices being inflicted on the Pakistani people by General Musharraf in his grab for absolute power.

In the months and years ahead, the people of Pakistan will be asking: Who stood with us against General Musharraf's attempt to destroy democracy and seize absolute power? That is why it is so important that we in Congress, and the President as well, make it clear that we stand with the Pakistani people and Pakistani democracy and the rule of law and we reject Musharraf's power grab.

Robert H. Clampitt Foundation Children's PressLine

Thank you to the senior Senator from Louisiana for speaking so eloquently about the benefit that her State will get from funding in this bill. I understand there has been some confusion about the intent of this funding. I want to assure my friend from Louisiana that I will communicate to the Department of Education that the intent of this funding is to help children in New Orleans.

Will the leader yield for a question?

I thank the leader for his statement. I just want to make sure everyone understands what just happened. As I understand it, the majority leader propounded a unanimous consent request that all amendments to be offered to the farm bill be relevant to the farm bill; is that not correct?

There was objection on the other side. Why would there be an objection to that? We have a farm bill, and we have worked hard. The leader is right. We reached a bipartisan agreement. I daresay none of us like every little bit in the farm bill, but that is the art of compromise. You compromise on these sorts of things and you move them ahead.

I don't know, for the life of me, why there would be an objection to saying that all amendments should be relevant to the farm bill. Let's move the farm bill. I hope people in farm country are watching this. I hope agribusiness is seeing this. I hope people know what is at stake in this farm bill for rural America for specialty crops, for our dairy farmers, for rural development, and I might add the nutrition programs, food stamp recipients, things that we have done good work on in this bill, to provide an underpinning of nutrition and support for some of the least among us. We have done good work in that area. Now it is held up because some people want to offer nonrelevant amendments. For the life of me--and this is my seventh farm bill, counting my time in the House, and my second as chairman--I don't understand why we cannot have a bill. Yes, open it to amendments on the farm bill. If people have amendments on the bill and want to change this, add this, or subtract that, fine. But why should we now debate, as I said, the war?

Can the leader think of any reason we should not just stick to the farm bill?

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

Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, that was simply the House bill that came over and was at the desk. On behalf of Senator Chambliss, myself, and others, I offer the substitute amendment as the Senate-passed bill. That is what is now pending at the desk.

Today begins the deliberation and amendments on the 2007 Food and Energy Security Act, otherwise known as the farm bill.

I intend to take some time to lay out basically the farm bill and the different titles, some of the things we did in committee, approaches that were done in the past, and what we are looking at in this farm bill. So I will take some time this afternoon to do that.

As I understand it, under the previous order, there will be no amendments in order today.

It will be opening statements on the bill itself, and we will proceed to amendments tomorrow at whatever time the Senate convenes.

Mr. President, on behalf of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, I am pleased to bring to the floor the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, which enjoys broad bipartisan support among all our committee members. In fact, we reported it out by voice vote without a negative vote among the Senators who were present. We had a quorum present.

I thank our ranking member, the senior Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, for his leadership and partnership in producing the bill, along with the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, as well as chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad.

We generally refer to this legislation as the farm bill. But that title doesn't do justice to the range and scope of the bill. Yes, the bill helps farmers and ranchers who produce an abundance of food and fiber and are contributing ever more to our Nation's energy security. The bill also helps conserve and protect the environment on tens of millions of acres of farmland, ranchland, and wetlands. It is the most important legislation to allow millions of low-income American families put food on the table. It is the single most important legislation for boosting economic growth in jobs and improving the quality of life in rural communities across our Nation.

We have faced a huge challenge in writing this legislation this year. When we wrote the last farm bill in 2002, we had about $73 billion of new money over 10 years to invest. But for this bill, this year, we barely had any funding above baseline. Fortunately, we have had some help from the Finance Committee in obtaining additional funds. We have also reexamined all of the spending in our baseline to come up with budget offsets. We have combined these funds and produced what I believe is a forward-looking bill to make historic investments in energy, conservation, nutrition, rural development, and promoting better diets and health for all Americans. It also maintains a strong safety net for America's farm producers.

The bill looks to the future and creates new opportunities in agriculture and rural communities. Yet I emphasize that this bill complies with the strict pay-as-you-go budget rules we adopted earlier this year.

This legislation continues a strong system of farm income protection. It is a truism that we have heard many times but ``no farms, no food.'' Our Nation needs programs that will help farm and ranch families survive the inevitable downturns in markets, disasters, and crop failures. We need these programs so that the cycles of markets and weather do not force out of agriculture people who are so vital to grow food, fiber and, increasingly, energy for our Nation.

You will notice I referred to cycles in agriculture. That is why I have long been a strong supporter of what is commonly called countercyclical income protection programs for our farmers and ranchers. That is a type of program that pays adequately when farm income falls. Yet it is careful with taxpayers' dollars when farm income is good. Because a countercyclical program is good common sense, I have never been a fan of direct or, as they came to be known in the mid-1990s, freedom-to-farm payments that were enacted in the 1996 farm bill.

Since the freedom-to-farm payments or the direct payments are not countercyclical, what we have found is that they help too little when times are bad for farmers, but they are very hard to justify--direct payments to farmers--when we may be having record prices and high incomes. How can you justify giving sort of ``free money'' when times are good? So, in my view, a very positive feature of the bill is that we continue the countercyclical income protection system we reinstated in the 2002 bill. We allow farmers at their option to choose a new program, called ``average crop revenue,'' modeled after legislation introduced by Senators Durbin and Brown. This new choice for farmers will make farm income protection stronger and more flexible. It will allow farmers better to manage their farm's risk in today's uncertain and evolving farm economy.

Our legislation also includes other improvements in countercyclical income protection. It is reinstituting a higher payment rate in the Milk Income Loss Contract program, or the MILC program, and adjusting certain target prices and loans.

I will explain why I stress the countercyclical elements in this legislation. The farm programs are supposed to be about income protection, helping farm and ranch families survive cycles of hard times--the ravages of wind and weather, pestilence--and to stay in business.

The farm programs are not supposed to be just about USDA commodity program payments and trying to maximize those payments regardless of income. Now, it is true that for over 70 years Federal price and income supports have been the dominant feature of U.S. food and agriculture policy. Yet it is a mistake to suggest that farm program payments are somehow the most important contributor to the past success of American agriculture or to its success in the future. A lot of times, people say these farm programs in the past have been a great success. Look what they have done to help us become the leader in the world in terms of agricultural production. Well, they have been helpful but not the most important.

The most vital elements in the success of American agriculture has been the skill, the dedication, and the hard work of the men and women and families on farms and ranches across the Nation, and also all of the people who develop and supply technology and other production requirements, such as all the new hybrids that have come in in the last 30 to 40 years that increased production exponentially; and, of course, the highly productive land and climate with which our Nation has been so blessed. Thanks to those factors, agricultural productivity--get this--rose some 116 percent from 1960 to 2004, while in other U.S. industries it rose 13 percent. So there has been a 116-percent increase in productivity of agriculture and only 13 percent in the rest of the American economy.

So while this legislation we have today is vitally important, let us not forget the true sources of America's agricultural strength and abundance. For those reasons, I strongly believe that, in addition to a solid countercyclical farm income protection system, we must also make investments to help U.S. agriculture succeed in the future, as I will explain in a moment.

One area in the bill where we are reaching out to help agricultural producers is in initiatives for growers of what we call specialty crops--fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, other horticultural or floricultural crops. Past farm bills focused heavily on a few crops that have come to be known as storable commodities, most notably cotton, rice, corn, soybeans, and wheat, which are, of course, vitally important. However, according to USDA, specialty crops now account for roughly 50 percent of the total value of U.S. crop production.

In this bill before us, we include a dramatic increase in our assistance to specialty crop producers but not in the form of subsidies or payments. They have not asked for those. This legislation will help our Nation's specialty crop growers address the very diverse challenges they face in today's complex and global marketplace.

The programs within this bill will help America's specialty crop producers gain access to overseas markets where they can promote and sell their products. It will also strengthen our national prevention and surveillance system for invasive pests and diseases, which will help protect the stability and health of fruits and vegetables in this country. And, of course, we increase research on specialty crops to prevent the spread of plant-based viruses. For instance, the Clean Plant Network, for which we include $20 million over the life of the bill, will be a tremendous help to our orchard and nursery industries. The Clean Plant Network establishes a national system of diagnostic and research facilities to help ensure that our orchards and nurseries have the safest plant materials possible to grow the fruits and vegetables we need.

We also provide a significant amount of money in this bill to address the trade-related challenges of U.S. specialty crop producers. The current trade deficit for specialty crops in the United States is roughly $2.7 billion. In other words, we import $2.7 billion more in fruits and vegetables, horticulture, items such as that, than we export.

The Market Access Program at USDA provides funding to nonprofit agricultural trade associations and agriculture cooperatives to help promote U.S. agricultural products overseas--in other words, to try to get that balance of payments more in line. The bill invests an additional $94 million in the Market Access Program, which brings the program up to almost $240 million a year. Again, this program has been tremendously popular among specialty crop producers who receive nearly 50 percent of the MAP funding.

The bill also makes crucial investments in the prevention of invasive pests and diseases. A total of $200 million in new funding is provided for a pest and disease program at USDA to enter into cooperative agreements with State departments of agriculture that conduct early plant pest detection and surveillance activities.

To some, the farm bill may seem an abstraction, removed from the pulse of everyday life, but this is not the case. The farm bill touches the lives of millions of Americans every single day, and nowhere is this more evident than in the nutrition title of the farm bill.

In the nutrition sections of this bill, we strengthen America's commitment to fighting hunger and promoting sound health and nutrition. By strengthening food assistance to low-income Americans, the bill that is before us will help millions of Americans who currently live daily in the shadow of hunger. Because of the assistance this bill provides, millions of Americans will put food on their tables, will be better able to afford childcare so they can enter the workforce, will be able to save modest sums for retirement or for the education of their children, and because of this bill, millions of low-income children in schools throughout America will be introduced--some perhaps for the first time--to fresh fruits and vegetables that science tells us are critical to sound health and prevention of diet-related chronic diseases.

The current USDA nutrition assistance programs need to be modernized and strengthened. Nowhere is that more evident than in the persistence of the term ``Food Stamp Program.'' We have all heard of food stamps, even though food stamps, the paper coupons, have long since gone by the wayside. So we renamed it the ``Food and Nutrition Program.'' It is no longer the ``Food Stamp Program,'' it is the ``Food and Nutrition Program.'' We update it in a number of important ways.

We made some progress in the 2002 farm bill, but the economic challenges of low-income Americans, in many respects, multiplied in recent years.

Since 1999, the number of Americans experiencing food insecurity has increased from 31 million to 35 million. Similarly, between 2000 and 2006, median household income in the United

States, adjusted for inflation, actually decreased. Over the same period, the number and percentage of American children living in poverty increased. So USDA food assistance has not kept up with inflation or changes in the real world. For example, because of budget cuts enacted in the mid-1990s, the purchasing power of USDA food benefits has continued to erode with each passing year. Similarly, despite growing recognition that low-income Americans require the same incentives to save for their future as others, current rules all but force low-income Americans to spend down their meager savings to rock bottom before they are eligible to receive food assistance during times of insecurity.

These punitive rules on family assets have not been meaningfully addressed since the late 1970s. Let's take the case of a single mother who is working and has a couple of kids. She may be working at a low- income job, but she has put away a little bit of money for a rainy day. She loses her job. Something happens, and she is temporarily unemployed and needs to have food assistance for herself and her children. Right now, she has over $2,000 in savings. She is ineligible for any food assistance. That $2,000 was set in the 1970s and has barely been increased since. If it had kept up with inflation, that would be about $6,000 now. That is one of the items we address in this bill.

Finally, as more and more low-income women have entered the workforce in recent years, Congress has often spoken of the need to support families during this transition from welfare to work, but our actions have not suited and matched our rhetoric. For example, despite the fact that childcare is critical to successful participation of women in the workforce, when calculating income for a household to qualify for food assistance and to set benefit levels, no more than $175 per child per month can be counted as childcare costs despite the fact that the average monthly cost of childcare in 2006 was well over $600.

So I am proud to say this bill addresses all of these issues. It stops the erosion and even increases food assistance for most recipient families. It reforms the asset rules by increasing the asset limit modestly. I wish we could have done more. We just didn't have the money for it, but we did increase it. We also adjusted for inflation. We exempt tax-deferred retirement accounts and education savings accounts from the asset limit. We take that off the table.

It promotes work by allowing the full deduction of childcare costs. They get to deduct that cost. There is no more $175 limit. Whatever your childcare costs, you get to deduct it. I again thank the administration. In their farm bill they proposed earlier this year, this is also one of the key features of the administration's policy, to take away that limit on the childcare deduction.

Fighting hunger and food insecurity is the central mission of the farm bill's nutrition title, but it is not the only mission. In this title, we also seek to address poor health and nutrition among America's children. Much has been said and written about the sad state of nutrition among our kids, manifested in rising rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and a national epidemic of childhood obesity.

In this bill, we act to improve child nutrition with a major expansion of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program for schools. I was able to initiate this program in the 2002 farm bill.

I have always believed that one of the reasons kids don't eat fresh fruits and vegetables is because they simply don't have the opportunity to do so. I figured, let's give them an opportunity and see what happens. So we began by providing fresh fruits and vegetables--free, I might add--free fresh fruits and vegetables to 100 schools in four States and one Indian reservation. We wanted to test it: What would happen if we gave free fresh fruits and vegetables to kids at school-- not in the lunchroom, but when they get the growlies at 9 o'clock in the morning or in the afternoon when they get a little tired or antsy, kids need something to eat. What if they had fresh fruits and vegetables available at those times? What happened is the kids, the teachers, the principals, the parents all loved this program. Not one of the schools that has participated in this program--and it is all voluntary, no one is forced into it--not one school that has participated in this program has asked to drop out. In fact, every school that has participated has begged to stay in it.

By 2005, because other States were clamoring to get into the program, and other schools, we expanded to 10 States and two more Indian reservations. That is how successful it has been. In those States in which we do have the program, the schools that are not getting the free fresh fruits and vegetables are lining up saying: We want it also.

We have seen the positive effects it has had. Kids no longer are eating junk food. Kids are no longer sneaking candy and cookies. They are no longer going to vending machines to get some sugary snack. They are eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

In this bill, we make a quantum leap forward for this program. The bill provides $1 billion--that is right, $1 billion--over 5 years to expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program to reach nearly 4.5 million children nationwide, with a special focus on high-poverty school districts.

I wish to emphasize that point. I have been to some of these schools where they have the free fresh fruit and vegetables program. I can remember being in one school where some of the fourth-grade kids had never had a fresh apple in their entire lifetime--fourth grade; fresh bananas, they never had such a thing. I remember I was at a class one time, and they had fresh pears. The kids didn't even know what they were--kiwi fruit, strawberries. I remember I went to a school in Iowa once--and our schools let out in the summer after the first crop of strawberries is harvested. The principal told me that by 10 a.m. in the morning, there wasn't a strawberry left in school. Kids eat these fresh fruits. I have actually seen with my own eyes kids eat fresh broccoli. That may come as a surprise to some people, a shock, that kids actually eat fresh broccoli. I have actually seen kids eat fresh spinach.

Because of the popularity of the program, because it has grown, some of the marketers are now packaging fruits and vegetables just for this program, so the kids get a little plastic package, they rip it open, and they have enough in there for a little snack. As I said, it has taken off. It is providing better health, better nutrition for kids. They study better. They behave better.

There was some reticence when we started this program. Teachers said: Oh my gosh, kids will be throwing peels on the floor, apple cores at each other, making a mess of everything. This has not happened. In fact, teachers are now some of the strongest supporters of this program.

So when you go into these schools, you can see these kids eating these foods, ripping open a package and getting little baby spinach leaves, and they have a little tin of ranch dip, they dip it and eat it. I always said I didn't like broccoli until I had fresh broccoli. Who likes cooked broccoli and cooked spinach? It is not good for you. It may be good for you, but fresh is very good.

I emphasize this point because we are expanding this program. I have a goal I have stated, and as long as I am here, I am going to keep fighting for that goal; that is, to make sure this program is available to every elementary school in America within 10 years. I think it will do more to prevent childhood obesity, provide better health, plus when kids start eating these fruits and vegetables--and we have some anecdotal evidence of kids who are eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and they go home and ask their parents: Can we have some of this at home or they go to the store with their parents, when they go shopping, and say: I had this in school, I really liked this fruit or I like these vegetables, can we have this at home? It is going to do a lot for helping get at this problem of childhood obesity and some of the chronic diseases, such as diabetes, among younger kids.

Now, I wish to talk a little bit about the energy title, another very important and kind of a new area for agriculture. The energy title will help farmers in rural communities across the country join in a major transition in which our agricultural sector supplies clean biofuels and renewable energy for all of America. It gives farmers a chance to add biomass crops to their farming operations, with Federal

support to protect against the financial risks associated with the transition. It supports rural communities with the development of biorefineries for the production of biofuels and bioproducts. It helps farmers and ranchers and rural small businesses that want to improve their own energy systems through grants and loan guarantees for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy systems. It emphasizes a particular opportunity--help for farmers and communities to install livestock manure to energy facilities that address environmental and odor problems, while utilizing a valuable energy resource. It will make investments in research that will complement and enhance rural energy production opportunities. Members of the Senate are well aware of the disastrous consequences of America's dependence on foreign oil. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan has said the war in Iraq is about oil. At the same time, with oil prices relentlessly approaching $100 a barrel, our dependence on foreign oil is a threat to both our national security and the health of our economy.

The bigger picture is that new oil discoveries around the world are steadily declining at the same time that global oil consumption is rising. I have a chart to indicate that. These are the billion barrels of oil per year in discoveries, and we can see in the 1930s, the 1950s, a huge increase, the 1960s, the 1970s a little bump up there with Alaska, and then we keep coming down. We can see that global oil discoveries are rapidly, rapidly, rapidly declining. At the same time, we superimposed on that this red line showing consumption. So as the oil discoveries are going down, look at our consumption. It keeps going up and up and up.

Well, the Petroleum Council's report delivered to the Department of Energy this past summer states that:

It is a hard truth that the global supply of oil and

natural gas from the conventional sources relied upon

historically is unlikely to meet the projected 50- to 60-

percent growth in demand over the next 25 years.

Well, our country needs energy. We need energy to grow and to produce. We need energy for the new kinds of manufacturing we are going to have in this country, for transportation. It is an urgent national priority to accelerate our transition from oil to homegrown, farm-based renewable sources of fuel and electrical power. If we reach our full potential in producing renewable biofuels using feedstocks from our farms and forests, we can replace as much as 30 percent of our transportation fuels by 2030--by 2030.

Right now, current ethanol production is about 7 billion gallons annually. I believe we are headed toward a production of 60 billion gallons of biofuels, requiring 50 to 100 million acres of crop lands dedicated to biomass crops by the year 2030. These charts show the sharp upward trajectory of biofuels over the past 5 years and with the contributions we are making in this bill.

So here is what we have done in biofuels. It doesn't go back very far. If you go back to about the late 1980s, early 1990s--millions of gallons. Not very much. But look at the sharp curve up as we came up in the late 1990s into 2000 and 2005. Then let us look at the projections. Here we are at 2005, and here is 2030 at 60 billion gallons per year. So that is the trajectory. That is the trajectory we are basically on and a lot of us are committed to. Senator Lugar and I have a bill in that basically--and others have cosponsored it--to mandate we reach that level by 2030.

Well, the energy title in this bill allocates $1.1 billion over 5 years for new investments in farm-based energy. It is imperative we accelerate the transition of biofuels produced from cellulosic feedstocks, in addition to grains and oilseeds, if we want to get to that 60 billion gallons per year. And here, in addition to speeding up the development and evaluation of conversion technologies, we also confront a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. Entrepreneurs would not build cellulosic biorefineries in the absence of reliable feedstock. Producers would not grow the cellulosic feedstocks unless and until there are biorefineries to produce them. Well, in this bill we address this dilemma very aggressively.

On the supply side, we allocate $130 million over 5 years to the biomass crop transition program. We know it takes a few years to get crops, such as switchgrass or miscanthus or soft pine or fast-growing poplars or whatever it might be, to get them started and established, so farmers are going to need financial assistance during the transition. That is what we provide in the Senate bill.

On the other side, on the demand side, we allocate $300 million to support grants and loans for biorefinery pilot plants, loan guarantees for commercial biorefineries, and support for repowering existing corn ethanol plants and other facilities so they can process cellulosic ethanol.

In addition, we continue the CCC Bioenergy Program with $245 million to support feedstock purchases for advanced biofuels production. We continue the section 9006 program of grants and loan guarantees that we put in the 2002 farm bill. This is for farmers and ranchers to purchase renewable energy systems or energy efficiency systems for their own farm or ranch. The budget for this is $230 million, double what we put in the farm bill in 2002. We are including about $140 million for biomass research, including biomass crop experiments.

A large part of the future of biofuels lies in the use of cellulosic feedstocks. Cellulosic fuels, biofuels, can be produced just about everywhere in the United States. This will expand biofuels production beyond our major corn-producing regions and to places closer to where the fuels are blended and consumed.

I will make this prediction. If we can preserve the Senate energy provisions in conference--maybe get some additional funding for them, which we will try to do--I predict that within 5 years, by the end of the life of this farm bill, we are going to see cellulosic biofuel refineries sprouting up akin to mushrooms all over this country. That will help restore our energy security and our national security. It is good for the environment and good for farmers and the rural economy.

Now, let me talk a little bit about another important part of this farm bill, and that is the conservation title. Agriculture and forest lands account for 69 percent of all the land in the United States. That means farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners are the first line of defense for our environment. They are America's first conservationists. The conservation title of this bill gives them the tools they need for voluntary efforts to conserve oil, to protect water and air quality, to increase wildlife habitat on their land, and maintain and improve our Nation's natural resources for future generations.

The conservation programs are similar to a toolkit to address conservation needs, from the basic function of providing technical assistance on how best to, for instance, protect the waterway from erosion and runoff, to paying for easements, to protect wetlands and grasslands or working farmland that is under the threat of development, to cost-share incentive payments and enhancement payments to help farmers build and adopt new conservation practices.

This bill looks to the future in preserving our natural resources by allocating $4 billion in new budget authority for the conservation title. This is extraordinarily important to the future of farming in the United States. I am pleased we were able to accomplish so much with relatively limited funding. For example, the Wetlands Reserve Program had no baseline to continue to enroll wetlands after this year, so we had to put in new money for that. The Grassland Reserve Program was also out of funds to enroll new land. We had to put new money in for that. The Conservation Security Program's funding had been cut by billions, almost $4 billion over the last 5 years, to pay for agricultural disasters and budget reconciliation. We needed to restore sufficient funding to allow the program to enroll more acres nationwide, and I am pleased to say we have successfully resolved all of these funding challenges.

In addition to maintaining or expanding existing programs, we addressed some new needs in this bill. For example, here in the mid- Atlantic area, where Washington, DC, is located, we devote $165 million to improving conservation to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. This is money that will be used for upland treatment so all that runoff would not be going into the Chesapeake Bay.

In the Southeast, in order to provide better wildlife habitat, we provide

funding to improve the management of trees planted on Conservation Reserve Program acres. I am pleased to join with the committee's ranking member, Senator Chambliss, who was the basic mover behind this.

The conservation title also establishes new incentives for producers to allow voluntary public access to their land for hunting, fishing, and other wildlife-related activities. Senator Conrad has been a leader on this issue. I am pleased to have cosponsored his legislation, and we have included it in this bill.

The conservation title also makes important policy changes. We have worked to streamline the process to acquire conservation easements in the Wetland Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection Program, and the Grassland Reserve Program. That process has been paper heavy since the beginning. In this bill, we have addressed that to cut down on the paperwork.

In this bill, we make significant improvements in the Conservation Security Program, which was created in the 2002 farm bill to reward farmers and ranchers for good conservation practices on working lands. Now, this was new in the 2002 farm bill. In the past, most conservation programs were lands that were taken out of production, in one way or the other--wetlands, grasslands, the CRP and others. But as we saw more and more land coming into production, a lot of it for ethanol production, more and more marginal lands started coming in and we had to do something about that. In this bill, the program was renamed the Conservation Stewardship Program to reflect the goal of the program to promote the long-term benefits to our Nation by adopting and maintaining good conservation practices.

We have yet to realize the full potential of the Conservation Stewardship Program because of tight restrictions on funding that excluded many producers. Regulations only allowed certain farms and acres to be enrolled in certain designated watersheds every year. In addition, the process resulted in some kinds of crops and production techniques being largely excluded from the program, such as organics, for example. Well, the new Conservation Stewardship Program will eliminate these shortcomings. It will grow rapidly, at a pace of more than 13 million acres a year, which, with the 15 million already enrolled, will total 80 million acres in 5 years.

Acres will be allocated to States based not on watersheds but simply on each State's share of the national eligible acres. Within each State, enrollment will be accomplished through a ranking process that will prioritize producers who are already doing good conservation and who are willing to do even more.

Again, I emphasize that this program we started in 2002 is going to grow rapidly, as I said 80 million acres, and the idea behind it basically is to reward farmers for being good conservationists--those farmers who practice good tillage methods, conservation tillage, who put buffer strips along rivers and streams; those who apply the right amount of fertilizer, not excessive amounts of fertilizer that can run off into our rivers and streams, polluting the Chesapeake Bay and other places.

So again, the idea is to reward good stewardship of our land, and I think it is a good investment. I think it is one that will be broadly supported by the American people. As I said, these kinds of conservation programs are more important than ever. The rising demand for commodities is bringing millions of acres into production. A lot of land that was in the Conservation Reserve Program is now coming out.

We can't force people into the Conservation Reserve Program, and we don't have enough money to bid everything back into it. So if that land is going to be planted for some kind of crop production, then we better help ensure it is done in a conserving manner. So we provide the incentives in the Conservation Stewardship Program to make sure they get the technical assistance, the cost-share, and the payments to prevent erosion and runoff.

As we look to the future, we have to look at these conservation programs not only as a boost to the environment and cleaning up our environment but as a WTO, a World Trade Organization-compliant, non- trade distorting way of assisting farmers and ranchers.

I got the idea for this Conservation Security Program--now renamed Conservation Stewardship Program--traveling through Europe in the late 1990s and looking at their farms and being amazed at the countryside. Then I looked at how much money European countries were giving to help their farmers--a lot more than we were--for conservation. I had to figure this out. How were they providing so much money to farmers--more than we were--but they didn't violate trade rules? Yet the money we were giving to farmers violated trade rules.

It was simply they were making ``green payments'' to farmers-- payments to their farmers for conservation--cleaning up rivers and streams. Green payments. Green payments are under the ``green box'' of WTO, and it is WTO compliant. So we do not violate any of our agreements under WTO by providing farmers incentives for good conservation.

Now, I mentioned earlier that one element has been overlooked seriously in our farm bills in the past. We put a little bit in the 2002 farm bill dealing with organics, and that was a cost-share for the organic certification. But the fact is, organics is the fastest growing sector in U.S. agriculture. The demand for organic products is so great that it far outpaces our domestic supply. Much of that $2.7 billion of products, all agricultural products coming into this country over what we send out, is organics. I have had people in the organics food business, who sell organic foods, say they can't get it locally; they cannot get it in this country, so they have to import it. Well, we don't have enough farmers getting into organic production, so imports pick up the slack. In this bill, we make it a priority to help farmers who are serious about getting into organic food production, and we help them overcome the challenges of transitioning into this industry.

We include $80 million over 5 years for research into organic production and marketing. We include $5 million for price yields and overall data collection, which we don't even know about. We remove the 5-percent surcharge arbitrarily charged to organic producers who want to reduce their risk by buying crop insurance. Crop insurance had a 5- percent surcharge on it. We removed that. We make EQIP more universally available for farmers to transition into organic agriculture.

Now, one of the problems in organics that we have had is for a farmer to get certified to be organic, you have to have at least 3 years of not using pesticides, that type of thing.

During that 3-year period the farmer cannot sell into the organic market, and receive higher prices, yet still is bearing the costs of making the transition to organic production.

So we have provided some cost-share assistance to help farmers adopt sound conservation practices that are part of the transition to organic production. If they are serious about becoming organic producers, we will provide help in pursuing that opportunity.

Let's also talk about the assistance in this bill addressing global hunger and malnutrition through our food aid and development assistance programs, another part of our bill. We are very proud that over the last half century the United States has been the world's leading donor of food to hungry people. That is a source of great pride to us. U.S. programs are estimated to have helped more than 3.5 billion people over that period. I firmly believe our humanitarian activities throughout the developing world continue to be an essential component of our long- term effort to combat poverty and to build bridges of goodwill to foreign countries. It is a shocking fact that in the 21st century there is an estimated 800 million hungry people in the world, nearly half of them children.

In April, the Government Accountability Office released a study on how to improve the targeting and efficiency of U.S. international food aid programs, a study that Senator Chambliss and I requested last year. I am pleased to report that the agencies involved in the delivery of U.S. food aid are on a path to adopt most of the recommendations made by the GAO. Some of the other recommendations, those that require statutory changes, are addressed in this bill.

We set aside a specific amount of funding under title II food aid for nonemergency development assistance

projects. The creation of this ``safe box,'' as it is called, is intended to send a strong message that it is not acceptable for USAID to use nonemergency program funding as the piggy bank to raid if regular appropriations for title II emergency programs are inadequate. It is shortsighted to withdraw assistance from hungry people struggling to break the vicious circle of poverty in order to provide food to even hungrier or more desperate people. To me, this approach is like using one family's seed corn to feed another family. In the end, both families are left hungry, and the first family's efforts to lift themselves out of poverty are hindered. So we address that in this bill.

The trade title also gives USAID authority for a pilot program to conduct local or regional cash purchases of food. For the last few years, the President has requested authority to use up to 25 percent of title II funds for local or regional cash purchases, but this concept needs careful testing before we consider adopting it on a larger scale. I also want to make clear that I see local cash purchases as a complement to donation of U.S. commodities, not as a substitute.

As I have already noted, the funding for this new farm bill is extremely tight, so we were limited in what we could do to increase resources for international food aid. However, the title containing food aid provides an increase for the amount that can be spent in transporting U.S. food commodities under the Food for Progress Program from the current $40 million annually to $48 million.

The Food for Progress Program is aimed at improving economies and helping to build democratic institutions in developing countries and in Eastern European countries transitioning to democracy. Obviously, we would have liked to do more to increase funding for the Food for Progress Program.

I also would have liked to have provided mandatory funds for the excellent McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which I helped to establish in law in the 2002 farm bill. The McGovern-Dole program is designed to encourage children in developing countries to go to school and stay in school by providing them free or subsidized food. It has a lot of similarities to the School Lunch Program in this country. In its brief lifetime, the program has helped 19 million kids attend and stay in school in developing countries.

Think about it this way. In the United States, we provide free and reduced-price school lunches all over America and they help families a great deal. We may not think so much about the impact of that because in the overall economy of our nation food costs only about 10 percent of our disposable income on food. In some of the poorest countries, where food may consume perhaps 60 percent or more of disposable income, providing free food to children who attend school is a very big benefit to that family. That food can be the magnet that gets children out of an abusive child labor situation and into school. So it is a great program.

I remember when both Senator Dole and Senator McGovern came to see me about it in the late 1990s, trying to get it into the next farm bill, which we did, and their hopes and dreams for it. I still think if we can put the money into this program and grow it, it could be one of the best things we could do to fight hunger and poverty, to end child labor and to root out some of the harsh economic conditions, anger and frustration that may even lead some to turn to terrorism.

Despite limited new funding, I am proud of the work we have done on food aid and other trade issues in this bill.

We also in this bill help promote farmers markets, which are expanding all over the country. I can remember barely 10 years ago in my State of Iowa you could probably count the number of farmers markets on both hands. Now they are all over. In the Washington, DC, area, and other metropolitan areas, in the last several years we have seen farmers markets springing up all over the place. People want to purchase fresh, locally grown food. However, these are very challenging enterprises. They require grassroots organizing, planning and advertising; farmers have to be recruited; there are regulatory and logistical challenges.

In both the 2002 farm bill and this new farm bill, I have worked to help people overcome some of these barriers to establishing successful farmers markets. In the 2002 farm bill we added a program called the Farmers Market Promotion Program to help people develop and organize farmers markets and to enable direct producer-to-consumer market opportunities. In the legislation before us, we include $30 million for the life of the bill for these types of activities.

Too often farmers can and want to expand production of foods to be sold locally, but they face difficulties finding markets. Larger retail outlets want consistent supplies and abundant quantity, which is something a small farmer just can't provide. This bill seeks to solve this problem by fostering new opportunities for farmers to band together, providing funding through the value-added product market development grant program, as well as loans through the Business and Industry Loan Program. The idea is to promote what we call aggregators, where farmers who grow produce--vegetables or fruits or whatever it might be, or maybe they want to do some free-range chickens or organic meat or something like that--can join together to tap into bigger markets. What we need are aggregators who can go out to this farmer and that farmer and that farmer and say: OK, you bring your beets here and you bring your beets and you bring your beets or you bring your carrots or you bring your eggs or whatever it is. We put them together, and then we can sell them to larger buyers.

That is what we have done in this bill to promote and make it easier for farmers to get their produce to farmers markets.

For rural communities, as we seek to promote new opportunities in production agriculture, we have to realize the success of our farm households is tied not only to what is produced on the farm but the strength of the surrounding economy--rural economic development. Currently, more than 80 percent of total farm household income comes from sources off the farm.

I have a chart that shows that. It is amazing when you look at it. The percent of farm household income from off-farm sources 2 years ago: in the Northern Great Plains, 69.3 percent; in the Heartland, where I am from, Iowa, 66.7 percent; Mississippi Portland, 90.1 percent; Southern Seaboard, 94.9 percent; Northern Crescent, 85.2 percent. I guess we would probably be the least, in the Heartland, 66.7 percent. So even in our area, two-thirds of farming comes from off-farm income sources.

Again, 9 out of 10 people who live in rural America are not farmers. So our committee has a responsibility for crafting public policies that support not only farmers but all of our citizens who live in small towns and rural communities.

Rural America confronts unique challenges because of its low population density, the limited capacity of local governments and other special circumstances. In recent years we have come to appreciate that agriculture and rural development are closely intertwined. They have a common fate. We need to go forward with a policy framework that supports both our farms and our rural economy.

For years many economic development leaders have been frustrated that we have failed to create a more comprehensive approach to rural economic development. That is why I am excited about the Rural Collaborative Investment Program in this bill, which received $135 million in funding over 5 years. This new program provides Federal support for regional collaboration. It is becoming clearer to us that no one rural town or county can go it alone. Rural areas must work together regionally to scale up investments, build competitive economic clusters, and overcome geographic disadvantages.

The Rural Collaborative Investment Program awards innovation grants on a competitive basis to regions that creatively leverage these funds with other Federal, State, private, and philanthropic resources.

It provides incentives for elected officials, leaders of the business community, and nonprofit organizations to come together, to jointly develop plans that work best to improve the economy in their particular area.

Those who develop the best plans will receive significant resources from

USDA to help implement their plans. Because of limited Federal funding, many who compete for innovation grants will not get one, but they will still come out winners because they will have gained valuable experience in collaborating across county and town boundaries, and they will have completed a plan of action tailored to their specific area.

Again, this is so essential. If we look at the fact that the majority of farm household income is coming from nonfarm income, what good does it do to help our farm families if all of the small towns dry up and blow away? Already in my own State of Iowa, kids who live on farms and in small towns are riding school buses longer and longer distances as schools consolidate.

Farm families cannot even buy the essentials for their families without driving long distances, because there is not enough business to support local stores. We have small towns in Iowa where churches no longer exist. We have to do something to start enhancing the economic viability of our small towns and communities. That is what we do with the Rural Collaborative Investment Program.

One other key element I want to point out is the promotion of community foundations. You know, rural Americans possess hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Much of it is in land. Good valuable land. And, quite frankly, a large share of this, I know in my area, and in the upper Midwest--I do not know so much about some other parts of the country, but I bet it holds true almost all over--a large share of the asset value is held by people who are 65 years of age and older.

Well, these farmers, ranchers, businesspeople and others care deeply about their communities. They care deeply about their rural way of life. They care about the institution of the family farm. Many would be more than happy to give a generous share of their wealth back to their communities if they had a credible agency to make good use of the gift.

That is exactly the role that community foundations play. They are the perfect vehicle for bringing together local financing, local brain power, local leadership, to focus on solutions tailored to a given community or group of communities.

The rural development title of this bill also provides $40 million for a new microloan program championed by the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Nelson. This initiative provides support for organizations that help people of modest means acquire the expertise to start their own businesses. It provides small loans to these new entrepreneurs.

We provide $50 million in new funding for rural hospitals. Each dollar supports about $18 in direct loans, and generates even more dollars in the form of loan guarantees. This funding will help rural hospitals acquire the equipment they need to improve patient care and to computerize their records, for example. In talking about all of the needs in rural America, one of the big needs is health care, and in making sure we have rural hospitals there with primary and emergency care.

We also provide $40 million for the construction of daycare centers. Again, demographics show many young families are leaving rural America. Poll after poll shows they want to stay there. But they need an off- farm job, and to get that off-farm job, they need daycare, and there simply is not much daycare to be had. Access to quality, affordable daycare is a big part of the solution. It is urgently needed.

Another one of the big problems in rural America is the backlog of requests for money for good drinking water and for wastewater systems. This bill provides $135 million to reduce the backlog of these applications.

One other thing that is going to help a lot with rural jobs is the introduction of broadband services to our small towns and communities; and not only to small towns and communities but to the farms themselves. I like to think the extension of broadband to our farms and rural areas is every bit as essential today as the extension of electric lines was to our farms and rural areas back in the rural electrification days of the 1920s and 1930s.

The bill does that. We provide financial resources, we cut down on paperwork. We also cut down--basically we shift from financial assistance going to areas that already have broadband service. We do not need that. We need to get it into areas that do not have it. Broadband is a basic utility, both for the kids who need it for their schoolwork, and for farmers and rural business people in order to do business. I know of instances where in small communities, a small business person was growing his insurance business, but he needed access to broadband. There were, I forget exactly how many, less than 10 people who worked there. But he was going to grow his business. He knew he could, but he knew he needed broadband access. If he had broadband access, he could have stayed in that small town, maybe employed 15 to 20 people. Since he could not do it, he moved to a larger city, Des Moines, our capital. At least he stayed in Iowa, but I would have much preferred if he could have stayed in that small town and community and had broadband service. We need to extend broadband as rapidly as possible.

Let me talk briefly about agricultural research, which has been so important for that 116 percent increase I talked about in agriculture productivity since 1960.

The research title will increase competitive grant opportunities for basic and applied agricultural research; it will strengthen the research, extension, and education programs administered by USDA through our land grant institutions. It will achieve these objectives by restructuring the grant administering agency at USDA and transforming it into a national institute of food and agriculture. This will improve, integrate, and streamline the management of competitive and infrastructure programs, and will require a roadmap to be led by the Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, to refocus the research mission at USDA.

As I have said, agricultural research has historically produced enormous benefits from relatively modest funding. In my experience, few people appreciate the transformational impact of breakthroughs in agricultural research. To give one example, consider the work of an Iowan, Dr. Norman Borlaug, beginning in the 1950s. His methods of high- volume crossbreeding and shuttle breeding in order to develop disease- resistant wheat varieties were soon applied to other crops around the world, fostering what was known as the ``green revolution'' which has saved upwards of a billion lives.

Dr. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize and recently won the Congressional Gold Medal in a very nice ceremony here in the Capitol. But many people still do not realize how his successes in agricultural research have changed the world.

We are continuing to achieve great agronomic breakthroughs in agricultural research, but agricultural research is rapidly changing, and so we need to change the methodologies by which we fund and promote this research. That is what we do in this bill.

With the changes included in this bill, we will elevate the visibility of competitive research programs while strengthening our infrastructure programs--such as the research, extension and education programs--in place at our land grant universities. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture will lay the groundwork for a more robust agricultural research system, which we hope will lead to increased funding in the future, funding, I might add, that has remained flat in the past 20 years in inflation-adjusted dollars. I would also highlight that in the research title we provide $80 million for specialty crops research, such as to advance breeding and mechanization, and to improve the safety--I emphasize the safety--of fruits and vegetables. We also provide $80 million for research in organic agriculture, which as I said earlier is one of the fastest growing parts of our agricultural economy.

The largest obstacle to farm entry for beginning farmers and ranchers is access to two things, credit and land. Since 1990, a portion of the funding in the Farm Service Agency loan programs has been reserved for beginning farmers and ranchers. This bill expands the credit opportunities for beginning farmers by increasing the funding set- aside, and increasing the direct farm ownership and operating loan limit for the first time in over 20 years. Socially disadvantaged farmers face many of

the same challenges as beginning farmers do, and so we increase opportunities for them by authorizing wider participation in Farm Service Agency loan programs.

I am also proud of the fact that this is the first farm bill ever to include a livestock title dedicated to the needs of our livestock, poultry, and egg producers, and aimed at promoting animal health and expanding market opportunities.

Consolidation and vertical integration of the livestock and poultry industry has dramatically reduced the number of buyers, and in some regions there are only a few left. This lack of buyers has created an acute need for market reforms and more rigorous USDA enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act and the Agricultural Fair Practices Act.

To that end, this bill eliminates two layers of bureaucracy at USDA. It designates a special counsel, so at long last we will have a high- level official at USDA dedicated to overseeing, managing, and enforcing these two acts.

The bill would limit packer ownership of livestock in order to provide stability to the marketplace for independent producers. It provides basic fairness for producers using contracts, so that companies cannot force producers to travel great distances to settle disputes; in other words, to travel clear across the country to where a packer's headquarters might be located.

In addition, this bill makes arbitration voluntary, so producers are not forced into unfriendly terms, requiring mandatory arbitration, in take-it-or-leave-it contracts.

Let me also mention that at the urging of Senator Durbin and others, the bill requires the creation of a Congressional Bipartisan Food Safety Commission. This commission would be responsible for reviewing the Nation's food safety system, and making recommendations on how best to modernize the current structure.

Over the last year we have had outbreaks of E. coli contamination in bagged spinach, lettuce, and numerous recalls of very large quantities of meat and meat products. Over the weekend and in today's paper I read there are a million pounds of ground beef being recalled from stores in this area, and I do not know what other areas of the country. We have had repeated cases of contaminated food, everything from peanut butter to seafood to hamburger. So the work of this new Congressional Bipartisan Food Safety Commission will both be timely and urgent. Our consumers are basically demanding that.

In sum, I have sought to lay out the comprehensiveness of this bill. A lot of people are focused on payments to farmers. They think that is the farm bill. That is a small part of the farm bill. It is comprehensive. It addresses food safety, as I just mentioned. Food assistance to hungry people abroad, food assistance to hungry people in this country, energy, rural economic development, conservation of our nation's resources.

In energy, the bill opens up new vistas for energy production in this country, biofuels, cellulosic biomass materials; all of this is covered in this bill. So this bill is a strong forward-looking bill. It will be good for farmers, good for rural communities, good for our environment and good for our nation. It will promote our citizen's health, improve our energy security, and it is fiscally responsible. The bill won strong bipartisan support in the committee, and it deserves the same bipartisan support of Senators here on the floor.

As we look ahead to consideration of the bill this week, I hopefully can use the Senate's time productively. Obviously, this is the farm bill. We want to be productive. I encourage Senators, if they have amendments--and I am not encouraging a lot of amendments--to bring their amendments to the floor in a timely fashion. Hopefully, we can complete our work this week and go to conference as soon as possible.

I assume the chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Baucus, in his opening remarks, will dwell more on the part of the substitute amendment at the desk that includes provisions of the Finance Committee package. It includes a permanent disaster assistance program, tax credits that help offset the cost of conservation programs in the bill, and other tax provisions related to agriculture and energy. I expect Senators Baucus and Grassley will discuss these provisions at greater length. However, I thank them both and the members of the Finance Committee, including the occupant of the chair, for all of their support in helping the Agriculture Committee meet its goals and at the same time stay within our budget guidelines.

I know I have taken a lot of time, but for those who may be watching on monitors, people around the country watching on C-SPAN, and others who think a farm bill is only about payments to farmers, I wanted to show the comprehensiveness of this bill. It touches our lives every day in many ways, from the abundant food and fiber we enjoy to the safety of our food, to fruits and vegetables in schools, to the assistance to a family down on their luck who need some food assistance to feed their children during a time where they may be out of work for a period. It provides funding to help us meet our energy needs, to get us off of the oil pipeline to foreign countries. It saves our soil, provides for clean water and increased wildlife habitat for hunters and fishermen and everyone who enjoys the outdoors. It provides more research into improved agricultural technology and practices--how to do things better, how to be more productive, more safe. We have growing demands on the land. Yet we have to make sure our productivity keeps going up. We have seen tremendous strides in the past because of agricultural research and what we have accomplished there.

I want people to know, this legislation is not only a farm bill. This is a food and energy security bill covering everything--all the food we eat and consume, all the food we produce, all the food we have in our food assistance programs, and, yes, our energy needs as well. That is what this bill is. It is comprehensive. It is a good bill. I encourage the support of all Senators for this legislation.

I thank my ranking member and good friend, Senator Chambliss, first for his stewardship of this committee when he was chairman and for all of the hearings Senator Chambliss had last year all around the country. He came to my State of Iowa. We had a great hearing in Iowa. He laid the groundwork for this bill. It was a smooth transition this year, when our party took over the Senate through the election of last year. We continued that groundwork Senator Chambliss laid for this bill.

People wonder why we took so long. Two reasons: One, the farm bill bills usually take a long time. I have often said this is my seventh farm bill since the time I first entered the House back in 1975. It is a very challenging bill to put all together, especially when one has the budget constraints we had.

In 2002, that sailed through easily. We had $73 billion over baseline. Under the leadership of Senator Conrad and the Budget Committee, we decided this year we will not resort to deficit spending anymore. We will get out of the hole we are in. We are going to get out of the budget deficits we have had in the past. So we have a pay-go budget, and we met our obligations with this bill in that regard. It took some time to work it out. We also received help from the Finance Committee.

The Finance Committee, for many reasons, had a lot of things on their plate, too, but once the Finance Committee acted, we had our funding through that action, we moved ahead aggressively to finalize the legislation and put the bill together. We had tough negotiations, but farm bills have always been tough negotiations. They have also been good negotiations. They have been done in a spirit of making sure all the pieces fit together.

That is what this farm bill does--it makes many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together. It may not be everything I wanted in the beginning or everything Senator Chambliss wanted in the beginning or anybody else, but that is what this is. It is kind of a grand compromise, if I may say, to put all these things together and to fit them together so the entire country benefits. I say that in the way of thanking Senator Chambliss.

I see Senator Conrad in the Chamber. I thank him both in his capacity as chairman of the Budget Committee and as a senior member of the Agriculture Committee. He helped us put all these numbers together so they work.

Again, I close my remarks by thanking Senator Chambliss for his stewardship when he was chairman but also for being my partner in putting this legislation together as ranking member. It would be fine with me if we could quickly vote and move this bill to conference. I think Senator Chambliss might agree with me on that. But we will have some amendments this week. I hope we can complete them in a timely fashion.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated November 5, 2007.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today marks 5 years since the tragic death of our friend and colleague, Paul Wellstone of Minnesota.

You know, I look around the Chamber, I see men and women of remarkable talents and abilities. But I have also had a strong sense that over the last 5 years there has sort of been a void in our midst; a very special Senator, a Member who played a unique role within this body, has been missing.

It is as though we are suffering from ``phantom limb syndrome''; you know, where a person loses a limb but still feels its presence. Whenever an issue of moral urgency, an issue of conscience comes to the Senate floor, I still expect to look back over here in the back row and see Paul Wellstone over there, chopping his hands in the air, speaking with his passion, urging us to do the right thing. On that score, I remind my colleagues that one of the last major votes cast by Senator Wellstone was his vote against a resolution later used by President Bush as an authority to launch an invasion of Iraq.

I remember it well because Paul and I were very close friends, and we debated this between us. I said: Paul, no, Bush is not going to use this as any kind of authorization to go to Iraq. This is only meant to give him the authority to go to the U.N., to get the U.N., which is what we want to do, is to get the U.N. inspectors back there.

Well, I think Paul was a little more prescient than I was. So we did not vote the same way on that. I will forever rue the day I voted to give President Bush that authority. Quite frankly, Senator Wellstone was in the midst of a very difficult reelection campaign when he cast that vote. So I think it is a measure of his political courage that he cast that vote without thinking about any political consequences.

Five years later, with our Armed Forces bogged down in a civil war in Iraq, it is painfully clear Senator Wellstone's vote was not only a courageous vote, it was the right vote.

I think Paul truly was, as I have said before, kind of the soul of the Senate. I have said before that no one ever wore the title ``Senator'' better or used it less. He loved it when ordinary folks came up to him and called him Paul. Some Senators might not be so approachable. Paul Wellstone was. He took that as a sign that ordinary people knew he was one of them. He was approachable and he cared.

Paul Wellstone was truly my best friend in the Senate. But he is one of those rare souls who so many saw as their best friend. He had a powerful authenticity about him that made a miner up in the Iron Range know he was as important to Paul Wellstone as the President of the United States. That was a very unique ability he had.

He never had to proclaim his decency. It shone forth in great acts of political courage and small acts of human kindness. He never had to say he cared. He never had to proclaim his compassion. You just knew it was there. The hard-working folks he cared about most didn't have lobbyists of influence, but they had Paul Wellstone. He truly was their best friend.

So 5 years later we remember the political science professor whose measure of truth was never in political theory but in the impact of our decisions on real people. We remember the community organizer who understood how to bring people together, rural and urban, environmentalists and labor, Republicans and Democrats and, as I have often joked, he even brought Minnesotans and Iowans together. We remember a leader, a proud Democratic Farmer Labor Party liberal who constantly reminded those of us who are Democrats that the purpose of our party is to offer hope and opportunity to all Americans, including the neediest among us.

I still remember the first time I ever met Paul Wellstone. It was in 1988. I was a freshman Senator. We were in the midst of one of the deepest recessions--depressions, almost--in farm country that we had had since the Great Depression. Farmers were losing their farms all over the Midwest. Suicides were up. Families were breaking up. There were bankruptcies. It was not a very good time in farm country. I remember I went out to speak to a large group right outside of Austin, MN, at a big farm gathering. I know there were well over 1,000 farmers. It was a big gathering. I think the Minnesota Farmers Union or maybe the National Farmers Union had pulled them together.

So they asked me to come speak because I had been, at that time, trying to get through a bill called the Harkin-Gephardt farm bill to respond to the crisis.

So I went there to speak and, of course, as any big gathering like that on the stage, you have a lot of different speakers. I was supposed to be the final speaker. I was the Senator. So I get there. We had one farmer speak, then the head of the Farmers Union speak and then somebody else spoke and then somebody else spoke. Right before me, they had this guy, this Professor Wellstone. I had never met this guy, and I am on the stage with him. I am preparing my remarks, thinking how I am going to get the crowd up and excited, get them stimulated. And so this Wellstone guy gets up to speak. He has long curly hair. He has a T- shirt on, kind of rolled up. He was muscular, a wrestler.

How can I say it? After he spoke, I didn't quite know what to do. He had everybody up. He was so enthusiastic. He had everybody pumped up. He had everybody enthused. I thought, how can I follow this? Well, I tried my best. It wasn't very good. I came back to my staff. I said: I don't know who that guy is, but don't you ever put me on after him again.

That was my first introduction to Paul Wellstone. Then after that we became friends. After that, through mutual friends in Minnesota, I found out that he was thinking of running for the Senate. Of course, he had a big primary. He won it. Of course, I couldn't do much to help him because I was fighting for survival myself in 1990. I had a Congressman running against me. I was a first-term Senator. But I couldn't have been more happy, after my own reelection, than the fact that Paul Wellstone won that race in Minnesota in 1990. So we joined forces in the Senate.

In 1996, running for reelection, that was a tough year. Quite frankly, both of us nearly lost. We were very close. I remember talking to him on the phone.

I said: Paul, I don't know if I am going to survive. He said:

Yes, we are going to survive.

Then 2002 came. I remember a dinner with another colleague. I won't mention the name. It is a personal thing. But we were thinking maybe of not running again. Paul Wellstone had said he was only going to serve two terms, and he was afraid of breaking that commitment. So we discussed this over dinner. Our wives were with us. We discussed the issue of running or not. I thought, well, I have been here for a couple terms myself. I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore. That would have been my third term, his second. Then one by one we decided we were going to run again, and we talked Paul into it.

We said: Paul, you have to be here. You have to do it. And don't worry about that. Your people will understand. You have things to do. You haven't finished your job.

So we all decided, yes, we would seek another term in office.

Paul once said:

Politics is about what we create by what we do, what we

hope for, and what we dare to imagine.

Paul was a hopeful man. I always remember that green was his color. He had that bus painted green. When I say ``painted green,'' I mean with a paint brush. It was an awful paint job they did on that bus of his. He climbed aboard that bus in 1990 and set out to build a better America. But Paul never meant for it to be a solo voyage. He wanted us all aboard.

Though Paul is no longer with us, his journey for justice continues. Near the site of the tragic plane crash is a beautiful physical memorial for Paul and the seven others who died there: his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia, two pilots, campaign staffers Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic, and Mary McEvoy. That is the physical monument.

I would like to think there are also living memorials that Paul would have been truly passionate about. One of those is the nonpartisan, nonprofit Wellstone Action organization founded by his sons, Mark and David, which trains citizens in civic activism and grassroots, people- to-people politics, the kind of politics he loved and excelled at like no one else.

I think there is one more Paul Wellstone legacy. It is not tangible, but it may be the most powerful legacy of all. That is our memory of his passion, his convictions, and his incredible capacity for bringing people together to accomplish important things.

Before closing, I must mention one of those important things he fought so hard for and was so passionate about that still remains unaccomplished. He fought hard all the time I knew him to end the neglect and denial surrounding issues of mental health, access to mental health services. Over 41 million persons suffer from a moderate or serious mental disorder each year. Less than half receive the treatment they need, and 80 to 90 percent of all mental disorders are treatable by therapy and medication. Paul fought very passionately for the Mental Health Parity Act to end the absurd practice of treating mental and physical illnesses as two different kinds of things under health insurance.

In late 2001, the Senate passed the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act, sponsored by Paul Wellstone and Senator Domenici of New Mexico-- that was when I happened to be chairman. We had a brief interim where we had the Senate, at that time, 2001-2002--as an amendment to the 2002 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill. It passed the Senate. Then we went to conference. In conference it was argued that this was not the right place for it, that it should be on an authorization bill, not on an appropriations bill. I don't have the words right here, but I have them, when people committed that we would take care of mental health parity the next year on an authorization bill. So it was dropped in conference. Then 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and we still don't have mental health parity. The Senate passed it. A strong majority of Members in the other body supported a similar bill entitled the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. But we still don't have it done.

I can't think of a better living legacy to Senator Paul Wellstone than for this Congress, the 110th Congress, to pass the strongest possible mental health parity bill and send it to the President to become law. I hope we can get that job done before we go home whenever that may be.

In closing, for those of us who had the privilege of serving with Paul Wellstone, his spirit is still very much with us. He still inspires us. He still calls us to conscience. He still makes us smile when we think of his puckish humor. He was the finest of men. We miss him greatly.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Florida.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business.

Mr. President, tomorrow with the closing of the Maytag manufacturing plant in Newton, IA, a beloved Iowa institution and an icon in the history of industrial America will be gone forever.

The Maytag brand, synonymous with product quality and reliability, will still be attached to rebranded Whirlpool Corporation appliances, but do not be fooled, those products will no longer be made by loyal, skilled, experienced, Iowa workers. They will be made elsewhere.

This is a heartbreaking loss to the Newton community, Newton, IA, and a loss felt by people across my State of Iowa. Maytag was founded in Newton by Fredrick Louis Maytag, in 1893, as a manufacturer of farm equipment. Fourteen years later, the company introduced its first washing machine, which it produced during seasonal downturns in the farm implement business.

Newton soon became known as the washing machine capital of the world. By the time it was acquired by Whirlpool in 2006, Maytag Corporation was a $4.7 billion company with 18,000 employees worldwide.

But the center of its operations, the heart of its operations, was Newton, IA, with 2,800 employees. Now, it is all gone. Thousands of good-paying jobs and the economic foundation of an entire community.

For generations, Iowans eagerly went to work at Maytag, and Maytag was an integral part of the Newton community. Maytag workers helped to build a thriving local economy. The children of Maytag assembly line workers and the children of the Maytag executives all went to the same high-quality schools.

When children graduated from high school or from college, many came home to Newton to work at Maytag, either on the line or as executives. Together, workers and management at

Maytag built a wonderful community and a wonderful business. Now, in what seems like the blinking of an eye, Maytag is gone.

Why? Well, because it is cheaper to make appliances in foreign countries that pay their workers a pittance; that lack labor standards and environmental protections. Maytag management was seduced by the lure of lower wages; sent jobs from some of their plants to Mexico.

This, combined with unwise decisions by management to buy a variety of companies, significantly weakened Maytag's finances and their ability to invest in improvements to their own product lines. That made the company a takeover target.

It is a personal tragedy for the workers of Maytag and elsewhere who have lost good-paying jobs, but it is something else; it is a threat to the middle-class standard of living in this country, as displaced workers are obligated to accept lower paying jobs, often without health insurance or pension benefits.

According to a study by economists at Iowa State University, the average income in Jasper County, that is the home of Newton, the average income in Jasper County in 2005 was $34,400 a year, again, because of Maytag.

Without the Maytag jobs, the average income will drop by nearly $5,000. Let's be clear. As I said, washing machines made elsewhere will probably still carry the Maytag brand, but I will always say that the heart and soul of Maytag was the Newton community.

Richard Doak, a Des Moines Register columnist, was intervening a Maytag worker years ago when the company was hinting it might close the Newton plant. The worker stated:

If that ever happens, it will be the end of Maytag, because

the people of Newton are the essence of the company. We pump

blue blood [said the worker, referring to the color of the

Maytag logo.]

Daniel Krumm, the chief executive officer who transformed Maytag into a global company said that what he called the Newton ethic, was the key to the company's success. By the Newton ethic, he meant an entire community that was loyal to the company and took great pride in making products of the highest quality.

Unfortunately, some of Daniel Krumm's successors chose to betray the Newton ethic. Some of them chose to cash it in for cheaper products, and higher profits made outside the United States.

This story is all too familiar to skilled workers in the manufacturing sector in this country. You might wonder why I am on the floor talking about this on this Thursday, October 25. Because tomorrow, on Friday, Maytag will shutter its last plant and cease operations in Newton, IA. I worked as hard as I could to prevent the Whirlpool takeover of Maytag. I worked with State and local officials to prevent the closing of the plant in Newton. But in the end, regrettably, our efforts were unsuccessful.

Particularly, I wish to salute the tremendous effort of the officers, the plant committee, the department of stewards of United Auto Workers Local 997. Under the outstanding leadership of Ted Johnson, the local president, they have been on the frontlines throughout the crisis of Maytag, fighting to prevent the plant closure; when that failed, doing everything possible to help the displaced workers.

Tomorrow, Friday, will be a sad day in Newton, IA. But there is rebirth. Not all of the news from Newton is bad. The Newton ethic survives, and the Newton community is resilient. Two companies, Iowa Telecom and Caleris, plan to add more than 200 jobs in Newton by the end of the year.

Other businesses are expanding. Community leaders are coming together to develop a strategy to rebound from the loss of Maytag. I wish them every success, and I will stand ready to continue to assist in any way I can.

Another sad chapter in the continuing decline of our manufacturing base in America. Maytag. Who has not seen the ad about the Maytag repairman who has nothing to do because Maytag was such a good product?

Whether it is refrigerators or washing machines, home appliances, Maytag always stood for the best in quality. It was the best in quality because it was made by dedicated workers, skilled workers who took pride in their work. They made good livings. They were middle-class families. I said it was always a joy to go to Newton. It was wonderful to see the sons and daughters of assembly line workers going to the same school as the executives' kids, all working together, going to the same churches, belonging to the same clubs, going to the same bowling alleys, having this wonderful picnic every year, where the executives and their families and the workers and their families all were enjoying their annual picnic with their kids.

They took pride in the products they built. I do not think the people in some of these other countries will have that same kind of commitment. They are lower paid, they did not have the benefits. At some point, we have to take stock of what is happening to our manufacturing base in this country and what is happening to us in terms of a community and a business that can grow and evolve.

I know things change, and they have to change, but still, there is no reason, there is no reason why Maytag had to leave Newton. There were some bad business decisions made. But, again, it is chasing higher profits in the short term by shipping our jobs out overseas or to Mexico or to other countries.

And those short-term profits lead to long-term losses for the workers and their families and everyone else. So it is a sad day tomorrow in Newton and a sad day for all of us trying to work so hard to keep Maytag alive.

Mr. President, we entered into a unanimous consent agreement last night. I will repeat it for the benefit of Senators.

Senators should be aware that we will now start a series of debates and we will stack the votes. The first amendment will be the amendment of the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, amendment No. 3437. There will be 30 minutes of debate equally divided. That will be the first one.

The second one will be the amendment of the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. DeMint; that is amendment No. 3387. There will be 20 minutes of debate equally divided.

The third one would be the amendment No. 3365 by the Senator from Kansas, Senator Roberts. There will be 10 minutes of debate equally divided.

Then the fourth one would be the amendment No. 3358 offered by the Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn. There will be 20 minutes of debate equally divided. At the end of all of that time, the Senate will proceed to vote on and in relation to those amendments.

We are ready for the amendment of the Senator from Wyoming as soon as he arrives, and he is here.

Amendment No. 3437 to Amendment No. 3325

Mr. President, under the unanimous consent agreement entered into last night, I believe the Senator from South Carolina would be recognized next for amendment No. 3387, with 20 minutes of debate equally divided.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of the Roberts amendment first, and then we would, after the disposal of the Roberts amendment, then proceed to the DeMint amendment.

Mr. President, I yield myself about 3 minutes.

The amendment offered by Senator Roberts is a good amendment. This was authorized in the emergency supplemental bill for fiscal year 2007. The grants are for small businesses that want to partner with each other or other organizations to establish employer-owned childcare programs. Funds can be used for startup costs, technical assistance, and training and special services for sick kids or children with disabilities.

The program is authorized at $50 million in fiscal year 2008. As the Senator said, funding was not included. I think it is time we do fund it. I have long been a supporter of expanding the role of small businesses in providing the kind of childcare that their employees need.

I think the amendment of the Senator will further that goal, and I offer my support to the Senator's amendment and I hope the Senate will adopt it.

I yield back whatever time we may have.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 3387 to amendment no. 3325

I wish to join with Senator Specter in opposing the DeMint amendment, which would strike two congressionally directed fundings in the bill--one for the Appalachian Council, and the other one would be for the Working for America Institute.

This institute was created, first of all, in 1989 and then in 1998 was spun off and made into a totally separate nonprofit organization with a functioning board of directors and everything else. They have over 30 years of experience in the field of job training, workforce development. They work with businesses, the private sector, they work with unions, and they work with communities. The institute has basically been a showcase of how to pull people together and get people together for workforce development. It is doing great work, and it benefits communities throughout the United States. In fact, I had the list of some here. Just last year alone, the institute provided assistance to Portland, OR, the Ohio State Workforce Board, the National Governors Association, and the National Alliance of Workforce Boards. So you can see they do things all over the country.

I point out that this institute received funding through the Department of Labor for over 30 years, through Republican and Democratic administrations. I can go back to Nixon and Ford and Carter, all through the Reagan years, the first Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and actually the first part of this Bush administration until just a couple of years ago when the Department of Labor decided to cut all funding for it. So we had to come in here a couple of years ago and put directed funding in there for the institute. It was widely supported.

So when the Senator from South Carolina says that: Well, we will just make it competitive. Well, the Department will not do it anyway. They are not interested in it. They will not put it out for competitive grant. So this is another instance where I think congressionally directed funding has validity because we have looked at these programs from a bipartisan standpoint, and we agree they should be funded, even though the Department of Labor does not want the funding.

Now, the second issue I wanted to address is--I do not know whether I caught the Senator from South Carolina correctly, but I heard something about lobbying and political activity. I just wanted to make it very clear that section 503 of the bill reads--and I will read it in its entirety:

No part of any appropriation contained in this Act shall be

used, other than for normal

and recognized executive-legislative relationships, for

publicity or propaganda purposes, for the preparation,

distribution or use of any kit, pamphlet, booklet,

publication, radio, television or video presentation,

designed to support or defeat legislation pending before the

Congress or any State legislature, except in presentation to

the Congress or any State legislature itself.

B. No part of any appropriation contained in this Act shall

be used to pay the salary or expenses of any grant or

contract recipient or agent acting for such recipient related

to any activity designed to influence legislation or

appropriations pending before the Congress or any State

legislature.

So the recipients cannot do it, and they cannot hire lobbyists, either, to lobby for them for any legislation pending before the Congress. So I wanted to make it clear that none of this money can be used for lobbying or for any kind of partisan activities, nor can it even be used for them to hire a lobbyist or a lobbying firm for that activity. So I wanted to make that clear.

I support the Senator from Pennsylvania. The Appalachian Council has done a great job. They are doing great work in a number of States. The Working for America Institute, again, is one that has proven its worth. It has been widely supported throughout America, through business concerns, and State workforce investment boards all over this country.

Now is not the time to pull the rug out from underneath them. So I would join with Senator Specter in opposing the DeMint amendment.

I yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. President, I move to table the DeMint amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, now we are going to go to the Coburn amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that the vote sequence be changed and that the vote in relation to the Coburn amendment be second in the sequence; that the remaining provisions remain in effect.

Mr. President, I assume it comes as no surprise that I oppose the amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma.

I appreciate that the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma raises again the issue of children's health care. I think that debate should go on since the plight of poor children in this country needs as much attention as we can give it. But I do not think this amendment is serious about addressing the health of children. The amendment does not put any money into it at all; it just says that we will not have any congressionally directed funding until every child in America has health care coverage. I believe that is the way it is worded. So it really does not fund it. It does not do anything at all. I think it is the kind of thing that kind of gives Congress a bad name in that we say we

want to do these things, but we do not provide any funding for them.

We really already know how to increase the number of children insured in this country--by providing an increase in the SCHIP bill program. The Senate recently voted 68 to 31 to do that--68 to 31, pretty overwhelming. That bill would have provided insurance to millions of children who do not have any. Well, maybe the Senator from Oklahoma did not agree with how that was done but, nonetheless, 68 Senators did agree on both sides of the aisle on that approach.

So, again, if the Senator was really concerned about the plight of these children, I would suggest that rather then voting against the SCHIP bill, which obviously provides some guidance and direction, that there is another way of doing it. Again, I point out that the Senate voted overwhelmingly to do that.

That vote on SCHIP was a key one on children's health insurance, not a completely unrelated vote dealing with congressionally directed spending, which is what this is.

I say to my friend from Oklahoma, if he wants more kids to have health insurance, then vote for a bill that would provide more health insurance to kids. If it is not the SCHIP bill, then what is it? It has been suggested that maybe a vote for the Coburn amendment might be a nice cover vote for those who oppose the SCHIP bill. I don't think so. Perhaps more and more people are finding out that a vote against the SCHIP bill was not a very popular one, as we hear from communities and States. But an amendment such as this doesn't change the facts about the SCHIP bill, one way or the other.

I also disagree with the Senator's implication, if I might say, that congressionally directed projects in the bill are unworthy of Federal spending. I am proud of the projects I included in this bill. I will be glad to defend every one of them. Again, with the transparency we have that came with the new ethics reform bill, all of these have been spread upon the record. We know who asked for them and we know how much money is involved. I am happy to defend every one of the ones I put in there. I should add that many of the projects the Senator wants to eliminate are, in fact, directed to children's health. Let me cite a few examples.

There is congressionally directed funding for St. Francis Hospital in Delaware to expand prenatal maternity and pediatric services to indigents. There is funding for the Youth Crisis Center in Jacksonville, FL to address the serious health consequences facing runaway and homeless youth. There is funding for St. Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise, ID to expand pediatric services. There is funding for the St. Louis Children's Hospital in St. Louis for neonatal intensive care unit expansion. There is funding for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Children's Health Project which uses mobile units to provide primary care to indigent children along the gulf coast. There is funding for Child Sight in New Mexico, a vision screening and eyeglass program especially for Native Americans on reservations. There is funding for St. Anthony's Hospital in Oklahoma City for construction of a newborn nursery. All of these would be cut out if the amendment were adopted. They are good provisions, and they will go a long way toward helping children's health in all of these instances.

Again, I don't see this as a serious means of doing anything to help children's health. It is an attack on congressionally directed funding to which the Senator is opposed. As I said, I support congressionally directed funding. I always have. I especially support it now with the new provisions on transparency and accountability as a result of the ethics bill we recently passed.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

I yield to the Senator whatever time he requires.

Mr. President, I point out that the Coburn amendment doesn't put 1 cent into helping children's health, not 1 penny. Yet in the bill itself, as I pointed out, there are a number of programs that actually go to help children's health all over this country. The Coburn amendment would eradicate those.

Mr. President, I do want to give the yeas and nays to the Senator. I was just going to move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Yes.

No.

Mr. President, I say to my friend from Oklahoma, it was on or in relation to. So, yes, ask that again.

Mr. President, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I think we are getting close. With these three votes coming up now, hopefully we are just a few amendments away from completing the bill, and hopefully we will have it done early this afternoon. I had hoped we would have it done by 12:30, but that does not look possible. But we are getting close. I hope when Senators come over to the Chamber we can work out some other amendments that are pending at this time, and perhaps we can get a consent to limit the number of amendments and bring closure to this bill sometime early this afternoon.

Amendment No. 3437

Mr. President, since no one wants to be recognized in opposition, I yield back the time.

Mr. President, first, I make a point of order that the Senate is not in order.

Mr. President, we now proceed to 2 minutes on the Coburn amendment. After that, then we will have 2 minutes on the DeMint amendment and vote. These will be 10-minute votes as per the prior agreement.

Mr. President, I ask the Senate please be called to order.

Mr. President, I move to table the Coburn amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I understand there will now be 2 minutes prior to the vote on the DeMint amendment, which we already have moved.

Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will withhold for a second, I have two modifications I send to the desk, a modification of amendment No. 3351, a Smith amendment, and amendment No. 3376. I have two modifications I send to the desk.

Mr. President, I call up amendments No. 3351, as modified; 3376, as modified; 3397, by Senator Lautenberg; 3401, by Senator Cardin; amendment No. 3430, by Senator Feingold; amendment No. 3436, by Senator Hatch; amendment No. 3418, by Senator Lieberman; and amendment No. 3388, by Senator DeMint. These have all been agreed to. I ask for their immediate consideration en bloc.

Mr. President, regarding amendment No. 3350 by Senator Lautenberg and No. 3446 by Senator Landrieu, I ask unanimous consent they both be withdrawn.

Mr. President, can we withhold for a second? The amendment by the Senator from Massachusetts is accepted on both sides.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

For the benefit of Senators, I understand a number of Republicans are at the White House for a White House meeting until 3:30, so there will not be any votes between now and 3:30. However, we want to get amendments up and debated. Hopefully at around 3:30 or shortly thereafter we can start a series of votes. Right now we have four amendments pending and three more amendments that are not pending but will be called up shortly. One of those will be offered by the Senator from New Mexico. That is the lay of the land. It looks as if we are down to about seven votes, possibly, starting at or around 3:30 or shortly thereafter.

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

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, before we start, I send a modification to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration on amendment No. 3443 for Senator Hatch.

Mr. President, the amendment has been agreed to on both sides.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to vitiate the previous vote on amendment No. 3430, the Feingold amendment. I now send to the desk a modification of that amendment and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, under the previous unanimous consent agreement, I call up Kennedy amendment No. 3433, and I send a modification to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, Parliamentary inquiry: What is the amendment now before the Senate?

Mr. President, since no one is here to speak in opposition, I yield back all time.

Mr. President, in consultation with Senator Ensign, he does not wish to use his time. So, therefore, we yield back all time.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 3352

Mr. President, it is my understanding we don't need any time. All time is yielded back.

Mr. President, the next amendment up would be Senator Vitter's amendment No. 3328. I have a modification I send to the desk.

Mr. President, I appreciate the sentiments by the Senator from Louisiana and accept this proposal on this modified amendment and will ask that it be adopted by unanimous consent. I agree to work hard for inclusion of this amendment in the conference report of the final legislation.

Mr. President, we are ready to vote on the Vitter amendment.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I understand that under the unanimous consent agreement, the next amendment will be No. 3396, the Grassley- Sanders amendment. It has been modified.

If there is no one else to speak, I yield back the remaining time.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 3404 to Amendment No. 3325

Mr. President, I understand the next amendment is the Schumer amendment No. 3404.

As amended by the Durbin amendment No. 3449.

Mr. President, I call up the Durbin amendment.

All time is yielded back.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I have an amendment for Mr. DeMint, which I send to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, the amendment has been agreed to on both sides.

Mr. President, I am informed that amendment No. 3391 by Senator Chambliss can be withdrawn, so I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 3391 be withdrawn.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I yield--how much time remains?

I will split it, 1\1/2\ minutes to Senator Specter, and I will take the last 1\1/4\ minutes.

Mr. President, first I thank Senator Specter for his help through all this debate and developing this bill. I thank Senator Byrd for his usual eloquence tonight. I think he encapsulated what this is all about.

This is a bipartisan bill. It passed the committee by a vote of 26 to 3. Frankly, I think at least two, maybe all three of those were opposed to the stem cell portion we had in there, which is no longer in the bill. Nonetheless, this passed 26 to 3.

To echo a little bit what Senator Byrd said, if you vote to commit, you are voting to cut community services block grants, to zero it out, and your social services block grants that go to your States will be cut by 30 percent. You would cut NIH, as Senator Byrd said, by $279 million. How about special education? That would be cut by $748 million. How about community health centers? That would be cut by $250 million.

A ``yea'' vote means you agree with the President that we do not need any more community health centers, you agree with the President we don't need any more money to go to the States for special education, you agree with the President that we can cut funding for NIH, you agree with the President we can zero out the community services block grants and cut the social services block grants to the States by 30 percent. That is what a ``yea'' vote means.

Frankly, I hope we have an overwhelming vote to reject this motion to commit and keep this a strong bipartisan bill with which we can go to conference.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

study on folic acid

Senator Salazar, I commend you for bringing this critical issue to my attention and to my Colleagues' attention. I agree with you that we must do all that we can to reduce serious birth defects.

Senator Salazar, I will work with you to expand folic acid fortification of foods and beverages.

I thank my friend from Illinois for his leadership on this issue. I have worked hard in this bill to make prevention a priority. Doula programs provide the help and support that families need to create a safe environment for new infants, particularly when mothers have nutritional challenges. Everything we learn from the National Institutes of Health reminds us that this early stage of development is so key to our health and well-being.

And I want to applaud my friend Senator Durbin for bringing this proven model to me last year. We worked hard to include funding and I agree with him that expert technical assistance will be an important component to this initiative. I look forward to working with Senator Durbin and Senator Specter to monitor the implementation of this program and the outcomes it provides.

public access

I remain committed to retaining the provision in conference as it is written in the Senate and House Labor-HHS appropriations bills. I will be happy to work with the Senators from Wyoming and Oklahoma to ensure that the policy is implemented as smoothly as possible for the NIH, researchers, and scientific publishers.

I agree with my colleague and will work during the conference process to ensure that funding for this program is not reduced.

Mr. President, I would be happy to.

Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Massachusetts that I agree with his description of the challenges facing the funding for deafblind services and that it is my hope that we can find agreement with our House colleagues to retain the modest funding increase that appears in their bill.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senator Clinton and Senator Snowe, for bringing this critical issue to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The Even Start Family Literacy Program is a valuable program, and I agree with my colleagues that Congress must do all that it can to ensure that the Even Start Program receives an adequate funding level to keep the program alive.

I thank the Senator from Vermont for his support of this important program and share his commitment to our Nation's low income seniors. I want to assure him that I am committed to funding the program at the highest level possible and will work with the House to do so within our existing budgetary constraints. I thank the Senator from Vermont.

I share my colleagues' support for the National Health Service Corps and agree that we must do more to reduce the number of health professional shortage areas. In my State, 14 of our counties are designated as shortage areas, so I know this issue firsthand. When this bill gets to conference, I will support as much funding as possible for this important program, and I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to ensure an expansion of the National Health Service Corps.

Respite care programs recognize the vitally important work that families do when a loved one is struck with illness or disability. I have long been a supporter of home and community-based services to keep people with disabilities in their homes and respite care is an important part of that effort. For that reason, I will work with my colleague, Senator Specter, to obtain funding for the Lifespan Respite Care Act in conference.

Health Information Technology Network Development

I appreciate the comments by the Senator from Georgia, as well as the ranking member. I agree with them that the Health Information Technology Development program is a step towards better dissemination of health information and better health care, and I will work with my colleagues during conference with the House to provide as much funding as possible.

(At the request of Mr. Harkin, the following colloquy was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

HIV/AIDS Programs

I am aware of the cuts the State of Connecticut has sustained and am aware that these cuts directly impact individuals living with HIV/AIDS in your State.

Section 102 of Public Law 109-415 lists States by name that have sufficiently reliable and accurate names-based reporting of living non-AIDS cases of HIV. The State of Connecticut is not listed among those States. However, it is my understanding that the Health Resources and Services Administration, HRSA, has administered the program as if Connecticut were on that list. Is that true?

I see.

I appreciate knowing of the Senator's support for this provision. I will certainly keep it in mind as we move into conference negotiations.

Mr. President, we have had a very productive 5 days of debate on the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies. I would like to again thank the ranking member, Senator Arlen Specter, for his leadership and partnership in helping to shape this bipartisanship bill.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the subcommittee staff for the long hours and hard work they put into it. On the Democratic side, I thank Ellen Murray, Lisa Bernhardt, Teri Curtin, Erik Tatemi, Adrienne Hallet, and Mark Laisch. On the Republican side, I thank Bettilou Taylor, Sudip Parikh, and Jeff Kratz. These staff members set a very high standard of professionalism, excellence, and integrity, and we are very fortunate to have people of this caliber in public service.

Mr. President, we are just minutes away from the vote on final passage of the bill. I want to emphasize that this is an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill that meets the priorities of members on both sides of the aisle. Senator Arlen Specter and I produced a bill that passed in committee with the support of 14 of 15 Democrats and 12 of 14 Republicans. This bill funds the most essential, life-supporting and lifesaving services for millions of people in this country. It reflects the values and priorities of the American people.

As I have said before, it is regrettable that, even before we brought this bill to the floor last week, President Bush threatened to veto it because it included a provision to expand embryonic stem cell research, and because it includes $11 billion in funding above what he requested.

We have done our very best to accommodate the President, and to produce a bill that he can sign. To that end, we removed the stem cell provision from the bill before bringing it to the floor. This is a core priority for me, for Senator Specter, and for many other Senators. But we took it out of the bill in order to meet the President halfway. I remain hopeful that, in turn, he will meet us halfway, and join us in this spirit of bipartisan compromise.

I am an optimist, and I hold out hope that, if the President examines the substance of this bill, he will see that the additional funding above his budget request goes to essential programs and services that have been shortchanged in recent years.

President Kennedy said that ``to govern is to choose.'' The President has made his choices. But, under the Constitution, Congress also gets to choose. And, in this bill, we have made the right choices. Let me cite just a few examples:

The President is requesting that we cut the National Institutes of Health--research into cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases--by $279

million. In this bill, we increase funding for NIH by $1 billion.

The President requests that we reduce the Head Start program by $100 million, which would cut tens of thousands of children from the Head Start roles. This bill increases funding for Head Start by a modest $200 million.

Despite predictions of record energy prices this winter, Mr. Bush requests that we cut the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for poor people by $379 million. In this bill, we maintain LIHEAP funding at last year's level.

Mr. Bush requests that we eliminate the community services block grant, the safety net that includes job training, housing, and emergency food assistance. In this bill, we increase the community service block grant by a modest $40 million.

In each of these program areas, the bill includes modest, reasonable increases in order to keep pace with inflation or to prevent significant cuts in essential services. This remains a bare-bones, no- frills bill that conforms to a very conservative budget allocation.

For 5 years, Congress has appropriated countless billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for schools, job programs, hospitals, and human services in Iraq. Democrats and Republicans on the committee agree that it's time to look after those same needs in this country. And that is exactly what we do in this bill.

As I said, we tried hard to accommodate the President's concerns. There has been so much division and partisanship in Washington in recent months. This bill offers a great opportunity for Congress and the President to show the American people that we can resolve our differences with compromise and bipartisan goodwill. We have met the President halfway--in my opinion, more than halfway. Now it is time for him to respond in kind, and to rescind his veto threat.

It is important that we send a strong, bipartisan message to the American people that, at a time when we are spending enormous sums on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will not neglect or shortchange essential, lifesaving, and life-supporting programs and services here at home. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this important bill. And I urge the President to join us in supporting this bipartisan bill.

I know Senators are eager to vote and go home. I just want to thank all of the Senators for their many kindnesses and their courtesies in bringing this bill to a close. It was 5 days, but it was 5 days of good debate and good amendments. We have a strong bipartisan bill. I hope we will pass it with a strong bipartisan vote, go to conference, and get it to the President's desk as soon as possible.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 23, 2007, at 10 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

This hearing will examine the Surface Transportation Board's recent and ongoing efforts related to the commercial regulation of railroads, including rulemakings and recent cases. Witnesses will provide their perspectives on the STB and its effectiveness in balancing the commercial needs of railroads and their customers and will provide an update on the Government Accountability Office 2006 report reviewing the freight railroad industry.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 23, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The hearing is on the nomination of Mr. Todd J. Zinser, Inspector General--Designate, United States Department of Commerce; Mr. Robert Clarke Brown, Member of the Board of Directors--Designate, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority; Mr. Carl B. Kress, Commissioner-- Designate, Federal Maritime Commission; and Mr. A. Paul Anderson, Commissioner (Reappointment), Federal Maritime Commission.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to hold a hearing entitled, ``Examining the human health impacts of global warming.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to hold a hearing entitled ``EEOICPA: Is the Program Claimant Friendly for Our Cold War Heroes?'' during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate office building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 23, 2007, at 10 a.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Six Years After Anthrax: Are We Better Prepared to Respond to Bioterrorism?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select

Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 23, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

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

Mr. President, as you stated, we are back on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill. We had a good 2 days last week on it and amendments were disposed of.

We now have a whole series of pending amendments. Right now, Senator Specter and I have been working, our staffs have been working, to try to get these amendments cleared. That work is continuing.

As the leader said, we will have votes today starting at 5:30. We have two amendments. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to vote on these two amendments at 5:30, one following the other.

That would be the Allard amendment No. 3369, and the Dorgan amendment No. 3335, as modified by amendment No. 3445. So we would go to those two amendments in order at 5:30.

But I want to make it clear that if we do not reach an agreement on a whole host of other amendments that are pending, we could roll into a whole series of votes.

I want to read those off so people know what they are. First, there is the amendment by Senator Vitter, No. 3328, dealing with importation of drugs from Canada; there is a Dorgan amendment, No. 3345, relating to the NAFTA trade agreement; there is the Senator Menendez amendment, No. 3347, providing funding for the Patient Navigator Program; an amendment by Senator Ensign, No. 3342, dealing with Social Security benefit payments with Mexico; there is a Senator Ensign amendment, No. 3352, again dealing with Social Security benefits and illegal workers; there is a Lautenberg/Snowe amendment, No. 3350, to prohibit the use of funds dealing with abstinence education; there is a Senator Roberts amendment, No. 3365, to fund the Small Business Child Care Grant Program; Senator Reed's amendment No. 3360 providing funding for trauma in emergency medical services programs; there is a Coburn amendment, No. 3358, that would end all earmarks before every kid in America has health care; then there is the Brown-Webb amendment, No. 3361, providing information to schools relating to the prevention of violent events and other crisis situations.

So all of those amendments are pending. I mean, they are at the desk, they are pending, and can be called up.

Quite frankly, as the chairman and floor manager, if we don't reach agreement on them, it is my intention that we roll over into those votes tonight.

Again, with the concurrence of my ranking member, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30 the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to the Allard amendment No. 3369; then when that is disposed of, a vote on or in relation to the Dorgan amendment No. 3335, as modified by amendment 3445; further I ask that there be a 2-minute period of time before each amendment for debate on both sides; and furthermore, I ask unanimous consent that no second-degree amendments be allowed prior to the vote on either one of those two amendments.

We will proceed to vote at 5:30 on those two amendments. Then we will have to see whether we can work out clearance on some of these other amendments so we won't have any other votes tonight. But if we don't, we will have to roll into a whole series of votes this evening. We have to do this, if we want to finish by noon tomorrow. Both leaders on Thursday made a commitment that we would finish this bill by Tuesday at noon. If we are going to do that, I see no way other than having votes tonight or getting the sides to agree on the acceptance of these amendments.

Senator Specter and I have agreed on a number of these amendments to get them worked out, but they are being held up in other places. I understand that. That is the privilege of any Senator. But hopefully, we can get this worked out, and we won't have to have that many amendments this evening.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if my friend will yield, I concur with what Senator Specter said. The list of amendments I read is the list of amendments that is pending at the desk that we could call up to vote on. We could do that this evening. There is a bunch of other amendments that Senators have said they are going to offer that we have on our list but they haven't been offered yet. Senator Specter is absolutely right, Senators could find themselves in a crunch where there is no time left to offer these amendments by noon tomorrow. So if they want to get their amendments considered, now is a good time. They could get recognized right away.

I may have misstated something earlier in my unanimous consent request. I want to be clear that I asked unanimous consent that the Dorgan amendment 3335 be modified by 3445.

I thank the Senator from North Dakota for always being on the side of American workers and American jobs. I assure him he will have my support on the amendment. We do not have it cleared yet. We may have to have a vote on it. But if that is so, perhaps that could be one of the votes we have tonight, if we don't get an agreement on it.

Amendment No. 3369

I wish to take the time--we will be voting at 5:30. As I said, we will be voting on the first one, which will be the Allard amendment, amendment No. 3369. I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about the amendment.

It sounds simple. You cut funds for programs that the Bush administration has concluded are ineffective, using what is called the Program Assessment Rating Tool--PART--then use these savings to reduce the debt. We are all for making sure taxpayers' dollars are spent well and responsibly, but let's take a look at what this amendment really means.

First, we have to have some background on PART, the Program Assessment Rating Tool. It is intended to help assess the management and performance of individual programs. So it is not just a question of whether the program works, it also evaluates whether Congress has designed the program in a clear manner and whether Federal agencies do a good job managing the program. So programs evaluated under PART fall into one of five categories: They are effective, moderately effective, adequate, ineffective or results not determined.

The last category means there was not enough information about it to make a decision.

The Senator from Colorado, Mr. Allard, would only cut programs that are rated ineffective and take that money and apply it to the deficit. It sounds good. Why should you ever support an ineffective program?

First of all, let's take a look at what PART means. What is PART and how is it used? This is what the President's own budget documents say about PART:

Ratings do not result in automatic decisions about funding.

Clearly, over time, funding should be targeted to programs

that can prove they achieve measurable results. In some

cases, a PART rating of ``ineffective'' or ``results not

demonstrated'' may suggest that greater funding is necessary

to overcome identified shortcomings, while a funding decrease

may be proposed for a program rated ``effective'' if it is

not a priority or has completed its mission.

This is the President's budget. I say: Read it. It says: Sometimes if you have an ``ineffective'' rating, maybe you ought to have greater funding for it to overcome some shortcomings, rather than if you have an effective program that may be getting funded, maybe it should be done away with because either it is not a priority or has completed its mission.

In other words, the amendment offered by the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Allard, is counter to the idea behind creating the PART process. It was not intended as a club on an ``ineffective'' program, or it was designed to assess the impact of programs, identify steps that could be taken to improve them.

Now, that is not my only problem with this misguided amendment. I am concerned about the important programs Americans need that would be undermined by his amendment. Make no mistake about it, a vote for Senator Allard is a vote against the programs you see listed on this second chart. A vote for Senator Allard's amendment says we should undo the fiscal mess created by the Bush administration policy of tax cuts for the millionaires and the war in Iraq by reducing funding for programs that help some students prepare for college, provide unemployed low-income seniors with income, retrain workers who lose their jobs due to foreign trade.

Now, here are some of the programs that would lose 10 percent of the funding in the bill if the Allard amendment were adopted. The TRIO Upward Bound Program is funded at $315 million in

the Senate bill. There are 900 sites throughout the country, including 8 sites and over 700 students in the State of Colorado, I say to the occupant of the chair.

Here is what the Bush budget had to say about this program. This is a quote from the Bush budget:

The program received an ineffective PART rating when

assessed in 2002, in part, because the program evaluation

showed that the program did not overall increase the

proportion of participants who enrolled in college. However,

the program was found to have a positive impact for higher

risk students for whom the evaluation findings revealed that

Upward Bound increased 4-year college enrollment rates. In

response to this finding, the Department of Education

established a priority for the 2006 competition that required

projects to ensure that at least 30 percent of participants

were higher risk students. Given the improved targeting,

continued funding is warranted.

In other words--I better watch myself, I am saying nice things about the administration--basically what they did is they actually implemented the PART program correctly. They looked at it, they said, okay, it got an ineffective rating. Why? Well, because, they said, overall it did not show that it increased 4-year college participation.

But when they looked at the subset of the higher risk students, they said: It increased the college participation. So here is what we will do. We will require projects to ensure that at least 30 percent of the participants are higher risk students. That is how you use this tool. You do not use it as a club to get rid of it, I say to my friend from Colorado.

The President's own budget says the program is worthwhile. Look at the Perkins Career and Technical Education State Grants. It is funded at $1.2 billion. That is last year's level. We did not increase it. Last year, the Congress reauthorized and strengthened the program, and the Senate passed it by unanimous consent. In the House of Representatives there was only one vote against it. Here is what the Bush budget said:

The Perkins Act incorporates several important changes that

strengthen the program's accountability provisions and

provides opportunities to improve the program's performance.

Then there is the Community Service Employment for Older Americans. We had funded it at last year's level. This provides part-time community service opportunities paid at minimum wage for unemployed low-income persons.

The Health Professions Program: Now, this is interesting. We put in $357 million this year. The Allard amendment would cut it by $35.7 million. This is the category that includes almost all health training in America: nurse training programs, training in primary care medicine, dentistry programs. All of these would take a cut.

Then there is trade adjustment assistance: $888.7 million in this bill, last year's level, same thing the President requested. Again, this provides income support and retraining services to workers who lose their jobs due to foreign trade. Approximately 120,000 Americans are eligible each year, but only about 80,000 actually receive services.

Again, if we adopt the Allard amendment for the TRIO program at an average cost of $5,000 a student, we would cut 6,300 students out of the TRIO program.

For trade adjustment assistance, at about $12,000 per person, that means a loss of services to 7,400 workers who have lost their jobs and want to get retrained.

For the Community Service Employment Program, $5,932 for older workers--a modest amount every year to an older person--means a loss of support for 8,142 low-income seniors.

The Allard amendment on its face, you look at it and say: Well, he is cutting 10 percent from those programs rated ineffective. So you want to think: Well, gee, why would I support an ineffective program? No one wants to support ineffective programs. But, again, I refer to the first chart. I repeat again, you have to understand what PART is; that is, the Program Assessment Rating Tool, and how it is used. I will read again from the President's own budget.

PART ratings do not result in automatic decisions about

funding.

Well, the Allard amendment would be an automatic decision about cutting 10 percent. Clearly, over time, funding should be targeted at programs that can prove they achieve measurable results. I say to my friend from Colorado, it says:

In some cases, a PART rating of ``ineffective'' or

``results not demonstrated'' may suggest that greater funding

is necessary in order to overcome identified shortcomings,

while a funding decrease may be proposed for a program rated

``effective'' if it is not a priority or has completed its

mission.

So there may be effective programs that are rated as ``effective'' that probably ought to be cut. I am sure the administration and OMB are probably doing that, because they have either completed their mission or it is not a priority.

On the other hand, there may be some of those rated ``ineffective'' as mentioned in the TRIO program, rated as ineffective. When they looked at the overall score, they said: Well, it is effective if you look at higher risk students. So they carved it out and said: Thirty percent has to go to higher risk students. Then they requested the continued funding for it.

I say to my friend from Colorado, I understand his desire. Everybody wants to cut down on something that is ineffective. But I do think that if the Senator were to read and understand completely what that Program Assessment Rating Tool does, he might agree with the President's own words on his budget.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, again, I listened to my friend from Colorado, but maybe the right amendment would be to go after the Program Assessment Rating Tool, because as it says: Some of the programs that are rated ineffective actually may need more money.

I will give the Senator one example. A couple of years ago, a school that I know very well here in Washington, DC, called Gallaudet University--it is the university for the deaf here in America, premier college in the world, as a matter of fact--got an ``ineffective'' rating. That got me pretty upset until I started looking at it, finding out why it was ineffective. Now, if we had cut their funding by 10 percent, they never would have become effective. But because we got them in, and the committee did its job--and that is what the committee's function is for; if there is something that is ineffective, that is why we have committees.

Call them up, ask them what is happening. Make them explain why it has an ``ineffective,'' why it was demonstrated ``no results,'' and then let the committee do its work. That is what we did with Gallaudet. We could have had a 10-percent cut there, and they never would have become effective. They just needed better guidance and better direction. That is what the committee structure does. That is why we have the executive branch overseeing these things. That is the better way to approach it than this kind of sledgehammer approach.

That is why we have the Appropriations Committee. Yes, we do call them up, and we do look into these matters. But it is not this kind of heavyhanded approach that is going to cut programs that actually have taken steps, such as the Upward Bound Program, to be more effective.

Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to do that at this point.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that in the vote sequence previously agreed to, the Dorgan amendment, No. 3335, as modified, be removed from the agreement and the Menendez amendment, No. 3347, be substituted and the amendment be modified with the text of amendment No. 3428, and that the Senate then vote in relation to the Menendez amendment, No. 3347, as modified, following the disposition of the Allard amendment, and that all other provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be considered and agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc: Amendment No. 3335, as modified, 3331, 3419, 3434, 3405, and 3411.

Parliamentary inquiry: I understand there is 2 minutes, if the Senator wants it.

Mr. President, this is a heavyhanded club approach. Already we know that sometimes programs are rated ineffective, as the President's own budget says, and actually need more funding. Some of those rated ``effective'' probably ought to have their funding cut. But the Senator from Colorado says we are just going to cut all these programs across the board that are rated ``ineffective.''

As I pointed out, Gallaudet College in Washington, DC, probably the finest university for the deaf in the world--not probably, it is-- somehow got an ``ineffective'' rating. They changed things. Now they have an ``effective'' rating. Had they been cut 10 percent, they never would have been able to get ``effective'' again. This is not the proper way to do things. This is something for committees to handle and for the executive branch. I know the Senator from Colorado has well-meaning intentions, but they are misdirected and misguided because the Program Assessment Rating Tool is not the kind of instrument the Senator is envisioning with his amendment.

I yield back whatever time I have. I move to table the Allard amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I have a couple of modifications I will send to the desk. First is a modification for No. 3432 and then No. 3377.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3378 by Senator Tester and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, this amendment has been agreed to on the other side.

Mr. President, I ask that amendment No. 3360 be withdrawn.

Mr. President, here is the situation. Everybody wants to know if there will be more votes tonight. We don't know yet. We are trying to work out amendments with the other side. We have been instructed by the leadership to finish this bill by 12:30 tomorrow. We still have a lot of amendments pending. We are trying to work them through. Depending on the progress within the next half hour or so, we will know whether we need to have more votes tonight.

There are a lot of amendments pending. If somehow we can get these offered tonight and stacked for votes tomorrow, we might be able to do that. If not, we may have to have votes further tonight. I have been instructed by my leader to continue in that vein. So I cannot say yet if we are going to have more votes tonight. It depends on how many can be accepted on both sides. We will know shortly.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Boxer be recognized for 10 minutes to speak about the fires in California; that upon the end of her presentation, the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, be recognized for 5 minutes for the purpose of offering an amendment; that at the end of that 5 minutes, the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, be recognized for 5 minutes to offer an amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to announce to all Senators there will be no more votes tonight. But I must say there are a lot of amendments floating around that have not been offered, and we do have some that are pending. We are working on those right now, and shortly-- I hope within the next few minutes--I will be propounding a unanimous consent request that when we come in at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning we will have a list of amendments that we will be voting on.

So I say to Senators, if you have an amendment that is floating around out there, and we have a list of them, and you want it offered, I would suggest you better get over here tonight and do it, because once we start the votes in the morning at 10 o'clock--and hopefully we will reach unanimous consent with the other side on that, as I said, in a few minutes--that is going to chew up a lot of the clock. And since an agreement has been reached that we would finish by 12:30 tomorrow, that means if you have an amendment to be offered, you are going to get squeezed tomorrow morning. We may have to have one of those kind of agreements where you get 1 minute to speak, and you can offer your amendment, but it is going to be pretty hard to get an amendment in tomorrow morning.

I have to say to Senators, if you have an amendment that you feel strongly about and you want to have offered, you better get over here this evening. Because tomorrow morning the traffic is going to be pretty crowded around 10 o'clock.

Mr. President, while we wait to work out some other matters, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

We are making progress. I have some amendments that can be cleared. First I have to send some modifications to the desk.

I send to the desk a modification to Cornyn amendment No. 3427, a modification to another Cornyn amendment, No. 3379, and a modification to Baucus amendment No. 3344.

I now ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 3361 by Senator Brown; amendment No. 3427 by Senator Cornyn, as modified; amendment No. 3379 by Senator Cornyn, as modified; and amendment No. 3344 by Senator Baucus, as modified, and ask for their immediate consideration.

Mr. President, for Mr. Baucus, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated October 17, 2007.

Mr. President, we have worked through four more amendments. We are still working on others. Hopefully, soon we will have a unanimous consent proposal for tomorrow morning and linking up the votes beginning at 10 o'clock.

I say to Senators, if anyone out there has an amendment, there is no one on the floor. If anyone has an amendment they want to have offered, you would be well advised to do it tonight or you may not be able to do it tomorrow.

I believe it is important to compensate workers who have suffered as a result of their employment with the Department of Energy, and although the Energy Employee Occupational Compensation Program provides a process for compensating these victims, this process is often far too burdensome.

I agree with the remarks of the senior Senator from California.

I thank Senator Crapo for his remarks. I agree that COPD is an important health threat facing the American public. In part that is why Senator Specter and I have fought hard to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address COPD and other pressing public health issues. Since 2003, the year after the NIH doubling was complete, funding into research on COPD has continued to increase by $13 million at the National Institutes of Health. The bill before us, our Senate Labor-HHS bill includes a $4.4 million increase for the CDC to work with at least seven additional States in fiscal year 2008 on preventing heart disease and stroke. I am very proud of these increases and I thank my colleague Senator Specter for helping to make them possible.

I thank the Senator from Arkansas for her consideration and I assure her that I will work with her and Senator Crapo to ensure that the CDC is responsive to their concerns.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for sharing his views with me on LIHEAP and the national center for public health informatics.

We are facing a real crisis in Iowa and across the Nation. Last year in Iowa the average LIHEAP benefit was reduced by 30 percent. With record energy costs projected for this winter, many Iowa families are worried about how they will pay their heating bills. No family should have to choose between paying an energy bill and putting food on the table for their children. For this reason I look forward to working with my colleague to increase funding for the LIHEAP program in conference.

Children's Hospitals GME provides freestanding children's hospitals with the same support for graduate medical education that all other teaching hospitals receive through Medicare--as my colleagues have said. In Iowa, we don't have freestanding children's hospitals-- instead our children's hospitals are part of larger systems or institutions. Yet I have heard from our hospitals and pediatricians about the workforce shortages they face and how important this program is in making sure the children of my State get the best care possible. For that reason, I join Senator Specter in our commitment to working toward a higher level of funding for this program.

funding for the Organ Donation and Recovery Act

I share the Senator's support for organ donation, and I thank my friend from North Dakota for his leadership on this issue. This program is a smart investment and one that I will work to sustain in conference. By helping pay the travel and subsistence costs of donors who could not otherwise afford to donate, we will save lives and reduce the number of people on the organ transplant waiting list.

I agree with the concerns raised by the Senator from Pennsylvania. Since the 1970s, the percentage of obesity has more than doubled for preschool children ages 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12- 19 years, and more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years. As you know, I have a particular interest in fighting the obesity epidemic and have been very supportive of programs that increase physical activity and good nutrition, especially in children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2000 that only 8 percent of elementary schools, 6.4 percent of middle/junior high schools and 5.8 percent of senior high schools offer daily physical education for the entire school year for students in all grades of the school.

I agree with the recommendation from my colleague from Pennsylvania. Experts predict that the current generation of children could be the first in history to live shorter lives than their parents' generation. To fight this public health epidemic, it is going to take collaboration and partnership amongst all levels of government, community organizations, and businesses.

Teacher Quality Enhancement Partnership Grants

I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Illinois, as well as his work in championing partnerships, such as teacher residencies, on the HELP Committee. I realize the importance of having a quality teacher in every classroom. I know that too many students in high-need schools, both in cities and in rural areas, are sometimes taught by inadequately prepared teachers. These teachers are asked to take on challenges that can be discouraging, or even overwhelming. And so we lose too many teachers, often before we find out how good they could become.

I thank the Senator from Illinois for recognizing what we have done to avoid the elimination of funding for these partnership programs. When this bill goes to conference, I look forward to working with my colleague from Illinois, and I will continue to try to increase the level of funding available for colleges and universities to partner, in new ways, to improve teacher preparation. Bringing more quality teachers into classrooms is a priority for me, and I agree with the Senator from Illinois that it is important to find resources to support effective programs to better prepare and to better support teachers.

I share the concerns of my colleague from Illinois, Senator Obama, about lead poisoning in children. Despite the considerable progress made over the past few decades, much work remains to be done to protect our Nation's children. I am encouraged that the CDC is developing a hand-held lead screening device that will help to increase testing in underserved communities, who are especially at high risk for lead poisoning. This effort and other initiatives at CDC merit greater support and I will do my best in conference to increase funding for this important work.

Mr. President, I thank the Senators from Louisiana and Tennessee for their interest in this matter and for their request. Yes, I agree to support as much funding as possible for public charter schools.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of H.R. 3043 tomorrow, Senator Enzi be recognized to call up amendment No. 3437 and there be 30 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the amendment be temporarily set aside, and Senator DeMint be recognized to call up amendment No. 3387, and there be 20 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the amendment be temporarily set aside, and the Senate then resume the Roberts amendment No. 3365, and there be 10 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate resume consideration of the Coburn amendment No. 3358, and there be 20 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled prior to a vote; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate return to the Enzi amendment and vote in relation to the amendment; that upon disposition of that amendment, the Senate resume the DeMint amendment and vote in relation to the amendment; that upon disposition of the DeMint amendment, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Roberts amendment; that upon disposition of that amendment, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Coburn amendment No. 3358; that there be 2 minutes of debate prior to each vote, equally divided and controlled, with no amendments in order to any of the amendments covered in this agreement prior to the vote; and that after the first vote, the vote time be limited to 10 minutes.

So, Mr. President, this ends our business for this evening, so that when the Senate comes in tomorrow morning, we will have four amendments that will take about an hour, and then there will be four votes that will start. They will be stacked votes, and they will then take place 1 hour after we come in.

Again, I say that if we come in at 10 in the morning and this takes an hour and then we vote on four amendments, that will take us just about to the noon hour, and we are supposed to finish by 12:30. So I say again, if Senators have amendments, it looks as if they may be getting crowded out, unless they get over here in a hurry.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Caitlin Parton of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

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

Madam President, I send a modification to the desk of amendment No. 3374 and ask for its consideration.

Madam President, I have four amendments that have been cleared on both sides, and I ask unanimous consent to call them up and have them considered en bloc. The amendments are amendment No. 3353, amendment No. 3333, amendment No. 3354, and amendment No. 3374, for which the modification was sent to the desk.

Madam President, I don't think there is any further consideration to be had on these amendments. Are the amendments agreed to en bloc?

I thank the Presiding Officer.

We are waiting for a Senator to come to the floor to speak on an amendment. I know of no other speakers yet today. Again, I would remind people that we will be here Monday, and we will be voting--I don't know if the time has been determined yet but probably around 5:30 or somewhere around there. We will probably be in late voting on Monday. We will have a whole lot of amendments on Monday night. The agreement was struck yesterday that we would finish this bill by noon on Tuesday and to get there, with all the amendments we have pending, there will probably be a number of votes on Monday night.

So with that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, we have another amendment that has been agreed to on both sides, so I call up amendment No. 3399 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam President, I call up that amendment.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I appreciate the Senator raising this issue and will do what I can to ensure that we accept the higher number when we go to conference on this bill.

I am well aware of the problem of compensating workers affected by radiation from my efforts to secure a special exposure cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. Have these local communities received any sort of compensation to date?

I will work with my colleague Senator Specter, the ranking member of the subcommittee, to urge the National Cancer Institute to make this matter a high priority. Does the Senator agree?