Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Chris Erikson and Dree Collopy of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privilege of the floor be granted to Monica Severson during the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: What is the parliamentary situation we face right now?

Mr. President, the nomination of Thomas C. Dorr for the position of Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development has been controversial from the outset. It has generated a great deal of concern and opposition and very serious questions. The controversy concern, and questions have continued from Mr. Dorr's nomination in the 107th Congress, to a recess appointment, to his renomination in the 108th Congress, and his renomination this year.

I regret very much that so many problems have arisen regarding the nomination of a fellow Iowan. As any of us would feel, it is a matter of pride for me when somebody from my State is nominated for a high position in our Federal Government, regardless of party. This is the first time in my 20 years in the Senate that I have opposed a nomination of a fellow Iowan. Through the Reagan years, the first Bush years, it didn't matter. Regardless of party or about philosophy. Some were a lot more conservative than I am, and I never opposed one of them.

Like most Senators, I believe the President should receive a good deal of deference regarding nominations to Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions. However, our Constitution doesn't make us a rubberstamp. We have a responsibility to review nominees--not to decide whether the nominee would be our first choice but whether the nominee at least meets certain standards for the job.

As a member of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, I have a serious responsibility concerning nominations. I have worked with Chairman Chambliss, former chairmen Senators Cochran and Lugar, to move nominees through the Agriculture Committee and through the floor fairly and expeditiously. I

have done so both as chairman and as ranking member. That has been true for nominees of both parties.

This is not a minor nomination. The Under Secretary for Rural Development is critically important to family-size farms and ranches and to smaller communities all across America. The responsibilities include helping build water and wastewater facilities; financing decent, affordable housing; supporting electric power and rural businesses, such as cooperatives. They also include promoting community development and helping to boost economic growth, creating jobs, and improving the quality of life in rural America.

Given those responsibilities, one of this nominee's first controversies arose when Mr. Dorr's position on agriculture was reported in the New York Times of May 4, 1998. He proposed replacing the present-day version of the family farm with 225,000-acre mega farms, consisting of three computer-linked pods. Well, with the average Iowa farm at about 350 acres, this vision certainly was radical, to say the least.

On another occasion, at a 1999 conference at Iowa State University, Mr. Dorr criticized the State of Iowa for failing to move aggressively toward very large vertically integrated hog production facilities. The record also shows Mr. Dorr verbally attacking the ISU extension service and harassing the Director of the ISU Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. I ask, is this really the attitude and the vision for agriculture and rural communities that the Under Secretary for rural development ought to bring to the job?

The person in that position must also be responsive and sensitive to the demands of serving America's very diverse rural citizens and communities. That requirement cannot be overemphasized in a department that has been plagued with civil rights abuses of both employees and clients.

Here is what Mr. Dorr had to say about ethnic and religious diversity at the Iowa State University conference:

I know this is not at all the correct environment to say

this, but I think you have to perhaps go out and look at what

you perceive are the three most successful rural economic

environments in this State. And you will notice when you get

to looking at them that they are not particularly diverse, at

least not ethnically diverse. They are very diverse in their

economic growth, but they have been very focused and

nondiverse in their ethnic background and their religious

background, and there is something there, obviously, that has

enabled them to succeed and to succeed very well.

Should we have as Under Secretary of Rural Development someone who lacks the judgment to avoid uttering such intentionally provocative and divisive remarks? How does this sort of insensitivity serve the urgent need to reverse USDA's poor civil rights record?

Let me also point to a letter Mr. Dorr sent me in October of 1999 to complain about charges on his telephone bill for the national access fee and the Federal universal service fee. Now, the proceeds from these relatively modest fees go to help provide telephone service and Internet service to rural communities, hospitals, and schools-- including, I might add, Mr. Dorr's hometown, Marcus, IA, school district. It strikes me as very odd that Mr. Dorr would have the responsibility for helping rural communities obtain telecommunications services and technology when he was so vehemently opposed to a program that serves that very purpose.

Here is what he said about the national access fee and the Federal universal access fee:

With these kind of taxation and subsidy games, you

collectively are responsible for turning Iowa into a State of

peasants, totally dependent on your largesse. But should you

decide to take a few side trips through the Iowa countryside,

you will see an inordinate number of homes surrounded by 5 to

10 cars. The homes generally have a value of less than

$10,000. This just confirms my ``10 car $10,000 home''

theory. The more you try to help, the more you hinder. The

results are everywhere.

Those were Tom Dorr's own words in writing to me. Time and again, we gave Mr. Dorr the opportunity to explain this, but he could not explain this broad attack against help to rural communities.

In fact, it seems clear that Mr. Dorr was degrading the very people, the very rural communities he is nominated to serve at USDA. He was making light of lower income Americans in rural communities who are struggling to make a living and get ahead and declaring that it is counterproductive to try to help them.

When he appeared before our committee, I asked him about it, and he could not explain it. So I asked Mr. Dorr: Mr. Dorr, have you ever gotten any Government help? He did not respond.

I said: Did you ever get a guaranteed student loan when you went to college? He admitted that he had.

I asked him if he had received any Government-backed loans for farming operations?

Yes.

Had he ever gotten any farm payments from the Federal Government for his farming operations?

Yes, he had.

I listed a number of ways in which the Federal Government had helped him. And I asked rather rhetorically if it hindered him.

It seems to me Mr. Dorr was quite willing for the Federal Government to help him get ahead, but if the Federal Government is going to help someone of low income, living in a rural area who is in poverty, he says, no, if you help them, you just hinder them. Is this the kind of person we want in charge of rural development--I think to do any job well one has to believe in its value--if the very purposes of USDA's rural development programs are anathema to the beliefs and the philosophy of Mr. Dorr?

Furthermore, the nominee's record shows that he prefers to provoke, bruise, and offend rather than to seek cooperation and common ground. This simply is not an acceptable approach for the U.S. official in charge of rural development.

As with any nominee, the Senate has a responsibility also to examine Mr. Dorr's financial background and dealings. Former Secretary Veneman put it perfectly when she wrote to me:

Any person who serves this Nation should live by the

highest of standards.

So let us see whether Mr. Dorr meets the standards articulated by Secretary Veneman on behalf of the administration.

Mr. Dorr was the self-described president and chief executive officer of Dorr's Pine Grove Farm Company, of which he and his wife were the sole shareholders. In that position, as president and CEO, Mr. Dorr created an exceedingly complex web of farming business arrangements. This chart illustrates all of the various farming operations in which Mr. Dorr was involved.

Mostly you will hear about a couple of trusts: the Melvin Dorr trust and the Harold Dorr trust. There are also Seven Sons, there is the Iotex Farm Company, there is Ned Harpenau, Diamond D Bar. There is a complex web of different operations.

His operations included land in two trusts set up in 1977, one by his father, Melvin Dorr, and one by his uncle, Harold Dorr. For a time, Tom Dorr, through his company, Dorr's Pine Grove Farm, farmed the land held by the trusts under 50-50 crop share leases, with half of the crop proceeds and half of the farm benefits going to Tom Dorr's Pine Grove Farm and half going to the trust.

Then, beginning in 1988, Mr. Dorr filed new documents with USDA indicating that each trust had a 100-percent share of the crop proceeds and were entitled to receive 100 percent of the program benefits.

Tom Dorr, acting through Dorr's Pine Grove Farm, still farmed the land as before, but he claimed the arrangement had become ``a custom farming arrangement.''

At some point, one of the trust beneficiaries, Mr. Dorr's brother, Paul Dorr, began to question why the custom farming fees were so high and out of line with other custom farming fees in that area. Paul Dorr taped a telephone conversation with Tom Dorr that corroborated his suspicions that Tom Dorr was engaged in misrepresentation.

Paul Dorr contacted the Farm Service Agency and persisted in his request for an investigation. Finally, in the spring of 1996, the Farm Service Agency conducted a review of the Melvin G. Dorr irrevocable family trust. The Farm Service Agency found that the forms filed and signed by Thomas C. Dorr for the 1993, 1994, and 1995 crop years misrepresented the facts, and the trust was required to pay $16,638 to USDA. That is just one--that is, the

Melvin G. Dorr trust had to repay that amount. That is the result of an investigation in 1996.

In the fall of 2001, after Mr. Dorr had been nominated for this position, the USDA Office of Inspector General conducted a further review of Mr. Dorr's affairs. The OIG asked the Farm Service Agency to review the Harold E. Dorr irrevocable family trust. Once again, that trust then was found to be in violation of program rules because of the misrepresentation on USDA forms signed by Thomas Dorr. So now that trust had to pay USDA $17,152 in benefits and interest for what was paid out to them in 1994 and 1995. So a total of $33,782 was paid back by the two trusts.

USDA investigations determined that for the years examined, the forms signed by Tom Dorr misrepresented the trusts' shares in the crop proceeds. They found, in reality, the land in both of those trusts was farmed on a 50-50 crop share basis, it was not custom farming. The trusts, therefore, were not eligible for the 100-percent share of the program benefits they had received because Tom Dorr had misrepresented the actual farming arrangement.

The records show that Mr. Dorr knowingly carried on a crop share lease arrangement between his farm, Pine Grove Farm, and each of the trusts, even as he represented to the Farm Service Agency that it was custom farming, not crop share leases.

How do we know this? We know this because in a telephone conversation that Mr. Paul Dorr taped, and which I played for the committee in the hearing this spring, Tom Dorr is on that tape, in his own words, admitting that the so-called custom farming arrangement was, in fact, a crop share. And here is the transcript. This is a partial transcript of that conversation.

Paul Dorr:

It, this was all done that way in an effort to . . .

Tom Dorr interrupts him and said:

. . . avoid the $50,000 payment limitation to Pine Grove

Farms . . .

Mr. Dorr's operation.

Paul Dorr:

And . . . to, it is to your benefit to your other crop

acres . . .

Tom Dorr:

. . . that's right. . . .

Tom Dorr filed that way in order to avoid the $50,000 payment limitation, and he knew full well what he was doing.

This is the payment limits connection. Part of the farm program payments for land in these two trusts should have been paid directly to Tom Dorr's Pine Grove Farm under what was actually a crop share arrangement. Those payments would have counted toward Mr. Dorr's payment limitation. Instead, Mr. Dorr misrepresented to USDA the operation; therefore, the money was funneled through the trusts and not counted against Mr. Dorr's payment limitation.

Indeed, the Farm Service Agency review of Dorr's Pine Grove Farm Company found that Mr. Dorr's misrepresentations in signing up the trust land in the farm program ``had the potential to result in Pine Grove Farm receiving benefits indirectly that would exceed the maximum payment limitation.''

Federal law provides criminal penalties for knowingly making false statements for the purpose of obtaining farm program payments. So the USDA Office of Inspector General referred the Dorr matter to the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

In February of 2002, that office declined criminal prosecution and any affirmative civil enforcement due to the fact that the statute of limitations had run.

I have a copy of that letter. I ask unanimous consent to print the letter in the Record.

Mr. President, that is the letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office saying they were not moving ahead because the statute of limitations had run and they could not do anything--not that they had found Mr. Dorr innocent, but the statute of limitations had run.

Mr. Dorr's arrangement with these two trusts was only part, as I pointed out, of his extensive farming operations. Based on the seriousness of the violations involved, it was our responsibility to exercise due diligence regarding other parts of Mr. Dorr's complex farming arrangements and to take at least a look at earlier years that had not been involved in these investigations.

Again, whatever the Farm Service Agency or the Office of Inspector General did or did not pursue, that is not the end of the matter. We have the responsibility to look into this because fraud is fraud, and it is serious.

Shortly after the March 2002 nomination, Senator Dayton, a member of our committee, wrote a letter asking for other information on the other financial entities with which Mr. Dorr was involved in 1988 to 1995. We never heard back. So I wrote to Secretary Veneman on May 17 and on June 6, 2002, seeking a response to the committee's questions. We finally received a response to the letter and some materials, dated June 27, 2002.

I ask unanimous consent to have these letters from Senator Dayton and me, along with the transcript of the audiotape printed in the Record.

But critical questions remained unanswered. The materials provided late in June showed that over $70,000 in farm program payments had been received by the two trusts that were prior to that, from 1988 to 1992. So what turned up were some new questions.

If, in fact, Mr. Dorr had misrepresented his farming operations and he had been caught and the trusts had to pay back money for 3 of those years, what about the 5 years prior to that?

So I wrote a letter on July 24, 2002, and asked for the record on all these other operations from 1988 through 1992. That was Wednesday. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday--on Monday, I received a letter back from Secretary Veneman, dated July 29, in which basically she said that this issue has gone on too long, that we need to move this nominee. She did not say they did not have the records. She basically said it is time to move this nominee ahead.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter of July 24, 2002, the questions I submitted and the response of the Secretary of Agriculture on July 29, 2002, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, what I am saying is, let's try to boil this down. Thomas Dorr, in 1988, went into his local USDA office and refiled his farming operations. He said: No longer am I crop sharing with the trusts, I am custom farming. That meant that more money would go to the trusts and that payments to those trusts would not count against his farming operations payment limitations.

In 1995, his brother taped this conversation. He went to the Farm Service Agency. They investigated and found, indeed, that Thomas Dorr had misrepresented his operations, and the family trusts had to pay back nearly $17,000 in 1996.

Then after he got the nomination, a further investigation ensued and found the other family trust also had to pay back over $17,000. This was in 2001. Well, this is only for the years 1993 through 1995. So the family trusts paid $33,782. However, I asked about those other years, the years prior to 1993: 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992; give us the records for all of these different operations. That is what the Department of Agriculture would not give us. They would not give us those records.

So we know that the farm payments to one of the trusts from 1988 to 1992 were $35,377. We also know that payments to another trust from 1993 were $35,025. What I am saying is if in fact Thomas Dorr's operations were the same during those earlier years as they were in 1994, 1995, and 1996, for which the family trusts had to pay back the money, Mr. Dorr's family may owe as much as $104,184 to the Federal Government rather than the 30-some-thousand dollars the trusts had to pay back earlier. We do not know for certain. Because I have never seen the records. I have asked repeatedly for the Department to make those records clear.

Again, my bottom line on this nominee, No. 1, this is an important position. No. 2, he falsified his documents to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in order to obtain money. His family had to pay some of it back. We cannot get the records from the Department of Agriculture to see what may be owed for the years before, and yet we are being asked to confirm this individual as Under Secretary for Rural Development.

As I said, I take no pleasure in opposing this nominee. I have never before opposed an Iowan for any position. This has nothing to do with ideology. It has nothing to do with that. I have supported many conservatives from Iowa for positions in the Federal Government. My bottom line is, someone who knowingly misrepresented the truth to the Federal Government to obtain money, who was caught at it, which had to be paid back, who by his own words on tape said he did it to avoid farm payment limitations, I do not think that person ought to receive an under secretary's position in the Department of Agriculture.

What message does it send to farmers? Go out and defraud the Government, just be careful and do not get caught. What a terrible situation.

I have no problem with any farmer arranging his or her farming operation to get maximum payments within the law from the Government. There is nothing wrong with that. But that is not what he did. He knowingly filed false documents with the Government. That is what is wrong. That is why someone such as that does not deserve to be under secretary.

I yield to the Senator from Minnesota.

The Senator is right. The Des Moines Register did expose this story. At that time they had the tape of the telephone conversation. That is how it came to light at that time. It was based on that and then based upon the investigations at that time in 1996.

Then in 2001, after he got nominated, the OIG went further and found further discrepancies in 1994, and 1995, for which the other family trust had to pay back more money. Well, when 2001 goes into 2002, that is when they referred it to the U.S. Attorney's Office for prosecution. The U.S. Attorney, as I said, wrote a one page declaratory letter saying the statute of limitations has passed.

That is when everything was dropped. After that, we began to ask more questions in 2002, and as the Senator from Minnesota referred to, I wrote a letter to the Secretary asking for these records. I followed up with a letter in July further asking for these records, and we have never to this date received those records of the prior years to see what his filings were like and how much money had been paid in those previous years based on misrepresentations.

I would be delighted to yield for a question.

I thank my friend from Minnesota for his great work on the Agriculture Committee and for again trying to bring to light what went on with this whole matter. Again, I say to my friend from Minnesota, I take no delight in this. I have never before opposed an Iowan and I do not take any joy in this, either. But some things rise above party, some things rise above our own feelings about our State and our pride in our own State. I think this rises above that. This rises to the level of saying whether someone with that kind of background deserves to be Under Secretary for Rural Development.

How much time do I have remaining?

I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes which I want to yield to the Senator from Minnesota.

First, let me pay my respects and express my gratitude to my chairman and friend, Senator Chambliss. We have worked together on all matters of agriculture. He is a great chairman of our Agriculture Committee and I mean that most sincerely. He has given me and my staff every opportunity to work not just on this issue but all the other issues in agriculture. He has been most accommodating of every request I have ever asked. I could not have asked for more in terms of pursuing interests on the Agriculture Committee. I publicly thank Chairman Chambliss for being a great chairman and being a great agricultural leader. I appreciate that very much.

I appreciate his leadership on this issue also. When you get into these kinds of things, it is never a happy situation for anyone on these kinds of matters. But we all have our responsibilities. As I said, the chairman has been right in allowing these investigations and allowing this matter to move forward in an open and transparent matter. Again, for that I am very deeply grateful.

I thank my friend from Delaware for his diligence in looking into this and again, for, as we say, trying to move the ball down the field, as you might say. I want to make it clear for the record that all we are talking about here is vitiating the cloture vote. I also want to make it clear this letter is a letter in which finally Mr. Dorr says:

Regarding farm program payment issues, what I did was

wrong. I regret that I did it. If I had it to do over, I

would not have filed my farming operations as I did with the

Farm Service Agency. I hope that other farmers learn from

what I did.

That is the first time Mr. Dorr has ever said what he did was wrong and I am glad he finally owned up to it. But, again, let's not get carried away. This letter doesn't make Mr. Dorr pure as the driven snow. Frankly, I still have concerns that we have never gotten the records from the Department of Agriculture on the previous years. But with a sense of accommodation and comity here in the Senate, I have agreed, working with Senator Chambliss and others, to move this ahead. I will not object. I did not object to the unanimous consent on vitiating the cloture vote.

I want to be very clear, however, that I still cannot in good conscience vote for the nominee. I will not support the nominee for this position. But I will not pursue any further extended debate on the nominee.

Sometimes people have deathbed conversions. The problem is sometimes the patient recovers. I hope this is not just one of those deathbed conversions on the part of Mr. Dorr. As the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee,

I will be checking very carefully on how he carries out his responsibilities if in fact he wins the vote. I don't even know if that is a foregone conclusion. I assume it is, if all of the other party vote to confirm. I don't know. But if he does take this position, I can assure you we will be carefully looking at how he carries out his responsibilities at the Department of Agriculture. We may still want to take a look at those earlier records.

I want to make it clear, I still do not think Mr. Dorr meets the standards, the highest standards, as Secretary Veneman said, for this position, but at least with this admission that what he did was wrong, that he has apologized for the statements he made on diversity, I believe that is at least enough for us to get past the cloture vote and to move to an up-or-down vote on this nominee.

With that, again, in the spirit of comity and trying to move this ball ahead, we will do that. I thank Chairman Chambliss for all of his work and his efforts in this regard.

I will yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jonathan Brostoff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

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

Mr. President, for many years, I have been active in efforts to stop exploitative child labor as well as trafficking in child and female slaves around the world. In my travels to many countries, I have seen this scourge firsthand. I have come to the floor of the Senate many times to speak about this issue. I have spoken about how shocked I was to see the deplorable conditions under which these kids are forced to work. Many are physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. All of them, every child engaged in abusive child labor is deprived of a childhood solely for someone else's gain.

Why should we as a nation tolerate children being used in such a manner? We should not. It is a moral outrage and an affront to human dignity. When a child is exploited for the economic gains for others, not only does the child lose, but the family loses and I think the whole world loses. It is bad economics, and it is bad development strategy. A nation cannot achieve prosperity on the backs of children, and there should simply be no place in the global economy for child labor.

So when news reports about forced child labor on west African cocoa farms first emerged in 2001, I was not entirely surprised. According to one report in a series of articles by Knight Ridder, the child laborers of Ivory Coast ``are whipped, beaten, and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and the United States.''

After looking into this, I resolved to do everything I could to end this tragic exploitation of children working on cocoa farms. However, I sought a legislative remedy not as a first resort but as a last resort. Together with Congressman Eliot Engel of New York, we engaged the major chocolate companies in lengthy, intense negotiations. The result is what is now called the Harkin-Engel protocol for the growing and processing of cocoa beans in a manner that complies with the International Labor Organization Convention 182 concerning the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor. This protocol would apply to everywhere cocoa is grown and processed.

The agreement laid out a series of date-specific actions, including the development of credible, mutually acceptable, voluntary industrywide standards of public certification by July 1 of 2005, this month, in order to give a public accounting of labor practices in cocoa farming.

The Harkin-Engel protocol marked an important first--an entire industry, including companies from the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom, taking responsibility for addressing the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in its supply chain.

Today the protocol stands as a framework for progress in west Africa, bringing together industry, west African governments, organized labor, nongovernmental organizations, farmers groups, and experts in a concerted effort to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and forced labor from the growing and processing of cocoa.

Since the Harkin-Engel protocol was signed, a number of positive steps have been taken to address the worst forms of child labor in cocoa growing. These include the creation of the International Cocoa Initiative Foundation, which is now beginning to form partnerships with nongovernmental organizations to provide social protection programs in west Africa. Also, in Ghana, the International Labor Organization carried out a small pilot project, and in the Ivory Coast, the government is committed to conducting a similar pilot project to examine the labor situation and social protection needs on cocoa farms. These pilot programs will then be assessed and used to develop a child labor monitoring system.

Although I was disappointed that the July 1 deadline was not fully met by the industry, they have given us a commitment to achieving a certification system which can be expanded across the cocoa-growing areas of west Africa and which will cover 50 percent of the cocoa- growing areas of Ivory Coast and Ghana in 3 years' time. I am very pleased with this commitment.

Going forward, the industry has pledged to dedicate more than $5 million annually to support the full implementation of a certification system for cocoa growing farming practices and for programs to improve the well-being of the more than 1.5 million farm families growing cocoa in west Africa, including efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and forced labor.

Specifically, the rollout of the certification system, including monitoring, data analysis reporting, and activities to reduce the worst forms of child labor, will proceed as aggressively as possible in Ivory Coast and Ghana with the goal of covering 50 percent of the two countries' cocoa-producing areas by July of 2008. This is, indeed, a milestone on the way toward the ultimate goal of 100 percent coverage in cocoa-producing countries around the world.

In addition, the industry pledges to improve conditions in west Africa cocoa farming communities and to address the worst forms of child labor and forced labor at the community level through the International Cocoa Initiative Foundation, the World Cocoa Foundation, and the Initiative for Africa Cocoa Communities. Congressman Engel and I have accepted the industry's pledge and commitment, and we congratulate them for this.

The protocol framework continues. However, as President Reagan used to say regarding arms agreements with the Soviet Union, we decided to trust but verify. To ensure accountability and transparency, Congressman Engel and I will establish an independent oversight entity to monitor future implementations of the accord. This entity will include experts on child and forced labor, as well as on corporate social responsibility, and will monitor the industry's work and produce periodic publicly available reports on its progress.

Again, I applaud the cocoa industry, the chocolate industry for their agreement to accept such an independent oversight entity.

In addition, to accelerate progress, I support the recommendation of the verification working group, a group charged under the protocol with an independent assessment of the certification system to create a skilled, multi-stakeholder working group on certification.

Yes, I am disappointed that the July 1 deadline was not fully met, but I am reassured that the industry is committed to the goal we all share, which is to eliminate the scourge of the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in cocoa-producing countries.

Obviously, I will be closely monitoring progress under the protocol in the months and years ahead, and I will make periodic reports on the Senate floor and in the media. As Justice Brandeis once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Progress under the protocol will be transparent. It will be documented and reported for the entire world to see.

Congressman Engel and I are fully committed to meeting the terms and goals of the protocol. As I also said, we are pleased that the chocolate industry likewise has pledged its full commitment to these terms and goals. I would also like to commend the governments of the Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana for their cooperation in meeting the terms of the protocol. Clearly, it is in the interest of these national governments to eradicate the worst forms of child labor for their own economic and social well-being.

We all realize the stakes are incredibly high and that the time for just talking has passed. Child labor and forced labor continue in the cocoa fields of west Africa and elsewhere. Children today are suffering, being deprived of their childhood, being beaten, being deprived of education. And ultimately the chocolate companies have a big responsibility in stopping this suffrage. I will continue to work with them and with the west African governments to eliminate this scourge.

At this time I would like to inform my colleagues of my intent to offer a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to the Foreign Operations appropriations bill that the Senate is now considering. My amendment simply reaffirms the industry's commitments to eradicate child labor from cocoa plantations. The resolution I will offer reflects the main points I have mentioned today. I hope it will be a noncontroversial amendment and that it can be accepted by the managers of the bill.

Furthermore, Mr. President, I would remiss if I did not mention in passing, at least right now, some of the other problems facing the African continent today: HIV/AIDS, hunger, the genocide in Darfur, debt relief, millions of displaced people. Unfortunately, the list is long and the problems severe. I was pleased that the recent G8 meeting held in Scotland addressed some of these issues. This is a positive but, I must add, a small step forward. In order to successfully meet the challenges facing African nations, nations of the world must work together. And I will continue to support our chairman and ranking member and our committee on the foreign operations appropriations subcommittee to do all we can to help in those efforts.

Mr. President, I am going to just read briefly some parts of the amendment that I will be offering to H.R. 3057. Basically, it is just, again, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to express the sense of Congress regarding abusive child labor practices in the growing and processing of cocoa. It has a number of findings, but it is a sense of Congress that:

The cocoa industry is to be commended, as the Protocol

agreement is the first time that an industry has accepted

moral, social, and financial responsibility for the

production of raw materials wherever they are produced;

The Government of the Republic of Cote d'Ivoire and the

Government of the Republic of Ghana should be commended for

the tangible steps they have taken to address the situation

of child labor in the cocoa sector;

An independent oversight body should be designated and

supported to work with the chocolate industry, national

governments and nongovernmental organizations on the progress

of the development and implementation of the certification

system by July 1, 2008 through a series of public reports;

The governments of West African nations that grow and

manufacture cocoa should consider child labor and forced

labor issues of top priorities;

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of

the Department of State should include information on the

association between trafficking in persons and the cocoa

industry of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and other cocoa producing

regions in the annual trafficking in persons that is

submitted to Congress.

Mr. President, I will not read all of it, but those are some of the basic elements of the sense-of-the-Congress resolution that I want to propose.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Is there an amendment pending at this time?

I would ask the manager of the bill, would this be an appropriate time to send my amendment to the desk.

Certainly. I just got it finished a bit ago.

I appreciate it.

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

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

I thank the chairman for taking a look at it. I hope it will meet his approval.

Basically, as I said, the chocolate industry, I believe, is to be commended for taking positive steps in agreeing to do 50 percent of the farms by July 1 of 2008. We have to be vigilant. It is really a sense of the Congress commending them and then urging we stay on to meet those goals and eventually the ultimate goal of making sure that we don't have any forced labor and child trafficking on cocoa farms anywhere.

It always struck me as really kind of telling, almost bordering on the obscene that so many of our kids in our country, in Europe, around the world enjoy eating chocolate. Who doesn't enjoy eating chocolate? We all love chocolate, hot chocolate, or chocolate of any form. And so I think many people who enjoy chocolate don't know that it is being produced by forced child labor in many cases, kids who are beaten, kids who are deprived of their childhood, kids who are basically child slaves. So I think this is something that we should pay attention to. As I said, we have been working on this now, this is our fourth year, working with the chocolate industry. We have this protocol. We have the framework. Progress is being made. We just need to make sure we don't slip behind, that we continue to support these efforts, to support the Governments, as I said, both Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, in their efforts, and the chocolate industry, also.

That is basically what this sense-of-the-Congress resolution is all about.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, for many years, I have been active in efforts to stop exploitative child labor as well as trafficking in child and female slaves around the world. In my travels to many countries, I have seen this scourge firsthand. I have come to the floor of the Senate many times to speak about this issue. I have spoken about how shocked I was to see the deplorable conditions under which these kids are forced to work. Many are physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. All of them, every child engaged in abusive child labor is deprived of a childhood solely for someone else's gain.

Why should we as a nation tolerate children being used in such a manner? We should not. It is a moral outrage and an affront to human dignity. When a child is exploited for the economic gains for others, not only does the child lose, but the family loses and I think the whole world loses. It is bad economics, and it is bad development strategy. A nation cannot achieve prosperity on the backs of children, and there should simply be no place in the global economy for child labor.

So when news reports about forced child labor on west African cocoa farms first emerged in 2001, I was not entirely surprised. According to one report in a series of articles by Knight Ridder, the child laborers of Ivory Coast ``are whipped, beaten, and broken like horses to harvest the almond-sized beans that are made into chocolate treats for more fortunate children in Europe and the United States.''

After looking into this, I resolved to do everything I could to end this tragic exploitation of children working on cocoa farms. However, I sought a legislative remedy not as a first resort but as a last resort. Together with Congressman Eliot Engel of New York, we engaged the major chocolate companies in lengthy, intense negotiations. The result is what is now called the Harkin-Engel protocol for the growing and processing of cocoa beans in a manner that complies with the International Labor Organization Convention 182 concerning the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor. This protocol would apply to everywhere cocoa is grown and processed.

The agreement laid out a series of date-specific actions, including the development of credible, mutually acceptable, voluntary industrywide standards of public certification by July 1 of 2005, this month, in order to give a public accounting of labor practices in cocoa farming.

The Harkin-Engel protocol marked an important first--an entire industry, including companies from the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom, taking responsibility for addressing the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in its supply chain.

Today the protocol stands as a framework for progress in west Africa, bringing together industry, west African governments, organized labor, nongovernmental organizations, farmers groups, and experts in a concerted effort to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and forced labor from the growing and processing of cocoa.

Since the Harkin-Engel protocol was signed, a number of positive steps have been taken to address the worst forms of child labor in cocoa growing. These include the creation of the International Cocoa Initiative Foundation, which is now beginning to form partnerships with nongovernmental organizations to provide social protection programs in west Africa. Also, in Ghana, the International Labor Organization carried out a small pilot project, and in the Ivory Coast, the government is committed to conducting a similar pilot project to examine the labor situation and social protection needs on cocoa farms. These pilot programs will then be assessed and used to develop a child labor monitoring system.

Although I was disappointed that the July 1 deadline was not fully met by the industry, they have given us a commitment to achieving a certification system which can be expanded across the cocoa-growing areas of west Africa and which will cover 50 percent of the cocoa- growing areas of Ivory Coast and Ghana in 3 years' time. I am very pleased with this commitment.

Going forward, the industry has pledged to dedicate more than $5 million annually to support the full implementation of a certification system for cocoa growing farming practices and for programs to improve the well-being of the more than 1.5 million farm families growing cocoa in west Africa, including efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and forced labor.

Specifically, the rollout of the certification system, including monitoring, data analysis reporting, and activities to reduce the worst forms of child labor, will proceed as aggressively as possible in Ivory Coast and Ghana with the goal of covering 50 percent of the two countries' cocoa-producing areas by July of 2008. This is, indeed, a milestone on the way toward the ultimate goal of 100 percent coverage in cocoa-producing countries around the world.

In addition, the industry pledges to improve conditions in west Africa cocoa farming communities and to address the worst forms of child labor and forced labor at the community level through the International Cocoa Initiative Foundation, the World Cocoa Foundation, and the Initiative for Africa Cocoa Communities. Congressman Engel and I have accepted the industry's pledge and commitment, and we congratulate them for this.

The protocol framework continues. However, as President Reagan used to say regarding arms agreements with the Soviet Union, we decided to trust but verify. To ensure accountability and transparency, Congressman Engel and I will establish an independent oversight entity to monitor future implementations of the accord. This entity will include experts on child and forced labor, as well as on corporate social responsibility, and will monitor the industry's work and produce periodic publicly available reports on its progress.

Again, I applaud the cocoa industry, the chocolate industry for their agreement to accept such an independent oversight entity.

In addition, to accelerate progress, I support the recommendation of the verification working group, a group charged under the protocol with an independent assessment of the certification system to create a skilled, multi-stakeholder working group on certification.

Yes, I am disappointed that the July 1 deadline was not fully met, but I am reassured that the industry is committed to the goal we all share, which is to eliminate the scourge of the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in cocoa-producing countries.

Obviously, I will be closely monitoring progress under the protocol in the months and years ahead, and I will make periodic reports on the Senate floor and in the media. As Justice Brandeis once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Progress under the protocol will be transparent. It will be documented and reported for the entire world to see.

Congressman Engel and I are fully committed to meeting the terms and goals of the protocol. As I also said, we are pleased that the chocolate industry likewise has pledged its full commitment to these terms and goals. I would also like to commend the governments of the Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana for their cooperation in meeting the terms of the protocol. Clearly, it is in the interest of these national governments to eradicate the worst forms of child labor for their own economic and social well-being.

We all realize the stakes are incredibly high and that the time for just talking has passed. Child labor and forced labor continue in the cocoa fields of west Africa and elsewhere. Children today are suffering, being deprived of their childhood, being beaten, being deprived of education. And ultimately the chocolate companies have a big responsibility in stopping this suffrage. I will continue to work with them and with the west African governments to eliminate this scourge.

At this time I would like to inform my colleagues of my intent to offer a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to the Foreign Operations appropriations bill that the Senate is now considering. My amendment simply reaffirms the industry's commitments to eradicate child labor from cocoa plantations. The resolution I will offer reflects the main points I have mentioned today. I hope it will be a noncontroversial amendment and that it can be accepted by the managers of the bill.

Furthermore, Mr. President, I would remiss if I did not mention in passing, at least right now, some of the other problems facing the African continent today: HIV/AIDS, hunger, the genocide in Darfur, debt relief, millions of displaced people. Unfortunately, the list is long and the problems severe. I was pleased that the recent G8 meeting held in Scotland addressed some of these issues. This is a positive but, I must add, a small step forward. In order to successfully meet the challenges facing African nations, nations of the world must work together. And I will continue to support our chairman and ranking member and our committee on the foreign operations appropriations subcommittee to do all we can to help in those efforts.

Mr. President, I am going to just read briefly some parts of the amendment that I will be offering to H.R. 3057. Basically, it is just, again, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to express the sense of Congress regarding abusive child labor practices in the growing and processing of cocoa. It has a number of findings, but it is a sense of Congress that:

The cocoa industry is to be commended, as the Protocol

agreement is the first time that an industry has accepted

moral, social, and financial responsibility for the

production of raw materials wherever they are produced;

The Government of the Republic of Cote d'Ivoire and the

Government of the Republic of Ghana should be commended for

the tangible steps they have taken to address the situation

of child labor in the cocoa sector;

An independent oversight body should be designated and

supported to work with the chocolate industry, national

governments and nongovernmental organizations on the progress

of the development and implementation of the certification

system by July 1, 2008 through a series of public reports;

The governments of West African nations that grow and

manufacture cocoa should consider child labor and forced

labor issues of top priorities;

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons of

the Department of State should include information on the

association between trafficking in persons and the cocoa

industry of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and other cocoa producing

regions in the annual trafficking in persons that is

submitted to Congress.

Mr. President, I will not read all of it, but those are some of the basic elements of the sense-of-the-Congress resolution that I want to propose.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Is there an amendment pending at this time?

I would ask the manager of the bill, would this be an appropriate time to send my amendment to the desk.

Certainly. I just got it finished a bit ago.

I appreciate it.

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

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

I thank the chairman for taking a look at it. I hope it will meet his approval.

Basically, as I said, the chocolate industry, I believe, is to be commended for taking positive steps in agreeing to do 50 percent of the farms by July 1 of 2008. We have to be vigilant. It is really a sense of the Congress commending them and then urging we stay on to meet those goals and eventually the ultimate goal of making sure that we don't have any forced labor and child trafficking on cocoa farms anywhere.

It always struck me as really kind of telling, almost bordering on the obscene that so many of our kids in our country, in Europe, around the world enjoy eating chocolate. Who doesn't enjoy eating chocolate? We all love chocolate, hot chocolate, or chocolate of any form. And so I think many people who enjoy chocolate don't know that it is being produced by forced child labor in many cases, kids who are beaten, kids who are deprived of their childhood, kids who are basically child slaves. So I think this is something that we should pay attention to. As I said, we have been working on this now, this is our fourth year, working with the chocolate industry. We have this protocol. We have the framework. Progress is being made. We just need to make sure we don't slip behind, that we continue to support these efforts, to support the Governments, as I said, both Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, in their efforts, and the chocolate industry, also.

That is basically what this sense-of-the-Congress resolution is all about.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise in favor of the nomination of Dr. Lester Crawford to be the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. I do this because I believe it is important for the FDA to have stable, permanent leadership at this critical time in its history. Dr. Crawford has valuable experience both in and out of government and has a background that makes him qualified for this position.

I want to highlight several issues where I would like to work with Dr. Crawford in the future. First, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, DSHEA, in 1994 to ensure the availability and safety of dietary supplements that millions of Americans rely on. Under the leadership of Dr. Crawford as Acting Commissioner, FDA has made significant progress in implementing and enforcing it. There is still work to be done on this issue, and I look forward to continuing to work with FDA to fully implement DSHEA, and to make sure that U.S. consumers have access to safe, effective, and affordable dietary supplements. ,

Second, given the Nation's obesity epidemic, I appreciate the efforts Dr. Crawford and the agency are making to improve consumer education and information regarding nutrition choices. I urge Dr. Crawford to follow-up and implement recommendations contained in the FDA report on obesity, ``Calories Count.'' In particular, Dr. Crawford should direct the entire restaurant industry to follow the recommendation to develop a nationwide and point-of-sale nutrition information campaign for consumers to include information on calories.

However, I am also voting in favor of Dr. Crawford's nomination in full support of the efforts of my colleagues, Senators Murray and Clinton, to obtain a commitment from Dr. Crawford prior to his confirmation that the FDA will act promptly and in a scientifically appropriate manner on the sale of emergency contraception. I understand they have secured that commitment. I share Senator Murray's and Senator Clinton's concern about the FDA's handling of the application for over- the-counter sale of emergency contraception, or the ``morning after'' , pill. There is absolutely no dispute that emergency contraception is safe and effective. The FDA's own advisory panel concluded unanimously in December 2004 that emergency contraception was both safe and effective. I strongly disagree with the FDA's decision last year to deny over the counter status to emergency contraception. Over the counter sale is about prevention. The morning after pill prevents the need for abortions, a goal that every Member of this body supports.

I am voting in favor of Dr. Crawford today. However, with this vote, I urge the FDA to address some fundamental challenges facing it in the future. The FDA must continue to take action to address post-market safety of the drugs it approves. In several high profile cases, the public's trust in the agency has been eroded. I look forward to working with Dr. Crawford on safety issues in the future.

Mr. President, I rise in favor of the nomination of Dr. Lester Crawford to be the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. I do this because I believe it is important for the FDA to have stable, permanent leadership at this critical time in its history. Dr. Crawford has valuable experience both in and out of government and has a background that makes him qualified for this position.

I want to highlight several issues where I would like to work with Dr. Crawford in the future. First, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, DSHEA, in 1994 to ensure the availability and safety of dietary supplements that millions of Americans rely on. Under the leadership of Dr. Crawford as Acting Commissioner, FDA has made significant progress in implementing and enforcing it. There is still work to be done on this issue, and I look forward to continuing to work with FDA to fully implement DSHEA, and to make sure that U.S. consumers have access to safe, effective, and affordable dietary supplements. ,

Second, given the Nation's obesity epidemic, I appreciate the efforts Dr. Crawford and the agency are making to improve consumer education and information regarding nutrition choices. I urge Dr. Crawford to follow-up and implement recommendations contained in the FDA report on obesity, ``Calories Count.'' In particular, Dr. Crawford should direct the entire restaurant industry to follow the recommendation to develop a nationwide and point-of-sale nutrition information campaign for consumers to include information on calories.

However, I am also voting in favor of Dr. Crawford's nomination in full support of the efforts of my colleagues, Senators Murray and Clinton, to obtain a commitment from Dr. Crawford prior to his confirmation that the FDA will act promptly and in a scientifically appropriate manner on the sale of emergency contraception. I understand they have secured that commitment. I share Senator Murray's and Senator Clinton's concern about the FDA's handling of the application for over- the-counter sale of emergency contraception, or the ``morning after'' , pill. There is absolutely no dispute that emergency contraception is safe and effective. The FDA's own advisory panel concluded unanimously in December 2004 that emergency contraception was both safe and effective. I strongly disagree with the FDA's decision last year to deny over the counter status to emergency contraception. Over the counter sale is about prevention. The morning after pill prevents the need for abortions, a goal that every Member of this body supports.

I am voting in favor of Dr. Crawford today. However, with this vote, I urge the FDA to address some fundamental challenges facing it in the future. The FDA must continue to take action to address post-market safety of the drugs it approves. In several high profile cases, the public's trust in the agency has been eroded. I look forward to working with Dr. Crawford on safety issues in the future.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Steven Neve and Hanna Garth of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Steven Neve and Hanna Garth of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

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

Mr. President, as the Senate debates the Central American Free Trade Agreement implementing legislation today, we know that it has been more than 13 months since the United States and its six partner countries in Central American and the Dominican Republic formally signed the agreement. So what has taken so long? The reason I think for the long delay, obviously, is that supporters have had a hard time selling this agreement to the American people. The supposed benefits are murky, in the distance, while the flaws are all too obvious. This is a shame because we could have a much better agreement that would have won broad bipartisan support.

I have evaluated CAFTA with a genuinely open mind, having supported most major trade agreements during my three decades in Congress. I have no philosophical or ideological bias for or against trade. Far from it. I take a strictly pragmatic approach, and generally I am in favor of trade. But that same pragmatism tells me that it is folly to load all of our economic and diplomatic hopes on the slender back of inadequate trade agreements.

As has been my practice with past trade agreements, I have carefully weighed the prospective advantages and disadvantages of CAFTA. Under the fast-track procedure, our only option is to vote up or down. And late last evening, after thoroughly looking at this, I finally had to come to the conclusion that the problems with CAFTA, as we have it before us, clearly outweigh the very small benefits. On balance, the facts and reasons against CAFTA are significantly stronger than the arguments for it. Therefore, I must vote no on this implementing legislation today.

As one would expect, proponents of CAFTA have presented a glowing picture of the agreement's benefits, but there has been an awful lot of overselling, in some cases outright exaggeration about how important this agreement really is. Let's take agriculture, for example. On paper, CAFTA appears to offer opportunities for some U.S. farmers and negatives for others, and the magnitude of these pluses and minuses is part of the debate. But while in theory agriculture should benefit overall, the projected benefits are strikingly modest, and they come many years in the future.

Economists at the American Farm Bureau Federation estimate that U.S. agricultural exports would increase by about $1.5 billion a year when the agreement is fully effective. That is 15 to 18 years from now. So if we assume an average annual inflation rate of about 2.3 percent, that $1.5 billion increase by 2024 would be only about $930 million in today's dollars. That is about 1.5 percent of our total agricultural exports. So the benefits 15 to 18 years from now, calculated in today's dollars, are relatively small.

There is one other aspect to this. The International Trade Commission of the U.S. Government also had a study. It showed that they predicted a $100 million decline in net annual exports from the United States to the six partner countries as a result of CAFTA. So we get a small 1.5- percent increase in agriculture in 2024. But the International Trade Commission says we are going to have a $100 million decline in net annual exports from the United States.

Whether CAFTA's modest predicted benefits actually materialize is in dispute. Average per capita income in CAFTA countries is about $1,800 a year. Are they going to become good customers? About a third of the population there lives on $2 a day or less. How are they going to buy a New York strip steak or one of our delicious Iowa pork chops that some are so optimistic that we are going to export to those countries?

Potential for big gains is further limited by the fact that we already dominate trade in those countries. In 2003, we accounted for about 45 percent of all merchandise exports to the region. The benefits that CAFTA backers optimistically predict are based on the assumption that CAFTA will spur economic growth in these generally poor and small countries. Right now, under existing trade preference programs, these six countries already face zero tariffs on 80 percent of the goods they ship to the United States, meaning that additional tariff reductions will not spur significant economic growth in those countries. Many are skeptical of these claims about CAFTA and the economic growth in Central American countries.

One of the reasons that has moved me to the ``no'' column on this is, I recently had a meeting in my office with a Catholic bishop, Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, a senior Catholic prelate in Guatemala, who came to my office to lobby against CAFTA. I spent time with him. I quizzed him about it. I

wanted to know why he felt so strongly that CAFTA would not be in the best interest of his parishioners. He said that he and other advocates for the poor in Central America opposed CAFTA because its benefits would go mostly to the economic elites and it would deepen the disparity between rich and poor. So if, as the bishop says, CAFTA would not raise incomes broadly for Central America's people, it won't help them and it won't help us.

The previous speaker mentioned something about Daniel Ortega. Talk about a ghost out of the past. I am talking about the Catholic bishop of Guatemala who came to this country a few months ago to tell us that this would not be in the best interest of his small farmers, his campesinos, and their families. He said it would drive them off their farms and push them more into cities where there is no work for them.

CAFTA will make it harder for U.S. workers, farmers, and businesses to succeed in the increasingly competitive global economy. We can compete on a truly level playing field. It is not fair competition if other countries allow their manufacturers or farms to disregard internationally recognized labor rights and child labor protections or if those countries have lax or nonexistent environmental rules. This CAFTA does virtually nothing to deal effectively with the competitive issues relating to labor and environmental standards. For labor, the internationally recognized rights are pretty basic, such as the right of association and bargaining, prohibition of forced or prison labor, and protection of children from working at young ages or in hazardous or exploitative jobs. I have worked for many years in the effort to eliminate abusive child labor around the world. It is morally wrong, and it leads to all kinds of other injustices and inequalities.

Reports from our own Department of State and the International Labor Organization have documented labor rights and child labor problems throughout the six countries of CAFTA. Just yesterday morning, we learned that our U.S. Department of Labor had been hiding from us a report it commissioned that found serious labor violations in the countries that signed CAFTA. Right now--this is what is important-- under current U.S. law, if one of those CAFTA countries condones abusive child labor or other violations of internationally recognized labor rights, we can keep that country from shipping goods to us at low tariff rates. In other words, our U.S. trade law right now allows us to enforce international labor rights. This came about because in 2000, I worked with then-Senator Jesse Helms to modify our Generalized System of Preferences Program, the GSP Program, so that countries that allow abusive child labor are ineligible to ship products to the United States at low GSP tariffs.

The other provision is in the Caribbean Basin Initiative. It allows our Government to deny the benefit of lower CBI tariffs to enforce the broader set of internationally recognized labor rights; that is, if a country is tolerating violations of international labor rights, we can take action so that goods from that country coming into the United States are subject to a higher tariff than is applicable to goods from other CBI countries. In fact, we have taken action under that CBI provision against violations of international labor rights.

So right now, as pertains to these CAFTA countries, we have strong provisions in law to protect against child labor and internationally recognized labor rights. Guess what. CAFTA would supersede and abolish both of these labor rights enforcement features of our current U.S. law with respect to the six other CAFTA countries. Talk about a giant step backward. Five years ago, this Congress added--and the President signed it into law--provisions that protect children, protect people who want to organize and bargain collectively, protect against forced or prison labor in these countries. Guess what. CAFTA does away with it.

What is happening? I thought we were supposed to be progressing in the world, in terms of recognizing basic, fundamental human rights. What could be more fundamental than the human right of children not to be exploited and find themselves in abusive types of labor situations and forced to work? Yet, CAFTA removes these countries from being covered by those laws. It says: Fine, if one of these countries were to use kids working in places where it would be in violation of internationally recognized human rights labor standards, we cannot do a thing about it--nothing. Today we could. When CAFTA passes and goes into effect, we won't. Not too many people know that. I guess that is the major reason why I am opposing this CAFTA--the giant step it takes backward in protecting against abusive child labor.

Under this bill, we have no ability to hold a CAFTA country to internationally recognized labor rights and child labor protections if its own laws are weaker than the international standard. So we are faced with a contradiction. One of the big reasons that I keep hearing to support CAFTA is to boost economic and social progress in these countries. Yet, we are taking a giant step backward in our ability to press our CAFTA trading partners to combat abusive child labor practices and other violations of internationally recognized labor rights.

Elsewhere, this administration insists on social and political reform as a condition for allocating aid to developing countries. For example, eligibility standards for the Millennium Challenge Accounts require progress on social and political fronts. Why should we jettison such requirements under CAFTA? Should free trade come at the cost of progress in combating abusive child labor practices? Of course not. It is not acceptable for me, and it should not be for any of us. That is the problem with the bill before us.

Again, if the President would have worked with us and consulted with us in good faith and said we are going to keep these provisions that we put into law in 2000 and the provisions we put in the Caribbean Basin Initiative to protect child labor, well, you've got my vote. But they didn't do that. In discussions with U.S. negotiators before the text was completed on CAFTA, Members and staff made clear our concerns about all these issues. Unfortunately, little or no effort was made to address those concerns until after the agreement was completed and the White House recognized it might fall short of the necessary votes. At that point, it was too late; the final agreement had been negotiated.

Mr. President, from a broader view, the modest benefits that we are theoretically promised 15 years from now under CAFTA simply do not offset the harm it will do to kids and poor people and small farmers in those countries. The modest benefits do not compensate for what is going to happen if our small manufacturers in this country rush down there for cheaper labor, lower environmental standards, make products down there, pay people low wages, don't give them decent benefits, don't recognize appropriate labor standards, use children as workers, dump the refuse out in the environment, and then ship the products back to the United States. That is what we are voting on here.

Mr. President, I don't consider this agreement worthy of passage. Modest benefits, 15 years from now, may or may not be realized. But we are taking a giant step backward in terms of protecting labor rights and child labor and the environment. For that reason, I believe this CAFTA bill, as it is written, is a big mistake. I do not oppose all free-trade agreements with Central America. But for these reasons, I oppose this one. We can, and we should, do better for our people, our farmers, our small manufacturers but also for the poor people of Central America and the campesinos there who need to have their standard of living raised, not have their children working and not going to school, not have refuse dumped into the environment which threatens their health in the future. That is why this is unfair. That is why it ought to be defeated. We ought to have a better trade agreement than this one.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act of 2005. This legislation, commonly known as Kevin's Law, is dedicated to the memory of 2-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died in 2001 after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Passage of this bill is vital because on December 6, 2001, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld and expanded an earlier District Court decision that removes the Department of Agriculture's authority to enforce its Pathogen Performance Standard for Salmonella. The 5th Circuit's decision in Supreme Beef v. USDA seriously undermines the strong food safety improvements adopted by USDA in its 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and Pathogen Reduction (HACCP) rule.

In 2003, there was another court case that calls into question USDA's authority to enforce basic sanitation standards. A company called Nebraska Beef sued USDA after the Department tried to shut down the plant for numerous sanitation violations. USDA settled the case because it feared losing yet again in court and having another vital piece of its authority struck down.

According to the 5th Circuit's opinion in the Supreme Beef case and the settlement in the Nebraska Beef case, today, there is nothing USDA could do to shut down a meat grinding plant that insists on using low- quality, potentially contaminated trimmings. These decisions seriously undermine the new meat and poultry inspection system.

The HACCP rule recognized that bacterial and viral pathogens were the foremost food safety threat in America, responsible for 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations and 76 million illnesses each year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To address the threat of foodborne illness, USDA developed a modern inspection system based on two fundamental principles.

The first was that industry has the primary responsibility to determine how to produce the safest products achievable. Industry had to examine their plants and determine how to control contamination at every step of the food production process, from the moment a product arrives at their door until the moment it leaves their plant.

The second, even more crucial, principle was that plants nationwide must reduce levels of dangerous pathogens in meat and poultry products. To ensure the new inspection system accomplished this, USDA developed Pathogen Performance Standards. These standards provide targets for reducing pathogens and require all USDA-inspected facilities to meet them. In theory, facilities failing to meet a standard are shut down until they create a corrective action plan to meet the standard.

So far, USDA has only issued one Pathogen Performance Standard, for Salmonella. The vast majority of plants in the U.S. have been able to meet the new standard, so it is clearly workable. In addition, USDA reports that Salmonella levels for meat and poultry products have fallen substantially. Therefore the Salmonella standard has been successful. The Supreme Beef and Nebraska Beef decisions threaten to destroy this success because they restrict USDA's ability to penalize meat and poultry plants that violate a pathogen standard.

The other major problem is we have an industry dead set on striking down USDA's authority to enforce meat and poultry pathogen standards. Ever since the original Supreme Beef decision, I have spent untold hours trying to find a compromise that will allow us to ensure we have enforceable, science-based standards for pathogens in meat and poultry products. I have introduced bills to address this issue and I have worked with industry leaders trying to reach a reasonable compromise.

However, despite repeated attempts to address industry concerns, industry has continually backtracked and moved the finish line. Many times, I have made changes in my legislation to address their ``pressing'' concern of the moment only to have them come back and say we hadn't gone far enough. We have to look out for the consumers of meat and poultry so our children, our families are not put at increased risk of getting ill or dying, because some in the industry want to backtrack on food safety.

I plan to seek every opportunity to get this language enacted. I think it is essential, both to ensuring the modernization of our food safety system, and ensuring consumers that we are making progress in reducing dangerous pathogens.

I hope that both houses of Congress will be able to act to pass this legislation without delay. The effectiveness of our meat and poultry inspection system and the public's confidence in it are at stake.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jane Siegel and Tiffany Gilbert of my staff be granted the privileges of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation to fix a huge oversight in pension policy.

In the early 1990s, a large number of U.S. companies began a process of switching their traditional defined benefit pension plans to what's referred to as ``cash balance'' pension plans. A cash balance pension is insured, like a traditional plan, through the PBGC. However, it looks more like a defined contribution plan to participants because the benefit is expressed as some percent of play plus some guaranteed interest rate. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself. However, in practice, many of the employees working for these companies were not told what these changes would mean for them. Some companies had their employees work for years without earning any more benefits. Many of those employees didn't figure that out for a very long time. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding in this situation was a key benefit to management. However, once they figured out what was happening, the retirees were furious.

As two consultants who helped put these plans together said at an Actuaries conference in 1998:

``I've been involved in cash balance plans five or six

years down the road and what I have found is that while

employees understand it, it is not until they are actually

ready to retire that they understand how little they are

actually getting.''

``Right, but they're happy while they're employed.''

One of the most abusive practices in cash balance conversions is known as ``wear away. `` The company freezes the value of the benefits employees already earned, which by law cannot be taken away once given. However, the employer opens a cash balance account for that worker at a much lower dollar level. So they end up working for years contributing to this lower cash balance account, not realizing that contribution is meaningless because their old benefits were higher. At the same time, younger workers do get money added to their account every day. This is clearly age discrimination, and bad pension policy.

In 1999, I introduced a bill to make it illegal for corporations to wear away the benefits of older workers during conversions to cash balance plans. I offered my bill as an amendment. Forty-eight Senators, including 3 Republicans, voted to waive the budget point of order so we could consider this amendment. We did not have enough votes then, but I believe the tide is turning.

After that vote, more and more stories came out about how many workers were losing their pensions. In September of 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury put a moratorium on conversions from defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. That moratorium has

been in effect now for over three years. In April of 2000, I offered a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to stop this practice, and it passed the Senate unanimously.

There are hundreds of age discrimination complaints currently pending before the EEOC based on some of these abusive cash balance conversions. Clearly, something must be done to address this issue that's been floating around now unresolved for over five years.

Before, I said that wear-away is the least fair practice during conversion. And I have to say that now, public sentiment is really coming around to acknowledge that unfairness. However, aside from wear- away, there's another problem in shifting from a traditional pension to cash balance. In a traditional plan, you accrue most of the benefits toward the end of your career, because there's usually some kind of formula that multiplies top pay times years of service. People tend to earn more salary toward the end of their careers, and if that is multiplied times more years served, the pension grows quickly in later years. But in a cash balance plan, younger workers do better because they are given a flat percent of pay plus some guaranteed interest credit. Interest is good for young people, they have many years to accrue and compound it. So if you get caught in mid-life, mid-career in one of these transitions, you get the downside of both plans.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear on one point--cash balance pensions can be a great deal for workers. Some. And they may help fill a needed niche in the pension world to cover the half of the workforce that currently has no pension. But I will continue my long battle to oppose the unilateral decision of a company to cut off a promise for an older worker, give that money to a younger worker, and not view it as age discrimination.

That is what this issue is all about. It is fairness. It is equity. I know discussion of pension law can become very convoluted. But this can be boiled down pretty simply. It is about what we think a promise from an employer ought to mean.

There is one thing that has distinguished the American workplace from others around the world. We have valued loyalty. At least we used to. That is one of the reasons pension plans exist--the longer you work somewhere, the more you earn in your pension program. Obviously, the longer you work someplace, the better you do your job, the more you learn about it, the more productive you are. We should value that loyalty.

But here, companies are able to take away the benefits of the longest serving workers. What kind of a signal does that send to the workers? It tells workers they are fools if they are loyal because if you put in 20 or 25 years, the boss can just change the rules of the game, and break their promise. It tells younger workers that it would be crazy to work for a company for a long time, that it's best to hedge your bets and move on as soon as it is convenient. It's crazy to trade current pay for the promise of future benefits. So why even take into account the fact that you're being offered a pension plan? This is a very dangerous road to go down.

This destroys the kind of work ethic we have come to value and that we know built this country. But some of these cash balance conversions counter all of that. Here is an analogy. Imagine I hire someone for 5 years with a promise of a $50,000 bonus at the end of 5 years of service. At the end of 3 years, however, I renege on the $50,000 bonus. But the employee has 3 years invested. Had they known that the deal was going to be off, perhaps they would not have gone to work for me. They could have gone to work someplace else for a total higher compensation package. Now imagine that they hire a new guy to join the team, and they give him part of that $50,000 bonus they promised me. Is that the way we want to treat workers in this country, where the employer has all the cards and employees have none, and employers can make whatever deal they want, but can change the rules at any time?

That is why I am introducing this legislation. It is simple. It says that you have to give older, longer serving employees a choice, at retirement, when their pension plan is converted to a cash balance plan to get the benefits earned in the old plan instead. It also says that employers must start counting the new cash balance benefits where the old defined benefit plan left off, instead of starting the cash balance plan at a lower level than an employee had already earned.

This isn't a radical idea. I was very pleased that in February of 2004, the Administration came out with a cash balance proposal that recognized that these transitions are hard on workers. It not only prohibits wear-away but provides for 5 year transition credits for workers caught in the middle of a conversion. Treasury reaffirmed its commitment to this approach in this year's budget request.

I was excited when Treasury first came to the table with a proposal to do more to protect workers here. I was so encouraged by this that I convened a series of meetings over the course of last summer to get all interested parties to the table--everyone from participant rights advocates to industry groups to consultants. I heard some really great ideas, and some that I didn't agree with. But I think there is still room to find answers to this problem. So I'm putting my plan back on the table today. And I really hope that we can continue a meaningful dialog on this issue.

If we do that, this year, we can enact meaningful participant protections moving forward so that there is another pension option out there to cover the roughly half of Americans with no pension at all. But I also want to make it clear that this Senator will never sit idly by as older workers get the rug pulled out from under them just as they thought they were on solid ground for their retirement. I won't stand idly by and watch their money redistributed in an age-discriminatory way. We can have this dialog and we can find a way to fix what's broken here, but not by blessing some of these blatant abuses.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation to fix a huge oversight in pension policy.

In the early 1990s, a large number of U.S. companies began a process of switching their traditional defined benefit pension plans to what's referred to as ``cash balance'' pension plans. A cash balance pension is insured, like a traditional plan, through the PBGC. However, it looks more like a defined contribution plan to participants because the benefit is expressed as some percent of play plus some guaranteed interest rate. This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself. However, in practice, many of the employees working for these companies were not told what these changes would mean for them. Some companies had their employees work for years without earning any more benefits. Many of those employees didn't figure that out for a very long time. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding in this situation was a key benefit to management. However, once they figured out what was happening, the retirees were furious.

As two consultants who helped put these plans together said at an Actuaries conference in 1998:

``I've been involved in cash balance plans five or six

years down the road and what I have found is that while

employees understand it, it is not until they are actually

ready to retire that they understand how little they are

actually getting.''

``Right, but they're happy while they're employed.''

One of the most abusive practices in cash balance conversions is known as ``wear away. `` The company freezes the value of the benefits employees already earned, which by law cannot be taken away once given. However, the employer opens a cash balance account for that worker at a much lower dollar level. So they end up working for years contributing to this lower cash balance account, not realizing that contribution is meaningless because their old benefits were higher. At the same time, younger workers do get money added to their account every day. This is clearly age discrimination, and bad pension policy.

In 1999, I introduced a bill to make it illegal for corporations to wear away the benefits of older workers during conversions to cash balance plans. I offered my bill as an amendment. Forty-eight Senators, including 3 Republicans, voted to waive the budget point of order so we could consider this amendment. We did not have enough votes then, but I believe the tide is turning.

After that vote, more and more stories came out about how many workers were losing their pensions. In September of 1999, the Secretary of the Treasury put a moratorium on conversions from defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. That moratorium has

been in effect now for over three years. In April of 2000, I offered a Sense-of-the-Senate resolution to stop this practice, and it passed the Senate unanimously.

There are hundreds of age discrimination complaints currently pending before the EEOC based on some of these abusive cash balance conversions. Clearly, something must be done to address this issue that's been floating around now unresolved for over five years.

Before, I said that wear-away is the least fair practice during conversion. And I have to say that now, public sentiment is really coming around to acknowledge that unfairness. However, aside from wear- away, there's another problem in shifting from a traditional pension to cash balance. In a traditional plan, you accrue most of the benefits toward the end of your career, because there's usually some kind of formula that multiplies top pay times years of service. People tend to earn more salary toward the end of their careers, and if that is multiplied times more years served, the pension grows quickly in later years. But in a cash balance plan, younger workers do better because they are given a flat percent of pay plus some guaranteed interest credit. Interest is good for young people, they have many years to accrue and compound it. So if you get caught in mid-life, mid-career in one of these transitions, you get the downside of both plans.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear on one point--cash balance pensions can be a great deal for workers. Some. And they may help fill a needed niche in the pension world to cover the half of the workforce that currently has no pension. But I will continue my long battle to oppose the unilateral decision of a company to cut off a promise for an older worker, give that money to a younger worker, and not view it as age discrimination.

That is what this issue is all about. It is fairness. It is equity. I know discussion of pension law can become very convoluted. But this can be boiled down pretty simply. It is about what we think a promise from an employer ought to mean.

There is one thing that has distinguished the American workplace from others around the world. We have valued loyalty. At least we used to. That is one of the reasons pension plans exist--the longer you work somewhere, the more you earn in your pension program. Obviously, the longer you work someplace, the better you do your job, the more you learn about it, the more productive you are. We should value that loyalty.

But here, companies are able to take away the benefits of the longest serving workers. What kind of a signal does that send to the workers? It tells workers they are fools if they are loyal because if you put in 20 or 25 years, the boss can just change the rules of the game, and break their promise. It tells younger workers that it would be crazy to work for a company for a long time, that it's best to hedge your bets and move on as soon as it is convenient. It's crazy to trade current pay for the promise of future benefits. So why even take into account the fact that you're being offered a pension plan? This is a very dangerous road to go down.

This destroys the kind of work ethic we have come to value and that we know built this country. But some of these cash balance conversions counter all of that. Here is an analogy. Imagine I hire someone for 5 years with a promise of a $50,000 bonus at the end of 5 years of service. At the end of 3 years, however, I renege on the $50,000 bonus. But the employee has 3 years invested. Had they known that the deal was going to be off, perhaps they would not have gone to work for me. They could have gone to work someplace else for a total higher compensation package. Now imagine that they hire a new guy to join the team, and they give him part of that $50,000 bonus they promised me. Is that the way we want to treat workers in this country, where the employer has all the cards and employees have none, and employers can make whatever deal they want, but can change the rules at any time?

That is why I am introducing this legislation. It is simple. It says that you have to give older, longer serving employees a choice, at retirement, when their pension plan is converted to a cash balance plan to get the benefits earned in the old plan instead. It also says that employers must start counting the new cash balance benefits where the old defined benefit plan left off, instead of starting the cash balance plan at a lower level than an employee had already earned.

This isn't a radical idea. I was very pleased that in February of 2004, the Administration came out with a cash balance proposal that recognized that these transitions are hard on workers. It not only prohibits wear-away but provides for 5 year transition credits for workers caught in the middle of a conversion. Treasury reaffirmed its commitment to this approach in this year's budget request.

I was excited when Treasury first came to the table with a proposal to do more to protect workers here. I was so encouraged by this that I convened a series of meetings over the course of last summer to get all interested parties to the table--everyone from participant rights advocates to industry groups to consultants. I heard some really great ideas, and some that I didn't agree with. But I think there is still room to find answers to this problem. So I'm putting my plan back on the table today. And I really hope that we can continue a meaningful dialog on this issue.

If we do that, this year, we can enact meaningful participant protections moving forward so that there is another pension option out there to cover the roughly half of Americans with no pension at all. But I also want to make it clear that this Senator will never sit idly by as older workers get the rug pulled out from under them just as they thought they were on solid ground for their retirement. I won't stand idly by and watch their money redistributed in an age-discriminatory way. We can have this dialog and we can find a way to fix what's broken here, but not by blessing some of these blatant abuses.