Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I would like to call my colleagues' attention to the extraordinary work of one of my Iowa constituents. This year, Ako Abdul-Samad, a Des Moines-based activist, received the prestigious 2004 National Caring Award for his work with at-risk youth in urban areas throughout Iowa. His organization, Creative Visions, was founded in 1996 after gang violence killed a young woman in suburban Des Moines. By working with both community leaders as well as gang leaders, Ako has helped many youth overcome their troubled past.

I am proud to call Ako Abdul-Samad not only a fellow Iowan, but also a friend. Since 1996, his organization has aided countless Iowa youth. Without his remarkable efforts and compassion, the urban areas of Iowa would not be the same. His progressive vision of today's youth places a positive outlook not only for the youth of today, but also the youth of the future.

Mr. President, I ask that the following magazine article be printed in the Record.

The article follows:

[From the Caring Magazine, Dec., 2004]

In 1996, a young woman from an outlying suburb of Des

Moines, Iowa, was killed when caught in gang crossfire--a

tragedy frequently played out in all too many American cities

and towns. The community was outraged, and many people

approached local activist Ako Abdul-Samad and asked what

could be done. He replied, ``Let's talk with the kids you're

talking about. Let's hear what they need.''

And so Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of Pioneer Hi-Bred

and president of the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, and Tom

Glenn of the Des Moines Labor Institute met with Abdul-Samad

for hours along with 14 of Des Moines' top gang leaders. Then

Abdul-Samad met with the gang members alone, discussing an

idea he had to build an organization to help at-risk youth.

Of the 14 gang leaders who showed up that day, six bought

into Abdul-Samad's idea. And thus Creative Visions was born.

The only thing the newly birthed organization asked of the

six gang members who stayed on was to stop all of their

illegal activity. ``We didn't ask them to denounce their gang

or to shed their gang colors,'' says Abdul-Samad. ``And for

two months we all worked out of my house--with members of the

Crips, Bloods, Gangsta Disciples, and Vice Lords coming and

going, much to my neighbors' wary curiosity.

``After the two months, we met again with the president of

Pioneer Hi-Bred, among others. The gang members walked in

wearing their colors, and then shortly into the meeting they

all got up and walked out. I kept on talking, and it seemed

like they weren't coming back, so I began to apologize to the

president and attendees. Just then, all of them walked in

again dressed in business suits ready to give their

individual presentations. Tears streamed down my face.''

In the eight years that have since passed, only one of the

six original gang members who agreed to work with Abdul-Samad

returned to his former ways, and now even he is starting to

put his life back together again.

From that small but powerful beginning, Abdul-Samad

estimates that Creative Visions has probably taken more guns

and drugs off the street than any other organization in the

Midwest. Their secret? Very simple, really. Give the so-

called ``lost-to-the-streets'' youth and young adults a

customized, holistic program of self-development, and you

will see them transform into self-sufficient, productive

citizens. The seeds for Creative Visions were planted 15

years before its formal founding. ``I had a contract to visit

and work in the prisons statewide,'' says Abdul-Samad. ``One

day I was in the intake center where all the prisoners come

once they are sentenced. I met a 16-year-old who was about to

serve an adult sentence, and before I left he asked me to

tell his dad and uncles when I saw them that he was OK. I

thought he meant when I got back to Des Moines to look them

up. But no, he said his dad was in one state prison and his

uncles were in another. Then I learned that all of them had

been to El Dora, a well-known boys' training school that

supposedly helped troubled youth avoid a life of crime.

Obviously, we were failing to turn young lives around.''

Abdul-Samad began to research the problem. He resigned his

prison contract and went to work for a Des Moines

organization called Urban Dreams, where he worked with kids

already at El Dora. ``But I wanted to catch the kids before

they got to that institution,'' explains Abdul-Samad. ``And I

was tired of hearing people say we can fix kids. You can't

`fix' a child or an adult. You can provide resources for them

to fix themselves because if the motivation to change doesn't

come from their own heart, it doesn't work.''

It was at that time that the young woman in Des Moines was

killed in the crossfire, providing a catalyst to test Abdul-

Samad's concept. ``With Creative Visions we showed the kids

we were willing to give them an opportunity,'' Abdul-Samad

affirms. ``We gave them a new family to belong to. We gave

them an opportunity to have a building--that gave them

ownership because they put the graffiti on the walls. Every

young person who was here in 1996 was involved in all aspects

of Creative Visions. We didn't do one program without their

input. We would do focus groups until we got it right. And

they saw me walking the talk.''

And then came 1997 and a personal tragedy that tested

Abdul-Samad's faith and ability to continue to ``walk the

talk.'' In December his only son, ``Little Ako,'' was shot to

death by a young man named Rodney. ``When I went to the

hospital, it was full of young people waiting to see what I

would do,'' Abdul-Samad recalls. ``The police declared it

an accidental shooting. My family wanted me to press

charges and send the killer to jail. And the gang members

wanted to kill Rodney. I will tell you now that the walk

became very difficult for me. I worked hard at just trying

to think straight. Sometimes I wouldn't know what I was

doing.

``I prayed for guidance. Within a week, I called a press

conference and had Rodney and his mother there. And I forgave

Rodney in public. I said that I've already lost my son and

that it would do no good to lose another young man. I said if

I could forgive him, who had the right not to? And then I

took Rodney home with me for the next four or five days.

``I think this is what the fate of Creative Visions,

because the kids and young adults now saw me walk the talk

despite my personal pain. They saw I was willing to keep on

giving, no matter what it cost. And not only me. There was

another staff person whose son was shot and killed in a

street not far from our office. The kids could see that there

are people who work here that are in pain, but they keep on

going.'' Lest one label Abdul-Samad and his co-workers ``role

models,'' he is quick to correct the term: ``We don't use the

term `role model;' we use `goal model.' Too many times we put

our role models upon pedestals; we don't allow them to be

human, which hinders their giving. We think a `goal model'

allows someone to make mistakes, to learn from those

mistakes, and to grow. As goal models we `model' setting

goals, striving to reach those goals, and making those goals

a reality.''

Certainly part of what makes Creative Visions work is its

peer counselors--some of whom are former gang members, drug

addicts, and dealers themselves. They are especially able to

form trusting relationship with young people who know they

have ``been there, done that.''

Like many dedicated to a life of service, Abdul-Samad's

reward is not accolades. ``A reward is when a young street

person, whom everyone else had given up on, goes through our

program and then walks in the door one day and shows you

their diploma, or tells you they've gone back to school, or

shares

the career path they've chose to pursue. Nothing is more

rewarding than to watch someone who is struggling and wearing

a look of despair suddenly transform. You can begin to see

hope in their eyes and the beginning of a smile.''

There are many aspects of inner-city life that are not

pretty. Abdul-Samad and his co-workers come face to face with

often grim and gritty circumstances that most people would

not want to even hear about, much less confront. Teen

pregnancies, venereal diseases, drug overdoses, stabbings,

are all part of the realities Creative Visions' counselors

face each day. Abdul-Samad credits his relationship with God

with helping him get through his pain. He also copes through

the pen--often writing poetry at 3 a.m., which relaxes him

and had led to the release of his first book, A Deeper Truth/

Relevations From the Soul.

Abdul-Samad has spent most of his 53 years giving to

others. Even as a child he tended to wounded animals or fixed

broken bicycles and then gave them away to neighborhood kids.

By the time he was 18, he was aligned with an organization

that fed 300 children each morning--long before the school

system began offering free breakfasts. ``This was all during

the 1960s, a good time in which to have grown up because of

all the consciousness-raising going on--women's rights, civil

rights, human rights,'' says Abdul-Samad. ``Anyone young who

got caught up in the counter-culture movement at that time

couldn't help but identify with people who were struggling.''

After eight years, the vision Ako Abdul-Samad conceived and

built is flourishing. Almost two dozen programs are now

operating through his center, from computer classes to 12-

step meetings. Since its inception, Creative Visions has

attracted and helped more than 6,500 men, women, and at-risk

children and youth. Now calls are coming in from cities

around the United States--and other countries including

Mexico, the Netherlands, and Nigeria--also interested in

starting similar organizations.

Abdul-Samad knows that many of the battles he undertakes

won't be won in his lifetime. But his philosophy is to plant

a seed, and he has planted many.

Mr. President, one of the great joys of my job as Senator is working closely with talented, dedicated Iowans from all walks of life. I take a moment to salute one of those exceptional people, one of Iowa's most distinguished public educators, Angie King.

Angie King has dedicated her life to children and public education, first as a classroom teacher, later as two-term president of the 32,000-member Iowa State Education Association, and, until her retirement this week, as a senior staff member of that Association.

The fact is that, as an educator-leader, Angie King speaks with a special authority that can only come from decades of experience on the front line as a classroom teacher. For 21 years, she taught elementary students in the Des Moines public schools. Of all the titles Angie King has held in the course of her career, she prizes none more highly than the simple title of ``teacher.''

Angie King, as a teacher, leader and advocate is one reason why Iowa public schools are among the most respected and highest achieving in the United States. The marketplace claims that you get what you pay for. But in Iowa, when it comes to teachers, we get far, far better than we pay for. Despite modest salaries, my state is blessed with an extraordinary cadre of talented teachers. And most folks in Iowa know this and appreciate it. We hold our teachers in special esteem. And we're grateful for the long hours--and the generous hearts that they bring to their jobs.

For many people, there is a defining moment in their careers. For Angie King, that moment came one day in 1972 when she missed a staff meeting at her elementary school. The next day, she discovered she has been elected in absentia to serve as a local representative of the Des Moines Education Association. Some people are born leaders; some people pursue leadership; and some people have leadership thrust upon them. That's what happened to Angie King. But she embraced her new role and responsibilities with energy and excellence.

As an association representative, she became more interested in the world of education beyond the four walls of her own classroom. She became a tireless activist, going on to serve as vice president of the Des Moines Education Association, a charter member of the ISEA Women's Caucus, an elected member of ISEA's executive committee, and, in 1985, chair of the ISEA Political Action Committee.

In 1990, Angie King was elected to serve the first of two terms as president of the Iowa State Education Association. She was one of a handful of women in history to be elected ISEA president, and the first elementary school teacher to hold that office.

In her farewell address at the conclusion of her second term in 1994, Angie King shared one of her favorite quotes from Albert Camus: ``In the midst of winter I find there is in me an invincible summer.'' ``That simple statement,'' she told the ISEA Delegate Assembly, ``captures the very essence of who we are and what we do. In every child there is an invincible summer. It is our responsibility to nurture it and to foster it. And in each one of us there is, too, an invincible summer. It's what keeps us going back day after day, year after year, in the midst of sometimes very cold and dreary conditions.''

Since 1994, Angie King has served as the political action specialist for the Iowa State Education Association. With her retirement this week, she concludes a distinguished career in public education spanning three and a half decades.

Angie King has made a real difference as a dedicated teacher, leader, and champion of public education. I know that she is looking forward to spending time nurturing the garden she has neglected while nurturing the children of Iowa. I am deeply grateful for her service, and I wish her all the best in the years ahead.

As long as the floor is open, I might as well speak now.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Montana. I will not take a lot of time. I wanted to talk a little bit about the measure in front of us, raising the debt limit yet one more time on the American people.

I liken it really to this right here. I will take it out of my billfold. It is a credit card. You see, what the Republicans have done is they have put America on a credit card. What they are doing is sort of like: spend and pay later, feel good. There was an advertisement once for a credit card company that said you can have it all. That is what the Republicans are telling us: You can have it all. We are going to put America on a credit card society. We can have tax cuts for the wealthy and the most privileged and we will put it on a credit card. We can continue the war in Iraq, brought on by exaggerations and misinformation to the tune of about $6 billion a month now. That is what we are spending in Iraq. I think it will $200 billion by the end of this fiscal year. Put it on a credit card. Put it on the credit card. And, boy, does it feel good. We can have everything. We can have it all. That is what Republicans are telling us. All you have to do is go in debt, put it on the credit card, put it on the country's credit card. We all know what is going to happen. When you are running up the credit card, boy, it feels good.

Who is getting all the advantages of this credit card, though? The wealthiest among us who got all these big tax cuts, and they are now shopping at Neiman Marcus. Check it out. High-end stores, the high-end catalogs are doing very well. People are buying expensive trinkets, expensive watches, yachts, and everything else. They made out.

Guess where it is coming from. It is on your credit card, America. It is on your credit card. And who will be paying? Working families. And now they want us to extend the credit card limit one more time.

You see, they bumped against the limit on the credit card, so now they are saying we have to extend the limit. That is what all this is about. You have to put it in real-life terms. This is a real-life credit card. You know what your limit is, you know what your income is, and you know what happens if you exceed your credit card limit and you cannot pay it. What happens? What happens when you cannot meet the payments? You either declare bankruptcy and go to bankruptcy court, or your creditors come after you. They restructure you. They deny you certain things so that you can start to pay off your credit card debt.

Guess who is now taking our credit card debt. The top countries holding our credit card debt are Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, OPEC--the oil producing and exporting countries have a lot of our debt--China. I do not mean to castigate China. I happen to like the Chinese people. I think we ought to trade with China, although in a more balanced way. But what happens when they become a big creditor and we are their debtor? What happens to trade deals down the road?

Put yourself and your family in this position. What happens when you are the debtor and you have a creditor? Who tells whom what to do? Does the debtor tell the creditor what to do? Your creditor tells you what you have to do to get out of debt.

So what is going to happen a few years from now when we are having a trade deal with China, when we are trying to hammer it out and the Chinese do not like exactly how we are dealing? What happens when they are keeping the value of their currency artificially low? The debtor tends to pull their punch when dealing with the creditor. And we have been pulling our punches in this situation.

This is not some fancy kind of thing. I have heard some speeches on the floor today about the debt limit. Look, this is family. This is the American family we are talking about, and the Republicans are selling us out to creditors around the world. And now that we have bumped up against the limit on our credit card, they say we are going to raise the limit one more time. We can put more debt on our credit card: $800 billion more. Think of it as another $11,000 for a family of four.

Two things are happening. First is you have to pay interest, right? When you have debt on your credit card, you pay interest on that credit card debt. You pay it every month or you start paying interest on the interest. Guess what. You will have to pay it. That is what is happening to our national debt. We raise the limit on our credit card, and every month we have to pay interest or what it build and build.

How much interest? Every man, woman, and child in America will, by 2009, be paying $1,000 a year in taxes just to pay the interest on the national debt; $4,000 for a family of four, every year, just to pay the interest on the debt. And, Mr. President, that is not one tax that can be cut. You cannot cut that tax. That has to be paid. The interest has to be paid on the debt--$4,000 a year for a family of four.

I have heard a lot of talk around here this year and in previous years--and now I hear the President of the United States talking about it again--about the death tax, otherwise known as the estate tax, which is if you have a big estate, over $1.5 million dollars, before you pass it on, you have to pay taxes on the amount over that sum. They got to calling it this fancy death tax, like you are taxed because you die. You are not taxed because you die, you are taxed because you have large holdings that have built up, a lot of which you have not paid taxes on, that you can pass on to other generations in your family. They call it a death tax.

I think we ought to start talking about the birth tax. That is what is happening on the floor today. Increasing our national debt is putting a birth tax on every child born in America.

Think about it. For a child born in America 5 years hence, during that child's first year of life, his or her share of the interest payment on the publicly held debt will be $1,000. No one is talking about it. We ought to be talking about it because that is what it is--a birth tax on every child born in America. You have to pay $1,000 a year interest on the national debt to pay for the tax cuts.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.

That is what it is. It is a birth tax. Every child born has to pay $1,000 in interest on the debt that first year.

Where did the money go? Lots went to the wealthiest in our society who are now shopping at Neiman Marcus and buying fancy cars. Trickle- down economics. All you have to do is give more to the wealthiest in our society, and it will trickle down. Nonsense. What is trickling down is the interest on the debt that our families have to pay. That is all that is trickling down.

Here it is right here on this chart, the debt each American owes, per capita, Federal debt outstanding. This year, $25,398 each American owes on the Federal debt outstanding, and now we are asking one more time to raise the credit card ceiling. One more time we will raise it, putting American families more in hock to the Chinese, the Japanese, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean banking centers, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland, and the oil producing and exporting countries, the top 10 countries holding our national debt.

This is not rocket science. All it is, pure and simple, is giving more to those who already have a lot in our society. It is spending, as I said, on a needless war in Iraq to the tune of $6 billion a month, not counting the tragic loss in American lives and innocent Iraqi lives. Yet, with all of that we do not even have enough money to fund education. We are putting to bed, so to speak, our education appropriations bill. Guess what. In the Omnibus Appropriations bill we will consider on the floor of the Senate this week, funding for Title I spending, for the poorest schools, is $8 billion short of the authorized level. We have had to cut title I spending for the poorest schools, for the kids in the lowest income areas of America today.

So we do not have enough money for kids and education, for poor schools. We don't have enough money to make sure we have a decent health care plan for the poorest in our country and our children. Our middle-class kids graduate from college with debt up to their eyeballs because they can't afford to go to college. Our environment is being ravaged, our transportation system is falling apart--drive down any highway, thank you--yet we are asked to raise the national debt one more time on this credit card so the most privileged in our society can continue their spending spree. It is time to get us off the credit card.

A simple fact, simple truth: Republicans can't be trusted with your money. That is the simple fact. It happens every time. They simply think all you have to do is run up that credit card, give tax cuts to the wealthy, and everybody will be fine.

Someone said earlier today the responsible thing to do was to vote to increase the debt limit. I am sorry. I am sorry. That is not the responsible thing. That is one more irresponsible action.

I wouldn't mind voting to raise the debt limit if it were coupled with a bill that was true tax reform, that made the wealthiest in our society pay their fair share, that provided for good education and health care for our people. Then you could say we had a fair deal. This is not a fair deal. We are raising the debt so the most privileged in our society can have more. We are raising the debt limit so countries like China can have a noose around our neck.

I ask for 60 more seconds and I will conclude.

It is a shame we have come to this. It is time to rip up the credit card. It is time to take the credit card away from the Republican majority here and from the President of the United States. It is time that we have a fair deal for the people of this country and not impose a new birth tax on every child born in America to pay this interest on the national debt. It is unfair. We ought to turn it down and come back with a fair deal for the American people.

I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his great statement. He is very perceptive.

One thing I did not mention, but as he alerted the Senate, we are now being told we will not be able to meet our obligations under Social Security if we continue down this path. Therefore, what we need to do is somehow privatize Social Security and put it out on the stock market, like Enron stock, for future beneficiaries.

I ask my friend from North Dakota to address that further. He touched on it. Now we are going into debt further and further and we have huge tax breaks for the wealthy, for the most privileged among us, and we are being told we will not have enough money to pay our obligations under Social Security.

Is that what is happening now, I ask my friend from North Dakota?

Mr. President, I ask the U.S. Senate to join me in saluting

the Jennifer Steensen Field of Dreams Therapeutic Riding Program of Granger, IO. This outstanding program provides therapeutic riding and driving programs for individuals with physical and mental disabilities and children in at-risk situations.

The program has provided over 2000 hours of horseback riding lessons to clients aged two to 80 with disabilities that include cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, spinal bifida, blindness, ADHD, learning disabilities and brain injury. On average, 80 individuals participate in this program every year.

I would like to pay tribute to the dedicated volunteers who make this program successful. One such individual is Lisa Quam, who volunteers once a week at the stables to share her laughter and love of horses with the riders. Matthew Vujnovich of Des Moines is one of the many clients who have benefited from the time and talents of the program's volunteers. Matthew has autism and Lisa's friendship and guidance with the horses has helped develop his fine motor skills, muscles and independence.

I am dedicated to the principles of the Americans with Disabilities Act: equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for millions of Americans with physical and mental disabilities. The Jennifer Steensen Field of Dreams Therapeutic Riding Program advances these principles and helps clients develop critical life-skills. I applaud their efforts and thank them for all that they have accomplished.

Mr. President, as we all know, this is an election year. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, both parties recognize the importance of civic engagement this year. That is why I want to recognize the efforts of Zach Hebl, an Eagle Scout from Cedar Township, IA. When 15-year-old Zach learned that his parents' polling location was not accessible to people with disabilities, he coordinated an effort to construct a sidewalk, parking lot, and wooden access ramp at Cedar Township Hall, a Johnson county polling location, so that everyone in his precinct had an equal opportunity to cast their ballot.

Zach's achievement is particularly important because as of September of 2003, there were approximately 300 precincts in Iowa that did not meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Without renovation, these locations will shut down in 2006 and close their doors to voters. Thanks to Zach, Cedar Township Hall was the first site to be removed from this list. I would like to print in the Record this article from the Cedar Rapids Gazette which describes Zach's project in greater detail.

The article follows:

Cedar Rapids Gazette, August 26, 2003:

Fifteen-year-old Zach Hebl didn't want to see the one-room

schoolhouse become just a symbol of the past.

The old schoolhouse, which closed in the 1950s, has served

as the township's polling place for at least 60 years but was

in danger of no longer being an allowable voting site because

it failed to meet Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA,

requirements.

That's when Hebl got the idea to bring the old building up

to current standards by building a ramp and deck onto the

building.

``I've always figured I could be voting here one day and

wanted to do something so that I could do that,'' said Hebl,

who lives on a farm in Cedar Township about two miles south

of the schoolhouse.

Hebl began working on the project, which he will use as an

Eagle Scout project, in mid-April. He developed plans for

multiple ramps and made a presentation to the Cedar Township

Board of Trustees. He researched the ADA requirements and

prepared cost estimates. By mid-July, both the Scouts and

trustees approved the project.

``We were glad somebody came along to take this project

over,'' said Don Brannaman, a trustee who has lived in Cedar

Township for 55 years. ``We were going to have to find a way

to do this.''

Hebl worked with his Eagle Scout adviser, Jim Jacob, 51, a

structural engineer with Van Winkle-Jacob Engineering in

Coralville, to conduct site elevations and choose the best

design.

``This building has got a lot of significance,'' said

Jacob, who lives in Cedar Township and has voted at the

building since 1983. ``If people couldn't vote here, nobody

would take care of the building, and it would fall into

disrepair.''

On Saturday, it was evident many residents didn't want that

to happen. A group of 25 kids, mostly fellow members of Troop

120, and 19 adults arrived at the job site to help build the

24-foot-long ramp and deck. Installation of the posts began

Friday, and the final touch on the project, a large concrete

parking slab and sidewalk to the ramp, will be installed in

September.

``We wouldn't want to vote anyplace else,'' said Loretta

Basten, 58, who attended the one-room schoolhouse until third

grade when it closed in the 1950s. She was bringing snacks to

the site.

``There are students who go to college and come back just

so they can cast a ballot here,'' Basten said.

In August, Chet Culver, Secretary of the State of Iowa, and I had the privilege of attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new polling place. There to support Zach were his parents, Boy Scout Troop 120, and many members of the community. It was a proud moment for Cedar Township as Zach cut that ribbon. He is a wonderful example of how one person can truly impact a community simply by acting upon an idea.

As the author of the ADA, I am always glad to see progress toward its four great goals--equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities. Zach's work is critical to ensuring equality in voting and full participation in our democratic system, which formerly was not available to the people in his County and still is not available for many Iowans. Even though Zach is too young to vote, he serves as a role model to Eagle Scouts and young people across the country. He proves that one person can make a tremendous difference.

Mr. President, I want to salute Norm Nielsen, president of Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IO, on his upcoming retirement. Dr. Nielsen has served the college and the greater community with dedication through both good and difficult times. During his tenure, and because of his commitment, talent and hard work, Kirkwood Community College has become a major contributor to economic development in Eastern Iowa.

During Dr. Nielsen's illustrious 18-year tenure at Kirkwood, the college has become the third largest institution of higher education in Iowa. Its excellence has been recognized with numerous honors and awards. For example, Kirkwood was named by the National Alliance of Business as its 2000-01 Community College of the Year.

I have known Norm for many years. I respect him as a true visionary who has helped to shape and transform the mission of our Nation's community college system. I respect him as a builder of programs and partnerships focused to enhance the quality of life in Eastern Iowa. Most of all, I respect Norm as a builder of people, a dedicated educator who believes in the transforming power of higher education and advanced training.

I salute Norm for his extraordinary work over the years in improving Iowa's community college system. I know that we can count on him to continue to play a contributing role even in retirement.

Norm Nielsen's leadership will be missed. But he will leave Kirkwood Community College in good hands, as Mick Starcevich takes over as president. Dr. Starcevich was previously superintendent of Prairie Community School District. Norm Nielsen is a tough act to follow, but I know that Mick is superbly qualified to take on the challenge of leading Kirkwood Community College into the future.

Mr. President, like millions of other Americans, I was

shocked and saddened to learn last evening and to learn more this morning of the death of Christopher Reeve. In Hollywood life, he played Superman. But in real life, Christopher Reeve was a super person, a truly wonderful individual who embodied the indomitable human spirit in a way that won the respect and admiration of people across the globe.

Christopher Reeve was a classic example of a person with a disability who is remembered most of all for his ability, not his disability--the abilities that he mobilized to become an extraordinarily effective advocate for stem cell research.

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his eloquent and straightforward presentation of the arguments on behalf of embryonic stem cell research.

But I want to commend the memory of Christopher Reeve. He marshaled forces, he traveled all over this country at great expense, and at great cost to himself personally in terms of his own health, to marshal the forces necessary to promote embryonic stem cell research.

He spoke with passion and intelligence and conviction. Christopher Reeve offered hope--not a false or idle hope. He offered hope grounded in science and discovery, hope grounded in the promise in possibilities of embryonic stem cell research. Forty-two Nobel laureates--I think maybe many of them because Christopher Reeve called them on the phone and visited--came out in strong support of embryonic stem cell research.

Just yesterday there was a march here in Washington by families and survivors of those who had ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. One of those marchers was a staff person of mine whose father just passed away from ALS. She and her mother were both in that march yesterday.

Christopher Reeve's argument for stem cell research was compelling. It was beyond personal. Yes, he did speak once about his own personal spinal cord injury and stem cell research at Ohio State University in 2003 at a commencement address.

He said:

I come to know people of all ages and from all walks of

life that I would otherwise never have even met. For all our

differences, what we had in common was our disability and the

desire to find a reason to hope. I was inspired by so many

and gradually discovered that I had been given a job that

would create urgency and a new direction in my life. I could

do something to help.

Christopher Reeve really did do a lot to help.

Senator Specter as chairman and I as cochair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services held the first hearing on December 2, 1998, after Dr. Thompson of Wisconsin and Dr. Gerhart of Johns Hopkins isolated the first stem cells. I am proud that our subcommittee had 15 hearings on this issue. At more than one of those hearings it was determined that we did have the authority to do stem cell research from embryos. That was determined. That was determined before August of 2001.

I also point out that Christopher Reeve very eloquently testified at one of those early hearings on the necessity of embryonic stem cell research. We decided that the Government did have the authority. It is the President's Executive order of August 9, 2001, that limited what we could do.

When the President says that he is the first President to authorize stem cell research, that is not so, as Senator Kennedy pointed out. He is the first President to limit, severely restrict, what we could do in stem cell research. The President said all the stem cells that were derived prior to 8 p.m. on August 9, 2001, could be used. Anything after that could not be used.

I remember watching that address. I was in my home State of Iowa. I thought to myself, why 8 p.m.? Why not 8:05? How about 8:10? In other words, if someone derives a stem cell at 7:59, it is okay, but at 8:01, it is not. What kind of arbitrary restriction is this? Totally arbitrary.

Because of that, he said there would be 60 stem cell lines--and we know there are only 22, and as the Senator from Massachusetts said every single one of those is contaminated because they used mouse cells on which to grow. So their use in human treatments is highly unlikely, at best.

The fact is, embryonic stem cell research offers enormous potential to ease human suffering. That is why this person, Christopher Reeve, fought so hard. The promise of stem cell research gave Chris Reeve hope, just as it gives hope for those suffering from ALS, Parkinson's disease, and diabetes, and all of their families. It is giving my nephew, Kelly McQuaid, hope. He was injured in the military. He is now quadriplegic and has been for over 20 years. He has hope that this stem cell research will allow him to again walk one day, just as Chris Reeve hoped it would for him.

We know stem cells have worked in rats. It has been proven that rats with spinal cords that have been severed and reconnected with stem cells walk again. That has been done in rats. As I pointed out, we humans are 99.5 percent rats--I don't mean just us politicians, I am saying genomically, structurally, we are about 99 percent the same cells. If stem cells can get rats walking again, think of the hope it has for humans. Yet this President says no.

There are those who say we cannot destroy these embryos because it is life. This is something I have done before in my committee, and I did it once with Chris Reeve there. He liked it, so I will do it again in his memory. I have a pen and a blank piece of paper. I hold this up and I ask if anyone can see what I put on that piece of paper. What I put on that piece of paper is a dot, a little dot. That is the size of the embryos we are taking the stem cells from--a dot you can barely see on a piece of paper.

People say that is life. Of course it is life. Every cell has life. All my skin cells have life. My hair cells have life. Sperm has life. Eggs have life. But they say we cannot destroy these for stem cell research. They equate that somehow with this human being right here. They equate this little dot that you can barely see with someone like Chris Reeve. This is what we are taking the stem cells from, that little dot.

A lot of people think when we talk about embryonic stem cell research that somehow we are destroying fetuses. They get this confused. So I point out it is as big as a dot on a piece of paper. We will equate that with this human or that dot with my nephew, Kelly McQuaid? This is the promise of stem cell research.

We already have over 400,000 of these little dots that you can barely see frozen in liquid nitrogen. They are left over from in vitro fertilization. Guess what happens, folks. They are being destroyed. The dots are in test tubes, frozen in liquid nitrogen. Every so often when the donors do not want them any longer--they had their children or they reached the age they do not want to have children--they can call up the in vitro clinic and say, We do not want those saved any longer, and the test tube is cleaned out and is washed down the sink. It is either that or use them for stem cell research.

That is why I wanted to pay homage to Chris Reeve's memory today. He was a great friend, a personal friend. I remember him coming to Iowa. My sympathies to Dana, his wonderful wife, and their family. But rest assured, we will prevail.

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

Mr. President, whenever I travel in Iowa, I hear moms and dads worrying out loud that if President Bush gets a second term, he intends to reinstitute the military draft. I hear the same thing from college-aged Iowans. In fact, a national poll of young people found that 55 percent expect the draft to be started up again. Of course, the joke that is going around is: President Bush insists that there will be no draft. And if anybody knows how to avoid a draft, it is George W. Bush.

But the facts tell a different story. The facts tell us that if President Bush continues on his current course, he will have to reinstitute the draft. In fact, to meet personnel needs in Iraq, President Bush has already imposed stage one of a new draft. Many soldiers whose enlistment time is up are not being allowed to leave the service, and people who left the service years ago are being forced to put on the uniform again against their will. So we already have a backdoor draft. Let's be honest about it. President Bush has already done away with the All-Volunteer military. Stage two of the reinstated draft would be easy to implement. Draft boards are already in place in every county in America. Young men who turn age 18 are already required to register with their local draft board. It is becoming increasingly obvious that because of President Bush's new doctrine of preemptive war, our military is stretched dangerously thin. We do not have enough people in uniform to meet current needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less to deal with a confrontation with Iran or North Korea or some other hot spot.

Here are the hard realities that cannot be ignored. Right now, total Active Army and Marine personnel number about 655,000. That includes support units, training units, headquarters personnel, and others who do not see combat.

In a long, drawn out war such as a Vietnam or an Iraq, units sent to the front lines have to be rotated out periodically and replaced by an equal number of forces. Now, currently, we have 135,000 troops in Iraq, 20,000 in Afghanistan, 36,000 in Korea, more than 100,000 in Europe, and some various troops scattered in Japan and Okinawa and a few other places.

Our Armed Forces have been stretched and strained to the breaking point. To fill the gaps and shortages, tens of thousands of guardsmen and women reservists have been called up, some for several years at a time. But there is a cost to all of this. Morale is suffering. Enlistments and reenlistments are down. The Army National Guard fell 10-percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal. The Regular Army has had to ease up on standards in order to meet its recruitment goals.

Now, what happens if all-out civil war breaks out in Iraq and we have to increase our troop strength to 200,000 or 300,000 to quell it? What happens if a newly reelected President Bush decides it is time for a preemptive war against Iran or Syria or North Korea?

President Bush has already effectively ended the All-Volunteer military. People are hesitant to join the Guard or Reserve because the odds of being sent into combat have skyrocketed.

So how in the world would a second-term President Bush meet the personnel needs of his doctrine of preemptive war? Bear in mind, President Bush has changed the standard for justifying preemptive war.

As the New York Times reported on Sunday, originally the criterion was that a rogue nation was an imminent threat to us, that it either possessed weapons of mass destruction or was actively attempting to build these weapons of mass destruction. But in response to the Duelfer report last week, which found no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and no active program to produce these weapons in Iraq, President Bush says that does not matter. He said that a preemptive invasion is justified if an enemy is trying to avoid United Nations sanctions by ``gaming the system,'' as the President put it.

As the New York Times concluded:

Mr. Bush appears to be saying that under his new standard a

country merely has to be thinking about developing illicit

weapons at some time.

Or as Joseph Nye of Harvard concludes:

The President is saying that intent is enough.

Well, given either the old or the new standard for justifying preemption, the U.S. military is going to be very busy indeed if President Bush is reelected. Our military personnel needs will grow dramatically as morale, enlistments, and reenlistments fall. That is exactly why I have taken the floor today, to state this: That I believe President Bush intends to reinstate the draft. Why can I say that? Because he has no choice. To pursue his agenda of aggressive preemption, he must reinstate the draft.

Now, if you look at history, incumbent Presidents never reveal their true intentions on matters of war and the draft. Those of us who were around in the 1960s remember President Lyndon Johnson, a President of my own party. When he was running for election in 1964, people were afraid he had a secret plan to escalate the war in Vietnam. He denied it. President Johnson repeatedly promised: I will not send American boys halfway around the world to do a job that Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Well, Mr. Johnson was reelected and, sure enough, millions of American boys were drafted and sent halfway around the world to Vietnam.

So young people today have good reasons for fearing the draft. They have good reasons for not believing President Bush's reassurances that he has no intention of reinstituting the draft. After all, President Bush has quite a lengthy track record of saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. Well, I guess there is some kind of a technical term for this. I guess it is called: Flip-flopping.

Remember, as a candidate in 2000, President Bush was for a ``humble foreign policy'' before he was against it. He was against nation building in foreign countries before he was for it. He was for a peaceful resolution of the

confrontation with Iraq before he was against it. He was for an All- Volunteer military before the pressures of war in Iraq obliged him to do away with the All-Volunteer military.

Now he says he is against the draft. I think our young people can be forgiven for doubting President Bush is going to stick with that position. George W. Bush may have avoided the draft when he was a young man, but he is not going to be able to avoid the draft as President if he is reelected and pursues his policy of preemptive war.

Mr. President, I also want to talk about a few of the things that have happened here this year in the course of our deliberations and debate on legislation in the Senate and in the Congress.

One of the issues I would like to talk about--and it came to a head here at the end--has to do with agriculture. But before I get into that, I want to talk about overtime pay. Then I want to talk about agriculture and conservation.

Last week, in a replay of what happened almost a year ago, the Bush administration used a conference committee to kill my provision to stop the Department of Labor's new rule on overtime pay, a new rule which, if it is allowed to stand, will strip 6 million workers of their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay.

Once again, the overtime provision I offered and which was adopted by the Senate was killed in conference, despite votes in both Houses of Congress demonstrating strong bipartisan support for my amendment to stop these onerous rules of the President from going into effect and denying the right of overtime pay to some 6 million Americans.

Now, yesterday, we in the Senate, yet again, voted to protect hard- working Americans' right to earn overtime pay. That bill we passed--as the amendments I have offered before that we passed four times--serves the simplest of purposes. It lets stand the new threshold of $23,660, below which anyone who is working is automatically guaranteed the right to overtime pay, and it guarantees that no worker who currently receives overtime pay would lose the right to overtime under the new rule. That is what this Senate voted to keep four times, and the House, twice.

This is a subject I feel deeply about, and I know I am not alone. Wherever I travel in the United States, people come up to me and talk about what overtime pay means to them and their families. They can become quite emotional about it. They know what this administration is trying to do. They are angry that this administration wants to roll back this new overtime rule.

It is a simple matter of honoring work. People believe that when they put in more than 40 hours of work in a week, that they are giving up their premium time, their time with their families, and that their employers should provide them with premium pay if they are giving up their premium time.

Also, many Americans rely on that premium pay as a substantial part of their income--to put a little bit aside for a college education, a rainy day fund, or perhaps maybe to buy a better house, move up the ladder a little bit, buy a new car.

Other people, to tell the truth, would just rather not work a lot of overtime hours. They believe a 40-hour workweek is a full workweek. That is what the Fair Labor Standards Act established when Congress passed it in 1938. It established in law the principle of a 40-hour workweek, that anyone basically who works over that gets time-and-a- half overtime pay. That was 1938.

But get this, in 1933, this Senate, right here in this very Chamber-- in 1933, after lengthy debate--passed a bill to establish not a 40-hour workweek, or 50-hours, as it was then, but a 30-hour workweek--a 30- hour workweek, in 1933. Think about that. They voted here to establish a 30-hour workweek in 1933.

Congress fought about it for about 5 years, and finally, in 1938, they compromised at 40 hours. It has been that way ever since. I will bet we couldn't pass a bill in this Senate today to establish a 50-hour workweek. By letting these rules go into effect, we are telling people, hey, you can work over 40 hours a week, but don't expect time-and-a- half overtime pay. That is exactly what we are talking about.

Again, we know that if overtime is free to the employer, if they don't have to pay anymore, they will work people overtime. This chart illustrates that. The red block is those who have no overtime protection. The green represents people who do have overtime pay protection. Of those who have overtime protection, only 19 percent work more than 40 hours a week, about one out of every five. These are people who get paid for overtime. But if you are not eligible for overtime pay, 44 percent work more than 40 hours a week, almost one out of every two. So if you don't have overtime pay protection, you are twice as likely to work overtime.

How about working more than 50 hours a week? If you have overtime pay protection, only about 5 percent work more than 50 hours a week, but if you don't have overtime pay protection, three times as many--15 percent--work more than 50 hours a week.

That tells the whole story right there. That is what is happening. If this new rule is allowed to stand, we will be back here 5, 6, 7 years from now, and you are going to see this red mark way up there, 50, 60 percent or more of people without overtime pay protection working more than 40 hours a week.

Last year, the Bush administration launched an assault on the time- honored principle of time and a half pay for over 40 hours. Actually the proposal of the President came out in a set of proposed rules from the Department of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 has been amended and changed a number of times since 1938, but it has always been done through the legislative process, not administrative rulemaking.

Ordinarily, the administration comes to Congress. They say they would like to modify the Fair Labor Standards Act for one reason or another. The appropriate committees have hearings. They bring in witnesses. We work it out. We bring it to the floor. We pass it. It goes to a conference with the House, and it is sent to the President for signature. That is the way it ought to be done.

This time, for the first time, this President issued a proposed set of regulations drastically changing the overtime pay rules without one public hearing. They issued these proposed rules without having one public hearing. It actually took us several weeks, kind of plodding through the proposed rules, to see what they were proposing. The magnitude was breathtaking.

Some of the most harmful provisions were not discovered until months later. Frankly, we were shocked when we first saw in these proposed rules of the administration that they were proposing to strip overtime pay from police officers, firefighters, veterans, nurses, and many others--radical stuff. Of course, once the true intent and extent became known, many of those affected were in open rebellion. We talked about it, and I talked about it here on the Senate floor.

When the Department of Labor issued the final rule just this spring, the White House seemed to have an election year conversion. Under extreme pressure from labor unions as well as us here in Congress, the administration backed off its attempt to strip overtime from certain high-profile groups such as rank-and-file police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians. I salute the efforts of many individuals and groups who fought hard and who forced the administration to abandon several of these most offensive and egregious proposals.

But what did the change do? They took us from an estimated 8 million people hurt by these overtime rules to 6 million. So basically we went from a proposed set of rules that were profoundly terrible to a set of rules that were just plain terrible.

The administration said they fixed it up. Sure, I admit there are about 2 million fewer people who were affected in the final rules, policemen and others. But make no mistake about it, up to 6 million hard-working Americans earning as little as $23,661 a year will lose their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay.

I have been guaranteed 2 hours today. I spoke 10 minutes earlier. I assumed I had about an hour and 50 minutes.

I have probably about 10 more minutes on overtime. I want to talk about the conservation program and just a little on the economy, so maybe 45 minutes.

Frankly, at this point the administration has zero credibility. As I said, when the proposed rule was issued more than a year ago, it took months of reading the fine print before we realized just how destructive it was. Only belatedly did we discover that the administration was giving tips and advice to employers as to how they could avoid paying overtime to employees. Right in the rules there is advice to employers how they can get around it. I had never seen that before, either.

Here we go again. The administration is all smiles and happy talk. Again the administration is assuring workers they won't lose their overtime rights. When the Bush administration smiles and says it only wants to fix overtime, I have five words of advice to American workers: Hang on to your wallets.

What I am telling you about this new overtime rule is not just according to me. Just a couple of months ago, the top three people who administered these regulations over the course of the last two decades released a report detailing their indepth review of these rule changes. Of all the people in the universe of labor experts who have weighed in on the Bush overtime rule, I would have to think that the credibility of these three persons is unparalleled on this issue. Why do I say that? They have no ax to grind. They worked for Republican and Democratic administrations, going clear back to President Reagan, the first President Bush, and President Clinton. One of them worked for this Bush administration. These are the three experts who administered this program. If you have any reservations about my interpretation or criticism, I invite you to read their analysis.

These three career officials have said:

In every instance where DOL [Department of Labor] has made

substantive changes to the existing rules, it has weakened

the criteria for overtime pay exemptions and thereby expanded

the reach and scope of the exemption.

Let me repeat the administration's central claim. They are saying that no workers earning less than $100,000 a year will lose their right to overtime pay. Well, one of these career DOL officials was quoted in the New York Times as saying by his analysis, 3 to 5 million Americans would lose their eligibility.

This other chart I have shows the impact of this new rule. It is clear that employees earning $100,000 a year or more can be exempted because they are exempted under the highly compensated employee provisions, if they make more than $100,000. Then if you earn less than $23,660, you are automatically nonexempt. You have to be paid time and a half. Who is in between? Well, a lot of people but especially team leaders. I will talk a little bit about team leaders.

Under the new rule, a worker who leads a team of other workers loses his or her right to overtime. Under the old rule, there was no provision concerning so-called team leaders. There wasn't even such a term. But the new rule, section 541.203(c), states:

An employee who leads a team of other employees assigned to

complete other projects for the employer meets the

requirements for exemption even if the employee does not have

direct supervisory responsibility of the employees on that

team.

This team leader loophole is big enough to run an Amtrak train through. Team leaders are commonplace throughout the manufacturing and service sectors. They are especially common in factories, refineries, chemical plants.

MIT professor of management Tom Kochan estimates that this team leader loophole alone could deny overtime rights to as many as 2.3 million workers. Again, the administration claims that no worker making between $23,660 a year and $100,000 a year will be denied overtime. That statement is just plain false.

When Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, it anticipated there would be a number of less than honorable employers who would try to cheat workers out of their overtime pay. So Congress included a penalty provision that would act as a strong deterrent. Here is what it was. Under the old rule, if an employer was cheating employees out of overtime pay, the penalty could be massive. All employees in the enterprise--all employees, including even salaried employees who were exempt from overtime--had to be paid time and a half overtime for the period that the improper practices took place. It was known as the nuclear deterrent. It was very tough.

Now, by contrast, under the new rule, the penalty is limited to the work unit where the violation was detected. This ignores the fact that, in nearly all instances, overtime violations are not limited to a renegade supervisor. They are almost always as a result of companywide practices. In other words, we have gone from the nuclear deterrent of old to the new sort of pussycat deterrent under the new rule. Under the new rule, many workers will legally lose their right to overtime pay. That is one part of it. And employers who cheat workers out of overtime pay illegally will receive a penalty that is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. No wonder the Wall Street Journal called the new rule a victory for business groups. No wonder this new rule is so strongly supported by corporate America.

It is time for the Bush administration to listen to Main Street, not just Wall Street; listen to ordinary working Americans. One of their highest concerns is economic security. Not only do they fear losing jobs, health care, and retirement; they are now afraid they will lose their right to time and a half compensation. They have good reason to fear that. They fear they will work a 50- to 60-hour week, with zero compensation. That is what is going to happen under these new rules. Last week, in 17 cities across the country, thousands of workers, who are angry about these new overtime rules, rallied in parks and outside Federal buildings. They delivered scores of boxes full of postcards to the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters, asking the President to take back this overtime pay cut.

Dixie Harms, a long-time trainer of nurses in Des Moines, said:

If overtime is changed for hospital nurses, we will see a

mass exodus of registered nurses from the hospital setting,

because they will get fed up and refuse to volunteer so many

hours to do what they really love doing.

It is bad enough to deny American workers overtime pay rights, but what is striking is the mean-spiritedness of the Department of Labor. As I said, the Department offered employers what amounts to a cheat sheet, giving helpful tips on how to avoid paying overtime to the lowest paid workers. For example, the Department suggests cutting a worker's hourly wage so any new overtime payments will not result in a net gain to the employees. It also says you can take a worker's salary, raise it up a little bit so that it meets the threshold. Say an employee is making $23,600 a year. All you have to do is give them a $61 increase, and guess what. You don't have to pay them overtime; you can exempt them. That is in the Department's rule, those tips. I liken that to the IRS giving helpful hints to tax cheats, saying if you want to cheat on your taxes, here are some tips on how to do it. We would be up in arms if the IRS were to do that. But we let the Department of Labor do it. Here are helpful hints on how to cheat your workers out of their legitimate right to overtime pay.

It happened recently. According to an article in the Detroit News last month, 2 managers out of 150 at Rozwell's Metro Detroit Burger King franchises became eligible for overtime. Listen to this. Rather than make them hourly workers, the company gave them a $20 a week raise to maintain their salary status. Two managers out of 150 are eligible for overtime under these new rules. What a deal.

I want to close my statement on this by saying there is one group disproportionately harmed by these new overtime rules: working women. Why? Because women tend to dominate the workforce in retail, services, and sales positions, which would be particularly affected by the new rule. Three in 10 working women earn all or almost all of their family incomes. Three in 5 earn about half or more of their family's income. Four in 10 women work evenings, nights, or weekends on a regular basis. One-third work shifts different than their spouses or partners. From 1979 to 2000, married women increased their working hours by nearly 40 percent. Their contributions are especially important to lower and middle-income families.

Yet, now the administration's new rule will take overtime pay protection away from millions of American women. They will have to work longer hours for less pay. This means more time away from their families, more childcare expenses, with no additional compensation. Listen to what Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA, says. She is a single parent, working hard to support her family. When she leaves work after a difficult 8-hour shift, she says:

My second shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes to

wash, laundry, and all the other housework that must be done,

which adds another 3 or 4 hours to my workday. My time at

home with my kids and family is truly my premium time. It is

personal time. It is the most valuable time of the day. So if

I am required to work longer than 8 hours, if I have to

sacrifice that premium time with my family, then I ought to

receive premium pay. That is overtime pay.

I have never heard it said better. Sheila Perez is right. If she is going to sacrifice her personal time, premium time, with her kids, it is only fair that she be compensated on the premium basis, with time and a half overtime pay.

Later this week, we will have another debate between President Bush and Senator Kerry. It is going to be on domestic issues--that is what I understand--the economy and domestic issues. I hope we will hear about this issue of overtime pay.

I am sure the President will say: Look, we expanded overtime pay. Why, we raised the base from $8,000 to $23,660.

Yes, with one hand, they raised up the base for low-income workers; and with the other hand, they took it right back. What a nice shell game. I gave you examples of how employers are getting around it, and the fact that the Department of Labor put out a cheat sheet on how to cheat workers out of overtime pay legally. How about the workers making $24,000, $25,000, or $26,000 a year? That is barely poverty wages. They are above the threshold. They will be exempt from overtime pay. Senator Kerry has stated that if he is inaugurated President in January, the next day he will rescind those onerous Bush administration rules. We will keep the base raise; we will raise the base from $8,000 to $23,660. That is what my amendment did. But we will guarantee that every worker in America who is eligible for overtime pay this last year will be eligible next year and the year after and the year after.

If President Bush is reelected, up to 6 million Americans will lose their right to overtime pay. To me, this is a gut issue. This affects our working families. We want to protect our overtime rights in America, getting time and a half over 40 hours. Senator Kerry, the day after he is sworn in as President, will rescind those onerous rules and put us on the right track.

I want to close my comments on this legislative year today regarding a couple of other matters, including the insistence by this administration that we take money for disaster assistance out of USDA conservation programs. Now, I have here a statement of the President of the United States, George W. Bush, that he made when he signed the farm bill.

I was there. I was chairman of the Agriculture Committee at that time. He touted the new farm bill for what it did on conservation. He said:

This bill offers incentives for good conservation practices

on working lands.

That is the Conservation Security Program. The President went on to say:

For farmers and ranchers, for people who make a living on

the land, every day is Earth Day. There are no better

stewards of the land than the people who rely on the

productivity of the land. And we can work with our farmers

and ranchers to help improve the environment.

That is what he said when he signed the bill. However, twice now-- once a little over a year and a half ago--the President has tried to take some $3 billion out of conservation funds. He succeeded in 2003, but then we put it back early this year.

Here we are again with the legislation that passed today. The President has once again taken just short of $3 billion out of conservation after saying he is for conservation. He said this in the debate last Friday. In his debate with Senator Kerry, he talked about how he was for strong conservation. I about came out of my chair when I heard that because at the very time the President in St. Louis was making this statement in the debate about how much he supported conservation, his people were up here on the Hill trying to gut it, take money away from it. Amazing.

Let me talk a little bit about this program. We have always had different conservation programs in America. We helped farmers who built terraces or grass waterways, for example. We supported practices to try to conserve soil and water, but much of Federal efforts entailed taking land out of production.

For years, farmers and ranchers all over the country have said: It seems that the people who get the USDA money are mostly those who are the worst in protecting soil and water. They plow up the turn rows, they go up and down the hills. They plant one crop right after the other. They do not rotate the crops, and they do not worry about soil erosion. Those were the ones who got the USDA funds. The good stewards stop runoff. They do not allow the streams to be polluted. But there is not much help for them, and these are most of our producers. These are the people who produce our food and fiber, the most abundant food anywhere in the world at the lowest cost, and the safest food.

Out of that came this idea that we ought to have an incentive program, as the President said in his statement, an incentive for good conservation practices on working lands.

We put that into the farm bill of 2002. It was called the Conservation Security Program. The idea was to begin to reward farmers for adopting and maintaining good practices. Unlike the commodity programs that give more money the bigger you are--the bigger the farmer, the more money he gets--unlike that, this program said: We do not care how big or small you are, it depends on what conservation you do. The more conservation work you do on your working lands--we are not taking land out of production; it is how you farm--then that is how you will get incentive payments.

The most any farmer, no matter how big you are, could ever get out of this is $45,000 a year. So it does help family-size farms. It helps all kinds of farms--vegetable farms, orchard and fruit farms. It helps corn, soybean, cotton, rice farms, and anybody else who wants to practice good conservation on their working lands. That was the cornerstone of the conservation title in the 2002 farm bill. And that is what the President talked about. That is what he touted. That is what he said he supported as recently as last Friday night in the debate.

The farm bill had a major conservation initiative. The President and his administration keep talking about it, but the President's people are up here gutting the program. Soon, right after it became law, they moved to take $3 billion out. They succeeded for a little while, but we put the money back. For 2005, the President in his budget is cutting nearly $600 million in conservation programs. That cuts the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, called EQIP, the Wetlands Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection Program, the Grassland Reserve Program, the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, and the Watershed Rehabilitation Program, and, of course, the Conservation Security Program. All of those are cut in his budget, yet the President last Friday night said he was for strong conservation.

For EQIP alone, President Bush requested a cut of more than $215 million. That does not include the additional $75 million to $100 million in cuts that will come from EQIP to pay for technical assistance, again a problem caused by this administration.

President Bush claims he supports efforts to restore wetlands, but each year he advocates cutting acreage for the Wetlands Reserve Program by 50,000 acres below the farm bill level. The Wetlands Reserve Program is the best tool we have to restore and protect wetlands, and the Bush administration is leading the way in keeping the enrollment down. Again, words are not matching what the President is doing.

In August of this year, President Bush announced in Minnesota--I was up there right about the time--he is going to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to offer early reenrollments and extension of existing contracts in the Conservation Reserve Program, those contracts that were set to expire in 2007 and 2008. Again, words do not match the deeds.

There is no automatic or guaranteed enrollment in CRP for producers whose contracts are expiring. On the contrary, all these producers got was the right to comment on how USDA should enroll the expiring acreage. There was no guarantee that any of the currently participating producers would get back into the CRP program; no guarantee that all these acres will be reenrolled; and certainly no reenrollment any time soon. So what was the President talking about in August in Minnesota?

In 2001 and 2002, we had a drought in many Western States. The Bush White House did not want to provide farmers and ranchers relief, as we have done in past emergency situations. They insisted if we are going to have disaster assistance, we have to get money out of the farm bill. What did they do? They went after the conservation funds to get the money to pay for it.

The Conservation Security Program is about our future. Here is what the Des Moines Register said in an editorial:

The CSP holds enormous promise to sustain the soil for

agriculture, to clean up rivers and lakes, to boost rural

development. People will want to live and visit a fresh, pure

countryside where wildlife and recreation flourish. Moreover,

the program could be the template for the farm programs of

the future, superseding the crop subsidies which are almost

certain to be outlawed some day under the rules of

international trade. CSP could give farmers an income safety

net based on how well they take care of the land instead of

how much they produce. It is shortsighted to fail to invest

enough in the conservation security program.

That is what the Des Moines Register said about it, and yet the administration keeps wanting to gut the program.

There is uniform opposition to this action taken by the administration from farm, conservation, and environmental groups. When can anyone ever remember the commodity groups, the environmental groups, and the wildlife conservation groups being in such agreement?

I have served on Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate for nearly 30 years, and I can never remember in my life all of these groups being so united in one cause. That tells us something. It tells us that the administration's actions are just plain wrong.

The White House, through the OMB, insisted on taking money from the Conservation Security Program. Now we have heard a lot of talk that this program is spending more money than what was anticipated. Well, that is not really true. Here is what happened: In 2002, when we passed the farm bill, the CBO made an estimate as to how much CSP would cost over 10 years. They said it would cost $2 billion. OK, fine. We passed the bill. The President signed it. About 6 months later, not one rule has been written, not one regulation promulgated, nothing has been done, and now OMB comes out and says, well, they reestimated CSP's cost at $7 billion over 10 years.

Where did they get that figure? They just plucked it out of thin air. But then they said, well, now that we have $7 billion there we can take $3 billion out. Right away that tells us they are up to something funny, but that is what they did.

In so doing, they capped the program, changed the nature of the program, so it could not operate as intended by the farm bill. As I said, we reversed that, but just a few months later, just this month, they have come back and proposed it again. They reached in again, took nearly $3 billion out of it, put a cap on the program.

Some are saying we need to put a cap on it; it might cost too much. Well, we do not know for certain what it is going to cost. But I think CBO is way out of line exaggerating the cost. That is from my own personal standpoint. We do not hear this call to limit other programs. What about food stamps? Food stamps is an uncapped entitlement program. If one qualifies income-wise, they are eligible for food stamps.

We know as unemployment goes up, wages go down, more people apply for food stamps. When employment is up, wages are up, the cost of food stamps comes down. Medicaid is another program. It has no cap on it. If one qualifies, they get it. In agriculture, the commodity program has no cap. My goodness, the corn, the soybean, the cotton, the rice, and wheat, there is no cap on those programs. It depends on what kind of year one has.

If prices are high, we spend less. If prices are low, we spend more. I thought it was pretty interesting also when the farm bill passed we had a milk income loss contracts program. It was estimated by CBO to cost $1.7 billion for the life of the program. After the bill passed, CBO raised its cost estimate to $4.2 billion.

Now it looks like it may cost less than that, but it has already cost some $2 billion already, which is higher than the $1.7 billion estimate. We have another year to go under this program, and it may well spend more money, my point being that these are uncapped programs so that they can operate as intended. The CSP program was uncapped to operate as intended, that if one does certain things, if one meets certain requirements of conservation practices, they will qualify for tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3, anywhere from $20,000 to $45,000 a year for the life of the contract, which is 5 to 10 years.

By what the administration has done, by taking the money out and capping it, they have turned a national program into a selective conservation program for only a few people, and it has led to all kinds of distortions and problems. What the administration did this year is they said, OK, certain watersheds will be eligible to get in the Conservation Security Program and only a few farmers in those watersheds. So there could be a farmer in a watershed who is eligible for CSP, and 2 miles away there could be a farmer who is a better conservationist, who is doing better work on his farm in saving soil and water, but is not eligible.

The second abnormality is that even within a watershed, there could be farmers who are good conservationists, but they did not get accepted, they did not get in that little select group. And guess what.

They have to wait 8 years before they can apply again. What signal are we sending to farmers? Forget about it, that is the signal. Forget about help for conservation unless you are part of this little select group. Maybe you will be in it; most likely you will not. That is what they have done to this Conservation Security Program.

The President had the gall, last Friday, to say that he was strong for conservation. Well, I have just pointed out that they have been gutting conservation, and they continue to do so. To those who ask why they are opposed to the program because it is uncapped, I am sorry, that is what the Agriculture Committee voted. We hammered this out in long sessions and long negotiations between the House and the Senate, between Republicans and Democrats, between those from the South, the North, the West and the East. There is no surprise.

This is what we voted. It is not right for OMB and the administration, through the Appropriations Committee, of which I am a member, to come in and unilaterally change this program. That is not the purview of the Appropriations Committee. It is the purview of the Agriculture Committee. That is why I kept the Senate in this week and that is why I stood here on Friday and Saturday because I am fighting for farmers and for conservation. I am fighting for the right of our farmers to rely upon what we passed in the farm bill, not having the Appropriations Committee take it away. So we passed a resolution on Saturday. We passed a resolution--I am not going to read all the ``whereases,'' but here is the resolution.

One of the things I negotiated to let some bills go through was I said, let us have another vote on whether the Senate wants to take disaster money out

of conservation or whether they want to treat disaster money as an emergency like we ought to and have before.

This is the resolved clause of that resolution: Resolved that it is the sense of the Senate that the 108th Congress should provide the necessary funds to make disaster assistance available for all customarily eligible agricultural producers as emergency spending and not funded by cuts to the farm bill.

Guess what. It passed the Senate 71 to 14. Seventy-one Senators said, you are right, it ought to be treated as an emergency. But the President of the United States says, no; no, we will treat some disaster losses as an emergency but not the drought that hit Iowa or the floods that hit North Dakota or the drought that hit Colorado. No, they are going to be treated different. What the administration said we are going to do is we will take money out of conservation, out of agriculture to pay for that.

The junior Senator from Pennsylvania was here on the floor the other day arguing heatedly that disaster assistance should be taken out of the farm bill. I pointed out that Pennsylvania is one of the States covered by hurricane assistance. The hurricane money is not taken out of the farmers' pockets. Why should their disaster be different than the ones out west?

I heard one Senator say: They have had a drought for 4 or 5 years, and we cannot be putting emergency money into those States where they have a drought year after year.

Wait a minute. It seems to me that Florida gets hit by a hurricane every couple of years. That is hurricane alley. We don't get hit by hurricanes in Iowa, but Florida does. Maybe we should not have hurricane assistance because Florida gets hit year after year by hurricanes? What kind of nonsense is that?

Again, we passed that resolution on emergency funding 71 to 14.

Also, an agreement was struck between the leadership, the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership, on another resolution that passed today. Since it passed by unanimous consent--that means no one objected--I want to read it because it was not read today. Here is a resolution:

To instruct conferees to the Agriculture, Rural

Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related

Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2005, or on a Consolidated

Appropriations Measure that includes the substance of that

act.

Resolved that, for the purpose of restoring the provisions

governing the Conservation Security Program to those enacted

in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act--

That is the farm bill of 2002--

and restoring the practice of treating agricultural

disaster assistance as emergency spending, the Senate

instructs conferees to the Agriculture, Rural Development,

Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies

Appropriations Bill, 2005, or a Consolidated Appropriations

Measure that includes the substance of that act, to insist

that the conference report contain legislative language

striking subsections (e) and (f) of section 101 of division B

of H.R. 4837. . . .

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent a copy of these resolutions be printed in the Record.

What does all that language mean? It means that the Senate went on record today to instruct conferees, those of us on the Appropriations Committee, to undo what the administration did, to restore what was in the farm bill for conservation, and to not take the money out of conservation for disasters but to treat agricultural disaster assistance as emergency spending, as it should be.

So 71 Senators voted that way on the earlier resolution to treat it as emergency spending. Now we have an instruction to conferees. Can we get any plainer than that?

We will see. We come back in November. We have to come back in a lameduck session because we have a continuing resolution to keep the Government running until November 20. So sometime before November 20 we in the Appropriations Committee and the Congress, we have to come back, are going to meet to either pass what is called an Omnibus appropriations bill or something of that nature, and we have instructions from the Senate to undo what the administration called for to cut conservation. We will see. We will see if Senators on that side of the aisle have the courage to stand up to this administration and to follow the will of the Senate and tell the President, no, you are not taking the money out of conservation. We will see. We have the instructions. We have 71 Senators who voted that way.

I will say about the future consequences to agriculture if this cut to the farm bill stands, this will set a precedent that will be used time and time again. Today it is conservation. Next time what will it be? How about the commodity programs? Those are uncapped entitlement programs. They go to rice and cotton and corn and soybean and wheat farmers. Someone will point out payments that go out to farmers and they will say: Wait a minute, we ought to cap that. If we cap it, we will have a lot of money to do other things. That is next. Or payment limitations. That has been fair game out here on the floor before.

My message to the farm groups in America is this is just the first step in reopening the farm bill. Reopen it here, and look out, it is fair game.

Shame on those in this administration who just 2 years ago loudly touted the farm bill. We signed off on it. We hammered out our agreements. Now they want to reopen it and take money out for disaster assistance. Look out. They will be coming after it again because there is money there. Commodity programs are uncapped entitlement programs. They are going to want to take that money for other things because people will look at this. There is a lot of staff around here. There are a lot of people looking at, where can I get money for this program and where can I get money for that? Those of us who represent farmers, are in the minority around here, aren't we?

There are a lot of good programs out there that maybe need money. Some of them I would even support myself. People are going to want to get money for them. Guess what. They are going to come after the farm bill because Congress and the White House now opened it. It is opened up wide. That barn door is open, and they are going to come after it. Mark my words. What are we going to say? We didn't protest enough? We didn't take strong stands against this administration when it refused to protect conservation, to protect our farmers? We will see when we come back. We will see when we come back in November whether we have the courage to override the administration.

The Economy

Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to talk about the economy and what is happening to American families. There is one question I never hear the President of the United States ask of anyone. I never hear it when I see him in all of the rallies. I never hear him asking one question: Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? You never hear that question. Are you, your families, or is the country, better off than they were 4 years ago?

I want to talk briefly about why the answer to that is obvious. We are not better off, either personally, our families, or the country as a whole. If there is one word that describes the Bush economic policy, it is ``reckless.'' If there is one word to describe the President's foreign policy in Iraq, it is ``reckless.''

This President has recklessly pursued tax cuts for the most affluent in our society above other priorities. He has recklessly squandered the surpluses he inherited from President Clinton. He has recklessly supported outsourcing of our jobs. The President has recklessly ignored 45 million Americans without health insurance, and he has recklessly set us on a course to run up nearly $5 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years.

Last month, the Congressional Budget Office announced that this year's budget deficit will hit around $422 billion, a new record. What was the President's response? Let's cut some more taxes and run the deficit up even more. When it comes to fiscal policy, President Bush is simply out of control. He is driving this country the way he would be driving recklessly down a road.

For him, these tax cuts are practically theology, not ideology. Unfortunately, we don't have a prayer getting our economic house in order under his leadership.

Last year, the President's Council of Economic Advisers said that with the 2003 tax bill, the economy would create 306,000 jobs every month. In the past 4 months we have created jobs at a third of that rate.

We have suffered a net job loss of nearly a million since Mr. Bush took office, the only President since Herbert Hoover during his 4 years who has not created one net new job.

The unemployment rate, they will say, went down in September. Why? Not because people were getting jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force shrunk by 152,000. Why? People gave up on looking for work. Therefore, conveniently they are no longer counted as unemployed.

Recent data released last month by the Census Bureau shows that since this President took office, real household income has fallen by $1,535. That compares to a gain of $5,498 during the Clinton years. Families were better off after Bill Clinton was President; with this President, a $1,535 loss in household income.

How about what consumers are paying for gasoline now. I filled up my car yesterday. It was $1.99 a gallon for regular. Today oil hit a new high--53-something dollars a barrel. I understand it may go as high as $60 a barrel. Gasoline prices are going up. Families have to drive their cars to work. Rural Americans have to drive a long way. Farmers have to fill up their combines and tractors with diesel.

The farm prices have come down, corn prices are down, bean prices are down, wheat prices are down. Guess what. Their fuel prices are up. Our farmers are hurting.

The number of Americans living in poverty has risen by nearly 4.3 million people. That is the number of people newly living in poverty under this President. During the Clinton years, we reduced those who lived in poverty by 6 million. You were better off after 4 and 8 years of Bill Clinton.

Over the last 4 years, the cost that employers paid for health insurance has climbed an extraordinary 59 percent. We wonder why so many of our small businesses are no longer covering their employees' health insurance. They simply can't afford to.

But this administration demanded a provision in the new Medicare law that expressly forbids the Government from negotiating lower drug prices, even though virtually every other developed nation negotiates lower drug costs with the pharmaceutical companies. But we have one agency of our Government that is allowed to do so, and that is the Veterans Administration. Guess what. The veterans get the cheapest drugs in America. God bless them. I am all for them. But why don't we let Medicare do the same thing as VA is doing? This administration says no. They wouldn't let them do that. This administration won't do it because they are joined at the hip, like Siamese twins, with the big pharmaceutical companies.

As I mentioned earlier, they have turned the clock back more than 60 years in taking away overtime pay rights of 6 million American workers. The President keeps saying we turned the corner. Maybe we have turned the corner and we are headed back to the 1930s. We are going back to the 1930s.

Remember the Depression? There had been all of these tax breaks for upper income people. We got into the Depression. People were working 50, 60 hours a week to try to make ends meet, if they could even get a job. So we put in a 40-hour workweek. We raised salaries and wages of people.

This administration has turned the corner. Mr. Bush says we have turned the corner but in fact it is back to yesterday, back to the 1930s.

When Mr. Bush took office we had the largest budget surplus in American history. Think of that. The largest budget surplus in American history.

According to all estimates, we were working toward a cumulative surplus of $5 trillion in this decade. Think about what a strong position that would have put our country in as the baby boomers began to retire. In less than 4 years, all of that has been turned upside down. This year we are running the largest budget deficit in American history; as I said, $422 billion.

What about this decade? We were going to have a $5 trillion surplus. But we are now looking at a cumulative deficit of $5 trillion. We went from a $5 trillion surplus to a $5 trillion deficit.

I am sorry. This President simply can't handle money. I don't think he could handle money when he was in the private sector either. But it is obvious this President can't handle our money either.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2009 we will be paying roughly $1,000 for every man, woman, and child just in interest on the public debt. That is $4,000 for a family of four.

President Bush says he has cut your taxes. That is wrong. We are paying more in property taxes, sales taxes, and everything else.

But think about this: By 2009, every family of four will be paying about $4,000 a year in taxes to pay the interest on the national debt. Guess what. You can't cut that tax. We have to pay the interest on the debt.

As soon as a baby is born in the year 2009, that baby owes that year's interest on the national debt. I don't know how that 1-year-old baby or her family is going to earn enough.

Some keep talking about a death tax around here, an estate tax as a death tax. How about the birth tax? That is going to hit in 2009. For every child born in America, $1,000 that first year they will have to pay to cover interest on debt. Why? Because we took their money and we gave the tax breaks to the wealthiest in our society today. That is wrong. That is just simply wrong.

One last thing: As I said, those bonds must be paid, and that interest must be paid. Who is buying the bonds? Who will be paying interest? More and more foreign governments and their central banks.

Since Mr. Bush took office, Japan and China have more than doubled the U.S. debt that they own. Our Government now owes just those two countries $854 billion. Pretty soon it will hit $1 trillion.

We have all learned who pays the piper. It is called the consumer.

Just ask yourself. Would you rather be a creditor or a debtor? Which position would you like to be in, creditor or debtor? Think about our country being in debt to China and Japan to the tune of $1 trillion. What happens if we want to negotiate a little trade deal that is better and more fair? Who is holding all the cards then? They are the creditors and we are the debtors.

These are the realities that we have today: Massive tax cuts, rapid increases in Federal spending, record budget deficits, record trade deficits,

skyrocketing public debt. But the credit card bill will come due. You can't repeal the laws of economics. Eventually, massive Government borrowing will squeeze out private investment and force interest rates up.

Eventually, massive indebtedness to foreign nations will cause the dollar to fall even more dramatically than it has so far on Mr. Bush's watch. Instead of making the needed adjustments to meet our responsibilities to retiring baby boomers and our children, this administration undercuts those responsibilities.

The President just does not get it. He continues on his reckless way, reckless and stubborn, cutting funding for veterans and public education and other domestic needs but he wants to send some people to Mars.

Priorities, priorities, reckless priorities. Reckless in economics and stubborn in continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

The President seems to say as long as we keep cutting more and more taxes for the wealthy, as long as we continue on this reckless course in Iraq, as long as we continue this reckless deficit spending, well, then it will all work out. It will be different sometime down the road.

I am sorry, it is going to dig us deeper and deeper in the hole. Someone once described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. But we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We know what the result will be.

Public opinion polls show the majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. They are right. We are headed in the wrong direction economically. We are headed in the wrong direction for our kids and our grandkids. It is time to end this reckless course that we are on, to get back to a sound fiscal and economic policy in this country. This President will not do it. He is just stubborn. He is going to continue his war policy. He is going to continue his policy in Iraq, and he is going to continue his domestic economic policy because he believes it is right. He may believe it is right, but the majority of Americans do not think so.

That is why we need to chart a new course for America. That is why, under a President John Kerry we will turn this country around. We will turn around the mess in Iraq. We will save young American lives. We will set right our economic policies. We will invest in education and the health care of our people. We will do it in a sound manner and 4 years from now we will stand here and say truthfully: You are better off today than you were 4 years ago because John Kerry has been President of the United States.

Reserving the right to object.

Reserving the right to object, I would say to my friend from Alaska that the precipitating cause of why we are here was the insistence of OMB, I am sure with the concurrence of the White House, and with the acceptance by the majority party on the Appropriations Committee, to fundamentally change an authorized bill in the Agriculture Committee under purview of the Agriculture Committee that would treat those who were hurt by the hurricane differently than farmers would be compensated in Iowa or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or a number of other States. And so it is not fair--

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I ask the Senator, what is the unanimous consent request before the Senate right now? What is that unanimous consent request?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I ask the Senator if he is willing to modify his request as follows: that immediately upon passage of the homeland security appropriations conference report, the Senate agree to include in the military construction conference report a provision prohibiting the use of farm bill funds to offset disaster assistance in that same report?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object--

Reserving the right to object, I had some conversations with the majority leader about this, and I would hope perhaps some further discussions could take place on resolving this.

Therefore, I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

Mr. President, first of all, I would like to respond to the Senator from Alaska who said this bill would not affect the program because it took funds out of the outyears. That is not true because this is a contractual program. Farmers have to sign 5- to 10-year contracts. If you take money out of the outyears, of course, that affects how the programs operate today, the ability of USDA to sign 5- to 10-year contracts today.

The Senator also said he did not know of any other program like this, which is a mandatory program without a fixed spending limit. I am sorry, but there are a lot of programs like that in our agriculture committee. The programs are like that. I see our chairman sitting here. The commodity programs are exactly like that. Apart from agriculture there are a lot of programs that operate that way.

I will respond to my friend from Pennsylvania. Regarding getting money out, I will point out that my friend from Pennsylvania said there are not too many offices open in Pennsylvania today. I also point out that he may have forgotten that Columbus Day

is a national holiday, and I don't think there will be many offices open in Pennsylvania that day either.

The Senator from Pennsylvania went on with quite inflammatory-type language about getting these bills done. I will point out that the MILCON bill passed the Senate on September 20. I never heard--maybe I missed it--the Senator from Pennsylvania speak so heatedly after September 20 about the necessity of getting this bill done. It has been out of here since September 20. Yet I only heard him talking about the necessity of passing it today. I never heard about it before. This is all politics. That is all it is.

I point out that homeland security passed September 14. I have not heard the Senator from Pennsylvania complaining before about how we need to get the House to act and get that done in a hurry. I had not heard it until today. It is just politics. We all know that.

Again, I am somewhat surprised that the Senator from Pennsylvania is willing to take money out of the pockets of Pennsylvania farmers and use that money to pay for farmers in Texas or Colorado or Wyoming or Montana. He is willing to do that.

I will point out again that the Senator talked about going back to appropriations to get funds for conservation back later. But we passed this conservation program in the farm bill, not in appropriations.

I also point out to the Senator from Pennsylvania that just yesterday, on a resolution that was before this body, 71 Senators voted affirmatively that this disaster money ought to be emergency spending and not offset out of farm programs. Mr. President, 71 Senators voted yes; 14 voted no. I guess it comes as no surprise that the Senator from Pennsylvania was 1 of the 14 who voted no. So he is in favor of taking money out of the farm program to pay for disasters. Surprise, surprise. Maybe it is not a surprise for some.

But I point out that Pennsylvania, the State he represents, is in the hurricane assistance package. They get the hurricane assistance without having an offset, along with Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, and a few other States.

One can be selfish about things and one can look upon disaster assistance as a national priority.

I note that a number of Senators from other States that were affected by the hurricane voted the other way. The Senators from Virginia, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, to cite some, all basically voted to say: Yes, we are happy that the hurricane money comes to us. But you are right, other disaster money ought to be emergency. But not the Senator from Pennsylvania. He voted to take it out of the farm program himself.

I wish he would follow the lead of some other Senators who are affected by hurricanes in other States. They said unselfishly: Yes, we need help. I believe they do, too, and it ought to be an emergency. But I also believe that farmers who suffered from drought or flooding in Iowa, floods in North Dakota, suffered from tornadoes in Oklahoma, hail in Minnesota, wind damage in Wisconsin, pest infestation in Pennsylvania, they too suffered a disaster.

That ought to be taken out of emergency spending just as we have done for the last 50 years, with one exception 2 years ago. That was corrected right away.

The Senator from Pennsylvania stands in a small minority who believe that disaster money ought to be taken out of the farm program.

The Senator from Pennsylvania went on talking about how much money this conservation program costs. He said it will cost four and one-half times what it was supposed to. That is a guesstimate. We really do not know exactly and for certain what it is going to cost, and I don't think it is going to cost that much. But, nonetheless, he went on about this program. I will check the record. I could be wrong in my interpretation. But I believe he said we should not have programs like that, that we ought to come back and get appropriations for them.

I just wonder. Of course, the Senator from Pennsylvania is no longer in the Chamber, but I am sure someone will tell him what I said. I would like to ask the Senator from Pennsylvania whether he wants the same rules to apply to the milk income loss program. Would the Senator from Pennsylvania like the same rules he is trying to put on the conservation program to apply to the milk income loss program? I bet he wouldn't because that affects his dairy farmers in Pennsylvania.

We put the milk income loss program in the farm bill. It was estimated to cost $1.7 billion through fiscal 2005. Later, CBO said it would cost more than $4 billion. Already it has cost $2 billion. I don't hear the Senator from Pennsylvania griping about that and saying that is not right, that if it was supposed to have cost $1.7 billion, that is where we should have capped it.

But the milk loss program will be coming back and we will see if the Senator from Pennsylvania would like to apply the same rules to that. In fact, the Senator from Pennsylvania wants to extend the milk loss program. He does not want to just let it expire but wants to extend it. He does not care how much it costs because it is uncapped. It is another one of those uncapped entitlement programs, I point out to the Senator from Alaska, that is paid for by the taxpayers of this country. There is no cap on that program. It is an entitlement program paid for by the taxpayers. Again, I point that out to the Senator from Pennsylvania, maybe he would like to go in there and get some money from that program.

I will talk about the conservation program for a few minutes. The Senator from Pennsylvania said what gives us a bad name around here--I don't remember all that he said--is the procedure of the Senate , like this afternoon. What gives us a bad name is when we agree to do something, enact it, and our constituents rely upon that, and then we come back later and a few people, exercising their power, run roughshod over the will of the majority and change the program we had promised to the people, We have enacted this program for you.

In the farm bill, we fought out these issues. We hammered them out and made agreements and we created this Conservation Security Program. Our constituency--farmers, conservationists and environmentalists and others around the country--were told, OK, you can rely on these 5- to 1-year contracts.

Now a few people have come back to thwart the will of the majority. As I pointed out, 71 Senators voted against taking an offset for disaster assistance, not to take it out of conservation. That is overwhelming. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported this program, but OMB, under the guidance of the White House, and with the concurrence of a few people in the House leadership and Appropriations Committee, were able to change it. That is what gives us a bad name around here, that a few people can thwart the will of the majority and change those programs.

Again, this is a program that was historic, the whole conservation title of the farm bill. When the President of the United States signed the farm bill in May of 2002, he said one of the main reasons he was signing it was because of the historic increase in conservation, an 80- percent increase. We had a lot of programs in there for conservation, and we had a new program called the Conservation Security Program. Everyone said good things about it, including the President.

Unlike other conservation programs, the Conservation Security Program took a comprehensive approach to conservation. It not only encourages the adoption of new practices, it rewards those who are already implementing important resource-conserving practices. CSP, as it has come to be known, the Conservation Security Program, was designed specifically as an open national program, equivalent to the commodity programs except instead of being paid in relation to farm commodity production, farmers and ranchers are now going to be paid for producing environmental benefits such as cleaner air, cleaner water, saving soil, enhanced wildlife habitat, and the adoption of energy- conserving practices.

The CSP is also clearly a way to provide all producers across the Nation the tools and opportunity to implement conservation practices and to lessen the need for environmental regulations. It also provides incentives for producers to create and adopt innovative conservation practices.

Again, those who would severely restrict this program and kill it, as they

have been trying to do, are opening the door for environmental regulations. The people of this country want cleaner air. They want cleaner water. They want to stop soil erosion. They want to clean up our rivers and our streams and our lakes. They want to stop what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with sediment and nutrients coming down the Mississippi. That is what this program is designed to do, to encourage farmers on a voluntary basis to implement these practices.

The funding for CSP was like that for a commodity program. We were going to make producing conservation benefits much like a commodity. The commodity programs have no fixed cost limit, no cap, I say to the Senator from Alaska. They are uncapped programs, just like the milk income loss program is an uncapped program. There are a lot of these. We do this in the Agriculture Committee and in other committees, a lot. They are restricted not by an arbitrary cost limit but by the eligibility requirements.

In order to get these payments, a farmer has to carry out substantial practices that will produce real conservation benefits. If you will do those things, you qualify. But you have to save your soil, protect your water, have cleaner air, enhance wildlife or conserve energy and those types of things. Then you qualify.

What a few people did under the guidance of the President was to come in and take a lot of money out of the conservation program. I was surprised at this because two nights ago in the debate in St. Louis the President proclaimed his strong support for conservation. I said, wait a minute, as I was watching this debate. At the very moment the President was saying he supported conservation, he had his people up here on the Hill taking over $2.8 billion out of conservation, gutting conservation, taking out the money.

The President cannot have it both ways. You cannot on television tell the American people you are for conservation and have your people up here taking the money out of conservation. That is exactly what the President and his people are doing. We all know it. That is what this fight is about.

I say to the Senator from Pennsylvania, I am here to fight for farmers. I am here to fight for a cleaner environment. I am here to fight to help save and improve our nation's soil, clean our water and our air, enhance wildlife. I am here to fight to give our nation's farmers and ranchers the tools they need to be better producers, to be better stewards of their land. I am here to fight for our farmers. I am here to fight for the farmers of Pennsylvania, too. Even if the Senator himself won't fight for them, I will fight for them. I don't want to take money away from the farmers in Pennsylvania to send to Iowa or to send to Wyoming, Oklahoma, or anywhere else there is a disaster.

Just as all taxpayers of this country are giving some of their taxes to help the victims of the hurricane, so, too, should we all, as we have for the last 50 years, provide assistance for those who suffer from tornados, floods, hailstorms, drought, and everything else. It is a national problem.

The Senator from Pennsylvania may want to take money away from his farmers. I guess he did that yesterday when he was 1 of 14 who voted to take money away from his own farmers to send to those who suffered a disaster.

I point out that Pennsylvania is in the hurricane assistance bill. They are going to get help and it will be emergency spending. Farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, farmers in Ohio and Missouri and other places, were not affected by that hurricane. What about them? Why should they be treated differently? Their disaster hurts them as much as the hurricanes hurt people in Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. We ought to care as much about the farmers who were hit by a tornado or a mud slide or hail storms, acts of nature over which they have no control.

Our farmers work hard. They produce the food and the fiber for our country. We have the best, most bountiful, cheapest food supply anywhere in the world, thanks to our farmers. They control a lot of things, but one thing they cannot control is the weather. Yes, there are crop insurance programs, but they do not cover all crops equally or sufficiently in so many situations.

We have always said, when you get hit by a disaster, we will be there to help, just as we are for people in Pennsylvania. But I would hope the people of Pennsylvania--I know the people of Pennsylvania. They are not a selfish people. The people of Pennsylvania would want to help farmers in Iowa or Missouri or Wisconsin or Ohio. They would want to help farmers who lost a crop because of a flood in North Dakota. They would want that. They would want the Nation to do it, just as we are helping them.

I am sorry that the Senator from Pennsylvania does not see it that way. I am sorry he can't be 1 of the 71 who voted to treat disaster assistance as an emergency and not take it out of the pockets of farmers. Our farmers work hard. They do not deserve this kind of treatment.

The dairy farmers in Pennsylvania who got money under the milk income loss program, well, we put that in the farm bill for those dairy farmers in Pennsylvania. It does not affect my State as much as it does Pennsylvania.

Well, I suppose you could say: We got ours. It is almost as if the Senator from Pennsylvania--it is almost as if I hear the words: Well, we got ours. To heck with everybody else.

Well, look, we are all part of this country. We are all part of this Nation. When a disaster strikes someone in Hawaii, we ought to be there for them. Or Alaska, if there is an earthquake in Alaska, you bet we ought to be there for them. We should not take it out of Alaska's highway money, or we should not take it out of money that goes to Hawaii for medical care, or something like that. We should not do that.

But evidently that is what some people around here are thinking. We should not say to the poor people in Florida: Look, I'm sorry. We'll give you hurricane assistance, but we are going to take it out of your highway money; we are going to take it out of your Medicare; we are going to take it out of other Federal programs that go into your State. That is not a caring kind of country if we do something like that.

So I would hope that we could be a little more caring and considerate of those who have suffered disasters in this country and make sure that they, too, are treated just like we are treating people in Florida and Pennsylvania and the other States that got hit by the hurricanes.

That is why I am here. That is why I am holding this up. That is why I wanted to get this corrected. I will fight--I will use every rule--I am not breaking any rule of the Senate, and I will not break any rules of the Senate--but I will use every rule I can of the Senate to stand up for farmers and for conservation and to stand up for people who were hit by disasters, to stand up for the agreements that we reached in the farm bill.

We voluntarily and knowingly reached all of these agreements in writing the farm bill and we stayed strictly within the budget we were given for it. We signed the conference report on the dotted line. Both the House and Senate passed it by strong bipartisan majorities. The President signed the bill. Now the President and others want to come back and say: Well, everything is OK except this one program. We will take out this one.

I am sorry, that is what gives this place a bad name. You cannot give your word you are going to do something and then you go back on it. You cannot do that around this place. The President has sent his people up here to do that.

If the President really wants to support conservation, he ought to tell his people: Look, put that disaster assistance in the emergency spending package just as you did the hurricanes. That is the fair, the just, the reasonable, and the compassionate way of doing it.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining of my hour?

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Hawaii for permitting me to go ahead of him.

I yield the floor at this time.

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

I will yield.

I thank the Senator from Louisiana. Let me return the bouquet. I thank the Senator from Louisiana on behalf of all the friends I have who are reservists--I was a reservist once myself in my younger years--all the National Guard people and the employers, the small businesspeople who try to do their best. These people are called up. They go to Iraq. Many times they try to give them some compensation, but they are leaving their families behind, their kids, their communities, and all the Senator has been asking for is to treat them fairly and decently, to help these employers make up that difference in income, many of whom are trying to do their best. But let's face it, a lot of them are small businesses. They cannot do it.

I thank the Senator from Louisiana for standing up for small businesses, for standing up for our Guard and Reserve people who have given so much to this country, making sure they are treated equitably and fairly. I thank the Senator for doing this. This is an issue that has to be resolved, and again every guardsman and every Reserve person in the United States owes the Senator from Louisiana a great debt of thanks.

I have to say this: If I am ever in a foxhole someplace, I want the Senator from Louisiana on my side because I know I will never have to worry about my backside if the Senator from Louisiana is there. She has what we call real grit. I am proud of her and thank her for being here this weekend and for never backing down. I thank her for standing up for our people in uniform in this country who are in the Guard and the Reserves.

I also want to thank those on the Republican side, Leader Frist and others, who have worked to try to get accommodations made and reasonable agreements worked out. This is a place where there must be compromise. It is not your way or my way all the time. It is trying to work out compromises, trying to work out reasonable solutions to things. I thank those on the other side of the aisle who have worked this weekend with us.

I especially want to also thank our leaders, Senator Daschle and Senator Reid, again for their willingness to work hard to try and work out these agreements with the leadership on the other side.

These are contentious things, but we know that. Sometimes around here we are not the masters of our own fate. I know the administration comes in and they want things a certain way. Sometimes it is hard being a member of the majority party whose President is in the White House. It is tough. I know that because a lot of times we may want to do things one way and the White House wants it the other way and they make it very tough on Members of their party. I understand that. I have been there before.

People of good reason can come together and work together to work these issues out. I know people took me to task today on the other side of the aisle. That is all right. I do not mind that. We have been around this place a long time. I want people to know I am going to stand here and fight for my farmers. They do not have many people fighting for them. They are a minority in this country. We got through a good farm bill in 2002 and the President signed it, touted conservation, and now twice conservation has been invaded, taking the money out of

our farm program. It is not right to do it that way.

So I am glad that when we come back in November to finalize our appropriations bills for next year--we have a continuing resolution until November 20 so we have to come back to finish that. Under the agreement we worked out, there will be an instruction to the conferees to undo what we did on the omnibus, to right what we did here and to make the conservation program whole again. That can be done. It can be done in November and, quite frankly, not too much will be upset in 1 month. We can live with that. We will get it straightened out in November.

I am glad we have reached this kind of a resolution and we will come back in November and try to get things straightened out at that time.

I want to thank those who have worked so hard to reach this agreement. I guess, as it goes now, we will be finished tomorrow and people can get back to their homes and campaign.

I also want to publicly thank all of the people at the desk, the clerks, the reading clerks, our Parliamentarians and others, the floor people on both sides, Republican and Democrat. They have had to give up their family this weekend. I know that. I want to thank them publicly for being here and working long hours on Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday. It is now 8 at night. They provide a tremendous public service on both sides of the aisle. I know a lot of times they could probably get a lot more done if we Senators were not around. The staff can work out things.

I also want to thank our reporters who are here. They have also worked long hours this weekend and given up their family time. I have to mention the pages, too. The pages probably had a nice weekend planned. We thank them for being here and permitting us to do our job.

These are things sometimes that take a long time to work out. We try our best and we have our debates. We go back and forth, but we could not do our job without all of these wonderful people. They do make the Senate a wonderful place in which to work. It is 20 years that I have spent here. I never would have imagined in my younger life I would have had such an opportunity or an honor to serve my constituents in Iowa, indeed all of the people in this country, as a Senator. All of you who work and labor here do not get much glory. Nobody ever writes about you and you probably do not get on television, you do not get to speak on the Senate floor like we do, but we could never do our job without you. I want you to know I appreciate each and every one of you, Republican, Democrat, and those of you who do not have a party who are here in a nonpartisan capacity. You do make this place function well, and I thank you for it. I thank you for letting us do our job on the weekend.

I would be delighted to yield to my leader. I paid homage to him earlier and I will pay it again most respectfully. I cannot say enough good things about Senator Reid's strength and character, about his own personal attributes of honesty and forthrightness. When Senator Reid gives his word, go to the bank. One does not have to worry about it.

He has a tough job. He has to deal with us and then he has to deal with the other side and try to work out these agreements. These are very tough negotiations. I could not ask for a better friend, a better person, to negotiate and work things out and get these compromises made. I could not ask for a better friend and a better person to do it than Senator Reid of Nevada.

I yield to the Senator.

That's right.

I thank my friend. I thank my friend for those very kind and overly generous words. I again say to Senator Reid, you do me a great honor. I don't think there is any higher honor than to have someone that you respect and that you admire say those kinds of things. I hope the Senator from Nevada understands the depth of my feeling about him personally--personally and professionally. Personally, as just a good, decent, wonderful human being, someone who cares deeply about people and making our Government work for people, making sure that people have the same kind of opportunities we had when we were kids.

A young kid from Searchlight, NV, and a young kid from Cumming, IA, knowing what our parents were like, poor--we see the two things we have in common. We were both born in small houses in small towns to poor parents. But we had a country that gave us an opportunity.

I know the Senator feels very deeply that he wants to pass on to his kids, and his grandkids, a country that gives them the same kind of opportunities the country gave us; for the Harry Reids of today who are born in some little house in some unknown town someplace out in the middle of nowhere, that they, too, have the same opportunity that this Harry Reid had to succeed in America.

That is the kind of America I know the Senator wants to leave. That is why I admire him so much. He is just a great human being.

I am glad you are our assistant minority leader, hopefully our assistant majority leader in the next term.

I thank you for those kind words, and thanks for your words on behalf of our farmers. We couldn't have gotten where we are without your great help and your great leadership. Even though you may not have a lot of farmers in Nevada, you have a lot of farmers who are your friends from Iowa, the Midwest, Ohio, and everywhere else.

I thank you for that very much.

Mr. President, I understand I have some time tomorrow to speak further on the issue. I will at this time yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

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

I do not mind. I thought I had half an hour under the rule. I do not care when I take my half hour. I can take it now or I will take it whenever. It does not make any difference to me.

I do not have to take it now if the Senator wants to do something else.

Mr. President, I understand I have a half hour of time yielded to me. I may have to yield it to another Senator, but I will take some time right now.

Natural Disaster Relief

Mr. President, the resolution I have offered is very straightforward. It simply reiterates the policy that this Senate and this Congress has endorsed repeatedly over the decades. It basically is that agricultural disaster assistance should be designated as emergency spending and not taken out of other farm programs. This is the way we have done this going back 50 years or more. In fact, I have looked and I have only found one instance in the last 50 years where we have offset, as they say, disaster assistance with some other money from the same program.

That was 2 years ago and that was corrected right away. We are now about to do the same thing.

Mr. President, one of the few uncertainties about agriculture is the uncertainty of the weather. And that is true whether it is farming or ranching, growing orchard crops or growing any other type of agricultural production. Even when a farmer has used his best practices, taken prudent steps to produce a crop, severe weather events can destroy years of work and threaten their livelihood.

Let me just quote from the USDA Web site:

Natural disaster is a constant threat to America's farmers

and ranchers. From drought to flood, freeze, tornadoes, or

other calamity, natural events can severely hurt even the

best run agricultural operation.

We have responded to these disasters through emergency legislation in the past because we believed it was essential to respond to natural disasters to lessen the financial hardship involved. We do have programs in place such as crop insurance, loans, and so forth. However, major disasters can easily overwhelm these programs, and that is why Congress has consistently responded to natural disasters by providing emergency assistance. This emergency assistance usually covers crop losses, forages--that is hay and things like that--pasture losses for livestock producers, funding for tree assistance programs, and again there is some misconception that this disaster money makes the producer whole, puts the producer where he would be if the disaster never happened. That is just not true.

Let me give you an example. It is only available, first of all, if you have over 35 percent loss of your expected production. So if you have a loss under 35 percent, you don't get anything anyway. But let's take an example of a Kansas farmer who, in a normal year, produces 100 bushels of grain sorghum per acre. Now he only harvests 80 bushels. Well, if the grain sorghum is worth $2.30 a bushel, that farmer will have an income shortfall of $46 an acre, but he will not be eligible for any disaster assistance because he only had a 20-percent loss, so he gets nothing. If the yield is only 50 percent, that means he has a 50-percent loss. His income shortfall is $115 an acre. Now the farmer is eligible for disaster assistance for 15 bushels of that loss--at a low payment rate. So, again, it is only a small fraction of what he gets. He loses $115, and receives only about $20. So some people think disaster assistance puts you back where you were if you were whole. No, it does not. It basically just kind of keeps you going, and that is about it.

Now, you will hear a lot of reference to drought relief or a drought bill or drought emergency assistance. Well, that is a misconception. It has been a misconception all along. While that may be the most common problem, disaster legislation covers the whole range of weather-related losses. The bill language covers losses ``due to damaging weather or related conditions.''

In addition to drought, the regulations that carry out disaster assistance include hurricanes, hail, floods, fires, freezes, tornadoes, mud slides, pest infestation, and other calamities--in short, just about anything Mother Nature can throw agriculture's way. It doesn't matter what weather event causes the loss. It doesn't matter if it is part of a hurricane that has a name or just a plain old ordinary storm that strikes the Midwest. It doesn't matter whether the crop loss happens in a catastrophic afternoon storm or whether it is the result of a drought that lasts 9 or 10 or 12 months. We have always included those in disaster assistance and treated them alike. That is what we passed in the Senate a few weeks ago. We passed an amendment unanimously on a voice vote to cover all types of weather-related disaster losses across the country and treated them the same.

That is basically what my resolution says. The White House and the House of Representatives decided to take a different approach. President Bush sent Congress the disaster assistance proposal that included agricultural disaster payments only for losses caused by hurricanes and left out assistance for a whole range of other disaster losses across the country. Furthermore, this hurricane disaster assistance would be designated emergency spending, meaning that it would not be

taken away from other programs. The President was adamant that if Congress is going to respond to any other disasters across the country, then the cost has to be offset from the farm bill, and that is what the House measure did. It is interesting, the States included in the House hurricane package are Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. So if you are a farmer in those States and you have a hurricane-related loss, your losses are covered without offsets. You get the emergency spending measure assistance. Here is the interesting wrinkle, Mr. President, in the President's package. If you are a farmer in one of those hurricane States that I just mentioned, but your loss was not from the hurricane--let's say you had a hailstorm. Let's say you had high wind damage from a severe storm in May. Let's say you had a pest infestation or something like that. Guess what. You get no assistance. In the House, in what the President proposed, if you suffer loss from a hurricane, your payments are under emergency spending. But if you are in a hurricane State and you have another disaster caused by a hailstorm, well, then the cost of your assistance comes out of the farm bill.

What kind of nonsense is that?

A sugarcane farmer, God bless him, in Florida lost his crop because of the hurricane. That farmer gets compensated out of the emergency package. Let's say you are a corn farmer in Ohio and your crop was knocked down by a tornado. Guess what. You are not in. Whatever assistance you get has to come out of the farm bill. So why is it, why is it that if you got hit by a hurricane, you are treated one way; if you get hit by a tornado or a hailstorm or a fire or a drought, you are treated another way. It absolutely makes no sense. So, again, we draw these artificial lines. The President has drawn them. Why discriminate against certain farmers? If you are a farmer and you lose your crop, as I said, to a tornado or high winds in Ohio or Wisconsin or Iowa or Minnesota or Missouri, well, guess what. They are going to take it out of one pocket and put it into your other pocket. But if you are a farmer down in Florida, they don't take it out of your pocket. The whole country, all of us, help pay for those disasters as we have done for the last 50 years.

Now the President wants to take the money out of the Conservation Security Program. That program covers the entire United States of America. Why would you want to take money out of a State such as Pennsylvania that uses conservation money or Ohio or Wisconsin or Minnesota or Iowa or Missouri, taking money out of those States to send to Texas or Oklahoma or Wyoming or Colorado to help the farmers who had a drought? That doesn't make sense. It seems if you are going to have a disaster assistance package, the whole country ought to pay for it, all of it. When you have an earthquake in Alaska, do we take the money out of one State, just one State, and pay for that--or two States--or do we just take it out of a State that maybe--we take it out of California because they have an earthquake and we send it to Alaska? No.

The entire United States of America, all of our people contribute to make sure that anyone who is hurt by an earthquake in Alaska or California or a flood in Iowa gets compensated and gets help. We had a flood in Iowa in 1993 that devastated our State. We didn't take money out of South Dakota or we didn't take out of Missouri or another State, out of what they get. The whole country came to our assistance.

As I said, I feel sorry for the people who have been hit by hurricanes, and we should help them, but we ought to do it on a national basis and not try to take it out of one pocket, one part to help another. That is not right. It is not right to discriminate against farmers.

One last thing I will say before I yield the floor. We don't take away a community's Federal funds for highways or housing or hospitals to fund civil disaster assistance. In other words, if we have a civil disaster, why should we take the money out of the highway money? If we are going to help Florida out, why don't we take it out of Florida's highway money? Take it out of their housing money? Take it out of their hospital money to pay for their civil disaster? We don't do that. So why should we do it in agriculture, on farmers? Why should we take it out of the farmers' pockets to pay for a disaster? Why don't we take the money out of the highway money going to Florida to pay for the hurricane? Take it out of their hospital money? Take it out of their housing money? We don't do that. We don't do it because it is not the right thing to do. We should not take it from the farm bill either.

I realize those of us who represent farmers and farm States, we get hit often because they say farmers get this and that. I want to point out, as I have pointed out time and time again, since we passed the farm bill in 2002 and the President signed it in May of 2002, we have saved the taxpayers of this country over $15 billion in less commodity program spending. I think that is a pretty healthy contribution by our farmers and our ranchers to help reduce the deficit of this country. Now they want to take more money out of agriculture to pay for a disaster. It is wrong. That is why I have offered this resolution which basically says:

It is the sense of the Senate that the 108th Congress

should provide the necessary funds to make disaster

assistance available for all customarily eligible

agricultural producers as emergency spending and not funded

by cuts to the farmer.

It is very simple and straightforward.

Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

Madam President, I don't know if anyone wants any time. I will be glad to yield to my friend from North Dakota.

How much time do I have remaining?

We all need leaders to organize us, to inspire us, to get us moving in the right direction. Our distinguished leader, Senator Daschle from South Dakota, was kind enough to say good things about me with regard to the Agriculture bill, but we would never have gotten it together had it not been for his leadership. We, on this side of the aisle, all rely on his inspiration and his leadership, pulling us together. Nowhere is that more evident than our fight for farmers and ranchers and people who live in small towns and communities all over America.

I thank my good friend and my leader from South Dakota for what he has done for the people who live in the little towns such as my home town, Cummings, IA, with 150 people, for the farmers and ranchers of Iowa, South Dakota, and all over this country. Senator Daschle has been their voice and their leader, as he has been our leader. I daresay we wouldn't have half of the things we have for agriculture today had it not been for Senator Daschle, in making sure we had a good farm bill 2 years ago.

As Members can tell today, his passion is still there. I thank the good farmers and ranchers and rural people of South Dakota for having him here and having him as our leader.

Madam President, I ask that an editorial from the Des Moines Register of October 9 be printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

I will read one sentence from the editorial:

"The reality of the situation is that there will be no

disaster money before we go home unless we provide budget

offsets,'' said the chairman of the House Agriculture

Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Easy for him to say; farmers in his State are covered by the hurricane disaster assistance package. He doesn't have to worry about whether it is emergency money.

What kind of selfishness is that around here? If you are from a State where you get the hurricane disaster assistance, to heck with everybody else?

The Des Moines Register editorial said:

Cutting farm programs to pay for the assistance would

amount to taking money from growers in the Midwest and giving

it to producers in drought-stricken areas of Montana, the

Dakotas and other Plains states.

I want to help those farmers. They should be helped. But as Senator Daschle said, they should not take it out of one pocket and put it in another.

I also ask that a letter from a number of different farm groups opposing the using of farm bill conservation money for disaster assistance be printed in the Record following my remarks. This is in opposition to the President's position.

I ask that a letter from a number of conservation groups be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks, asking that money not be taken out of the conservation title.

I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks a letter to a number of Representatives on the House side from a number of conservation groups also be printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

Lastly, I have heard the argument that drought is long term; there is some kind of climate change, but for the western part of the United States, which has had droughts for the last 4 or 5 years, we cannot continue to give disaster money if it is going to be a drought one year after another.

Guess what. Florida sits in hurricane alley. They have had hurricanes going back for 100 years. Guess what. Hurricanes are going to hit Florida next year and the year after and the year after. Should we say we cannot give disaster money to Florida because this is a long-term type thing? That is what I heard about drought assistance because we have had it for 5 years. Because we have been hit by 5 years of drought, that is long term and therefore we cannot help you?

Maybe we ought to take a look at hurricane alley. Maybe they shouldn't get help because they will get hit by another hurricane next year or the year after. We don't get hit by hurricanes in Iowa. They do not bother us. But we get hit by things such as tornados and hail damage and drought and, yes, floods.

Lastly, this bill, in helping the drought-stricken farmers--and my friend from North Dakota knows this very well--it only covers 1 year. We have had a drought for 4, 5, or 6 years. Farmers who suffered crop losses in both 2003 and 2004 will get to pick 1 year, either 2003 or 2004, you pick one, that is all the disaster assistance you get. It does not cover 7 years; it covers 1 year.

I wanted to clear this up. I hear rumors and misconceptions around here. I wanted to make the record clear that, yes, we have had some problems--such as tornados. Oklahoma gets hit by tornados, and Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa. We have had a lot. We will next summer because we are in tornado alley. Does that mean if a tornado strikes we should not get any disaster money because we get hit by tornados every year? No. Neither should the farmers in the Dakotas or Montana or places that have a drought right now, nor should they be penalized because they have been hit by some dry weather for a few years.

Exhibit 1

[From the Des Moines Register, Oct. 9, 2004]

Midwest Farmers May Lose Out With Disaster Aid

Washington, DC.--Farmers hit by a succession of crop losses

hoped an election year would bring some extra cash from the

government.

However, House Republicans are pushing for cuts in farm

programs to pay for a $3 billion package of farm-disaster

assistance, and agriculture groups may drop their support for

the aid.

Cutting farm programs to pay for the assistance would

amount to taking money from growers in the Midwest and giving

it to producers in drought-stricken areas of Montana, the

Dakotas and other Plains states. The prime target for the

cuts is the popular Conservation Security Program written by

Sen. Tom Harkin.

``If disaster assistance comes out of the farm bill, then

we oppose disaster assistance,'' said Mary Kay Thatcher, a

lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Democrats accused Republicans of hypocrisy. The White House

is pushing Congress to pass special emergency assistance for

Florida hurricane victims, including farmers there, without

demanding spending cuts. Florida is a key state in the

presidential race. ``It is not right to treat farmers in one

part of this country different than farmers in another,''

Harkin said.

The House passed legislation earlier in the week that would

pay for the drought assistance by capping the cost of the

Conservation Security Program.

``The reality of the situation is that there will be no

disaster money before we go home unless we provide budget

offsets,'' said the chairman of the House Agriculture

Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. Friday, lawmakers were

looking into trimming things other than the Conservation

Security Program because of technical problems with targeting

the conservation payments, congressional aides said. Harkin,

a Democrat, pledged to slow some must-pass bills unless

Republicans backed off making the cuts. Friday afternoon, he

blocked the Senate from considering amendments to an

intelligence-reform bill.

The Senate passed a version of the drought aid paid for by

adding to the federal budget deficit. Farmers could get

payments for losses in either 2003 or 2004.

Iowa farmers would likely receive about $200 million to

$250 million in disaster payments, primarily to cover damage

to soybean fields, according to Harkin's staff. The Iowa Farm

Bureau has estimated damage from the 2003 drought at $750

million.

The Conservation Security Program is designed to reward

farmers for practices that prevent soil erosion and other

environmental problems.

Some 2,188 farms, including 290 in Iowa, were signed up for

the program this year. Enrollment was limited to 18

watersheds, or river drainage areas. The National Corn

Growers Association never endorsed the disaster aid package,

partly out of concern that it mean reductions in other farm

spending, said Jon Doggett, a lobbyist for the group.

How much time is remaining?

Whatever time I have remaining I would be glad to yield.