Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I understand there was an order, and I am allowed to speak for 5 minutes.

Disaster Assistance

I take this time first to thank all the Senators who voted for S. 454, expressing the sense of the Senate that disaster assistance ought to be emergency spending and not taken as an offset out of any other program, especially the farm bill.

The vote was overwhelming, 71 to 14. Once again, as we have in the past, the Senate has spoken very loudly and clearly that when a disaster strikes, wherever it is, this is an emergency. It ought to be taken out of the whole pot of Government money rather than invading a program and taking money out it as an offset.

Again, I have the deepest sympathy for all the people who got hit by the hurricane in Florida and other States. They ought to be compensated. That is a true emergency. It is a disaster. But we have had disasters in other parts of the country. We have had floods, tornados, droughts, all kind of things. Just because it is not a big hurricane does not mean it is not just as devastating. It is. It makes no sense why we should have to then offset, take money out of existing farm programs, to pay for agricultural disaster assistance. But that is the position of President Bush and of the House leadership. We do not require offsets to respond to the hurricane disaster, and we should not do it for any other disaster.

Seventy-one Senators again spoke and said emergencies are emergencies. Disasters require emergency spending.

I have to point out that last night in the debate in St. Louis the President said he had fought for strong conservation provisions in the farm bill. I was there when the President signed the farm bill in May 2002, and he touted the conservation title and how much he supported it and that one of the main reasons he was signing it was because of the strong conservation title.

Yet today, his people, the President's own people from the White House and OMB, are up here telling the members of the House and Senators that in order to respond to the droughts, flooding, tornados and other disasters we have had around the country, that the disaster payments have to be taken out of the farm bill and that the place to take them is from conservation.

Yes, you heard me correctly. The President of the United States, who so loudly last night said he fought for a strong conservation title in the farm bill, today, his people are up here and saying to take money out of conservation to pay for agricultural disaster assistance.

I am sorry, can someone please join the dots for me? What is happening? The President is saying one thing, but his people are up here doing exactly the opposite. Does the President not know what his people are doing up here or have they not informed him or what is going on?

The farmers and ranchers of this country, as well as Americans who support conservation, ought to know that there is a provision soon coming before the Senate that will take money out of conservation to pay for disasters. It is wrong. Seventy-one Senators just spoke and said it is wrong. Yet the White House is insisting that disaster money has to be taken out of conservation.

The White House and the House insist on provisions that basically take money away with hand and give it back with the other and say to farmers and ranchers: You are better off. It is a cruel hoax for agricultural producers. Farmers who receive disaster payments should not suffer the loss of other farm bill benefits. Nor should our Nation's farmers as a whole, the majority of whom will not receive any disaster payments, be forced to bear the cost of disaster assistance by having farm bill benefits taken away to be transferred to a disaster program for only some farmers.

Why should the farmers in Pennsylvania have their conservation funding taken away from them to transfer to farmers in Nebraska or Wyoming or Colorado or Oklahoma or Texas or wherever the disaster may be. The White House did not say to do that for Florida's hurricane losses. They did not say to take money away from Alaska or Ohio or places like that to go to Florida. No, and they should not have. We should all pitch in as we have before, the whole country, to respond to the hurricane recovery. We pitch in because it is a disaster and emergency and so we fund it as an emergency, not by taking funding away from other vital programs. Yet for agricultural disaster assistance responding to droughts, or floods or other disasters, the White House and the House leadership are telling farmers and ranchers they will have to bear the cost of it by losing conservation funding from the farm bill.

I am sorry, it is not right and not fair. And 71 Senators said it is not.

Again, I ask the President: Please, Mr. President, you touted the conservation program.

I ask unanimous consent for just 30 more seconds.

Mr. President, you touted the conservation program. Last night you said you fought for a strong conservation title in the farm bill. And now you are taking money out of conservation to pay for disasters. Please, Mr. President, I am telling you, get ahold of your people who are at OMB--your people. They work for you. Get them on the phone right now and tell them, this agricultural disaster money ought to come out of emergency assistance, just like you proposed for the hurricanes, and not out of farmers' own pockets.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank a number of people. I thank Senator DeWine for his dynamic and great leadership on the issue of FDA regulation of tobacco products. He has been in the forefront of this fight for a long time. I thank him for his leadership, working again with Senator Kennedy on this issue and so many others on both sides of the aisle to get that position established by the Senate, which we did, and that was that we would have a tobacco buyout but also FDA regulation of tobacco, finally. We spoke on that, but, of course, the House didn't go along, and we find ourselves now with this great big tax bill of around 630 pages we have on our desk. Guess what. No FDA regulation of tobacco.

I thank Senator DeWine and I thank Senator Landrieu for her strong and dynamic leadership in being here on a Saturday night to continue to make the point about what happened to our guardsmen and reservists in the United States. It is unconscionable what the House and the President did on this issue. We ought to put the blame where it really lies; it is at the White House. That is where it lies. I might say the House, but they are just doing what the White House wants them to do. They

are just a rubberstamp for the White House. It is the White House that called the shots on that one.

I thank Senator Landrieu for sticking up for our people in uniform, for those all over the country who have been shortchanged by this so- called tax bill.

Mr. President, I want to take some time here to speak about tobacco and how unconscionable it is that this bill does not have FDA regulation of tobacco included. Over the last several days, we have heard a great deal about the dangers of smoking and the devastation caused to millions of families every year. With the results of the conference report on Wednesday, I fear colleagues have not been listening to the details of the public health crisis our Nation faces regarding tobacco and smoking.

Let me repeat them loudly and clearly so Members understand what they are opposing and why we so urgently need FDA regulation of tobacco.

One, smoking kills more than 450,000 Americans every year.

Over the last 10 years, smoking has claimed more than 4.4 million lives.

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in this country.

Smoking causes heart disease, cancer, emphysema, and a host of other related illnesses.

Two-thousand kids start smoking every day, and, ultimately, one in three will die of smoking-related causes.

Smoking-related medical expenditures have indirect costs resulting from lost work activity.

There are 250 chemicals in tobacco smoke that are toxic or cause cancer in humans.

Tobacco use accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths.

Smoking causes nearly 87 percent of all lung cancers, which is the leading cause of cancer deaths.

Last year, nearly 70,000 women died from lung cancer in the United States. That is more deaths than from breast cancer and all gynecological cancers combined--70,000 women.

If these facts don't paint a stark picture of the urgency for FDA regulation of tobacco, I don't know what will. You know, when there is an outbreak of food poisoning in a local school, we move Heaven and Earth to find the source and take appropriate action to make sure our kids don't get sick again. But somehow, when it comes to protecting our kids from a known toxin--tobacco--we find our hands tied. Why? Well, it is because of big tobacco. There is too much at stake in terms of profit loss for tobacco companies to allow this regulation to go through. They have been fighting it for years.

I introduced the first-ever comprehensive bipartisan FDA regulation with, I might say, Senator Bob Graham and former Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island.

That bill was introduced almost 6 years ago. I heard the same reasons then that I do now on how unnecessary FDA regulation is. Quite frankly, our bill went much further and was much tougher than this one. Creating a more sensible policy for tobacco has been a goal of mine for many years. It was in 1977, in my second term in the House of Representatives, over 21 years ago, that I first introduced legislation calling for repeal of the tax deductibility of tobacco advertising and marketing.

Unfortunately, victories in the tobacco wars for consumers and for our kids have come few and far between. Tobacco wins every time.

With the mounting evidence we have today about the absolute dangers of smoking, it is paramount we pass a comprehensive plan that would once and for all change how this Nation deals with tobacco and dramatically cut the number of our kids addicted to this deadly product.

That said, I am afraid the power of big tobacco has once again superseded the need to protect public health. The fact is we know now that 90 percent of current smokers became hooked on tobacco as kids. That should sound alarms that something needs to be done to stop this from happening, and to prevent senseless disease and death that is linked with this addiction. This is a drug addiction. Tobacco is a drug. It is addictive, just like methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. It is addictive and it kills you.

For too long, kids have been getting an unfiltered message from the tobacco industry: Smoking is cool. Smoking is harmless. Smoking is glamorous. Smoking is for active young people and will make you look more attractive.

Today, big tobacco companies spend more than $11.5 billion a year in advertising and marketing their products. Children are exposed to messages that are deliberately designed to attract a new generation to the smoking habit. The motivations are clear: Anything to make more money for big tobacco.

Now we hear from tobacco companies all the time that, oh, no, their advertising is to get people to shift brands, go from one brand to the other. Well, I will illustrate here very shortly that is not what they are up to.

Many think regulation is unwarranted after some of the restrictions that were agreed to as part of the master settlement agreement a few years ago. The good old MSA, the master settlement agreement. Yes, there are billboard restrictions and a few things such as that, but now we have much more sophisticated mechanisms.

Let me refresh some memories. Here is Joe Camel, a smooth character, Joe, flying his jet airplane with the afterburners going. He has a beautiful young woman looking over her shoulder, looking at Joe Camel with his Camel cigarette.

Who is this appealing to? Kids.

Now, there is another Joe Camel here. Here is Joe Camel, with Camel Lights, cool Joe. He has his red convertible and black T-shirt and Levi's, and Joe is cool. Joe Camel is a neat guy.

Well, we forced big tobacco to get rid of Joe. They did. We do not see Joe Camel any longer so we can take old Joe down. Joe Camel is gone. I want to refresh memories. I want to refresh memories, because there was a time--and I will repeat this, there was a time--a study was done that kids in America recognized Joe Camel more than they recognized Mickey Mouse. It is true. But we got rid of Joe Camel.

One might ask, what now do you need? I will show my colleagues why we need to have FDA regulation, because tobacco has gotten smart. They are now spending more than ever on predatory marketing since the MSA was agreed to. Big tobacco is spending 60 percent more on marketing than they were before the master settlement agreement.

Again, are they trying to get people to switch? Let us take a look. Here is Liquid Zoo. Now, I had a pack of those with me when we were in conference. I was one of the conferees arguing to keep the FDA regulation that we had in the Senate, and I had strawberry flavor. This was Liquid Zoo, strawberry flavor. When you smell it, why, you would swear you were in a strawberry patch. It smelled wonderful. It smelled like strawberries.

This is the tobacco. Liquid Zoo-flavored cigarettes are an exotic blend of strawberry-flavored tobaccos for a sweet, fresh taste and aroma.

Do they really think they are trying to get someone to switch from Marlboros or Winstons or Camels to that? That is going right to our kids. That is what this is about.

Then we have Kool Rapper here. We have another one. Here is the Kool Rapper. Here is a rapper. He is cool. He has his mike and he is spinning the disk or CD or whatever it is there, and everyone is dancing and that is called Kool Rapper.

Now, do my colleagues think they are trying to go after adults with that? Do my colleagues think they are trying to go after 40 and 50- year-old people to get them to switch from Marlboro or Winston or Camel to that? No. This is for kids. They are getting to young people. They are spending 60 percent more on marketing now than they did before the master settlement agreement, and we took away Joe Camel on billboards, but now they are spending 60 percent more and this is where it is going.

Because what do they know? They know 90 percent of all tobacco smokers today started when they were young. They get them hooked early.

I have another Kool Rapper here. This is just, again, special edition packs. Now, they do not any longer have the little coupons where you can get gear and all that kind of stuff. That is gone, but now they have special edition packs: Celebrate the sound track to the streets. It does not take a genius to figure out who they are targeting with that.

So big tobacco has found tricks and dodges to circumvent the law, and they have been very effective. From the birth of Joe Camel to the birth of Liquid Zoo and Kool Rapper, we have seen broken promises and bad faith again and again from big tobacco.

Giving the FDA the power it needs to end these false messages is exactly what is needed to stop big tobacco's exploitation of our kids. The only message our young kids should hear about tobacco is the truth: Smoking is a killer. It is a drug. It is addictive. It causes cancer. It causes emphysema. It causes a lot of other illnesses. That message needs to come through loudly and clearly. Since industry will not convey that message, we need strong FDA regulation to make it happen.

Instead, what do we do here now with this big tax bill we have? We allow big tobacco to further confuse kids when it comes to the actual safety of cigarettes.

This morning I got up and I had my Cheerios. I actually had a bowl of Cheerios this morning. Now, the bowl of Cheerios I ate this morning had to go through a multistep process set up by the Food and Drug Administration to earn its health claims that it is heart healthy and lowers cholesterol. It had to go through certain steps.

Somehow tobacco, a known health risk, does not have to go through any of those steps whatsoever. In fact, tobacco companies are free to add anything they want to their product without having to inform consumers or without any regard to the health effects of those additives.

For example, tobacco companies have added ammonia to their products. I do not know if my colleagues have ever smelled ammonia, but they get an idea of what it is like. They add ammonia to tobacco products on the ground that it improves ``tobacco satisfaction.'' They add the ammonia in order to create a ``free base'' form of nicotine that creates the highly addictive quick delivery form of nicotine to the brain. It goes from your lungs to your brain in 8 to 10 seconds when they add ammonia. We know this. So tobacco companies add ammonia so that you get a bigger kick right away, in 8 to 10 seconds. Adding ammonia to cigarettes is analogous to what crack cocaine was to cocaine--it just gives you a faster high, it goes to your brain quicker. But guess what. The tobacco companies do not have to tell you that. They just tell you have a Kool Wrapper there. They don't have to tell you anything else.

The industry claims that many of its ingredients are benign flavoring agents like strawberry that are on the FDA GRAS list. That stands for Generally Recognized As Safe. The tobacco companies say we put these ingredients in and they are benign; however, those ingredients such as chocolate, licorice, and other flavors are not safe when they are combusted, and they often create toxic chemicals when they are inhaled by the smoker. So, yes, maybe licorice is safe to eat, but when you combust it, then it creates toxics that you inhale. The industry will not tell you that either.

No other industry in America is allowed to add ingredients to their products without first having them tested and approved by the Federal Drug Administration for safety. For example, Kraft Foods, a subsidiary of Altria Group along with Philip Morris, could not add ammonia to Kraft macaroni and cheese on the grounds that it improves cheese satisfaction for its customers. Why can't they add ammonia to macaroni and cheese? They can't add ammonia to macaroni and cheese because it is not on the FDA list of products that are generally recognized as safe. They can add ammonia to cigarettes; they can't add it to Kraft macaroni and cheese. The FDA has more authority to regulate macaroni and cheese than it does cigarettes. Imagine that.

I have this to show what I mean by that. Here is something called Omni cigarettes. Here is what it reads:

Omni is the first premium cigarette created to

significantly reduce carcinogenic PAHs and nitrous amines,

which are the major causes of lung cancer in smoking.''

That is what they say.

Says who? The tobacco company says that. But we have no way of verifying that. They can make all the claims they want, like low tar, light, less carcinogenic, but we the public have no way to verify that because the Federal Food and Drug Administration has no authority to regulate tobacco or to go in and tell us what is in there or to make the tobacco companies verify what they say.

I have an Eclipse one here, too. Here is an Eclipse. This is interesting:

The best choice for smokers who worry about their health is

to quit. Here is the next best choice. Are you ready for

Eclipse? Get the facts.

I have the support of my wife..if I'm going to smoke, she'd

prefer I smoke Eclipse.

A better way to smoke.

Talk about a warped message:

Omni, there is no better way to smoke.

A better way to smoke? There is a better way to get cancer. There is a better way to get emphysema. This cigarette will give it to you faster. They don't tell you that, but that is what is happening.

During debate in the conference committee, one of my colleagues on the House side mentioned that the Founding Fathers would be shocked if they knew that Congress was trying to regulate an industry that was in part responsible for the early prosperity of our country. It is more likely that they are rolling over in their graves at the fact that we have known for more than 30 years that tobacco kills and that we have not done one thing about it. They didn't know it in the 1700s. They didn't know, but we know now.

The Congress is now considering, one more time, giving immunity to big tobacco and turning a blind eye to their responsibility to protect our kids and the public health. That is what is not in this tax bill. There are tax breaks for all kinds of things. There are tax breaks in here for gamblers who come from foreign countries to gamble here. Imagine that, they need a tax break. There is a tax break in here for people who import ceiling fans from China.

Lord only knows what else is in this tax bill. No one has really read it. No one knows what all these numbers and staff mean. There is a tax break here and a tax gimmick there; a tax break here and a tax gimmick there.

When this bill was before the Senate, this Senate added a provision that did two things. It allowed for a buyout of tobacco farmers' quotas--which I have been in favor of for years, by the way. Coupled with that is FDA regulation of tobacco.

Again, as someone who sits on the Agriculture Committee and also on the HELP Committee, I have been involved in both sides. I have espoused for a long time that we have a tobacco buyout, that we buy out these quotas. Why should we do that? These quotas were put on 60 or 70 years ago. They have been built into the price of the land. I can't go back and undo that. It is a fact of life. Many farmers in tobacco growing States--some of them are small farmers. All they have is that quota. They don't have anything else. The land is really not worth that much. So it is like taking away their income base. So I have always said we need to buy these quotas out and get rid of this tobacco program for once and for all. On the HELP Committee side, I have also said, if we are going to do that, then we ought to have FDA jurisdiction over tobacco.

This debate went on and on for years, and final we agreed. I might say that Philip Morris was one of those who agreed with us. I commend them for that. So we got it through the Senate.

It goes to the House. Guess what the House did. The tobacco buyout that we passed in the Senate, the money that is going to go to those tobacco farmers did not come from the taxpayers. It came from the tobacco companies. Of course, the tobacco companies will pass that on to tobacco smokers, so the smokers were going to pay for the buyout of the quotas. That is as it should be. Why should the taxpayers pay for it? We agreed on that. Philip Morris agreed on that. We agreed that we would have FDA jurisdiction.

Here is what the House did. They broke that agreement. First of all, the House of Representatives, and I am sure with the approval of the Bush White House because they wouldn't have done it unless the White House agreed, they made the buyout of the quotas paid for by the taxpayers of the country. All of you who do not smoke, you are now going to pay to buy out those tobacco farmers. That is what was in the House bill, plus they took away the FDA jurisdiction over tobacco.

In the final analysis, they put back in the companies paying for the buyout, but they left out the FDA regulation of tobacco. So here we are. No FDA regulation. That is what is not in this FSC bill.

It was my understanding the purpose of this bill was to repeal an illegal export subsidy. Now it has morphed into a big special interest giveaway that will help everyone from restaurant owners to makers of bows and arrows, tackle boxes, sonar fishfinders, NASCAR track owners, Alaskan whalers, foreign gamblers, as I mentioned, who win at U.S. horse and dog tracks.

I want to repeat that.

In this bill, there are provisions to give tax breaks to foreign gamblers who win at U.S. horse and dog tracks. Those interests trump the 2,000 kids hooked on smoking every day by the big tobacco companies. Imagine that.

What are our priorities around here? What is the priority of the White House? I am telling you it could never have happened unless the President signed off on it.

You go out there, Mr. President. You have some more days before the election. Go out there and tell the American people how you pulled the rug from underneath FDA regulations of tobacco, how you sided with the big tobacco companies to get our kids hooked on tobacco every day-- 2,000 every day. Go out and look those mothers and fathers in the eye and tell them your priority is the big tobacco companies and not their kids.

Yes. This would never have been done if the White House had not OK'd taking FDA jurisdiction away. Shame on the White House.

We had the opportunity here to pass this legislation once and for all, and to stamp out youth smoking in this country and protect kids from joining the ranks of the 450,000 who die from smoking each year. The tobacco industry has been engaged in a systematic campaign of distortion and deceit to hook kids and hide the facts from the American people for far too long.

I met a fifth grader, Ted Stanton, from Des Moines, IA, a few months ago who reminded me how important regulation is. Ted won a statewide poster contest sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians for his efforts to raise awareness about smoking. He is a fifth grader. What happened was Ted has had to watch his dad struggle with the habit of smoking for years. He drew a poster. His poster is an attempt to warn kids about smoking.

Here is his poster and here is why he won the prize. ``Invest in your future.'' He has the date 2054. ``Pay to the order of big tobacco companies $73,000.'' That is $4 a pack every day times 50 years. In other words, you smoke a pack a day for 53 years and you will pay big tobacco companies $73,000.

I thought Ted Stanton, a fifth grader, really pointed it out. That is what you are doing when you start smoking. You are going to smoke for 50 years, if you are a teenager, a pack a day, $73,000.

We do have some kids like Ted and others who realize they are being targeted by big tobacco, but they are defenseless. What are we doing to help them? What we are doing is protecting big tobacco--the same guys who conspired years ago to hide the truth about tobacco and instead pushed their deadly products on our most valued treasure, our kids.

It is disgraceful that this body has not acted yet. It is disgraceful that we are getting half of the deal we had worked on for years, the tobacco buyout of the quotas. Guess what happened. The way they worked this tobacco quota buyout is you are going to buy out the quotas, but now tobacco will be growing cheaper. Now the tobacco companies will be able to buy tobacco cheaper than they had before, making more money, hooking more kids, without FDA authority.

The reason I say that is because when we passed the bill in the Senate, we had a provision that provided for a licensing program that would prohibit more and more people growing tobacco in this country. The House took that out. So we got the worst of all possible worlds--no FDA regulation, a buyout of the quotas, more people will be able to grow tobacco, and the tobacco companies will get it cheaper and make more money to hook our kids. What a deal. Yet we can take care of foreign gamblers who come to bet on horses. But we can't take care of our kids. Shame on us.

(Mr. HATCH assumed the Chair.)

I know the hour is getting late. I see the occupant of the Chair, someone for whom I have great respect, the Senator from Utah.

I will state publicly that the senior Senator from Utah has also been in the forefront of the fight against tobacco. He always has been. I compliment him for that. I know he feels as strongly about antismoking and stopping kids from smoking as I do, or as Senator DeWine does, or Senator Kennedy, or anybody else does. The Senator from Utah has been stalwart in his support for getting FDA regulation of tobacco. I thank him for that. I encourage him to keep up his leadership on that because we have not yet fired the last shot. We are going to be back.

I wish the President of the United States, using the bully pulpit of the White House, had come out in an address to the Nation and said we need FDA regulations for tobacco, we need to stop our kids from getting hooked, and call upon the House and the Senate and say he will not sign this bill, he will veto this bill unless we protect our kids.

Think of what would have happened if the President of the United States had said that. We would have a tax bill here, but we would have FDA regulation of tobacco in here. I am sorry the President missed a golden opportunity and thus we have missed a golden opportunity. Thus, tomorrow and the day after, and next month, and next month, and next year, thousands of kids every day might pick up a pack of Liquid Zoo, because it smells nice. It tastes like strawberries. They will say, There is no harm in that, plus it makes me look glamorous. That is what all the ads say.

Think about it. That is what is going to happen. Shame on us.

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

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

I see the occupant of the chair, and I know he wants to go home. But I said to the managers I can be interrupted when they are ready to wrap up. I want the occupant to know I am not holding him here.

I will talk about one other item that is not in this FSC bill that we got stiffed on. We passed it four times in the Senate and twice in the House. I am talking about overturning the regulations that this administration put out that will deny overtime rights to over 6 million people.

Again, just last week, in a replay of what happened a year ago, the Bush administration used the conference to kill my provision to stop the Department of Labor's new rule on overtime pay that if allowed to stand will strip 6 million people of their right to time and a half overtime.

The bill before the Senate today serves the simplest of purposes. This tax bill has everything in it for everyone, but what is not in it is protection for the workers of America, protection for those who make over $23,660 a year. Actually, for some below because of little gimmicks that can be used to deny them their right to overtime.

Again, this is simply a matter of fairness. People believe if they put in more than 40 hours of work a week, they are giving up premium time, time with their family. I had a woman who wrote me and said: Look, I go home from work and my second job starts. I go home, take care of my kids, I get dinner ready, help them with their homework, and then I have to do washing, and this and that. But my time with my family is my premium time. If I am asked to give up my premium time with my family to work on my job, I ought to get premium pay.

What the Bush administration has done is said: No, sorry, we will ask you to work overtime and we will not pay you one cent more.

Again, a little history. It has been sacrosanct since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you work over 40 hours a week, you get time- and-a-half pay. It has been that way since 1938. We

have modified it a little bit here, a little bit there, but every single time we have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act, we have enlarged the pool of people who get covered by time and a half. This is the first time where up to 6 million people will lose their right to overtime pay.

Now, some will say but they raised the base to $23,660. In other words, anyone who earns under that is automatically eligible for overtime. Quite frankly, most people working there are already eligible because they are not salaried, they are hourly workers. While that is fine, we should raise the base. The administration then went and took away overtime pay rights for anyone making over $23,660 a year. If you are making $23,661, you are in a separate category. Just barely over-- well, that is poverty wages--and you still are not eligible for time and a half overtime.

I also say every time since 1938 when we have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act, it has come to Congress. We go through the committees, the committees have hearings, we bring in witnesses, they draft a bill, it is debated in the Senate, and it finally goes to the President. That is the way it ought to be. That is transparent; it is open; everyone gets their say. We can debate it and amend it. We, the elected representatives of the people, get to debate and amend it--a strange concept, I guess, to this administration.

What this administration did 1\1/2\ years ago, sort of in the stealth of night without having one public hearing, they promulgated these new rules on overtime.

Some might say: Well, they have had hearings since then. Yes, thanks a lot, after the horse is out of the barn and they closed the door. Fine. But that is not the way it should have been.

So now we have a situation where they finalize the rules on August 23. We have never really debated or amended that in the Senate. I have on four different occasions in the Senate offered amendments to overturn those rules, to go back to square one, to start over. Let's do it the right way. We have passed them here, but the administration says no every time.

I watched the debate last night, and I heard the President talking about domestic policies and jobs and economic growth. And I thought, wait a minute, he even talked about overtime. He said people are working overtime. I heard him say it last night. I thought, they are working overtime, but what the administration wants to do is take away their overtime pay.

That is exactly what is happening. We have facts. We have the data. People are now being denied time and a half overtime for working over 40 hours a week because they are being ``reclassified.'' Guess who is getting hit first. Women. Why do I say that? Many women raise families, start later in life, and start at lower income jobs. Many of these are salaried positions. Because they are on a salary, they will be reclassified. As they get reclassified, they will be exempt from the overtime laws. If overtime is free to the employer, it will be overused.

This chart shows a study by the Center for Women's Work at Rutgers University. The chart shows those who are eligible for overtime, in the green, are protected; the red are not protected. Those protected by overtime work are about 20 percent of workers working 40 hours a week. If they are protected, chances are 20 percent of these people work over 40 hours a week. If they are not protected by overtime, 44 percent of these people work over 40 hours a week--twice as many. So now we will take away this protection from this 20 percent. Then they will be working overtime, and they will not get paid for it.

Right now, if they are covered by overtime protection, only 5 percent work over 50 hours a week. If they are not covered by overtime, 15 percent, three times as many people not covered by overtime laws work over 50 hours a week.

That says it right there. If the employer does not have to pay you time and a half, work them more, and they will not hire any new workers.

It is interesting to note--the occupant of the chair will find this interesting--in 1933, 5 years before the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law, the Senate voted 53 to 30 to set a cap on the number of hours in a workweek. Was the cap 50 hours? Was it 40 hours? No, it was 30 hours. Imagine in 1933, this Senate, in this Chamber, voted 53 to 30 to say that the workweek would be 30 hours. You could not pass 60 hours here now. Imagine that. In 1933, this Senate voted 53 to 30 to set a 30-hour workweek. Amazing. The compromise was reached 5 years later at 40 hours a week, and that is what it has been ever since.

Again, we know what the intent of this proposed rule is. The intent of this proposed rule is to allow employers to work employees longer than 40 hours a week and not have to pay them time and a half. And we have a final rule on that, a final rule. These are going to be low- to middle-income workers. They are not organized. They do not have a strong voice. So the administration feels they can run roughshod over their rights.

For the life of me, I cannot understand this. People work hard. Many families are working two jobs where the husband and wife are both working, trying to make ends meet, trying to save a little money to put away for the kid's college education, maybe to buy a better house, move up the ladder a little bit. For those who work overtime, 25 percent of their income comes from overtime.

I see the managers are here to wrap up. I will just conclude by saying that, again, just as it is a shame and a shame on us that we do not have FDA control of tobacco, shame on us also, and shame on this administration, for taking away the overtime rights of 6 million people in this country.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I object.

I object.

I object.

I object.

Parliamentary inquiry: Are we not in a quorum call?

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. President, I object.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. I did not hear what he said.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. I did not hear what he said.

I thank the Senator for that kindness.

The Senator asked what my plans are. My plans are to protect my farmers.

My plans are to fight for what we in the Agriculture Committee----

I say to my friend from Arizona, my plan is to fight for an agreement that was hammered out in the Agriculture bill a couple or 3 years ago that everybody signed up on, everyone agreed, the President signed it.

It is not right. I tell my friends, it is not right to treat farmers in one area of this country different than the other. For the last 50 years, this Congress has responded to disasters, whether they are earthquakes or tornadoes or floods or hail or fire or hurricanes. For 50 years, we have responded, and not once, not once have we offset it. It has always been in emergency spending.

Not once until 2 years ago they did it once, and that was corrected. Now they want to do it again. Once was once too many. Now they want to change the underlying structure of the farm bill. I am telling you, it is not right to do so.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for giving me the time to explain why I am doing what I am doing. I thank the Senator.

I object.

Reserving the right to object.

OK.

Reserving the right to object, I hope the Senator's time--I make it clear that under the consent that the Senator's time, however much time he uses, be counted as running with the bill.

Will the Senator just amend his unanimous consent request to state that at the end his statement, whenever that might be, the Senate would be put back into a quorum call?

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

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. Under the procedure we are under now, the Senator from Iowa has how much time to speak?

Under the bill?

Then, I ask, as others have before me, unanimous consent to speak as in morning business but that the time keep running on the bill.

Yes.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, tonight, in just a couple hours, there will be another Presidential debate between our colleague, Senator John Kerry, and President George Bush. The debate tonight will be with questions from audience members. I assume these are rank-and-file citizens of Missouri or maybe Illinois and Iowa. I do not know where they are coming from. It will be interesting to see. The moderator is going to pick and choose the questions that are asked of both President Bush and Senator Kerry. I understand they will cover a broad range of topics, but the basic topic tonight will be on domestic issues.

Well, I hope there will be a number of questions asked of President Bush for him to explain why it is that he is so intent on taking away the overtime pay rights of over 6 million American workers.

A year and a half ago, his Department of Labor issued proposed regulations to drastically--drastically--change who is eligible for overtime pay in America. After analysis by independent groups, I decided we had to do everything we could to stop these rules from going into effect and hurting the workers of America.

So we have had debate on this issue over the last year and a half. The Congress has voted six times--four times in the Senate, twice in the House--each time voting to overturn and to stop these onerous new regulations from going into effect. Six times, the President has not listened to the elected representatives of the American people. Six times he basically said: I don't care what you want; this is what we are going to do.

Now, keep in mind, when these proposed regulations came out in February of 2003, they were sort of put out in the middle of the night, so to speak a stealth attack. Not one public hearing was held on these proposed rules--not one. Congress was not involved in shaping or fashioning them. This simply came out of the heads--I wouldn't say the hearts because these are heartless kinds of regulations--but it came out of the heads of some people in the Department of Labor, I guess, and maybe in the White House.

We have said time and time again they should not go into effect, but on August 23 of this year those rules went into effect. The new rules took effect on that date because House Republicans have been able to strip my amendment and its House companions in conferences. It goes to conference, they strip it out.

Now, I want to be clear. And I want to clear up one misstatement that comes out of the administration's press releases all the time; and that is that somehow I am denying workers the right to get overtime pay because the base pay on which people are exempt from overtime--I should say not exempt from any overtime regulations--starts at about $8,000 and goes up to $23,000 under these new rules. Every time I have offered my amendment, we keep that in there. The base ought to go up. But we say that no person who was eligible for overtime prior to August 23 ought to lose overtime afterwards. They ought to still be eligible for it. That is what the White House has said time and time again. They say: Well, if people got overtime before, they are going to get it afterwards. I say: OK, why not pass my bill? That is all I say. Anybody who got it before ought to get it afterwards. But the White House has resisted that.

As a result, employers will no longer have to pay more money for overtime work for millions of American workers. And most of these workers will be women, make no mistake about it. This is going hit women hardest. Why do I say that? Because women are in that class of employees out there who many times are salaried. They work at what might be termed white-collar-type jobs. They work with perhaps information systems. They are inputting data in computers, many times working for small businesses.

A lot of times they are working in jobs that are maybe their second job, for example, or they have entered the workforce later in life after their children have grown, and they are working at a job that does not pay a lot, but they are salaried.

Well, right now, they might be eligible if they worked over 40 hours a week to get time and a half. But under these new rules, they will be reclassified. They will then be asked to work over 40 hours a week and will not get one dime of overtime pay.

As one woman wrote me, who lives in Seattle, WA, she said: When I get home from work, my second job starts. I have to take care of my kids. I get dinner ready. I make sure they get to their afterschool events. Then we have homework. I put them to bed. And I have my laundry to do. But she said: That time with my family and that time at home is my premium time. If I am asked to give up my premium time to work longer, I ought to get at least premium pay for it.

I have never heard it said better. Yet that woman will be asked to give up her time with her family, her time with her children, working longer hours, and not get one dime of overtime pay.

If overtime pay is free to the employer, it is going to be overused. If employers no longer have to pay more money for overtime work, they will have no incentive to demand longer hours, no incentive to hire more workers. Workers will have less time to spend with their families.

A study done by the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University showed that only 20 percent of the workers eligible for overtime worked more than 40 hours a week. In other words, of 20 percent of workers eligible for overtime, only 20 percent worked more than 40 hours a week, but 44 percent of workers who are exempt from overtime pay work overtime, so twice as many. In other words, if the employer doesn't have to pay you overtime, you are twice as likely to work over 40 hours a week than if they have to pay overtime. That is common sense. It stands to reason.

When Congress enacted the overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, Congress did so with the intent that a hard- working America would not leave behind the concept of valuable family time. We believe that workers should be paid extra for the extra hours they work. Time-and-a-half pay accounts for some 25 percent of total income of those who work overtime, and the economic health of too many families is at stake. Congress has voted on this six times on a bipartisan basis to protect these American workers' overtime. Now they want to strip it out again, out of conference. In these tough economic times, why are we taking away families' rights to be fairly compensated in their overtime?

During the first 3 years of the Bush administration, the typical household saw their real income fall by more than $1,500. Real wages have fallen while gas prices have gone up. Milk prices have gone up. Health care costs have gone up. More than 4 million people have been thrown into poverty since the beginning of the Bush administration. More than 5 million have joined the ranks of the uninsured. In this kind of economy, why would the President of the United States want to take money out of families' pockets?

I hope this will be something that will be talked about tonight in the Presidential debate. I am sure the President will say they are expanding overtime pay because they are raising the base. They are raising the base with one hand, taking it away with the other. It is the old shell game. Yes, a worker who is making $15,000 or $18,000 a year will now be automatically covered by overtime. But guess what the administration did in the rules. They have suggestions to employers on how to get around it, how to get around paying the lowest income workers in America overtime.

We have had examples of that. We had an example in The Detroit News: ``Workers Agonize About Overtime Loss.'' Two managers out of 150 at metro Detroit Burger King franchises became eligible for overtime. Rather than make them hourly workers, the company gave them $20 a week raises to maintain their salaried status. They gave them a $20 a week raise so they would just be over that threshold, and they are not eligible for overtime. That means they have a $20 raise, and they to have work 3 or 4 hours' overtime. They are getting minimum wage or below even for working overtime. Two managers out of 150 eligible for overtime. So that is what is happening.

The President might say tonight: Well, they raised the base. But they are already telling employers how to beat it. I hope the President will tonight respond and answer to the American people why he is so intent on taking away the right to overtime pay, to time and a half over 40 hours of work.

Please, Mr. President, tell the women of America why you are sticking it to them, the working mothers of America, why you are taking away their premium time from their families but not allowing them to make premium time by working overtime.

Another issue I hope comes up tonight is the issue of job growth. The job report came out today. The economy created 96,000 jobs last month, less than two-thirds of the amount needed just to keep up with population growth. Only 59,000 were in the private sector, so just slightly over half in the private sector, and the rest were in the public sector. We have lost 1.6 million private sector jobs since President Bush took office.

They may say: That is not quite right. There was an 813,000 job increase. Well, that is because of Government employment. The gap between total jobs and private sector jobs accounted for 813,000 jobs in Government employment. That is called socialism. I wonder what this is called now. President Bush is for socialism? We can't get jobs in the private sector. We will put them on the Government payroll. Shades of the Soviet Union. But the private sector jobs are not there.

Total manufacturing jobs fell by 18,000 in September, the largest drop since last December. A total of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since President Bush took office--the first President since Herbert Hoover to not have created one net new job in 4 years in office. What a record. I hope the President talks about how great that is for our country, that the only increase we are getting is in Government jobs.

The unemployment rate is unchanged, 5.4 percent. It was 4.2 percent when the President took office in January of 2001. Eight million Americans were unemployed in September; 2 million more Americans unemployed today than when President Bush took office in January of 2001--a 33-percent increase. That is a terrible way to say it, a 33- percent increase in the number of unemployed in this country since President Bush took office.

Let's talk about long-term unemployment. That is longer than 26 weeks. That means you are out of work longer than 6\1/2\ months. Long- term unemployment rose by 83,000 last month. It is now at 1.7 million people. It has increased by 1 million under President Bush. That is long-term unemployment. The long-term unemployed are now 21.8 percent of the unemployed. That share has nearly doubled. This is the economic record. Long-term unemployment more than doubled.

In January of 2001, there were 680,000 long-term unemployed. September 2004, there are 1.75 million, a 160-percent increase in long- term unemployed.

That is it. I hope that the President will please talk about that tonight and how good this is for America and why things are getting better for America and for American families.

As I said, he is the worst President since Herbert Hoover to face the voters, having lost jobs during his tenure. He will finish his term with the worst record since the Great Depression and finish his term having lost private sector jobs. While the economy has created jobs over the last year, the recovery has been modest, with a total of 1.7 million jobs created, which is about 143,000 a month. This is below what is needed to keep up with population growth. A healthy labor market would be creating jobs at a more rapid pace.

During the last economic expansion, the economy created 200,000 jobs per month, for a full decade, every year, and 236,000 jobs per month during President Clinton's two terms. I will repeat that. During President Clinton's two terms, the economy created 236,000 jobs per month. During President Bush's tenure, we have had 143,000 jobs created per month. In January 2001, we had 111,560,000 private sector jobs. In September 2004, we had 109,930,000, with 1.6 million lost during that period of time.

So when the President says they are creating jobs, yes, they are creating jobs--mostly in the public sector, Government employment, but far fewer than is even needed to keep up with the population growth.

The administration has billed its tax cuts as a solution. But its predictions of the impact of the tax cuts have been consistently wrong. In 2001, Congress passed the President's economic plan. Three years later, we still have fewer jobs than existed when the plan became law. In 2003, the administration predicted that passage of that year's tax cut would create 5.5 million jobs by the end of this year, 306,000 jobs per month. That target has only been reached in 2 months, and the total 15-month shortfall is 2.9 million jobs behind the pace predicted by the administration. Job growth is roughly 7 million behind the administration's 2002 prediction of the impact of their economic plan.

I know these are big numbers when you talk about 306,000 and 5.5 million. Well, the fact is that has resulted in hitting our families hard. Here is what happened to families. Median household income: In 2000, the median household income was $44,853. Today, it is $43,318. So it is down $1,500.

I hope the President tonight talks about how this is good for America, how things are getting better, when family income is coming down. I hope the President will address himself to the huge increase in the cost of natural gas in the Midwest, and what that is going to mean to our farmers, our families, to the elderly who have to heat homes with natural gas, to our manufacturing concerns who use natural gas, and power companies that use natural gas to produce electricity.

Yet, household family income is down. The price of natural gas is up, gasoline is up, and oil hit a new high yesterday at $53 a barrel. Great for Halliburton and the oil companies; not too good for our families who have to drive a car to work--maybe drive two cars to work if they have two people working at different times. That is the median household income right there.

I hope tonight's debate will be about domestic issues. I hope they talk about the lack of job growth, the cut in median family income, the number of long-term unemployed; and, yes, I hope they talk about overtime pay and what is happening to people who work hard and are now going to see their rights to overtime pay taken away. Those are mostly women. So that is the economy.

I want to talk about all of those who are going to be hurt by the rules on overtime. Employees earning between $23,660 and $100,000 a year are going to find themselves with their right to overtime restricted or taken away, including veterans, police, nurses, team leaders, journalists, cooks, financial services, computer workers, and many others--a lot of people. So someone earning as low as $23,661 a year will find that their rights to overtime will be taken away. They will be reclassified.

As I pointed out, in Detroit, 2 out of 150 managers at a certain place of business were eligible for overtime--2 out of 150. What happened is the employer realized how to fix it. By raising their salary so it was $23,661, or $23,662--just over the $23,660--guess what. They don't have to pay them overtime anymore. I hope they will talk about that tonight. I hope we will also recognize that there are no excuses for this overtime being taken away.

Three career employees of the Department of Labor who worked in this area under Presidents Reagan, the first Bush, Clinton, and this Bush-- so they have worked for various Presidents--all three of them basically said that in every instance where the Department of Labor has made substantive changes to the existing rules, it has weakened the criteria for overtime exemptions, thereby expanding the reach and scope of the exemptions. That means that in every instance where they have made substantive changes to these rules, it has made it easier for employers to deny you the right to overtime pay.

So I hope the President again tonight will respond and tell us why he is intent on taking away the right to overtime pay. I also hope they will talk about health care and what happened to health care coverage in this country. We are now up to about 4.5 million more people who have lost health insurance under this President. Somewhere around 45 million to 50 million people in America have no health insurance coverage--none. No health insurance coverage.

As we have said, the rate of poverty has gone up in this country. We know that especially the elderly are cutting pills in half and going without medicine to pay their heating bills or their lighting bills or their rent. Well, I happened to listen to the Senator from Utah, my friend Senator Hatch, this morning go on and on. As I said, I like him, but he happens to be wrong on this issue, that's all. I don't know how anyone can stand here with a straight face and say that Medicare doesn't have the right to bargain down prices of drugs. In the Medicare prescription drug bill that we passed, which the President signed into law, there is an express prohibition against Medicare bargaining with the pharmaceutical companies to get a cheaper price. They are prohibited from doing this.

The Veterans' Administration is allowed to bargain, and they get great prices. In fact, our veterans get the cheapest drugs anywhere in America through the Veterans' Administration. That is great for our veterans. Why

shouldn't Medicare be able to do the same thing?

John Kerry has a plan. He has a plan for better health care in America, and the first part of his health care plan is to take away that restriction on Medicare and to allow Medicare--not even to allow Medicare, to insist that Medicare bargain with the pharmaceutical companies to get a cheaper price for drugs for the elderly in this country. Now that would be meaningful prescription drug reform.

The second part of the Kerry plan for having better health care for our people is to allow us to have free trade with Canada. One might say we have a free-trade agreement with Canada. Of course, we do. We have NAFTA. It allows free trade with Canada. We can have free trade in cars, clothes, shoes, glasses, paper, and I suppose anything you want to mention, except one item. We do not have free trade with Canada on prescription drugs.

Go along the northern border of the United States and people are driving across the border every day to buy cheaper drugs. Sometimes they take a bus from Iowa, go up through Minnesota, buy prescription drugs, and come back.

Why don't we have a free-trade agreement with Canada on drugs? Why not allow us to reimport drugs from Canada for our people in this country to get a cheaper price? It is time to do so. The Bush administration will not allow that to happen.

For a lot of people in this country who do not have health insurance, they look at us. I have a really good plan. I have a health care plan that allows me to choose doctors and hospitals and covers me wherever I go. Every year I can change my plan. When our kids were little, we had one plan. Now that our kids are grown up and married, we have a different plan. I get to choose from about--I don't know, I didn't check last year--15, 20 different plans. It is a good plan. I have that plan. President Bush is under that plan. Vice President Cheney is under that plan.

If it is so good, why don't we let the American people buy into this? Why don't we let them buy into the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan? Senator Kerry says we ought to do that. President Bush says no. It is OK for us, but it is too good for the American people. I think it ought to be good enough for the American people. John Kerry says, yes, he wants to open up the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan to allow the American people to buy in. That would be very meaningful, especially for small businesses and people who work for small business.

The fourth part of John Kerry's comprehensive plan to have better health care for America is to allow better tax breaks for small businesses to cover their employees with health care. It is very meaningful to those of us who live in rural States. Most of our people who live in small towns and communities work for small businesses. Small businesses simply cannot afford any longer to cover their employees.

John Kerry says we should provide up to a 50-percent tax credit to small businesses and to family farmers to allow them to purchase health care coverage for their employees. President Bush says no. But this is where we need to focus--on our small businesses. That is where most of the people work, and that is where most jobs are created. Yet small businesses simply cannot afford it any longer. John Kerry says, let's provide tax cuts to small businesses to get health care coverage for their employees.

The fourth part of John Kerry's comprehensive health care program is to extend and make more comprehensive the SCHIP program; that is the Children's Health Insurance Program. One might say, the President says he is for that. At his convention in New York, President Bush announced a new $1 billion initiative to enroll millions of poor children in two popular Government health programs, but next week the Bush administration plans to return $1.1 billion in children's unspent health funds to the Treasury. A projected shortfall in Federal SCHIP funds reduced health care to more than 200,000 children.

There you have it. A President Kerry would expand the SCHIP program and get every kid covered. Let poor families get into the SCHIP program and provide them the wherewithal to do so. Under this administration, fewer and fewer children are being covered under the SCHIP program.

Lastly, in his comprehensive plan for health care reform, Senator Kerry has said that we need a real prescription drug benefit for the elderly, not a phony card. And that is what it is, a phony card. That is what the elderly get today, a card. I cannot tell you how many senior citizens have come up to me in Iowa and told me how worthless that card is. They say: I have two or three cards in my billfold or in my purse and some of those are better than the Government card. The card I got with this drug company, or an AARP card--whatever card they have; there are a bunch out there--are better than the Government card. So why should they buy yet another card?

Senators were on the floor the other day saying we should not be denigrating; we should not be talking badly about this card for the elderly. We ought to be promoting it. Promoting it? Don't talk to me; talk to the senior citizens. Find out why they are not buying it. They are not buying it just because I got up here and said it is worthless. They know it is worthless. They are telling me it is worthless. But we are supposed to, I guess, be a cheerleader and get them to buy something that is not in their best interest, that is worthless. Senator Kerry says we need a real prescription drug plan for the elderly and not just a phony card.

Lastly, I want to talk about education. I hope education also is a part of the debate tonight. The President can probably tout the fact that he got a bipartisan bill through called No Child Left Behind. I supported that bill. I am on the Education Committee. We had a lot of negotiations. I was sitting there, since I am a senior member of that committee, in the final negotiations, and the big holdup was how much money would we put into it. We agreed on a number, and President Bush agreed that in exchange for the States doing these things and the mandates we put on No Child Left Behind, in exchange for that, we would provide the funding necessary to meet these requirements, and we specified how much money that would be.

What happened? The first budget year comes up, they get shortchanged. The second budget year comes up, shortchanged again, and once again this year.

I believe we are now in the neighborhood of about $27 billion short in education from what we had guaranteed. If I am wrong, I will come back and correct that, but it is something like that. I know it is over 20. The figure 27 sticks in my head. Even if it was $10 billion or $5 billion, the fact is, we put a mandate on our schools. We said we were going to pay for it, and we have reneged.

Now, do not take my word for it. I tell people, talk to your teachers. If you do not like that, talk to your principal or your superintendent. Talk to your school board members and see what they say about No Child Left Behind. Most of them will say, look, it is test after test. We can handle that, but we are not getting the supporting mechanisms we need because we do not have the funds to do it.

I cannot tell my colleagues how many times it has happened to me in my State of Iowa that I have seen schools where, guess what, they have cut out art classes, they have cut out music classes, they have cut out PE. Why? Because they are pinched. They are strapped. They have to put the money in for No Child Left Behind. Why? Because we did not fund it, one of the largest unfunded mandates ever.

President Bush has not asked for the money in his budget. He did not put it in there to fund No Child Left Behind. I think the President should be held accountable for that on education.

The second largest unfunded mandate our schools have is special education. We promised 25 years ago that we would pay up to 40 percent of the additional costs of funding special education in America. I think we are now at about 18 percent of funding additional costs for special education. We promised 40 percent, and yet time and again we do not get the funds and we do not get the budget allocation to fund special education.

So I hope these will be some of the issues that the President will talk about tonight, that I hope will be involved in the debate because these are the issues that affect families in their daily lives.

Lastly, I will take a little bit of time to talk about why I have been involved in slowing down the process in the Senate today. There are a lot of press people who talked to me about that so I thought I might at least take this time to explain why I am doing it.

The Senator from Arizona yielded me a couple of minutes to explain why I was doing it, and I have only one simple declarative sentence: I am doing it to protect our farmers. I am doing it to protect the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee. The occupant of the Chair is our distinguished chairman.

When we pass bills that are multiyear bills, sometimes it takes a lot of debate and discussion and working things out. In the 2002 farm bill, that was true. It took many weeks. I can remember sitting in these conversations on Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday working it out. These are tough negotiations. Agriculture is very diverse, but I have always believed the Agriculture Committee ought to represent all of agriculture; that we are all in this together.

So we hammered out a farm bill and we passed it. There was give-and- take. Now, I did not get everything I wanted. The Senator from Indiana, who was ranking at the time, did not get what he wanted. The House Democrats did not get all they wanted. The House Republicans did not get all they wanted. That is the art of compromise. But I thought we had a pretty good bill. We had one which was a true compromise, and everyone signed off on it. We passed it with big majorities in the Senate and the House, and the President signed it. I was there for the signing.

I remember the President talking about how this bill was so strong on conservation. That was one of the reasons he was signing it. Yes, I am proud of the fact that the bill had an 80-percent increase in conservation, everything from the WHIP program, the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, to the Waters Resources Program, Wetlands Reserve Program, CRP, Conservation Reserve Program, and a whole host of others, and a new program that we started called the Conservation Security Program, Farmland Protection Program, a lot of conservation programs.

So we had a provision dealing with the Conservation Security Program, which was designed to be an uncapped program that entitled every farmer who met certain requirements to be eligible to get payments for protecting soil, water, and air, and being a good farmer. I have long believed that it was not right that we just pay farmers to take land out of production. What about all of those farmers who do produce our food supply and work hard every day, who are good stewards of the land? Should they not have some incentive to take care of the soil, to protect our water, to protect our wildlife? So that is what we hammered out in the Conservation Security Program, an incentive program for farmers, yes, to take better care of the land. It does not require one iota of land taken out of production.

It is voluntary. It is not a mandatory program. No farmer has to participate, but if they will do certain things--there is a minimum level, a moderate level, and a higher level, and if they do these things they will get a payment. But they have to agree to do it for between 5 and 10 years by contract, and then they have to meet certain requirements from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. They sign an agreement that they will do certain things to indeed keep soil from running off, make their soil better, better tilled, protect the water, a whole host of things, all kinds of things, because what is considered good conservation practices in my State of Iowa may not be good conservation practices in the States of Mississippi, Colorado, Washington, or Pennsylvania. Different soil, different land, different crops, different ways. So we wanted to make it so it was adaptable to every part of the country; it was not some cookie-cutter approach.

Well, everyone touted this as a new approach. It was signed off on by the Agriculture Committee, passed and signed by President Bush. Then what happened was the Department of Agriculture began to drag their feet. In the bill, we gave them 18 months to come up with rules and regulations to get this program implemented. We passed the law and it was signed by the President in May of 2002. So that is almost 2\1/2\ years ago, and the final rules still have not been promulgated by the Department of Agriculture.

They put out the proposed rules finally after 2 years. So they have been dragging their feet. I guess they just did that for some reason.

We finally got it going and then a couple of years ago for the first time in the history of this Congress we responded to a disaster, a drought, by providing for disaster assistance to hard-hit farmers, but for the first time ever we took it out of agriculture. We made agriculture pay for it. In the 50 years that we have been providing disaster assistance to farmers--or others--it has always been paid for as an emergency spending. Two years ago, for the first time, they took it out of agriculture.

I warned at the time that they were reopening the farm bill, changing a program that was agreed upon and passed by an authorizing committee; that they were fundamentally changing the appropriations process--and I am on the Appropriations Committee, as is the occupant of the Chair. I said that they are fundamentally changing it; this is not right to do this.

Well, it was an on an Omnibus appropriations bill. The House passed it, went home, the funding of the Government was in it, so we had to pass it. I entered into a colloquy with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, the Presiding Officer, the Senate majority leader, and Senate minority leader. In that colloquy we stated that we agreed, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee agreed that at the first possible time--I will get the exact language--we would put the program back so that we could assure that it would run as intended by the farm bill for the life of the farm bill, which would take us to 2007. Fine. That is OK. So it was put back.

Because there was a lapse of time there, a gap in time, the Department of Agriculture issued some rules on how to implement this program, but they issued rules based upon the fact that it was a capped program and not eligible to every farmer. But the farm bill said it is eligible for every farmer in every State of this country if they meet certain requirements. They said they had to do that because it was capped.

I said, Now it is not capped. We changed it back.

The Department said, OK, we will have to change the rules to make it go back, and they said that. They said they were going to change it.

I know this is a long story, but now it takes us up to today. Once again, we had a disaster. We had two hurricanes, three hurricanes that hit Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas so they are going to provide disaster assistance. I think we should. We always have. How are they going to pay for it? They are going to pay for it as emergency spending.

But there is another disaster that has taken place in other States of the country. We have had tornadoes, mud slides, high winds, hail in other agricultural parts of the country. We want those disasters taken care of, too. The administration said: Yes, we will take care of those disasters, but agriculture has to pay for it, and guess what, it is going to come out of conservation.

Strange. If you are a citrus farmer in Florida and you have an orange grove and there were tornadoes in this hurricane, if a tornado came through and ripped out your trees--and it did, by the way, in a lot of places--you will now get disaster assistance, crop-loss disaster assistance paid for under the hurricane bill, not taken out of agriculture. But if you are a farmer in Mississippi or Iowa and you had a tornado come through and take out your cotton crop or take out my corn crop, you might get compensated, but, guess what, they are taking it out of your other pocket. They are taking it out of agriculture.

Why should our farmers be treated differently than the farmers in Florida, I ask. That is why I have slowed this up today. That is why I wanted to get the attention of the Senate. I have always believed farmers had to be treated the same no matter where they are. That is why this is so bad, what is happening. They are opening up the farm bill

again. They are taking it out of conservation again. They say they are going to do it. It may be conservation today. Next year, it might be commodity payments, maybe payment limitations. I have fought on this floor to protect those things. Maybe that is what it is going to be next year.

Look out. Once we in agriculture divide ourselves up and we say, No, that's all right, we will take it out of there; we will treat farmers someplace different than in another place. Now we opened the farm bill. Our baseline is going to be down. It is going to take it right out of the baseline of agriculture. I know that is sort of the inside game around here. That means agriculture is taking a hit.

What makes this so terrible is that in the last 3 years we, agriculture--I should not say ``we''--the farmers of America saved the taxpayers of this country $15 billion that was allotted for them under the farm bill that they did not have to take. That was $15 billion that went back to the Treasury. You would think we would say: OK, if we saved $15 billion, that is where the disaster assistance ought to come from. We are talking about $3 billion or $2.8 billion. We have already saved $15 billion.

But no, they are not going to count that. They are not going to count that. I am sorry to have to say this. We in the Senate passed an amendment to provide for disaster assistance that would be emergency. We did it here, but the House didn't. And the White House, OMB, is insisting, insisting that this $2.8 billion of disaster assistance for our farmers be taken out of agriculture but not the disaster assistance for farmers in Alabama or Georgia or the Carolinas or Florida. Please, someone tell me, what is the difference? Maybe we are just not lucky enough to have the President's brother as our Governor, or your Governor.

That is why I am so upset about this. It is just not right. It is not right what they are doing. They are fundamentally changing a program we agreed upon. They are taking it out of agriculture, even after we saved all this money. It is not right. I am going to stand here and I am going to fight.

I told them I probably can't win. They have the votes and they have the White House. But I am going to fight for my farmers. I am going to stand here or sit here to the bitter end. If I do not win this time, I will be back.

I told the majority leader. Majority leader, I said, I like you, I respect you. He is a fine guy and he has a tough job. But, I said, I have to fight for my farmers. I have to fight for my rural people. I have to fight to make sure they are not discriminated against. I said, Leader, if I get rolled here, I will be back. If we come back in October, I will be back then. I will be back in November, too. I will be back. I will be back.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Jurisdiction

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, just when you think things have gotten about as bad as they can get with the situation in Iraq and what got us into Iraq, another shoe drops. This morning we open up our newspapers and we read that the Duelfer report came out yesterday. This is the person whom the Bush administration picked to investigate Iraq's weapons programs. And here is what the headline reads:

U.S. ``Almost All Wrong'' on Weapons.

It is not that we were just slightly wrong, 50 percent or 60 percent or 40 percent--99.9 percent of everything that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell said prior to the war in Iraq and right after it was wrong. Where did they come up with this stuff? Where did they come up with the sayings they had on Iraq?

Here is Colin Powell:

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological

weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many

more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons

and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and

destruction.

That was in a February 5, 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council. Where did he get that nonsense? Did he just pluck it out of thin air?

Here is Condoleezza Rice:

We have found, in Iraq, biological weapons laboratories

that look precisely like what Secretary Powell described in

his February 5th report to the United Nations.

That was from May 28, 2003. She says: We found them.

Where are they? Don't these people have any shame at all?

Here is President Bush:

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and is

rebuilding facilities used to make more of those weapons.

Absolutely false.

Donald Rumsfeld, March 11, 2003:

. . . we know that he continues to hide biological or

chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often

as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential

neighborhoods.

Totally false.

Here is President Bush before the United Nations, September 16:

Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with

ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work

at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is

building more long-range missiles that can inflict mass death

throughout the region.

President Bush, United Nations, September 16, 2002. Totally false. Totally false.

Here is Vice President Cheney:

Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute . . .

We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire

nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact,

reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Vice President Cheney, March 16, 2003--every single one of them telling mistruths to the American people to get us sucked into the Iraq war. Now we have--I don't know what happened yesterday--1,061 dead, 8,000 of our young people casualties, injured for life. How many countless innocent Iraqis, women, children? They didn't like Saddam Hussein either, but they are now injured, many of them killed. The country is in chaos. Iraq is a quagmire.

The rest of the world is looking at this, and we are the laughingstock of the world. They are saying, what happened to you, America? What happened to you?

I am delighted to yield.

I didn't hear that.

Thirteen thousand Iraqis have been killed?

Well, I don't know if that is right. We would have to look at that to see if that is right. Thirteen thousand Iraqi civilians killed? How many women, how many children? The rest of the world is asking, what has happened to you, America? America used to be the moral leader in the world. You were the ones we looked to for guidance and direction, to be honest and open, not secretive, not lying to the rest of the world. When we confronted Nikita Khruschev in 1962 when they put missiles in Cuba, we had the photographs. We had the positive proof. The world has looked upon us like that.

And now? Now the rest of the world is looking at the United States and saying: You are just lying. You lied about this. You covered it up. And look at the mess you have created now.

And still President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, the whole crowd of them still continues to insist that everything they did was right. They still continue to insist that they would do the whole thing just as they did it.

In any other country in this world, if the leadership of that country had done this, they would have to resign in disgrace.

They certainly would not be seeking reelection. I am surprised this President and Vice President and their team are asking the American people to put them there again after this--1,061 Americans dead; several thousand, 8,000, severely injured for the rest of their lives. Now we have this report about 13,000 Iraqi civilians dead. It is a country in chaos.

America is isolated in the world community when, after September 11, 2001, the world was on our side. They were with us. They wanted to help us go after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the terrorists because the rest of the world knew then, as they know now, they have a stake in going after terrorists. But they had no stake in going into a misguided war, a war that we were taken into with falsehoods--absolute, total falsehoods.

I would be the first to say I don't have all the answers on how we get out of Iraq. It is just like dropping a ceramic bowl and it breaks and you have to put it together again. It is very tough. But I do know this: We will never solve our situation in Iraq, we will never get our troops out of Iraq with the leadership we have in the White House right now. This President has burned his bridges; he has poisoned the well with every country in the world. People know they misled us and continued to mislead us in Iraq. I mentioned the lives. How about the money--$200 billion and counting. Well,

they say $130 billion or $140 billion. Come on, it is going to be well over $200 billion, and we know that. Yet we cannot provide health care to our people. We cannot fund No Child Left Behind. We cannot pass a highway bill to rebuild our highways because we don't have enough money.

No, I don't have all the answers in Iraq. I am the first to state that. I know one thing: We will never be able to get out of Iraq and solve that mess with the leadership that has so misled us and the world in the past. We need new leadership with fresh credibility to give them a chance to go to the rest of the world and say there is someone new here, and we are going to rebuild those coalitions and alliances. We are not going to continue to go down that road. There is one thing about being consistent; there is another thing about being stubborn and reckless.

I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.

Mr. President, I wanted to close up anyway. We hear a lot about consistency. I tell people this: Imagine you are a passenger in a car. You are on a steep mountain road, and you want to get to the bottom of the mountain. You look over, and your driver is President Bush. He has his hands gripped tightly on that wheel, and he is looking straight down that road. You see a bend in the road up ahead and you say: Mr. President, there is a bend in that road. But the President is hunched over that wheel, he is gripping it tightly, and he is looking straight ahead and squinting those eyes, and he says: I don't care. I started out straight, and that is the way I am going.

Then he drives you over the cliff. You get to the bottom, but your car is wrecked and you are either dead or severely injured.

Imagine yourself a passenger in a car on that same steep mountain road. You look over and your driver is John Kerry. You say: Look, Mr. Kerry, there is a bend in the road.

He says: I see that bend, and I know how to take it. So he takes that bend and another couple bends, and he gets you safely to the bottom of the mountain. The car is secure and you are safe. That car represents our country, and you are the ``passenger''--the people of this country.

I am sorry, Mr. President, it is not enough to be stubborn and reckless. That hurts our country. That hurts our people. It is better to be tough and smart. It is better to know that sometimes our enemies are going to shift their tactics. The terrorists are not always going to do one thing. We better be able to respond.

Yet we are bogged down in one quagmire in Iraq, and that is where we are headed. That is dragging our country down. It is hurting our people. That is stubborn. That is reckless. That is not consistent. That is ignoring the fact that any military leader will tell you that when you go into battle, you have a plan.

But if the enemy does something different, you have to be able to maneuver. George Bush cannot maneuver. He is stuck in the quicksands of Iraq, while al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden go about their business. Better to be tough and smart than to be reckless and stubborn.

I yield the floor.

I didn't hear the request.

What amendment?

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I understand there is no quorum call in progress.

Mr. President, America is stuck in a jobless recovery. This jobless recovery is not an accident. It is in large measure the result of failed economic policies, policies that the Bush administration stubbornly clings to. Despite the loss of millions of private sector jobs over the last 3 and a half years, this administration has embraced offshore outsourcing. It has been against extending unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed. It is adamant against raising the minimum wage. And it has been determined to eliminate time-and-a-half overtime pay for millions of American workers.

It is time, I believe, for us to chart a new course. It is time for Washington to listen to ordinary working Americans. They are telling us loudly and clearly that their No. 1 issue is economic security. They are telling us that they fear losing their jobs, their health care, and their retirement.

Now they also fear losing their right to time-and-a-half compensation for overtime. They fear, with good reason, that under the Department of Labor's new rules, they will be obliged to work a 50- or 60-hour week with zero additional compensation. For millions of working Americans this is unacceptable, and it is the last straw.

Accordingly, we have repeatedly offered an amendment to stop the Bush administration's new rules to eliminate overtime pay protections for millions of American workers. That amendment was voted on numerous times in the Senate and passed both by strong bipartisan majorities. It also has the overwhelming support of the American public. Yet despite this clear expression of the will of Congress and the public, my overtime amendment was stripped earlier in the year from the Omnibus appropriations bill in conference and again this week in the conference on the FSC-ETI bill.

But my overtime amendment will be back, and it will be back by popular demand. It amazes me, wherever I travel in the United States, people come up to me to talk about this overtime issue. They know what the administration is doing. They are angry. They want action to stop these new overtime rules.

Frankly, at this point, the administration has zero credibility on this issue. The Department of Labor claims that it simply wants to give employers a clearer guide as to who is eligible for overtime pay. But ordinary Americans are not buying this happy talk. They know the administration has put into effect a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules. They know these new rules strip millions of workers from the right to fair compensation.

The American people are right. Plain and simple, the new overtime rules are a frontal attack on the 40-hour workweek, proposed initially by the administration without a single public hearing.

The new rules could effectively end overtime pay in dozens of occupations, including nurses, police officers, clerical workers, air traffic controllers, social workers, even journalists. Indeed, the new criteria for excluding employees from overtime are deliberately vague and elastic, so as to stretch across vast swaths of the workforce.

Listen to Mary Schlichte, a nurse in Cedar Rapids, IA. Here is what she said:

Many nurses just like me work long hours in a field with

very stressful working conditions and little compensation. .

. . Our patients rely on us, and our families depend on us.

We need overtime pay so we can stay in the profession we love

and still make ends meet.

Ms. Schlichte told me about her nurse colleagues in Cedar Rapids who also rely on overtime pay. One nurse is married to a struggling farmer, and she relies on overtime pay to cover their insurance premiums. They already fear losing their farm, she says, and now they fear losing their health care, too.

Dixie Harms is a longtime trainer of nurses in Des Moines. Ms. Harms told me:

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 doing what they love doing.

Three years ago, after the terrible September 11 attacks, many here in Washington spoke eloquently about the heroism of our firefighters, police officers, first responders, and public safety workers. Ever since, America's first responders have worked long hours to protect us from terrorist threats. But the administration even wanted to deny these workers time-and-a-half compensation for those longer hours. This is wrong.

Since passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, overtime rights and the 40-hour workweek have been sacrosanct, respected by Presidents of both parties. But alas, it is not sacred to this administration. For 65 years, the 40-hour workweek has allowed workers to spend time with their families instead of toiling past dark and on weekends. At a time when family dinner is becoming an oxymoron, this standard is more important than ever.

These radical revisions are antiworker and antifamily. And given the fact that we are stuck in a jobless recovery, the timing of this attack on overtime could not be worse. It is yet another instance of this administration's economic malpractice. Bear in mind that time-and-a- half pay accounts for some 25 percent of the total income of Americans who work overtime. With average U.S. incomes declining, the proposed changes would slash the paychecks of millions of white-collar workers.

Moreover, the new rules are all but guaranteed to hurt job creation in the United States. Isn't this just basic logic? If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will push their current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With millions of Americans currently out of work, why would we give employers yet another disincentive to hire new workers?

It is bad enough to deny 6 million workers their overtime rights, but what is striking is the mean-spiritedness of the Department of Labor. The Department offered employers what amounts to a cheat sheet. It offered employers helpful tips on how to avoid paying overtime to the lowest paid workers, the same workers who are supposedly helped by the new overtime rules.

For example, the Department suggested cutting a worker's hourly wage so that any new overtime payments will not result in a net gain to the employee. It also recommended raising a worker's salary slightly to meet the threshold at which eligibility for time-and-a-half pay ends. This is just disgraceful. But it gets worse. The administration's scheme specifically targeted veterans, categorizing many as professionals even if they do not hold a professional degree or receive the same salary as degreed professionals.

Think about it: The administration opted to deny overtime pay to first responders, police officers, and firefighters who put their lives on the line protecting us here at home. It also aimed to take away overtime from veterans who put their lives on the line overseas. This may seem outrageous to most Americans, but some major employers are very pleased.

Here is a portion of the Boeing Corporation's comments on the Department's rules:

Many of [Boeing's] most skilled technical workers received

a significant portion of their knowledge and training outside

the university classroom, typically any branch of the

military service . . . Boeing thus supports the department's

focus on the knowledge used by the employee performing her

job rather than the source of the knowledge or skill . . .

The National Association of Manufacturers made similar comments. Let me quote:

NAM applauds the department for including this alternative

means of establishing that an employee has the knowledge

required for the exemption to apply. This addition is

entirely consistent with the realities of the current

workplace and the purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

For example, many people who come out of the military have

significant knowledge based on work experience but have not

had ``a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.''

Understandably, veterans were deeply disturbed by the administration's

proposed new rules. For example, Vietnam Veterans of America wrote to the Secretary of Labor and said:

[Veterans] who have received military training equivalent

to a specialized degree could now be classified as a

professional employee and lose their right to overtime. This

will be true even if the veterans in question do not earn the

higher pay afforded to those with an advanced degree or with

supervisory/management positions.

The organization further complained that this legitimizes the already extensive problems of discrimination against veterans.

And this is from the national president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Thomas Corey:

Therefore, we would like to make you aware that the

proposed modification of the rules would give employers the

ability to prohibit veterans from receiving overtime pay

based on the training they received in the military . . . The

proposed rule changes will make these veterans and their

families unfairly economically vulnerable in comparison with

their non-veteran peers. We hope you will agree that the men

and women who have served our Nation so well in military

service should not be penalized for having served.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today the Senate will pass legislation that is critically important to individuals with disabilities and elderly Americans: the Assistive Technology Act of 2004.

I am delighted that we are completing this bill, which will also shortly be passed in the House. I want to thank Senators Gregg, Kennedy, Roberts, Reed, and DeWine, and Representatives Boehner and Miller, among others, for their excellent bipartisan work to get this accomplished.

Assistive technology is absolutely critical to the lives of people with disabilities. According to an NOD/Harris poll earlier this year, 35 percent of individuals with disabilities say that they would not be able to live independently or take care of themselves at home without assistive technology.

Assistive technology also opens up opportunities in education, employment and civic participation that would not otherwise be available to many individuals with disabilities.

As the National Council on Disability puts it: ``For Americans without disabilities, technology makes things easier. For Americans with disabilities, technology makes things possible.''

The bill that we are reauthorizing today builds on the successes of the Assistive Technology Act dating back to 1988. The State Assistive Technology programs have been highly effective in providing information, training, and technical assistance to a wide array of individuals, including people with disabilities, their families, educators, health care professionals and others.

Let me give you an example from my own State of Iowa. Ben Moore, owner of Moore Construction in Iowa City, learned about universal design--the practice of building homes so that people with and without disabilities can get around in them--because of the work of the Iowa Program for Assistive Technology. He went on to build a universally designed home for two Iowans with disabilities. Now he is encouraging other contractors to use universal design to build beautiful homes

that Iowans can remain in as they grow old. Given Iowa's aging population, this is very important work.

Joy Crimmins from Dubuque, IA, has benefited from the advocacy services funded through the act. She has a newly accessible bedroom and bathroom in her home because the assistive technology program provided legal advocacy to her family to get their home modified.

This wonderful work is not happening just in Iowa. The most recent data available, for Fiscal Year 2002, indicates that these programs are making a substantial difference nationally. In 2002, 92,000 equipment demonstrations were provided; 38,000 AT devices were loaned to individuals with disabilities; and more than 6,000 devices were exchanged or recycled. Also, more than 6 million dollars was loaned to individuals with disabilities so they could purchase assistive technology, ranging from a hearing device to an accessible van. The AT programs also provided timely information to Americans, answering 151,000 requests for assistance, and training more than 172,000 people.

Despite all of these successes, we recognize that there is much more to be done. The NOD/Harris poll indicates that 17 percent of individuals with disabilities still do not have the assistive technology device or equipment that they need. And the biggest barrier is cost. In this reauthorization, we emphasize programs that will improve access to assistive technology devices by providing loans, leases or other financing programs as well as recycled equipment.

While there are many important initiatives in this bill, I will highlight a few of the most significant.

First, the bill for the first time authorizes a $410,000 State minimum for each of the State projects to ensure that each state has the funds necessary to carry out the requirements of the act.

The bill also provides that the majority of the Federal funds will be spent on activities designed to provide direct access to assistive technology, including equipment loan, device reutilization, device demonstration, and financing systems.

States will continue their successful public awareness and coordination activities. States will also continue to provide technical assistance, with a new focus on individuals with disabilities who are going through transition periods and need assistive technology to be successful. This is particularly important for students with disabilities who are receiving IDEA services and transitioning to higher education, employment and independent living. It is also critical to adults with disabilities and older Americans who need help maintaining independent living or transitioning from a nursing home or institution to the community.

The Senate recently passed the Individuals with Disabilities Act, and we continue to be concerned about implementation of the ADA and the Olmstead decision. This effort aligns the Assistive Technology Act with these other initiatives.

Because individuals with disabilities still are afforded significantly fewer employment opportunities than individuals without disabilities, the bill places an emphasis on educating employers and employees. One of the projects of national significance authorized in the bill includes development of public service announcements and other means of reaching out to employers, giving them information regarding assistive technology.

The other project of national significance promotes research and development so we can have come up with assistive technologies that can open up more doors for individuals with disabilities.

This reauthorization recognizes the ongoing contribution of protection and advocacy services in making assistive technology available to individuals with disabilities. And it adds the Native American Protection and Advocacy System to those receiving funds under the act. Iowa's successful advocacy program will also be continued under this bill.

These are just a few of the many significant issues addressed in this bill. It is a very comprehensive effort, made possible by the hard work of the many stakeholders that participated.

I want to thank my colleague, Senator Gregg, and his staff, particularly Aaron Bishop and Denzel McGuire, for their excellent work on this bipartisan initiative. I also want to recognize the work of Senators Kennedy, Roberts, Reed and DeWine and their staff members, Kent Mitchell, Connie Garner, Jennifer Swenson, Elyse Wasch, Erica Swanson, and MaryBeth Luna. And I'd like to recognize Congressman Boehner and Miller and their staff members, David Cleary and Alex Nock, for working on this bipartisan, bicameral bill.

As part of this reauthorization process, committee staff have had extensive bipartisan briefings and met with a very wide array of stakeholders. Stakeholders also participated in work groups designed to forge consensus on many of the issues addressed in this bill. As a result, I believe we are passing a very strong bill. I want to thank the many individuals with disabilities, family members, assistive technology programs, vendors, members of the information technology industry, the financial and business community, service providers, advocates, educators and others who gave generously of their time and worked so hard on this bill.

This bill continues the tradition of bipartisan cooperation that has marked every significant disability bill that has been passed by Congress. Just as the ADA, IDEA and other bills have been bipartisan, so is this Assistive Technology Act of 2004, We can all be proud to see it enacted into law.

Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from Iowa have?

Mr. President, there is no longer any doubt about President Bush's reelection strategy. It is the same strategy that was used in the election 2 years ago: They invoke the images of the 9/11 attacks and warn that new terrorist attacks are imminent. They stoke Americans' fears and anxieties. And, of course, they accuse their opponents of being weak on terrorism, not willing to defend America.

The events of 9/11 were traumatic, and we all understand Americans' fear

of a new terrorist attack. But it is despicable to politicize this fear. It is despicable to exploit people's anxieties for political advantage. But this administration has done this again and again.

This is exactly what Vice President Dick Cheney was up to when he warned that if John Kerry is elected President, then ``the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating.''

You have to appreciate the pure Orwellian beauty of that statement. It was on President Bush's watch that we suffered the September 11 attack, a real attack, not a hypothetical one, and that attack happened despite multiple warnings to Mr. Bush from the CIA that al-Qaida was planning to attack America. Yet now his attack dog Vice President has the gall to warn that if John Kerry is elected President, the terrorists will hit us with a ``devastating attack.''

As I said, this is the administration's reelection strategy: Fear and smear; politicize the terrorist threat; exploit people's fears and anxieties for political advantage.

Late last week, President Bush and his allies escalated this strategy to a new level. They are now saying, in effect, that Senator Kerry is giving aid and comfort to the terrorists, and that as Republican Representative Tom Cole crudely put it:

If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the

election.

Last Tuesday, the senior Senator from Utah, and a good friend of mine, Senator Hatch, said that terrorists ``are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry.''

Last Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said terrorists in Iraq ``are trying to influence the election against President Bush.''

Last Thursday, President Bush said Senator Kerry's statements on Iraq ``can embolden the enemy.''

And Vice President Cheney called Senator Kerry ``destructive'' to the war on terrorism.

This morning our colleague from Arizona, Senator Kyl, criticized an earlier floor statement by Senator Kennedy. Senator Kyl said that Senator Kennedy's criticisms of the President's policy in Iraq were ``giving confidence to the enemy.'' That was said just this morning on the floor of the Senate.

This is disturbing. Since when is an entirely legitimate and justified criticism of the President's policy in Iraq ``giving confidence to the enemy.'' This is an outrageous accusation. It has no place on the Senate floor for legitimate debate.

I remind the Senator from Arizona of the wise words of President Dwight Eisenhower who said that criticism and dissent are the bedrock of democracy. This is what President Eisenhower said in 1954 at Columbia University:

Here in America, we are descended in blood and in spirit

from revolutionists and rebels--men and women who dared to

dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never

confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

That was President Dwight Eisenhower.

So we will not be silenced by accusations of disloyalty or accusations that we are helping the enemy or giving confidence to the enemy. Is all we are supposed to do hush up and allow Mr. Bush's reckless policies to lead us deeper and deeper into the quagmire?

These gentlemen claim to have such excellent access to the terrorists' thoughts. It would be nice if they would turn that knowledge into an effective policy against the terrorists. Instead, at key junctures, this administration has made disastrously wrong choices and repeatedly these decisions have played into the terrorists' hands. Look at the record.

It is a fact that the September 11 attacks happened despite repeated warnings to the President from the CIA that al-Qaida was planning to attack America. Those warnings included an August 8, 2001, President's daily briefing which he received when he was on vacation in Crawford, TX, titled ``Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'' That is not a subhead or a sentence in the memo; that is the title of the memo: ``Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.''

Let's look at the rest of the record.

President Bush botched the single best opportunity to capture bin Laden when we had him cornered in Torah Borah in Afghanistan, and yet the President removed intelligence personnel and predator aircraft from Afghanistan to put them in Iraq.

It was President Bush who 3 years ago pledged to smoke bin Laden out of his cave but has utterly failed to do so. Instead, by successfully defying the President, because we have been so bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq, bin Laden has become a folk hero across much of the Muslim world. He has attracted not only thousands of new recruits but dozens of imitators, new bin Ladens, forming their own terrorist organizations to attack America and Americans.

It was President Bush who diverted, as I said, our military and intelligence resources from the hunt of bin Laden in order to attack Iraq.

It was President Bush whose taunt of ``bring it on'' did indeed bring it on--a nationwide insurgency in Iraq, an urban guerrilla that has trapped our Armed Forces, as I said, in a quagmire.

It was President Bush whose unilateral approach on Iraq served to alienate many of our oldest allies and to turn world opinion against the United States.

It was President Bush whose invasion and occupation of the second largest Arab country has outraged much of the Muslim world and has been a recruiting bonanza for terrorism. Indeed, George W. Bush's policies-- reckless and wrong--have been the best recruiting tool imaginable for al-Qaida.

This is an astonishing record of mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations, and mismanagement. It is an astonishing record of George W. Bush again and again playing into Osama bin Laden's hands. It is sort of like watching the cartoon of Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner, only it is not funny. It is a colossal tragedy that has put our Nation at even greater risk.

Ironically, President Bush's father, the first President Bush, warned against the folly of invading and occupying Iraq. On February 28, 1999, speaking to a group of Desert Storm veterans at Fort Myer, VA, he said:

Had we gone into Baghdad--we could have done that, you guys

could have done it, you could have been there in 48 hours--

and then what? Whose life would be on my hands as the

Commander in Chief because I unilaterally went beyond

international law, went beyond the stated mission and said

we're going to show our macho? We're going into Baghdad.

We're going to be an occupying power--America in an Arab land

with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous.

That is not this Senator saying that; that is former President Bush in February 1999.

Now, of course, we heard the same pathetic warnings from Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and other foreign policy specialists, but this President and his partner Dick Cheney and their posse of neoconservative intellectuals thought they knew better. They reveled in words like ``slam dunk'' and ``cakewalk.'' And so now the disaster Bush 41 warned against has become a reality under Bush 43.

President Bush repeatedly says that his No. 1 job is to protect the American people. But the view of professionals on the front line is that he has failed to do so.

The Iraq invasion has set back, rather than advanced, the war on terrorism and al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden remains at large. Our Armed Forces are bogged down in Iraq with casualties rising above 8,000 and are not available to respond to real threats to the United States. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, our moral authority and credibility on the world stage are at rock bottom.

I was watching former President Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, at the Carter Center just a few days ago saying that he has visited 120 countries around the world, and he believes that at no time in the history of our country has our esteem, credibility, and moral authority been at such a low point.

Despite President Bush's loud threats toward the so-called ``axis of evil'' on his watch, North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons. Iran appears to be proceeding with impunity to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Again, this is an extraordinary record of mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations, and missed opportunities.

As a consequence of the choices made by this President over the last 4 years, I believe today America is weaker, less

secure, and more vulnerable. It is indeed time, past time, to change these policies.

I ask unanimous consent that at the termination of my remarks, two articles, ``Growing Pessimism on Iraq,'' Wednesday, September 29, Washington Post, and an article appearing on September 28 in the New York Times, ``Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread,'' be printed in their entirety in the Record.

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

I want to correct one other thing that was said this morning by the Senator from Arizona. He talked about the connections between al-Qaida and Iraq. He quoted Mr. Tom Kean speaking about that relationship, and I will quote, in its entirety, from page 66 of the report:

The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some

common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But

to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier

contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational

relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq

cooperated with al-Qaida in developing or carrying out any

attacks against the United States.

Sure, it is true that al-Qaida had relationships with Iraq. They had relationships with Saudi Arabia. They had relationships in Egypt. They had relationships in a lot of countries. But as the report clearly shows on page 66, there was no operational relationship between al- Qaida and Iraq as determined by the Commission.

I yield back whatever time I have remaining.

Exhibit 1

[From the Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2004]

Growing Pessimism on Iraq

(By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks)

A growing number of career professionals within national

security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much

worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is

being expressed in public by top Bush administration

officials, according to former and current government

officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence

officials at the CIA and the departments of State and

Defense.

While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals,

officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the

CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer

corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread

than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.

People at the CIA ``are mad at the policy in Iraq because

it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and

deeper and deeper,'' said one former intelligence officer who

maintains contact with CIA officials. ``There's no obvious

way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed

state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak

governments.''

``Things are definitely not improving,'' said one U.S.

government official who reads the intelligence analyses on

Iraq.

``It is getting worse,'' agreed an Army staff officer who

served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad

through e-mail. ``It just seems there is a lot of pessimism

flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that

are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting

attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year

ago.''

This weekend, in a rare departure from the positive talking

points used by administration spokesmen, Secretary of State

Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is

strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East is

increasing. ``Yes, it's getting worse,'' he said of the

insurgency on ABC's ``This Week.'' At the same time, the U.S.

commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, told

NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that ``we will fight our way through

the elections.'' Abizaid said he believes Iraq is still

winnable once a new political order and the Iraqi security

force is in place.

Powell's admission and Abizaid's sobering warning came days

after the public disclosure of a National Intelligence

Council (NIC) assessment, completed in July, that gave a

dramatically different outlook than the administration's and

represented a consensus at the CIA and the State and Defense

departments.

In the best-case scenario, the NIC said, Iraq could be

expected to achieve a ``tenuous stability'' over the next 18

months. In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.

The July assessment was similar to one produced before the

war and another in late 2003 that also were more pessimistic

in tone than the administration's portrayal of the resistance

to the U.S. occupation, according to senior administration

officials. ``All say they expect things to get worse,'' one

former official said.

One official involved in evaluating the July document said

the NIC, which advises the director of central intelligence,

decided not to include a more rosy scenario ``because it

looked so unreal.''

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, and other White

House spokesmen, called the intelligence assessment the work

of ``pessimists and naysayers'' after its outlines were

disclosed by the New York Times.

President Bush called the assessment a guess, which drew

the consternation of many intelligence officials. ``The CIA

laid out several scenarios,'' Bush said on Sept. 21. ``It

said that life could by lousy. Life could be okay. Life could

be better. And they were just guessing as to what the

conditions might be like.''

Two days later, Bush reworded his response. ``I used an

unfortunate word, `guess.' I should have used `estimate.' ``

``And the CIA came and said, `This is a possibility, this

is a possibility, and this is a possibility,''' Bush

continued. ``But what's important for the American people to

hear is reality. And the reality's right here in the form of

the prime minister. And he is explaining what is happening on

the ground. That's the best report.''

Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as ``dead-

enders,'' still offers a positive portrayal of prospects and

progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in

public. ``The path towards liberty is not smooth there; it

never has been,'' he said before the Senate Armed Services

Committee last week. ``And my personal view is that a fair

assessment requires some patience and some perspective.''

This week, conservative columnist Robert D. Novak

criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence

officer on the NIC who supervised the preparation of the

assessment. Novak said comments Pillar made about Iraq during

a private dinner in California showed that he and others at

the CIA are at war with the president. Recent and current

intelligence officials interviewed over the last two days

dispute that view.

``Pillar is the ultimate professional,'' said Daniel Byman,

an intelligence expert and Georgetown University professor

who has worked with Pillar. ``If anything, he's too soft-

spoken.''

``I'm not surprised if people in the administration were

put on the defensive,'' said one CIA official, who like many

others interviewed would speak only anonymously, either

because they don't have official authorization to speak or

because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top

administration officials. ``We weren't trying to make them

look bad, we're just trying to give them information. Of

course, we're telling them something they don't want to

hear.''

As for a war between the CIA and White House, said one

intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State

Department and the Pentagon, ``There's a real war going on

here that's not just'' the CIA against the administration on

Iraq ``but the State Department and the military'' as well.

National security officials acknowledge that the upcoming

presidential election also seems to have distorted the public

debate on Iraq.

``Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more

intense than expected, especially the intensity of

nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people,'' said Steven

Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning

department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added, ``I

don't think the political discourse that we're in the middle

of accurately reflects anything. There's a supercharged

debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side.''

Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer question

whether adequate progress is being made there.

``They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the

exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they

aren't working,'' he said. ``There's a feeling that Iraqi

security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the

general public to get the occupiers out.''

He added: ``I hope I'm wrong.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privilege of the floor be granted to Sarah Helgen during consideration of this legislation.

Mr. President, I am very pleased to join my colleague and Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Mr. Cochran in introducing this piece of legislation to correct a continuing problem at the U.S. Department of Agriculture with funding for technical assistance for agricultural producers and landowners participating in agricultural conservation programs.

The 2002 farm bill contains a historic increase in funding for conservation programs, including for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP), the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Grassland Reserve Program (GRP) and the Conservation Security Program (CSP). These programs provide our nation's producers and landowners the financial and technical means to protect and enhance natural resources, including water, air, soil and wildlife habitat.

To realize the environmental benefits made possible by this large new investment in conservation, it is essential that farmers, ranchers and landowners receive professional technical assistance to help them plan, design and carry out effective and workable conservation practices in their specific operations. This technical assistance is provided by employees of USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service and, under the 2002 farm bill, private sector providers.

Because technical assistance is so crucial to the effectiveness of conservation programs, the 2002 farm bill included sufficient money for technical assistance as an integral part of the mandatory funding provided for each of the conservation programs. The legislation requires USDA to use mandatory funds to carry out the conservation programs, ``including the provision of technical assistance.''

By providing funding in this manner, Congress acted to remedy the substantial and continuing shortfalls in technical assistance for mandatory conservation programs under the 1996 farm bill--which on several occasions necessitated limited stop-gap funding in appropriations measures. These shortfalls resulted from application of a limitation on transfers from the Commodity

Credit Corporation (CCC), often referred to as ``the section 11 cap''. The only conservation program not affected by this limitation was EQIP. That is because the statutory language creating and funding EQIP specifically identified technical assistance as an integral function of the program, thereby creating a funding stream through the program funds directly and outside the limitation on Section 11 transfers from

Mr. President, I am very pleased to join my colleague and Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Mr. Cochran in introducing this piece of legislation to correct a continuing problem at the U.S. Department of Agriculture with funding for technical assistance for agricultural producers and landowners participating in agricultural conservation programs.

The 2002 farm bill contains a historic increase in funding for conservation programs, including for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP), the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Grassland Reserve Program (GRP) and the Conservation Security Program (CSP). These programs provide our nation's producers and landowners the financial and technical means to protect and enhance natural resources, including water, air, soil and wildlife habitat.

To realize the environmental benefits made possible by this large new investment in conservation, it is essential that farmers, ranchers and landowners receive professional technical assistance to help them plan, design and carry out effective and workable conservation practices in their specific operations. This technical assistance is provided by employees of USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service and, under the 2002 farm bill, private sector providers.

Because technical assistance is so crucial to the effectiveness of conservation programs, the 2002 farm bill included sufficient money for technical assistance as an integral part of the mandatory funding provided for each of the conservation programs. The legislation requires USDA to use mandatory funds to carry out the conservation programs, ``including the provision of technical assistance.''

By providing funding in this manner, Congress acted to remedy the substantial and continuing shortfalls in technical assistance for mandatory conservation programs under the 1996 farm bill--which on several occasions necessitated limited stop-gap funding in appropriations measures. These shortfalls resulted from application of a limitation on transfers from the Commodity

Credit Corporation (CCC), often referred to as ``the section 11 cap''. The only conservation program not affected by this limitation was EQIP. That is because the statutory language creating and funding EQIP specifically identified technical assistance as an integral function of the program, thereby creating a funding stream through the program funds directly and outside the limitation on Section 11 transfers from

Mr. President, how much time am I allotted?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I want to talk a little about Iraq. Before that, I have a responsibility to respond to the majority leader's comments on health care today. Sometimes you hear things on the Senate floor and you have to stop and say, did I really hear that or is that just something I thought?

I was really listening to the Republican leader talk about Republican support for health care--meaningful health care. Listening to the Republican leader talk about Republican support for meaningful health care is like listening to the big tobacco companies talk about the need for cancer research. How do I say that? Because the problems of cancer basically are caused by the big tobacco companies. The problem that we don't have a meaningful health care system in America today--people- based, patient-based, preventive care-based--is because of Republican Party policies.

It has been very clear for a long time that the Republican Party has opposed any kind of meaningful people-based health care program. After all, it was our colleague, former Senator Robert Dole, who during his Presidential campaign in 1996 bragged he had voted against Medicare, as most Republicans did in the mid 1960s. Now, again, the majority leader says that the elderly are not signing up for these discount cards and we ought to be promoting them, sort of like a cheerleader. Maybe they are all taking their cue from the fact that President Bush was a cheerleader in college, so now we have to be a cheerleader. We heard that we have to cheerlead, regardless of what the facts are. There is a reason the elderly are not signing up for this card. It is meaningless. It doesn't do anything for them. Yet we are supposed to go out and be a cheerleader for them?

Well, the Republicans rammed through their health care program. The elderly get a meaningless card, and the pharmaceutical companies got $12 billion in payments to entice them into this program. How about giving the elderly in our country $12 billion?

I sum it up by saying that President Bush does have--I want to be fair to him--a health care plan. It is very simple and straightforward: Pray you don't get sick. That is President Bush's health care plan.

John Kerry has a sound health care plan: One, to overturn the ban on Medicare bidding down the prices from pharmaceutical companies. Again, that was in our last Medicare bill. Republicans insisted on it. They pushed it through. Right now, Medicare cannot bargain with the large pharmaceutical companies to bid down the prices. Why? Because they are paying in the bill and they are forbidden to do so. What kind of sense does that make? The Veterans' Administration can bargain down the price of drugs with pharmaceutical companies but not Medicare. That makes no sense.

One of the first things a President Kerry would do is get rid of that ban and let Medicare get the price of drugs down for the elderly.

Secondly, a President Kerry will say we have to allow for the reimportation of drugs from Canada. We have a free-trade agreement with them on cars, clothes, pens, ties, and everything else, except for one thing--drugs. Well, it is time we have a free-trade agreement on drugs and let us reimport drugs from Canada.

The third part of the Kerry program is to provide a tax credit for small businesses--up to 50 percent--so they can carry a health care policy on their workers. That is so important for us in rural America, where most of our people work for small business.

Fourth, Senator Kerry says we ought to open the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program to everybody in America. That is a good program. It allows you to pick your doctor and hospital, and it allows you to change your plan if you would like to do so. It is a great program. I ought to know, I am in it. So is President Bush. So is Vice President Cheney. So is every Senator on this floor. If it is good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for the American people.

The last thing in the Kerry program for health care is to double the National Health Service Corps to get more doctors, physicians' assistants, nurse practitioners, and others serving in our rural and underserved areas and to increase the number of community health centers in America.

So while I am proud John Kerry has a forward-looking, comprehensive health care plan that will be meaningful, that will reduce drug prices, and that will get affordable, reliable health care to the American people, President Bush is silent. Again, President Bush's health care plan is simple: Pray you don't get sick. That is not enough. We need better than that.

Mr. President, I also wish to speak for a few minutes about the mess in Iraq. Last week, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi came to Washington to join in President Bush's campaign of relentless happy talk about the war in Iraq. President Bush says:

We're making progress. We're making progress.

Meanwhile, back in the real world--the world that American soldiers confront on the ground in Iraq--the chaos gets worse and worse. Entire regions and many provincial capitals are under the insurgents' control. Virtually every day we see car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, beheadings.

As we learned last week, the CIA has produced a formal National Intelligence Estimate that says that, at best, the current level of violence will continue and, at worst, Iraq will plunge into a civil war. As Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged yesterday, it is getting worse in Iraq. But amazingly, President Bush insists that this mess in Iraq has made us safer, and the President and his political allies have been relentless in using the war on terror for their own electoral purposes.

Their message to the American people is simple: Be afraid, President Bush will protect you; his opponent will not.

Vice President Dick Cheney also took this line of attack 2 weeks ago when he darkly warned with his Darth Vader-type voice that if John Kerry is elected President, then ``the danger is we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating.'' That was Vice President Cheney.

Last Tuesday, the senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, said that terrorists ``are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry.''

Last Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said terrorists in Iraq ``are trying to influence the election against President Bush.''

If these gentlemen have such excellent access to the terrorists' thoughts, they are not doing a good job of turning that knowledge into effective policy against the terrorists. At key junctures, this administration has made disastrously wrong choices. Repeatedly, these decisions have played into the terrorists' hands. Let's look at the record.

It is a fact that the September 11 attacks happened despite repeated warnings to Mr. Bush from the CIA that al-Qaida was planning to attack America. Those warnings included an August 8, 2001, President's daily briefing which he received while he was vacationing in Crawford, TX. The report was titled ``Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.'' That is not a subhead or a sentence in the memo, that is the title of the memo: ``Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.''

Let's look at the rest of the record.

On President Bush's watch, the U.S. botched the single best opportunity to capture bin Laden at Torah Borah in Afghanistan. A political decision was made to allow Afghan warlords to carry the brunt of that siege, and bin Laden escaped.

It was President Bush who 3 years ago pledged to smoke bin Laden out of his cave, but has utterly failed to do so. Instead, by successfully defying President Bush, bin Laden has become a folk hero across the Muslim world. He has attracted not only thousands of new recruits, but dozens of imitators, new bin Ladens who are forming their own terrorist organizations to attack America and Americans.

It was President Bush who diverted our military intelligence resources and certain military hardware, such as the Predator aircraft, the unmanned aerial vehicles, took them out of Afghanistan, away from the hunt for bin Laden and sent them to Iraq.

It was President Bush whose taunt, ``Bring it on,'' did indeed bring it on--a nationwide insurgency in Iraq, an urban guerrilla war that has trapped our Armed Forces in a quagmire.

It was President Bush whose unilateral approach on Iraq alienated many of our oldest allies and turned world opinion against the United States.

It was President Bush whose invasion and occupation of the second largest Arab country has outraged much of the Muslim world and has been a recruiting bonanza for Islamist terrorists.

This is an astonishing record of mistakes, misjudgments, and mismanagement. It is an astonishing record of George W. Bush again and again playing into Osama bin Laden's hands. It is like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner, only this time it is not funny. It is a colossal tragedy. It has put our Nation at even greater risk of terrorist attack.

Ironically, President Bush's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, warned against the folly of invading and occupying Iraq. Listen to this. On February 28, 1999, speaking to a group of Desert Storm veterans at Fort Myer, VA, former President Bush said:

Had we gone into Baghdad--we could have done it, you guys

could have done it, you could have been there in 48

hours--and then what?

The first President Bush continued:

Whose life would be on my hands as the Commander in Chief

because I, unilaterally, went beyond international law, went

beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our

macho? We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an

occupying power--America in an Arab land--with no allies at

our side. It would have been disastrous.

That is the first President Bush. That is not me. That is an exact quote from the first President Bush, 1999. I would say to this President: You do not have to listen to us, just listen to your father. He would have told you what you are getting into in Iraq.

This is what his father said:

We're going to be an occupying power--America in an Arab

land--with no allies at our side. It would have been

disastrous.

It is disastrous. Of course, we heard the same prophetic warnings from Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and other foreign policy experts. But this President Bush and his partner Dick Cheney and the neoconservative intellectuals thought they knew better. They reveled in words such as ``slam dunk'' and ``cakewalk.'' And so now the disaster that Bush 41 warned against has become a reality under Bush 43.

The Iraq invasion has set back, rather than advanced, the war on terrorism and al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden remains at large--an imminent danger to our homeland. Our Armed Forces are bogged down in Iraq, with casualties rising above 8,000, and they are not able to respond to real threats to the United States. Our moral authority and credibility on the world stage are at rock bottom.

The other day I was watching former President Carter at the Carter Center answer a question. He said he has been, I believe I am not mistaken, in over 120 countries. He said never in the history of the United States has our country been at such low esteem and moral authority in the rest of the world--never in the history of our country.

Despite President Bush's blustery threats about the so-called axis of evil, on his watch, North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons and Iran appears to be proceeding with impunity to develop its own nuclear weapons. This is an extraordinary record of mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations, and missed opportunities.

As a consequence of President Bush's choices over the last 4 years, America is weaker, America is less secure, America is more vulnerable.

I say to my friend and colleague from Utah, whom I quoted earlier, look at the record. Look at this record and come to only one conclusion: The single best recruitment poster for al-Qaida and the terrorists is our policy in Iraq. Quite frankly, the architect of that policy, the person who is carrying it out, is President George W. Bush. No, it is not John Kerry, I say to my friend from Utah. It is not John Kerry. George W. Bush's reckless, stubborn policy is the single best recruiter for al-Qaida, and this must end so that our people can truly be made secure; that we can go after the terrorists; that we can get out of this quagmire in Iraq; that we can once again become the moral authority, the shining city on a hill that America has been to the rest of the world. I am sad to say it will not happen on this President's watch. That is why a change is in order.

I ask unanimous consent that an article that appeared September 26, 2004, in the Los Angeles Times be printed in its entirety in the Record.

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

Mr. President, the tax conference report before us is a purposeful mix of good and bad. On one side we have the content of the bill that is broadly supported on both sides of the aisle. There are few who disagree with the considerable majority of the conference report's provisions. Increasing the child credit, reducing marriage penalty provisions and the extension of the child credit do help the middle class and those of modest means.

I do think it was unfortunate that the measure did not adjust the child credit so more modest income working families could benefit more fully from the provision.

We do need to fix the alternative minimum tax. This bill kicks the ball down the street for another year. The 2001 tax bill effectively doubled the number of taxpayers impacted by the tax once a short term band-aid expired. So, here we have another 1-year band-aid. This is a growing problem with growing cost estimates to fix it.

The measure extends the R&D credit, the work opportunity tax credit, the wind and biomass credit, all of which I support. Clearly, these credits should be extended for longer periods of time. With this bill, they are only effective for another 14 months, until the end of next year. That is hardly good tax policy. Year after year, the Congress extends these provisions for a short time, not providing a longer term, which would allow business to plan.

However, the biggest problem with this conference report is that it is not paid for: $146 billion in additional spending with no offsetting of that cost.

This bill comes to the Senate in an abusive fashion. The majority decided to use a very narrow measure in conference and hijacked it to avoid the Senate floor on this far larger package of tax provisions. The majority knew that the provisions were very popular and would pass. But they also knew that there might be a majority in the Senate that would like to see the provisions paid for.

By not paying for them, by using this conference mechanism, we add to the government's skyrocketing debt. This year we have a record $422 billion deficit.

The one word that describes the Bush tax policy of never wanting to offset the cost of tax cuts is reckless. When President Bush came into office we were on track to completely eliminate the publicly held debt by 2009. Now, by 2009, we expect--and I am using OMB's own figures--to pay the equivalent of about $1,000 in interest on the debt for every man, women and child in America. It is weakening America. It is making us less able to meet the needs of our growing elderly population and our children.

Under a new CBO document released today, we see projections of deficits of more than $300 billion every year if we follow President Bush's policies, and we see deficits above the current levels a decade from now. Going into the future, with the retirement of the baby boomers, things only get worse.

What we are seeing is a growing debt tax. The interest on those bonds must always be paid, paid by our children and grandchildren.

One solution, I think we must consider is hard and fast paygo rules that were in effect through the 1990s that helped us to reduce the deficits. That is, simply, that if we lower taxes we need to pay for it by raising other taxes or cut spending. If we increase mandatory spending, we must cut other spending or raise taxes.

If we do not have serious, enforceable paygo rules, given the abuse of the conference process we have just seen, we should not allow future Finance Committee measures to go to conference. The only exception should be where clear public agreements are reached that a conference report will be fully paid for.