Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, this evening I want to take a few minutes of the time of the Senate to pay tribute to and to say a public goodbye to Mary McGrory, a friend of long standing to me and my wife Ruth and to our daughters Amy and Jenny. Mary passed away last evening here in Washington after having had a long illness.

Mary McGrory was a wonderful, warm, witty, and wise woman. Her death is, indeed, a passing of an era when the written word could carry meaning, when the written word could actually move people, when people looked to a Mary McGrory to give them the kind of inspiration they needed or to give them the in-depth analysis they needed to understand what was going on in Washington.

Her writing had such a clarity about it that once I read what Mary McGrory had written, I found myself many times saying: Yes, that's how I feel. Why didn't I think of that? Why couldn't I have said it that way?

I think of her passing as the passing of an era, like there is a time and a place and a circumstance that happens in the passing of time when certain individuals do something, make something, or leave an imprint in some way that you know will never happen again, such as the passing of a Michelangelo, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Shakespeare, a time and a place for Shakespeare and his magnificent writings never to be seen again. I think of that when I think of Mary McGrory because we may never see her kind of writing ever again.

Oh, with the advent of computers, sound bites, trying to get everything into 30 seconds or trying to make everything so simple that it is reduced to meaningless jabber, it may be that we will never see her kind of writing again.

Mary McGrory could make words dance. She could make sentences sing and turn paragraphs into symphonies. But it was not just her writing alone that endeared so many of us to Mary. It was just Mary, such a unique individual. It is hard to describe sometimes. I guess moments like this when you know you will never have her company again, you think about the pleasant times you spent together.

Of course, I always think about Mary's annual St. Patrick's Day bash--party, if you will--at her home on Macomb Street. I didn't make every one. Sometimes I was in Iowa on the weekend. It was always on the weekend before or after St. Patrick's Day. Usually before. But I made several of them.

They were wonderful affairs. There was, of course, music, a lot of singing, and, of course, Mary McGrory's lasagna which was always kind of odd. One would think that maybe on St. Paddy's Day one would have corned beef and cabbage, an Irish dish or Irish stew, something like that, but we always had lasagna. Mary McGrory was very proud of her Irish heritage, but I always thought she felt a bit confused. While she was Irish to the core, she loved Italy and loved going to Italy, and she loved having lasagna on St. Patrick's Day.

She one time said, and I am paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact words: It is too bad the Irish could not have been born in Italy. As I said, she was sometimes, I think, a little confused whether she wanted to be more Irish or maybe more Italian, but she was Irish to the core.

Her St. Patrick's Day events were wonderful occasions. There is that wonderful song about when Irish eyes are smiling, and something about the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing. When Mary McGrory's eyes lit up and when she laughed, she was all Irish and you really could hear angels sing.

We always had music and songs. Everyone had to perform at Mary's St. Patrick's Day parties. Everyone had to perform. She always had people of talent there to play the piano or some musical instrument. Since I am musically challenged, and she knew this, I was always commissioned to sing. My song always thereafter was Mother McCree. I always substituted the words ``Mary McGrory'' for ``Mother McCree'' which delighted her to no end.

Mary McGrory was a clever woman. She knew how to cajole, how to sometimes even plead, ask, prod, and act terribly helpless knowing that someone would pick up her suitcase, carry her belongings, get something for her, and when that happened, and you would retrieve something or carry something for her, do something for Mary, when you finished doing it, there was this twinkle in her eye and you knew you had been had one more time. She was very clever.

Mary and my wife Ruth became fast and strong friends over gardening.

I enjoyed gardening, although I am not much of a gardener myself. I would sit and listen to them talk about gardening, or Mary would come out to the house and my wife would take her around or ask her about this flower or that flower. Of course, we would go to her place and they would go out and look at Mary's flowers and what was wrong here and what should be planted there. I always felt my job was to go down to Connecticut Avenue and pick up something to eat and come back at the appropriate time when they had finished talking about gardening.

Much has been written and much will be written about Mary's background and where she went to school and what got her into journalism, but I think more should be said about the imprint she left on so many people. She was not only a warm, wise, witty, and clever woman, she was an inspirational woman to so many people.

After you had been with Mary, or after maybe reading one of her columns, you always felt better. You felt better about the world around you. You felt better about things maybe you thought were going wrong. Maybe you were mad about something the Government was doing in one administration or another. You read her column and you felt no matter how bad things were, it was going to be okay; we were going to get through it; right would prevail; justice would triumph and people of good will would take over.

There is an old folk song with this refrain: Passing through, passing through, sometimes happy, sometimes blue, glad that I ran into you. Tell the people that you saw me passing through.

Well, Mary, you passed through and in your passing through you inspired us; you made us think; you prodded us to question, and always, to the end, gave us hope and courage that life will be better for those who come after us.

So we say goodbye to Mary McGrory, thanks for passing through, thanks for touching each of us so profoundly as you did when you passed through.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, might I inquire as to how much time I would have to speak on the floor now?

Mr. President, last week the Labor, Health, and Human Services Subcommittee of Appropriations held a hearing in my State of Iowa. I wanted to learn more about the medical and financial ramifications of chronic conditions such as obesity, tobacco use, mental illness, and lack of physical activity. I come away from that hearing and other hearings that we have had in Washington, and others we have had going back probably over a dozen years, even more convinced that we need to refocus our health care system toward wellness and prevention. I am convinced now more than ever that we really do not have a health care system in America. We have a ``sick care system'' in America. I will say more about that in a moment.

At the hearing and at others before that, we heard the familiar litany of grim statistics associated with these chronic conditions. But we also heard from Iowans, students and adults, who are taking matters into their own hands, doing innovative things to promote wellness and healthier living in their communities.

In the United States we spend in excess of $1.5 trillion a year on health care. Fully 75 percent of that total is accounted for by chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes. What these diseases have in common is, in so many cases, they are preventable. In the United States we fail to make an up-front investment in prevention, so we end up spending hundreds of billions on hospitalization, treatment, and disability.

This is foolish, and clearly is unsustainable. We need a new paradigm in American health care. We need a prevention paradigm. As I said, right now we have a sick care system in the United States. If you get sick, one way or another you get care, either through health insurance or through Medicaid, Medicare, or something like that. Of course we know we have 43 million uninsured who do not have access, even, many times, to our sick care system. But what we need is a genuine health care system, a system focused on wellness and prevention, a system focused on keeping you healthy in the first place.

Consider the cost of major chronic diseases, diseases that in many cases are preventable. The annual costs for cardiovascular disease are about $352 billion; for obesity, $117 billion a year; for diabetes, $132 billion a year; for smoking, more than $75 billion a year; and for untreated mental illness, $79 billion a year. Indeed, major depression is the leading cause of disability in the United States.

If I bought a new car and I drove that car off the lot and I never maintained it, I never checked the oil, I never changed the oil, I never checked the transmission fluid, never got it tuned up, I just drove it, you would think I was crazy, not to mention grossly irresponsible. The commonsense principle with an automobile is: Pay a little now, keep it maintained, or you are going to pay a whole lot later for a new engine.

It is the same with our national health priorities. Right now our system is in a downward spiral. We are not paying a little now so we are paying a whole lot later. If we are serious about bringing down health care costs, we must get people access to preventive care. We must give people the tools they need to stay healthy. We must build incentives throughout the entire society, incentives for prevention and wellness. This will take a sustained commitment from government, schools, communities, employers, health officials, and of course the food industries. But this can have a huge payoff for individuals and families, for employers, for society, and for the economy at large.

One condition in particular is fast becoming our Nation's leading public health threat: being overweight and obesity. Several weeks ago a new study came out that confirms what many of us already know. Obesity, unhealthy diets, and lack of physical activity have made us a nation at risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a study that determined that poor diet and lack of physical activity are now the second leading cause of death in the United States, contributing to at least 400,000 deaths annually.

I think this chart shows the startling statistics very clearly. This is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual cause of death in the United States in 1990 from tobacco was 400,000. By the year 2000 the cause of death by tobacco was 435,000. But look at this. Poor diet and physical inactivity, in 1990: 300,000 deaths; by 2000, 400,000 deaths. So while the cause of death from tobacco use had gone up less than 10 percent in 10 years, the cause of death from poor diet, obesity, and physical inactivity went up 33 percent in one decade. It is now the second leading cause of death in the United States.

One of the authors of this study was the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Julie Gerberding. The media and the American public increasingly recognize this growing crisis. Seemingly every day I open the paper and read about the public health impacts of chronic disease. A recent cover of the Economist magazine hit the nail on the head. If we don't act now and act aggressively, the progress we have made in promoting health and fighting disease, all of the public health gains we have made in the last couple of hundred years, will be totally wiped away.

I thought this illustration from the Economist showed the progress of humankind as we became more and more like modern man--and then here we are, descending into obesity and overweight. That was the cover of the Economist last December entitled ``The Shape of Things to Come.'' Of course, here he is, drinking his supersized soft drink, walking down the road to chronic illness and disease.

In 1990, 1997, and 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a State-by-State obesity prevalence study. I am going to show three charts which are startling in how they depict what is happening just in the last 14 years in the United States. The first chart I will put up is obesity in the United States among adults in 1990. In 1990, the dark shaded areas here are obesity rates between 10 percent and 14 percent. The light blue areas are States where we have less than 10 percent incidence of obesity. For the white States we just didn't have data. But as you can see, in 1990 no State had a prevalence of obesity over 15 percent--not one. All of the States were less than 15 percent or less than 10 percent. That was in 1990.

Now let's take a look at 1997. By 1997, here we have some orange States coming up now which we didn't see in 1990. The orange States mean that the prevalence of obesity is over 15 percent. Now we have these States with a prevalence of obesity over 15 percent. Remember all those blue States that were less than 15 percent? It is now 15 to 20 percent. So all of the dark areas are now over 15 percent. And only a few States here are from 10 percent to 15 percent, but no State has an incidence of less than 10 percent now. That is just in less than 7 years. That is 1997. Keep in mind now we have these three States, and the majority of the States now are between 15 and 20 percent.

Let's take a look at what happened in 2002. Here is the real shocker. Look at all the orange States. These are the States now where the incidence of obesity is 20 percent to 24 percent. Now we have three red States where the incidence is over 25 percent. We have a few States here below 20 percent. Now we have no States less than 15 percent.

If I could have the first chart of 1990, I want to show the comparison. Here we have in 1990 no States with an incidence of obesity of over 15 percent. By 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three States are over 25 percent, the vast majority of States are over 20 percent, and the rest of the country over 15 percent. In 1990, we didn't have one State that fit the pattern we see in the United States now. That is what has happened in 14 years. Now we see even some States exceeding 25 percent. We see the trend.

Actually, the story is even worse than this. The data on these charts is based on self-reported weight, which tends to be significantly understated, as you might imagine. As catastrophic as this chart of 2002 appears, it actually understates the extent of the obesity epidemic. If you use reported data rather than self-reported, obesity rates are much higher. In fact, using this scientific approach, we learned that almost two out of every three Americans are either overweight or obese. Think about that. Right now, only one in three Americans is within their weight range for their height.

Obesity takes a terrible toll on a person's health. It can lead to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and numerous other chronic diseases. Incredibly, obesity causes more chronic conditions than either smoking or alcoholism.

This is what this chart shows. This is again from the Centers for Disease Control. We have a higher incidence of the number of chronic conditions associated with health behavior. The No. 1 incidence of chronic condition is aging. The older you get, the more liable you are to get a chronic condition. Aging from 30 to 50 has the highest incidence of a chronic disease. Second only to that is obesity, and it is almost the same. Being obese is like aging from 30 to 50. If you are 30 years old and you are obese, you might as well be 50 years old in terms of susceptibility to a chronic disease.

Here is smoking. It is down here quite a ways. Just being overweight is down here. Drinking, past smoker, and obesity. In fact, right now obesity is, as I said, the second largest killer of people in this country.

Thus far, Congress has not been willing to adequately take on the challenge of obesity and the challenge of encouraging healthy choices and lifestyles. It is time for the Senate to lead in a new direction by encouraging wellness and prevention.

To that end, I am currently working with others on several initiatives to create a healthier workplace and a healthier environment for our Senate family. In March, I sent a letter to the Senate Rules Committee to request that signs be placed next to elevator buttons and at the entrances to stairwells and at the base of escalators encouraging people to use the stairs. Just the other day, I heard someone on the elevator say they wanted to use the stairs, but they didn't because they couldn't find them.

The other day I happened to visit Secretary Thompson down at HHS. They have signs right there by the elevators and the doors encouraging people to take a flight of stairs rather than riding the elevator.

I have also been in discussions with the Senate cafeteria on the matter of food labeling. To their credit, they already have food labeling available on their Web site. But I would like to see the Senate cafeteria go the next step by including nutrition information on menus or handouts that customers can pick up when they enter one of the Senate restaurants. If Ruby Tuesday's can do it and put all of the information

on their menus, why can't we in the Senate cafeterias?

I have also developed what I called the ``Harkin Health Challenge'' to promote wellness for my staff here and back in Iowa. This is a comprehensive workplace wellness program that addresses stress management, nutrition, physical, wellness screenings, and, of course, smoking cessation.

Some believe there should be no role for the government in curbing obesity. Some believe this is a matter of personal responsibility. I don't agree. We can take steps to encourage and facilitate healthy lifestyles. We can make sure ordinary Americans have the tools and information they need to make informed healthy choices and be more responsible for their own health.

We are about to pass a highway bill of approximately $300 billion for highways, roads, and bridges. We tried to get an attachment to that bill to promote bike paths along our highways. I saw a figure the other day about how much less young people ride bikes today than they did 15 or 20 years ago. Ask yourselves as you drive down one of our busy thoroughfares or streets: Would you ride a bike down there during rush hour traffic? Of course not. You look to the side and there are no bike paths. There are no walkways for people to have access. We have streets now that do not even have sidewalks by them, let alone a bike path. I think when we invest taxpayers' money to build highways, roads, and bridges, we ought to mandate that, as a part of that, there ought to be an access for bike and/or walking paths next to those streets.

I have already introduced legislation that would require menu labeling in chain restaurants, but I can already hear objections that this will be too expensive. It will be a burden on businesses, for example, to put all of their information on menus. I mentioned that Ruby Tuesday's already announced plans to implement food labeling in its restaurants. Clearly they don't consider this to be too expensive. They made a hardheaded corporate decision that it was both doable and good for business.

I remember the same objections which were raised when Congress first passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act to require labeling of retail foods and packaged foods. But lo and behold, years later, the sky has not fallen. To the contrary, consumers like labeling. When they go into the grocery store, they pick up boxes, cans, and packages and they read the nutrition labeling. They rely on those labels to help them make informed healthy choices.

Consumers say they want nutrition information available when they make menu selections at restaurants. Yet, while they have access to excellent nutrition information at supermarkets when they go to buy packaged foods, when they go to a restaurant, consumers have to resort to guessing and estimating.

What about our special responsibility to the children? The food industry spends more than $12 billion a year bombarding our kids with advertisements through television, movies, magazines, and the Internet. I don't have to tell you that they are not advertising broccoli and apples and orange juice. The majority of these ads are for candy and fast food--foods that are higher in sugar, salt, fat, and calories.

Today, specialty marketing firms have made a science out of influencing children to buy a particular candy or to go to a particular fast-food restaurant. Yes, parents have a responsibility to shield their kids from harmful influences of all kinds. But what about corporate responsibility? What about corporate ethics? What about our Government's responsibility to make sure our children have a healthy environment?

Children, especially those under 8 years of age, don't always have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. The number of TV ads that kids see over the course of their childhood has doubled from 20,000 to 40,000; meanwhile, the percentage of children who are overweight or obese has also doubled. The percentage of overweight or obese teens has, in fact, tripled. The United States right now has a higher percentage of overweight teens than any other industrialized country.

We also need to take steps to reduce the junk food that our children are getting at schools. The GAO found that 43 percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools have vending machines, school snack bars, or other food sources outside of the school lunch and school breakfast programs. We know that when kids have access to vending machines and snack bars and a la carte lines at school, bad things happen. Kids' consumption of milk, fruits, and vegetables goes down, and their intake of sodas and fried foods skyrockets. This is one more area where Congress has a responsibility to intervene to protect our children.

I had this brought home to me the other day when it was pointed out that a 20-ounce size soft drink--Coke, Pepsi, all the soft drinks--has the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar. I ask: As a parent, would you send your kid to school during the day and say, Here are 15 teaspoons of sugar, please eat this. No parent would want to do that. Yet when that kid goes to school and buys a 20-ounce soft drink, that is exactly what they are getting. And they will probably have two of them during the day. That is 30 teaspoons of sugar in 1 day.

Go home, take 15 teaspoons of sugar, put it in a cup and see if you would like to eat that. Or do 30 teaspoons, the equivalent of what a lot of kids are drinking today. No wonder obesity among teenagers has tripled. No wonder our teenagers in this country are more obese than teenagers in any other industrialized country in the world.

We have a responsibility; parents have a responsibility; schools have a responsibility. But it is Congress that funds the school lunch and school breakfast programs and the nutrition programs. This year we will reauthorize the nutrition program, school lunches and school breakfasts. We will reauthorize that this year.

What will we do as Senators and Congressmen to help promote healthier eating and healthier lifestyle choices among our kids in school? Do we have a responsibility? You bet we do. I hope we will step up to that responsibility when the nutrition reauthorization bill comes through the committee to the Senate.

In the coming months, I will be announcing a package of bills and initiatives focusing on wellness, focusing on preventing chronic diseases. The emphasis will be on nutrition, physical activity, mental health, tobacco cessation. It will stress prevention, consumer awareness, responsible marketing practices, and wellness programs in schools, communities, and the workplace.

We face an obesity epidemic. We face an explosion of largely preventable chronic diseases. We face health care costs and health insurance premiums that are skyrocketing. All of these things are related. We have to meet our responsibilities. We as Senators must set a good example: Walk more, use the stairs more, have information on all of our menus in all of our Senate cafeterias so we know exactly how much trans fats, calories, sodium we are getting with each meal ordered, and also to do what we can in our official capacity to help support wellness and to support healthy lifestyles among our kids in school and at daycare centers. That is where it starts. If we can get the kids and teach them healthier lifestyles, healthier eating choices early on, chances are that is what they will follow when they grow older.

It seems to me the golden rule of holes is this: When you are in a hole and you find it is getting up to your shoulders or up to your head, stop digging. We have dug one whopper of a hole in health care in this country by failing to emphasize prevention and wellness. It is time to stop digging. It is time to focus our attention on healthy lifestyle, prevention, wellness, providing incentives for businesses.

I hear about tax incentives for business to do this, and that we need more tax incentives for businesses to provide wellness and prevention programs at the worksite for people who work in small and large businesses. We need to provide the kind of support for our public schools to provide better choices for our kids, also.

I thank the indulgence of the Chair. I wanted to take this time to talk about this and to alert my fellow Senators that I will be introducing a package of wellness bills and I have been working with the majority leader, a doctor, Senator Frist, on some of

these items, especially about getting signs posted about trying to use the stairs more often, about getting Senators wearing pedometers and doing more walking, for us to set a good example for the rest of the country.

I am hopeful we can also use the nutrition reauthorization bill this year to make some changes in how we approach how kids eat and what they eat at school and what is available to them in terms of vending machines, soft drinks, sugar, salt, that type of thing, and to get them eating healthier at an early age.

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

Mr. President, I understand I am recognized for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I say to my friend from New Jersey I will not take that long.

Mr. President, I want to talk about the news this morning about the issuance of the proposed final rules on overtime. Before I do that, on a more happy note, I note that an Iowan, of whom we are all very proud, Cheri Blauwet, from Larchwood, IA, crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday in 1 hour 39 minutes 53 seconds to win first place on the

women's side in the Wheelchair Division of the Boston Marathon.

Last year she finished second. This has added to her long list of accomplishments as a wheelchair competitor in races. She is a three- time Paralympic medalist. Again, she won the Boston Marathon yesterday.

As I said, Cheri Blauwet, whom I know well, is from Larchwood, IA. She is now a medical student at the Stanford University Medical School. We are all proud of Cheri and wish her the best as she continues to win more and more marathons.

Mr. President, the news reports of this morning are that the Department of Labor will shortly publish the final regulations regarding changing the overtime rules that have been in existence since 1938.

Frankly, given its past track record, the Bush administration is simply not trustworthy on this issue. This administration has gone out of its way, time and again, to undercut working families' rights to time-and-a-half pay for overtime.

Now, it is possible that the administration has had an election-year conversion on overtime, but I hope you will pardon me if I remain a little skeptical. I will remain skeptical until I see the regulations and have a chance to analyze them and read the fine print. I have asked the Department of Labor to provide me with a copy of the regulations this morning. I am eager to see them as soon as possible. As of a few minutes ago, they still have not been posted on the Department of Labor's Web site.

Let's be clear about one thing: The draft regulations that came out a year ago were a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules and a frontal assault on the 40-hour workweek. Millions of American workers were slated to lose their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay as a result of those proposed regulations.

Since passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, overtime rights and the 40-hour workweek have been sacrosanct, respected by Presidents of both parties--until now.

This administration rammed through these new regulations a year ago without a single public hearing. It has dismissed public opinion polls showing Americans' overwhelming opposition to changes in overtime law. The White House brushed aside the will of the Senate and the House, both of which voted in support of my amendment last year to block implementation of these new rules.

There is no question the proposed new rules will hurt job creation. If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will simply push their current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With 9 million Americans currently out of work, why give employers yet another disincentive to hire more workers?

Again, while a limited number of low-income workers technically were given the right to overtime pay--and that base was increased--at the same time, the Department of Labor also gave employers advice on how to avoid paying overtime compensation to the lowest paid workers. So the administration gave on the one hand and took it away with the other.

The Department of Labor is poised to issue its final regulations. But I can assure you, this will not be the final act. We will be back. I look forward to reading them. We will look over the fine print, as I said.

For example, last year when the proposed regulations came out, it took some months before everything came out about how bad these proposed regulations really were. So we are going to go over these proposed regulations and take a look at them.

But I know the administration yesterday and in a press report today said this is a good deal; they are going to expand the eligibility for overtime pay; this is going to include more people. Well, we heard the same kind of ``happy talk'' a year ago when they first put out the proposed regs. However, public exposure showed the real facts of the proposed regulations. Up to 8 million Americans were going to lose their right to overtime pay. Again, it is just one in a series of assaults on working Americans by this administration.

Again, if you look at this chart, the red line is what the White House forecast for job creation for 2002. The blue line is what they forecast in 2003. The purple line is what they forecast for 2004. Here is where we really are down here with the green line. So this is ``happy talk.'' The administration says, oh, they are going to forecast more jobs. It is all going to get better. But the facts are not so. Job creation has stayed stagnant. So when you hear all this ``happy talk'' about how these final new regulations on overtime are going to be so wonderful for everyone working in America, take a look at this chart. It is just more ``happy talk.''

We will look them over. But unless this administration has done almost a complete revision of what they proposed, we are going to still be back on the Senate floor asking that these rules not go into effect, and we will have a vote on that.

Finally, I think an article by Bob Herbert in the New York Times of April 5 says it all: ``We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?'' What Mr. Herbert points out in his article is that an awful lot of American workers have been had, fleeced and taken to the cleaners, as he said. He said:

. . . there has been no net increase in formal payroll

employment since the end of the recession. We have lost jobs.

He said: What happened to all the money from the strong economic growth? Well, he said:

The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, ``but instead

were used to boost profits . . . or increase C.E.O.

compensation.''

Well, it is the first time on record where the bulk of the increase has gone to corporate profits and not to labor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this article of April 5 be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, again, we will look over these proposed regulations. But nothing the administration has done in the last couple, 3 years with regard to job creation, with regard to treating labor fairly in terms of getting its fair share of any economic gains, or the proposed regulations last year that would have literally cut off at the knees American workers' right to overtime pay changes my mind; I remain skeptical that this administration really wants to help work workers get overtime pay.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last fall, Central College kicked off a year of festivities to celebrate its sesquicentennial. Founded in 1853 by a determined group of immigrants from the Netherlands, Central College has grown in size and stature during the last century and a half, but remains grounded in the tradition and faith of its founders. This weekend, the celebration continues with the Happy Birthday Dear Central Gala.

Currently affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, the college was originally created through the efforts of the Baptists of Iowa. The Iowa Baptist Society worked to establish an ``institution of liberal and sacred learning'' in the early days of our State. An enterprising, open-minded Pella resident, Dominie Scholte, believed in the

power of higher education and campaigned to bring the new institution to his community. Scholte, a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, sealed the deal for Pella by donating land and money to the new school.

The new Central University of Iowa opened its doors on October 8, 1854, with 37 students in a rented buildlng on Washington Street. From a humble beginning, Central College has grown into a state-of-the-art liberal arts college with 1,700 students. The college offers degrees in 36 disciplines and is well known for its ambitious study abroad program.

The study abroad program began in the summer of 1962 when a group of Central students ventured to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The program also sent students to Paris, France the following summer and was expanded to a full year of study in 1965. The popularity of the program and the number of foreign locations has increased and now includes England, Wales, Austria, Spain, Holland, China and Kenya. Today, approximately half of Central students spend at least one semester aboard.

Central College alumni, students, staff and Pella residents have participated in a variety of special events over the past several months. The sesquicentennial celebration has showcased the strong liberal arts tradition of the college with special performances, lectures, exhibits and social events. As the college community comes together for the Happy Birthday Dear Central Gala, I offer my heartfelt congratulations on 150 years of excellence in the education and my best wishes to Central College for the next 150 years.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss my thoughts before this very difficult vote on the Pension Funding Equity Act conference bill. The bill arrives at a reasonable immediate solution to a very complicated problem.

However, I do have concerns about the larger problem of pension funding rules in the US, and I have grave concerns about the treatment of multi-employer plans in this conference bill.

I supported this bill when it passed the Senate in January by a vote of 86-9. That bill provided a reasonable approach to funding single- employer plans--a 2 year corporate bond rate. I was especially satisfied with the 2-year amortization of losses for multi-employer plans.

When the White House wanted this provision struck in conference, an agreement was arrived at by conferees to cover the 20 percent of multi- employer plans most in need. The White House, however, held up these important negotiations and insisted on virtually eliminating multi- employer relief.

Clearly, immediate funding relief is needed. We have known that this was coming for well over a year. With the drop in the 30-year treasury rate corresponding directly with declining stock values, pension plans have become drastically underfunded. This situation doesn't just hurt the bottom line right now, it hurts the defined benefit system as a whole and jeopardizes the retirement security of millions of workers.

I have been concerned as this bill has evolved that it represents a band-aid approach that addresses immediate funding obligations without fixing the larger problem. There are perverse incentives that actually prevent employers from keeping money in the pension plan when times are good, so that we end up having to bail them out when times are bad. We need to put serious effort in the coming years to work out defined benefit pension plan funding in general.

I don't believe we take these long-term problems seriously enough. Two years ago, when we came up with the initial readjustment of the 30- year treasury rate, it was my hope that we would address these problems before the issue came up again. But, here we are--2 years later and no farther ahead. I am afraid that unless we focus on this issue this Congress, we'll be looking at simply extending this rate again in 2 years without any understanding of the impact of this rate on defined benefit pensions, on the economy, or on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.

I am sure that it comes as no shock to my colleagues that the stock market actually falls from time to time. Sometimes, by more than 25 percent. Yet, we allow companies to transfer funds out of their pensions when times are good, leaving only a 25 percent cushion for when times are bad. We offer little in the way of incentives to pad plans in the good years to carry them through the bad years.

Many advocates characterize this funding climate as the ``perfect storm.'' I believe that it's a storm that could have been more easily weathered had companies been prepared for a rainy day. However, the onus is reasonably on Congress to establish tax and accounting policies that create positive incentives to do so. I think we should consider increasing the funding level required prior to a section 420 transfer, at the same time, increasing the amount of money that can be kept on hand receiving favorable tax treatment.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to find a more precise solution to this delicate balance between making defined benefit pensions attractive for companies, while protecting workers. I share with my colleagues the goal of ensuring the viability of the defined benefit system.

Having said that, there is no other answer for the immediate problems facing us than to provide the funding relief provided in this measure. I think we absolutely need to do something now for the companies we can help. We need to help the airlines, we need to help the machinists. Eighty percent of this bill makes sense and is the right policy for the moment. Unfortunately, the White House has chosen to play politics with the income security of workers in multi-employer plans, and of the businesses that participate in those plans. There is no good reason for dropping these plans from the agreement, except to cause pain to certain working families. I plan to work with Senator Kennedy and other colleagues very soon to repair the harm done in this portion of the bill to members of the construction trades, the Teamsters, IBEW, Plumbers and Steamfitters, Sheet Metal, Finishing Contractors, Operating Engineers, Bricklayers and other participants in multi- employer plans.

I am supporting this conference bill to help enact its truly necessary provisions--the vast bulk of the legislation which will keep other plans from freezing in the face of the current funding situation. But I will not drop my concern for those who are harmed.

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

Mr. President, the management of National Public Radio has announced that Bob Edwards, the host of ``Morning Edition'' for a quarter century, will be removed from the show at the end of this month. NPR executive vice president Ken Stern explained that getting rid of Edwards was part of ``a natural evolution.'' He says that it was ``a programming decision about the right sound.''

``Natural evolution?'' The ``right sound?'' I have no idea what these words mean. In fact, I have yet to talk to anyone who knows what those words mean.

If NPR's management wants to remove a star broadcaster, enormously popular all across America, you would think they would offer a clear, coherent explanation. But, no, the best we are offered is that they want a different ``sound.''

Well, this is not very sound on the part of NPR management. Think about it: Bob Edwards has been the host of ``Morning Edition'' for 25 years. He has won every radio broadcasting award imaginable, including the 1999 Peabody Award. He has built ``Morning Edition'' into the No. 1 morning show on radio in the United States, with almost 13 million loyal listeners. He has played a major role in doubling NPR's audience over the last 10 years.

Now, I didn't go to Harvard Business School. I don't have the business and management credentials of the top executives at NPR. But I have enough sense to heed the oldest and wisest rule of management: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you are fortunate to have the best in the business, a broadcaster who is the heart and soul of the No. 1 morning show on radio, then, for heaven's sake, you don't remove him. You don't dump him. You raise his pay.

Characteristically, Bob Edwards was gracious and restrained. He said, ``I would love to have stayed with `Morning Edition.' But it is not my candy store.''

No, ``Morning Edition'' is not Bob Edwards' candy store. Nor is National Public Radio the candy store of Mr. Stern, Jay Kernis, Kevin klose, and the other NPR executives apparently responsible for this decision.

I would remind them that NPR's middle name is ``Public.'' National Public Radio and its affiliate stations depend on taxpayer dollars and contributions from ordinary Americans. NPR depends on the public's support. And I have yet to talk to one person, one member of Congress, one listerner of public radio who supports this decision.

Americans are speaking up and expressing their unhappiness. NPR has been deluged with telephone calls and e-mails. And I certainly encourage people to call their local NPR station or go to the NPR website at www.npr.org, where you can register your dissatisfaction. Urge NPR's executives to reconsider this unwise decision. Urge them to listen to their listeners.

Let me be clear, I do not advocate or support any kind of boycott of NPR. It would be a misguided and counterproductive for people to withhold contributions to their local NPR station. After all, National Public Radio is a national treasure. It is the gold standard of radio news and journalism. And we should do nothing that undermines it.

But we have a right to speak up. And we need to speak up. So by all means, send an e-mail to NPR. The address of the ombudsman at NPR is simple enough: [email protected]. In addition, call your local NPR affiliate. Urge them to request NPR to reconsider its decision to remove Bob Edwards from ``Morning Edition.'' And if NPR digs in its heels, urge your local affiliate to discontinue ``Morning Edition'' and find alternative programming for the morning time slot.

Obviously, I am personally a big fan of Bob Edwards. I listen to him virtually every morning, and have for as long as I can remember. He is a straight-shooter, smart, erudite, witty, and calm. He doesn't shout or rant. In other words, he adds class to radio news reporting and interviews.

So I urge executives at National Public Radio to reconsider their decision to remove Bob Edwards from ``Morning Edition.'' And I urge Americans who share my respect for Bob Edwards to make their voices heard.

Mr. President, how much time is left?

I understand that the Senate will then resume consideration of the motion to proceed.

Mr. President, I am going to ask unanimous consent, since I had 15 minutes--I am going to ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 5 minutes as in morning business and then the Senate would then interrupt my presentation to return to the motion to proceed and that I be recognized to finish my statement then.

We will just go to the motion to proceed. That is fine.

Which one?

I thank the Chair and I thank my colleague from North Dakota. We might as well go on with the motion to proceed. I can make my presentation then, too.

Mr. President, there is no secret that there is a great frustration in the American workplace today. There is a great anxiety among American working families. You can sense it, you can feel it, you can hear it no matter where you go in America, whether it is in Iowa or Wyoming or New York or wherever it is. Something is happening out there. You get it all the time from people who have been working, maybe have lost their jobs, maybe they took another job, they are not making ends meet. They see the economy doing much better. They read this in the paper all the time--the economy is getting better, tax cuts are going into effect, foreign car sales, the big cars, the Mercedes and all those, are up. We see all the higher end items being purchased and sold.

For example, over the recent Christmas holidays, the Sharper Image, I believe, which sells high end electronics stuff, and Neiman Marcus had great sales. But Wal-Mart was down.

There is a great sense among American working people that something is not quite right with what is going on in this country. Maybe most Americans don't have degrees in economics; they haven't studied it, but they sense something is going wrong.

In his recent book, ``Wealth and Democracy,'' Kevin Phillips pointed out that there is a trend that different countries go through at various stages of their growth. One of those stages is where more and more of the output of a country accumulates to capital and less and less accumulates to labor, to the working people.

It is with great interest I note that, after I had read Kevin Phillips' book, yesterday in the New York Times an article by Bob Herbert brought it home. The title of the piece was ``We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?'' As Mr. Herbert wrote yesterday in the New York Times:

It's like running on a treadmill that keeps increasing its

speed. You have to go faster and faster just to stay in

place. Or, as a factory worker said many years ago, ``You can

work 'til you drop dead, but you won't get ahead.''

American workers have been remarkably productive in recent

years, but they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits

of this increased productivity. While the economy, as

measured by the gross domestic product, has been strong for

some time now, ordinary workers have gotten little more than

the back of the hand from employers who have pocketed an

unprecedented share of the case from this burst of economic

growth.

What is happening is nothing short of historic. The

American workers' share of the increase in national income

since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the

lowest on record. Employers took the money and ran. This is

extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it,

which tells you something about the hold that corporate

interests have on the national conversation.

The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very

revealing title of a new study from the Center of Labor

Market Studies at Northeastern University: ``The

Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the

Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation--Gainers and Losers

from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003.''

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. I did not understand I was under a time limit. I had asked to continue to proceed after morning business on the motion to proceed, but I didn't recognize there was a time limit there. I did not ask consent for 10 minutes.

I think the record will show that I asked for consent to continue to speak in morning business, to yield the floor, to then return to the motion to proceed, and that I be recognized to continue to speak on the motion to proceed. That does not have a time limit.

I understand that. I thank the Chair.

Sure.

I do not mean to take more than 15 minutes. I might go into 18 or 20 minutes. I wasn't going to take a long time. I wanted to finish my statement without being constrained with the 15 minutes I had under morning business. That is why I went on the motion to proceed. I will speak on that for an additional few minutes. But I will take whatever time I can now. If I am cut off, I will be back.

Mr. President, Mr. Herbert further said:

Andrew Sum, the center's director and lead author of the

study, said: ``This is the first time we've ever had a case

where two years into a recovery, corporate profits got a

larger share of the growth of national income than labor did.

Normally labor gets about 65 percent and corporate profits

about 15 to 18 percent. This time profits got 41 percent and

labor [meaning all forms of employee compensation, including

wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes

paid by employers] got 38 percent.''

The study said: ``In no other recovery from a post-World

War II recession did corporate profits ever account for as

much as 20 percent of the growth in national income. And

at no time did corporate profits ever increase by a greater

amount than labor compensation.''

In other words, an awful lot American workers have been

had. Fleeced. Taken to the cleaners.

The recent productivity gains have been widely

acknowledged. But workers are not being compensated for this.

During the past two years, increases in wages and benefits

have been very weak, or nonexistent. And despite the growth

of jobs in March that had the Bush crowd dancing in the White

House halls last Friday, there has been no net increase in

formal payroll employment since the end of the recession. We

have lost jobs. There are fewer payroll jobs now than there

were when the recession ended in November 2001.

So if employers were not hiring workers, and if they were

miserly when it came to increases in wages and benefits for

existing employees, what happened to all the money from the

strong economic growth?

The study is very clear on this point. The bulk of the

gains did not go to workers, ``but instead were used to boost

profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation.''

This is a radical transformation of the way the bounty of

this country has been distributed since World War II. Workers

are being treated more and more like patrons in a rigged

casino. They can't win.

Corporate profits go up. The stock market goes up.

Executive compensation skyrockets. But workers, for the most

part, remain on the treadmill.

The study found that the amount of income growth devoured

by corporate profits in this recovery is ``historically

unprecedented,'' as is the ``low share . . . accruing to the

nation's workers in the form of labor compensation.''

I thought Mr. Herbert wound up his statement quite adequately when he said:

I have to laugh when I hear conservatives complaining about

class warfare. They know this terrain better than anyone.

They launched the war. They're waging it. And they're winning

it.

One of the reasons they are winning it is because workers no longer have organized labor. Organized labor has been weakened to the point where workers are told: Take what you got or go get something else or we will take your job and we will take it to China or we will take your job and move it to India or South Africa or some other place. You have no recourse as a worker.

I have tried for years in this Senate and in this Congress to try to get a bill passed called the striker replacement bill which says if you are on strike you can't be replaced with a replacement worker. That one thing alone has broken the back of organized labor to the point where workers no longer have the power to withhold their labor, the only tool with which they have to bargain.

So here we have more and more of the earnings from increased productivity going to capital and less going to workers. What do we do about it? We say now we are going to take away your time-and-a-half overtime. That is the next assault on the time-and-a-half overtime. For our workers who are working more and more in this country and working longer hours than any other industrialized country, we are going to say to workers we will take away your right to overtime.

That issue was brought up on the bill that was before us earlier. That was my amendment, to say these proposed rules by the Department of Labor that would deny up to 8 million Americans their right to time- and-a-half overtime could not go into effect. Now we find that not only is the administration trying to push through new rules to eliminate overtime pay; at the same time, many employers are illegally pushing the same thing. They are doctoring their employee time records in order to avoid paying overtime. This practice is shaving time. It is easy to do, it is hard to detect, and is done in a matter of a few keystrokes.

According to the New York Times article on Sunday by Steven Greenhouse:

Workers have sued Family Dollar and Pep Boys, the auto

parts and repair chain, accusing managers of deleting hours.

A jury found the Taco Bell managers in Oregon had routinely

erased workers' time. More than a dozen former Wal-Mart

employees said in interviews and depositions that managers

had altered time records and shortchanged employees.

I ask unanimous consent a copy of the New York Times article be printed in the Record.

I also ask unanimous consent that yesterday's article by Bob Herbert be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the article went on to point out that Kim Danner used to manage a Family Dollar store with eight employees in Minneapolis. She says:

. . . her district manager urged her to erase hours so she

never paid overtime or exceeded her allotted payroll.

She said her employees could not do all of the unloading, stocking, cashier work, and pricing in the hours allotted, so she altered clock- out times and inserted half-hour lunch breaks, even when employees worked through lunch. She says:

I felt horrible that I was doing this. I felt pressured,

absolutely. If I refused, I would have been terminated

easily.

Instead of issuing new rules to officially eliminate overtime for millions of Americans, the Department of Labor ought to be cracking down on these unscrupulous companies. The Department of Labor ought to be enforcing the overtime laws so American workers are not gouged and cheated out of their hard-earned pay.

Now we see clearly where the increased productivity is coming from. American workers are working longer hours, they are working through their lunchtimes, but their hours are being shaved. Their time is taken away from them. Sometimes they clock out and they are made to come back to work. Rather than making an example of these companies and going after them, the Department of Labor is coming around the other side and saying, well, that may be illegal, but what we are going to do is make it legal to take away the overtime rights of up to 8 million workers. In fact, even in the proposed rules, the Department offered employers helpful tips on how to avoid paying overtime to the lowest paid workers, the very workers, of course, supposedly helped by the new rules.

For example, the Department of Labor, in their own writing, suggests cutting a worker's hourly wage so any new overtime payments will not result in a net gain to the employee. The Department of Labor also recommends raising a worker's salary slightly to meet the threshold at which eligibility for time-and-a-half pay ends.

Again, American workers face a double-barreled threat to their overtime rights. They face a threat from unscrupulous employers who deny overtime illegally and now they face a threat from the Department of Labor which wants to deny overtime legally. But the result is the same: an assault on the American worker's right to time-and-a-half pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours a week.

We are going to continue to try to offer this amendment and to try to get a vote on it. In Rollcall today there is an article saying ``Will `Obstructionist' Label Stick?'' Evidently, our majority leader last week said: Obstruction, obstruction, obstruction--every bill. That is according to Majority Leader Frist, at least according to the article in Rollcall.

I have the greatest respect for Senator Frist. He knows that. I like him as a friend. But quite frankly, that will not wash. The first ruling on FSC was in 2002.

Mr. President, I will continue my remarks later today.

Mr. President, before us right now is a motion to proceed to what is called the medical malpractice bill, for short. In fact, that is what it is--to change the tort system in America to take away the right of any person who has been injured to seek redress in court for noneconomic damages and also for punitive damages. It is called the medical malpractice bill. We have had it here a number of times before. It is not going anywhere because it is not a true compromise. There may be a compromise that could be worked out on this issue, but this bill represents a one-sided view. It is not going anywhere. The Republicans know this. They know it is not going anywhere, but they brought it up.

I thought the FSC bill--the JOBS bill--which they brought up earlier was a must-do bill. There was a jobs bill. They are going to put people to work. Yet it languishes somewhere.

In the meantime, we brought up the TANF bill. Now we brought up the medical malpractice bill.

It makes you wonder what the priorities are of the majority party in the Senate. There is a lot of talk about who is obstructing what around here. But I think it is clear to any casual observer that the majority is basically kind of filibustering their own bills, obstructing their own bills. And sometimes, as in the case of the gun bill that was up before us a few weeks ago, the Republican majority even voted against its own bill. But it chews up a lot of time. It takes up a lot of time on the Senate floor, but nothing goes anywhere.

That is what we are facing again with this so-called medical malpractice bill, or the motion to proceed to it. The majority party knows it is not going anywhere. So they want to talk about medical malpractice. There has been a few speakers on the floor today on the Republican side talking about medical malpractice.

I think what the country wants us to focus on and wants to hear us debate and discuss and vote on is the economic malpractice of the Bush administration. That is right, the economic malpractice of the Bush administration.

I mean by that the fact we have had a loss in jobs in this country over the last 3 years unlike anything we have seen in 70 years.

This chart shows that not since the Great Depression have we had a loss of jobs for any President during his first term--some more than others, but we have always had a positive indication of job creation.

It is interesting to note that most of these took place under Democratic administrations--Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower had a little bit but still had some; Kennedy, we had good job creation; Johnson, very healthy job creation; even under Nixon, pretty good; Ford, back down; Carter; even under Reagan; Bush, it is down; Clinton, up a little bit more. All positive, Republicans and Democrats, until this President, the only President in 70 years to have negative job growth.

That is why I call it the economic malpractice of the Bush administration--the only President in all of those years to preside over negative job growth in our country.

Not only are we not discussing on the Senate floor these issues pertaining to workers, but we are precluded by the majority from even offering amendments and getting a vote on them.

I tried earlier on the so-called FSC bill that everyone talks about, the so-called JOBS bill they had here, to offer my amendment to disallow the promulgation of proposed rules that would change the overtime laws in our country.

Last year, to refresh everyone's memory, about this time--a year and a month ago, as a matter of fact--the Department of Labor came out with a proposed change in overtime rules.

The Fair Labor Standards Act has been in existence since 1938. We have had changes in basic overtime laws. But in every single case, when it has been done, it has always been done with consultation with Congress after open hearings with the public having input.

These proposed rules came like a bolt of lightning in the midnight hour. No public hearings were held. Not one public hearing was held on these proposed changes in overtime rules. No hearings were held by Congress. No witnesses were called to talk about what these proposed changes might mean in the workplace. They just put the rules out there.

Now the Department of Labor is about to issue its permanent change in regulations.

That is why last summer this Senator offered an amendment on the Senate floor to disallow these rules from going into effect. The Senate adopted my amendment on a bipartisan vote. We had quite a few Republicans vote for it. The House of Representatives then voted to instruct its conferees to go along with the Senate on that provision. That was on the appropriations bill. The White House came in and got it knocked out. Then we were forced to vote on the appropriations bill without that provision in it.

I said at that time in January I was going to find any vehicle I could to try to revisit this issue because the Congress had spoken; that we did not want these rules to go into effect which would take away the rights of up to 8 million American workers to get paid time- and-a-half overtime if they worked over 40 hours a week.

The first bill I could do this on was the FSC bill, which was brought out by the Finance Committee to the floor. They termed it a jobs bill.

I pointed out then, and I point out again today: How can you have a meaningful jobs bill on the floor of the Senate if we are not going to speak about it, debate it, and vote on whether we are going to take away the rights of people in this country to get paid time and a half for over 40 hours a week? Yet that is what happened. I offered the amendment. The majority will not permit a vote on it. They tried all kinds of parliamentary maneuvers, tactics, recommits, all kinds of funny parliamentary games just to keep us from voting on it.

I don't know what they are so afraid of. Are they afraid members of the President's own party might vote to say those rules shouldn't go into effect? They did last summer. I compliment them for it. That is courage. I know the President and his Department of Labor want to drastically change our overtime laws. They want to do it through the regulatory process--not through the legislative process.

Quite frankly, the Bush administration thought they could put these new rules into effect quietly with no hearings before anyone knew what was going on. But they were wrong. They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

The fact is, public outrage over the proposed new overtime rules has gotten stronger and stronger as Americans learn more about the details. At this point, the administration has about as much credibility on the issue of overtime as they do on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In other words, the administration has zero credibility on this issue.

The Department of Labor claims it simply wants to give employers clearer guidance as to who is eligible for overtime pay. But ordinary Americans are not buying this happy talk. They know the administration is proposing a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules. American workers know these new rules will strip them of their right to fair compensation. So we will continue to press for a vote on this and on a couple of other issues.

Last week on the TANF bill, the temporary assistance to needy families, Senator Boxer of California offered the amendment to raise the minimum wage, now at $5.15 an hour, to $7 an hour over 2 years. The majority will not vote on that, either. So that bill has gone by the wayside, too, because they do not want to face the music and

vote on whether we increase the minimum wage. Mr. President, $5.15 is the minimum wage now--mostly women, heads of households with children.

I point out again, since 1967, if the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation, the minimum wage would be over $8 an hour right now. Yet we are only asking for $7 an hour.

I wonder what the hue and cry would be in this country if we had indexed CEO compensation the way we indexed the minimum wage increases since 1968. We would probably be better off in this country, to tell you the truth.

So we tried to bring up a minimum wage increase. We tried to stop these rules on overtime from going into effect to strip people of their overtime. We have tried to increase unemployment compensation, to get more unemployment compensation to workers whose unemployment benefits had run out. There are 1.1 million workers this last week who lost their unemployment benefits because of time running out. We want to extend that. The majority will not let us.

The administration is all for an economic stimulus when it involves tax breaks for people making more than $200,000 a year. When it comes to economic stimulus involving raising the income of people at the bottom of the economic ladder, whether by increasing the minimum wage or creating jobs directly, which is what the highway bill will do, the President is even threatening to veto the highway bill.

We passed a bipartisan highway bill in the Senate. The House passed something substantially less. The President has threatened to veto that. Actually, the House bill for my own State of Iowa would mean 12,000 jobs less than that passed by the Senate. Yet the President has threatened to veto even the House version.

There is a frustration among American workers right now. They know they are working harder. They know they are working longer. But something is wrong. They are not getting adequate compensation. As this chart indicates American workers are working longer hours per year than workers in any other industrialized country. In fact, since 1979, every single industrial country has reduced its work hours except one, the United States. In Japan, since 1979, they have gone down 286 hours a year. Germany has gone down 489 hours per year. Even Canada went down 31 hours a year. Australia went down 44 hours per year. But the United States went up an average of 32 hours per year. We are the only country increasing the number of hours worked per year.

Not only that, as we found out earlier--I quoted the New York Times Sunday article by Steven Greenhouse--unscrupulous businesses in America are cheating people out of their overtime. I may not have mentioned a guy by the name of Drew Pooters, retired member of the Air Force military police. He went to work in a Toys ``R'' Us store in Albuquerque. He was stunned by what he found his manager doing.

. . . his manager was sitting at a computer and altering

workers' time records, secretly deleting hours to cut their

paychecks and fatten his store's bottom line.

``I told him, `That's not exactly legal,' '' said Mr.

Pooters, who ran the electronics department. Then he out-and-

out threatened me to not talk about what I saw.

Mr. Pooters quit. Then he got a job managing a Family Dollar store, one of 5,100 in that discount chain. Top managers there ordered him not to let employee total hours exceed a certain amount each week. One day he said the district manager told him to use a trick to cut payroll, delete some hours electronically.

Experts on compensation say the illegal doctoring of hourly employees' time records is far more prevalent than most Americans believe. The practice, called ``shaving time,'' is easily done and hard to detect with the simple matter of computer keystrokes.

I earlier had this article printed in the Record.

The article revealed in Toys ``R'' Us, in Dollar Stores, Taco Bell, Pep Boys, Wal-Mart employees, et cetera, workers are basically being cheated out of their fair compensation. Many are being cheated out of overtime.

Here is what the Wall Street Journal article said about this:

While employees like overtime pay, a lot of employers

don't. Violations are so common that the Employer Policy

Foundation, an employer-supported think tank in Washington,

estimates that workers would get an additional $199 billion a

year if the rules were observed. That estimate is considered

conservative by many researchers.

American workers are being cheated out of over $199 billion a year by unscrupulous employers.

Here we have the Department of Labor legally--trying to do it legally--taking away workers' rights to overtime pay. The Steven Greenhouse article in the New York Times showed on Sunday there is a rampage in this country of illegal activities taking away workers' rights to their adequate pay. Why isn't the Department of Labor focusing its time and energy in going after these unscrupulous employers, making an example of them so others will not be encouraged to do the same thing rather than trying to legally take away workers' rights to overtime?

That is why I say this Bush administration is committing economic malpractice.

You do not have to be from Iowa to know that you do not fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots. That is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus directly to the roots. There are obvious ways to do this. One, instead of tax cuts for the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people. Secondly, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the pockets of hard- working people who, by necessity, have to spend every penny. Three, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed, again, who, by necessity, are spending every dollar they receive. Four, you pass a highway bill that is as generous as possible.

We need to rebuild our Interstate Highway System in this country. Take a drive on any one of them. They are beat up. They are disintegrating. They are a patchwork here and there. They are causing delays in trucking. They are beating up our cars and taking away from the productivity of America. Our bridges need to be replaced. Sewer and water systems need to be upgraded.

These are good jobs. These are jobs that employ Americans. When you think about construction jobs in this country, that is what I call insourcing jobs rather than outsourcing jobs because, you see, if you are building a bridge or a highway, a sewer and water system, or maybe a new school, when you think about it, most of the products are made in America. Think about it. The cement is made here. The rebars, the rerods, and all that for construction are made here. When you put up a building, you put up wallboard. That is made here--and electrical wiring, electrical conduits, electrical switches, electrical lights, plumbing. When you think about all that goes into construction, most-- the vast majority--of the products are made in this country.

Guess what else. All of the labor done is here in America. You do not outsource those jobs. Those are American jobs. What do you get out of it? You put a lot of people to work. You improve the productivity of America. You get a lasting benefit of things that last for a long time, and that helps us be a more productive and vibrant Nation.

It seems we can spend billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild those countries. We need to invest money like that here in America. For every $1 billion spent on these projects, we sustain or create more than 47,000 jobs for American workers. That is the direction we ought to be going, rather than more tax cuts for those who make over $200,000 a year.

I do not have it with me, but I saw a cartoon in the paper today that I thought said it all. There was a gasoline pump, with gas that cost about $1.90 a gallon. This American worker had obviously just filled his tank, and he was up at the window paying. In back of the window sat what looked like one of the Saudi Arabian princes saying, ``Thank you,'' and taking our American worker's money. The caption below it was: There goes the tax cut.

How many American workers, who are told by this President they got a tax cut for this or that, are now seeing it go to pay for imported oil, to pay for the increased price of gasoline because this administration will not take their friends in Saudi Arabia to task to keep these prices low, will not let some of the oil out of our Strategic Oil Reserve

right now to counter these increased prices? So we find whatever little money the worker may have gotten in a tax cut going to pay for the increased price of gasoline. Again, economic malpractice, economic malpractice by this administration.

So we can go to the medical malpractice bill. Quite frankly, again, we are focusing on medical malpractice and whether someone can sue for damages, and this and that. While there may be a reasonable compromise on this issue at some point, this bill is not it. But I wonder--I truly wonder--how many of the 43 million Americans who have no health insurance coverage whatsoever would think this is the major health care issue that we ought to be debating and voting on in the Senate Chamber. They are not interested in medical malpractice or suing. They just need health insurance. They need coverage for themselves and their families. Here we are talking about lawsuits, when what we ought to be talking about is how we are going to get health care coverage to people in America.

The other side can talk all they want about obstructionism and who is holding up what. We have said, time and time again, as I said on my overtime amendment--I am not obstructing anything. I will take a time agreement. We have already had enough discussion. In 15 minutes we can have a vote. In 15 minutes we can have a vote on the minimum wage. In 15 minutes we can have a vote on extending unemployment compensation.

Who is obstructing what around here? It is simply that the majority side does not want to have these votes under the time-honored tradition of the Senate to debate, discuss, and vote. It seems as if the majority side now wants to turn the Senate into just another House of Representatives--come out with a closed rule. I know that sounds kind of funny. What does that mean? What it means is the majority party brings out a bill. You cannot amend it. You cannot change it. You either have to vote for it the way it is or not vote. If they have the majority votes, they want to pass it.

That is not the way to run the Senate. It is not the way to debate and vote in the Senate. The way to do it is to have our debates, have our votes, and move on. Sometimes you win; sometimes you do not. But, to me, that is what the American people want us to do.

We are doing nothing in the Senate right now--nothing. The reason we are doing nothing is because the other side will not let us vote. So here we sit with bill after bill that is brought out, trying to game the system so we cannot have votes on these meaningful issues.

They say: Well, these are just political games. No, they are not political. When you are talking about taking away a worker's right to overtime pay; when you are talking about increasing the minimum wage for a single mother with kids to feed, who is being cheated out of her overtime pay; when you are talking about a family whose unemployment benefits have run out, and they do not know where to turn, it is not political. It is just focusing on the real needs of America--our working families--and not focusing on giving yet more tax breaks to those who already have too much in our society.

Mr. President, I will close my remarks--I see others want the floor-- to say we will be back. I do not like to quote too much the present Governor of California but: I'll be back.

Time and time again, I will be back to offer this overtime amendment, until we have a vote on it, and until we can express ourselves on these onerous rules that the Department of Labor wants to foist on the American worker.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was listening with some interest to the unanimous consent proposed by the distinguished majority leader, and I thought for a minute I was back in the House of Representatives. I remember a time in the Senate when we actually introduced amendments, debated and voted on them. I thought that was what the Senate was supposed to do.

Over in the House, where I served for 10 years, they have a Rules Committee. The Rules Committee reports a bill out on the floor, and a lot of times they give them closed rules, which means you cannot add amendments. That is what I just heard propounded here. If, in fact, they get cloture, it is a closed rule. That is basically what it is.

I wish we can get back to a Senate where we debate and vote on amendments.

Mr. President, I want to take a little bit of time this afternoon to talk about the economy. We are all encouraged by the essentially positive job growth reported for the month of March. However, the same report noted that the overall rate of unemployment increased in March. Strange. There are major questions surrounding the quality of the jobs that were added. For instance, there was no increase whatsoever in manufacturing jobs. Indeed, for 43 consecutive months we have either lost manufacturing jobs or have seen zero job growth.

The good news on jobs appears to be largely concentrated in the services sector--jobs that generally don't pay well and many with no benefits. Meanwhile, long-term job losses have consequences.

On the 1st of April, 1.1 million jobless Americans lost their unemployment benefits. They expired because the President and the Republicans in Congress are adamantly refusing any extension of unemployment benefits. In no other comparable period on record have there been so many unemployed people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits literally overnight.

Think about it. Despite the scarcity of jobs, despite the fact the United States is currently in the longest period of secular job decline in our history, despite the fact that nearly 3 million private sector jobs have been lost in the last 3 years, despite the fact that more than 9 million Americans cannot find work, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers have dropped out of the labor market, despite all of these harsh realities, the President and his allies have slammed the door on any extension of unemployment benefits. I guess we can say: So much for compassionate conservatism.

In my State of Iowa, more than 8,000 people lost their unemployment benefits in the first 3 months of this year. Nearly 9,000 more Iowans will lose their benefits in the next 3 months if Congress doesn't act. This is a cruel, unnecessary blow to these unfortunate people. It is a blow to Iowa's economy, because extending unemployment benefits would have provided more than $100 million in economic stimulus in my State alone.

When it comes to economic stimulus, this administration is all for economic stimulus when it involves tax breaks for people making more than $200,000 a year, but it is adamantly opposed to economic stimulus when it involves people who have lost their jobs and have lost their unemployment benefits, or when it involves directly creating jobs.

What I mean by that is, the President now is threatening to veto the highway bill and, for my State alone, the more modest House highway bill would cost 12,000 jobs compared to what we passed in the Senate. The President is threatening even to veto that bill.

We are not talking just about statistics; we are talking about real people here, people who are hurting. One of those is Larry O'Brien of Cedar Falls, IA. He is 60 years old. He lost his job as a machinist when the Doerfer Engineering plant closed in October. He says he is not optimistic about his future when his unemployment runs out in 2 weeks. He already says he is not optimistic at all about getting a job. He has begun taking high blood pressure and stomach medicine every other day instead of daily. When the medicine is gone, he is afraid he won't be able to get any more. He is worried he will have to take a low-paying job with no benefits just to make ends meet--at age 60.

Larry O'Brien and millions like him are hurting. They are in real distress.

Their plight is being ignored in Washington. It is being ignored by the very people whose economic policies are largely responsible for their plight.

Let's be clear. Despite the uptick in jobs reported last Friday, America has been stuck in a jobless recovery for several years now. It is not an accident. Since the Bush administration took office, nearly 3 million private sector jobs have been lost, including nearly 1 in every 6 in manufacturing.

This administration presided over the largest job loss of any administration since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress remain stubbornly committed to policies that are making this problem worse. They continue to pursue a whole range of policies that are retarding job creation, driving down wages, and threatening the economic security of the American people.

In January, the White House issued its annual economic report--signed by the President--explaining why we should be celebrating the ``offshoring'' of U.S. jobs. The President's top economic adviser assured us of the outsourcing of high-end white-collar jobs to Asia is ``a plus for the economy in the long run.''

The President's report praises the virtue of a level playing field for goods and services, arguing that ``when a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically.'' But do we really want American workers competing on a ``level playing field,'' head to head with factory workers in China making 20 cents an hour or software engineers in India making $10,000 a year? Would this not precipitate a race to the bottom with nations competing to slash salaries and benefits in order to ``win jobs''?

We are a free market economy. Corporations have the right to move jobs overseas. However, it is wrong for the White House to be a cheerleader for this unfortunate trend, and it is wrong for our Tax Code to reward companies that outsource jobs. That is why Senator Wyden, Senator Durbin, and I are sponsoring an amendment to eliminate these tax subsidies.

Our amendment, which would go on the so-called FSC bill, would eliminate the ability of companies to deduct, depreciate, or amortize costs involved in shifting jobs overseas. This would include such costs as training of replacement workers, transporting property overseas, the sale of property in the United States that is closed, administrative costs, and acquiring facilities overseas.

Our amendment would also eliminate the ability of companies to not pay taxes on the profits from outsourced activity by keeping those funds overseas that were generated by outsourced workers.

As I said, the Harkin-Wyden-Durbin amendment would not prohibit companies from outsourcing jobs--I do not think constitutionally we could do that--but it would stop encouraging and rewarding them under the Tax Code. This is the least we owe to America's workers.

Outsourcing is not the only thing hurting job creation and suppressing wages. The Department of Labor is forging ahead with its radical rewrite of the rules governing who is eligible for time-and-a- half overtime pay. Up to 8 million American workers could be stripped of their right to overtime pay. American workers fear, rightfully so, that under these new rules they would be obliged to work 45, 50, 55, 60 hours a week with zero additional compensation.

Moreover, these proposed new overtime rules are all but guaranteed to hurt job creation. It is just basic logic. If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will push current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With 9 million Americans currently out of work, why give employers yet another disincentive to hire new workers?

So let me review. This administration sees the outsourcing of jobs as a plus. It is determined to eliminate the right to overtime pay for millions of American workers. It refuses to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. There is one more thing. We saw last week on the Senate floor that the President and his allies remain adamantly opposed to any increase in the minimum wage which has been frozen at $5.15 for years. This is not a living wage. It is a poverty wage.

A minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earns $10,700 a year. That is $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.

It has been 7 years since we last voted to raise the minimum wage. We have raised our salaries three or four times since then. So it is time we raised it to a minimum of $7 an hour. Yet, once again, my friends on the other side of the aisle are refusing to allow a vote on a key issue related to jobs. We debated the Boxer amendment to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families bill, regarding minimum wage, but as with my overtime amendment and as with the amendment to extend unemployment benefits, we were denied the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote.

In fact, the Republicans on the other side would rather sacrifice the underlying bills, the FSC and TANF bills, rather than allow a vote on these issues so crucial to working Americans.

It seems the administration has one approach: tax cuts, mainly for those who are wealthy. But something is missing. Most working Americans are not participating in this so-called recovery. The rich are getting richer. Tax cuts are working for the privileged few, but more and more Americans live in fear of losing their jobs, their health benefits, and their retirement benefits.

The truth is, we cannot build a sustainable recovery by exporting jobs, driving down wages, and making Americans work longer hours without compensation. Moreover, such a recovery is not desirable. A true recovery must include all Americans, and it can only be built on a foundation of good jobs with good wages in America, not overseas. It must be built on a minimum wage that is a living wage, not a poverty wage. It must be built on a foundation that preserves our time-honored right: time and a half pay for overtime over 40 hours a week.

So it is time for the Senate to get to work on the people's business. As my friends on the other side of the aisle like to say, the majority leader determines what bills will come before the Senate, but according to the rules of the Senate and according to our longstanding tradition, it is Senators who decide what amendments are to be proposed to those bills. It is Senators, in open, free, and fair votes, who decide how those bills are shaped on the Senate floor.

All I can say is, Senators on this side of the aisle have proposed amendments in good faith that we believe are necessary for job creation and economic growth in America. On all three--the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, and the overtime issue--the Republican leadership on that side refuses to allow a straight up-or-down vote. This is not just unfair to us on this side, this is unfair to America.

My friends on the other side seem desperate to change the subject. Instead of talking about jobs, they want to talk about guns, abortion, or gay marriage, whatever social wedge issue seems handy at the time. In fact, they are so eager to change the subject, they are so eager to prevent votes on overtime, minimum wage, and extending unemployment benefits, that it seems they are willing to sacrifice or at least substantially delay the underlying bills.

We need to get to work in the Senate. Our economy remains fragile and hesitant. We have millions of Larry O'Briens in this country who are desperate, who need help, who want to go back to work. We need to address outsourcing. We need to boost the minimum wage. We need to extend unemployment benefits and we need to assure working Americans that they are not going to lose their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay.

Strong, timely acts on these issues will give a much needed boost to the economy, and it will ensure that Friday's generally positive economic report was not just another one-time fluke.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wanted to take a moment today to speak about the American Legacy Foundation. This foundation celebrated its 5th anniversary this past month, and I wanted to express my continued support for the foundation in the future.

This foundation, formed under the master settlement agreement reached with big tobacco, has worked tirelessly over the last 5 years on its mission to build a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit.

We know that tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Forty-seven million Americans smoke, and 400,000 people a year die because of it. Smokers have a one in three chance of dying from smoking-related conditions.

Even more alarming, every day, 3,000 children under age 18 start smoking, of which 1,000 will ultimately die of smoking related diseases. Almost 90 percent of adult smokers started using tobacco at or before age 18; the average youth smoker begins at age 13 and becomes a daily smoker by age 14\1/2\.

The American Legacy Foundation, through its highly effective public

awareness campaign truth' alone, has helped reduce youth smoking rates to a 28-year historic low. I have heard from young people in my home state of Iowa who say that seeing the truth' television and magazine advertisements have affected their decisions about tobacco. The foundation also has a number of successful cessation programs in operation across the country.

The American Legacy Foundation clearly still has work to do. Educating American young people about the harmful effects of smoking is not merely a 5-year long task. Yet this year, the foundation received its last payment from the master settlement agreement. Without increased resources, the important work of the American Legacy Foundation cannot continue.

I ask that my colleagues to join with me in recognizing the achievements of the American Legacy Foundation and in pledging our support for the important work they do educating our nation about the dangers of tobacco use.