Floor Statements

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: We are under a cloture motion that has been filed on this amendment?

Since I have been recognized and I have the floor, is there a time limit on how long this Senator can speak?

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, first I ask unanimous consent I be added as a cosponsor on this amendment to raise the minimum wage. I strongly support the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and Senator Kennedy.

Let's be clear at the outset. The current level of $5.15 an hour as a minimum wage is a poverty wage--actually less than a poverty wage, which I will show in a minute. It is a wage that does not respect the dignity of work, including the most humble work in this country. That is wrong. I say the President of the United States ought to be ashamed of himself, this Senate ought to be ashamed of itself, the House of Representatives ought to be ashamed of itself, that we would let the minimum wage get as low as it has gotten, forcing more and more families into poverty and on food stamps.

I just heard my colleague from Iowa saying, rather than raising the minimum wage, we ought to be putting more into food stamps. What kind of a solution is that? I thought we were going to give people the dignity of work. We ought to get them off welfare and get them into jobs. Now I hear some people say the best thing is giving them more food stamps. I am all for food stamps. It has been a real blessing to our society. But that is sort of a welfare answer. It sounds as if we turned the clock back and we go back on welfare again.

The economic policies of this administration are simply not working as advertised. It is still sputtering. The recovery remains fragile. The President has assured us again and again that tax cuts overwhelmingly for the wealthy will stimulate the economy and create more jobs and get this country moving. Over the last 3 years we have had nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts, but we have lost more than 2 million jobs. The President's economic policies, including tax cuts, outsourcing of jobs, not increasing the minimum wage, refusing to extend unemployment benefits, are not working. Trickle-down economics simply, again, is not working.

You don't have to be from Iowa or Nebraska to know you don't fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots, and that is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus to the roots, not to the treetops.

There are obvious ways to do this. No. 1, instead of the tax cuts for the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people who need the money and who will actually spend the extra money here in America.

No. 2, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the pockets of people who will spend the money because they have to, out of necessity.

No. 3, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed. Today, March 31, a record 1.1 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits--this quarter. This is unfair. It is indecent. It is foolish, because it will create more drag on the economy. Again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not extending the unemployment benefits to all these people who have now lost them.

I strongly support the Boxer amendment as one step we need to take in addressing the fact we have too many people out of work, and that people on the bottom of the economic ladder are falling further and further behind.

No one in America who works for a living should live in poverty. Yet for the millions of hard-working Americans with minimum wage jobs, that is exactly what is happening. In fact, if you look at what has happened over the last few years, you can see if this is the poverty line right here for a family of three, going back here to 1971, 1974, 1977, the minimum wage was pretty darned close to the poverty line. Then during the Reagan years it started coming down. During the Clinton years it went up a little bit. Now we are back down again. Look at this gap compared to where we were before, or even before 1970 when the minimum wage was actually above the poverty line. When you look at that, it is no wonder our society has problems. No wonder we are being torn apart in this country. We have more people working, yet falling further below the poverty line because we don't increase the minimum wage.

The other side filed a cloture motion, I understand. I asked the Presiding Officer. He said a cloture motion has been filed on this amendment. This bill we have before us is TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The other side has filed a cloture motion, saying an increase in the minimum wage is not germane, it is not pertinent to the TANF bill, to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They are saying it is not pertinent because if the cloture motion is successful tomorrow, this amendment will fall. So they say it is not pertinent.

Why don't they tell that to Secretary Thompson? Here is what he said regarding TANF reauthorization:

This administration recognizes that the only way to escape

poverty is through work and that is why we have made work and

jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece

of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance

for Needy Families Program.

It is the centerpiece. And they say it is not pertinent. Somebody better get hold of Mr. Thompson. You better start getting your story straight. He says it is the centerpiece.

If minimum wage is the centerpiece for TANF reauthorization, then we ought to be about discussing how much of a minimum wage--not whether it is pertinent but how much.

Bear in mind again, I heard some talk about teenagers. I keep hearing about teenagers making minimum wage. They are living at home, they have this and that. Teenagers, teenagers, teenagers, I hear that all the time. But you have to look at the facts. Facts are stubborn. Sometimes facts get in the way of stories. The fact is, 7 million workers would directly benefit from a minimum wage increase; 35 percent are the sole earners in their families--35 percent. Maybe some of them are teenagers. Maybe they are married and out of school, maybe they are 18, 19 years old. Mr. President, 61 percent of those affected are women and one-third of them are raising children; 15 percent are African American and 19 percent are Hispanic Americans.

What is this all about teenagers? This is not about teenagers. This is about Americans who go to work every day. As I said, they do some of the most humble work in America.

I think I heard my colleague from Iowa saying something about if you raise the minimum wage, it is bad for business because people will shop elsewhere because they will raise the price of goods and people still have choices. We are not putting the minimum wage on one company and not another, one employer and not another. This is across the board. So if all of them go up, then there is still competition out there. Maybe through the competitive urges of the free marketplace they will find other places to cut costs, be more productive. But don't take it out of the hides of those who work for a minimum wage.

That is what we are basically saying. That is what Congress is saying. That is what this President is saying, when we don't increase the minimum wage. They are saying to businesses all over America: If you want to cut costs, if you want to increase your profit margins, we will help you by keeping your minimum wage as low as possible.

If we raise the minimum wage, maybe businesses will find some other ways of cutting costs and being more productive.

I also heard that if you increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, it is a drain on business. It doesn't help the family that much. There would be more help with food stamps, for example. An increase to $7 an hour for full-time, year-round workers would add about $3,800 to their income.

Maybe for Senators and Congressmen who make $150,000 a year--I assume most of us have stocks and different investments--when you look at the net worth of the Members of the House and the Senate, what is it? Is it 500 times more than the average American? Maybe $3,800 doesn't seem like a lot to people here, but to a family on minimum wage, for a low- income family, $3,800 would be more than a year of groceries. It would pay 9 months of rent, a year and a half of heat or electricity, or full tuition at a community college for one of the kids. That is nothing to scoff at.

People say, Well, it will impact business. Again, facts are stubborn things. History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has never had an impact on jobs, employment, or inflation. In the 4 years after the last minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced the strongest growth in over three decades. Nearly 11 million new jobs were added at a pace of 218,000 per month. There were 6 million new service industry jobs, including more than 112 million retail jobs of which nearly 600,000 were restaurant jobs.

This was after we raised the minimum wage last time. It sure made a bad impact on this country, didn't it?

It is long overdue. We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it fall so low.

Now we are being told we can't have a vote on the TANF bill because it is not germane. That is exactly what Secretary Thompson said.

Work and jobs that will pay at least a minimum wage is the

centerpiece to the reauthorization proposal of TANF.

Those are Secretary Thompson's words.

We also have to keep in mind that a great majority--61 percent, as I have pointed out--who would be affected are single parents, mostly women with children. Unfortunately, the kind of jobs that women who leave welfare find are minimum wage jobs, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain families and meet the demands of raising children. For these people, survival is a daily goal. They work hard enough. Their hours are long enough to make ends meet, but only barely.

What this means is they don't have time for their families. They cannot participate in activities with their children, especially school-related activities that most of us take for granted.

I would like to do a survey in the Senate of everyone here. I wonder how many Senators know someone or a family living on the minimum wage. I wonder how many Senators would actually have some friends who are families on the minimum wage. I bet you would not find very many who would actually know anyone. They read about them, but I mean actually know them or maybe have them as neighbors or friends and meet with them and talk with them about how they are living on a minimum wage. That would be an interesting survey to take.

For these people, as I said, survival is their daily goal.

Bear in mind the real value of the minimum wage has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years. Here is the real value of the minimum wage shown earlier by Senators Kennedy and Boxer. We have to keep showing them because these facts are stubborn things. People are working the same.

Back in 1968, in real 2003 dollars, the minimum wage was $8.50.

In other words, if we had indexed to inflation the minimum wage in 1968, it would be $8.50 an hour. That is just indexed for inflation. But if you look at where people were back in 1968, look where we are now. The people who were working back in 1968 at minimum wage jobs are the same people, the same kind of people, the same class of people who are working today. They are doing the same kind of jobs. Why was that job worth $8.50 in 1968, but that same job today is only worth $4.98 an hour?

You might say the minimum wage is $5.15. But if we don't increase it by the end of this year, the real value of that will be $4.98 an hour.

Why? It is the same job, the same work. Why was it worth $8.50 an hour then, and it is only worth $4.98 an hour now? It is because we haven't done our job about keeping up the minimum wage. We keep pushing people down.

That is why there is unrest in America. That is why low-wage people are saying there is nothing in the system for them because it is so skewed against them. They work hard and never can get ahead because the minimum wage is stuck.

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

Again, here is the poverty line. The red line is for a family of three. Here is where we were in the past. Before 1970, the minimum wage was above the poverty line. Now look at the gap. Look how far down it is.

Poll after poll after poll taken of low-income Americans show that they don't believe the system is fair. You can read the polls. Look at what happened to them. You add on to that they don't have health insurance. You add on to that they do not have any retirement benefits. You add on to that their pay goes for high heating bills this last winter. You add on to that many of these people earning the minimum wage are paying one-third to one-half of their paychecks just for rent.

How many of us pay one-half of our paycheck for rent?

As I said earlier, the minimum wage--I stand corrected. It is not a poverty wage; it is less than a subsistence wage. And we can't ignore it any longer.

Three million more Americans are in poverty today than when President Bush first took office.

I am not saying that to blame it all on the President. I am not going to say that. Of course not. I am just saying it is a fact.

Today, more than 34 million people live in poverty including 12 million children.

I am not blaming it on the President, or anybody else. I am just stating a fact.

Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has doubled since the late 1970s--from about 1.3 million to 2.6 million in 2002. Poverty has doubled since the late 1970s.

There is a lot of blame to go around. Rather than blaming anybody, let's fix it. The best way to fix it is to raise the minimum wage. That is at the heart of this problem.

An increase to $7 an hour would affect nearly 7 million workers.

I just saw the figures as to what it would mean in Iowa. I have the figures here as to an increase in the minimum wage in Iowa. If we were to increase this minimum wage, there would be 104,000 workers in my State of Iowa who would be making more money--104,000 workers. Do you know what? They will spend that money. They will spend that money because they have to spend it, because their rent is high, their heating bills are high; if they have any health insurance at all, that is skyrocketing. They are paying for food, paying for the kids. That money gets spun around in the economy. It would be a shock of stimulus for the economy.

I am proud to cosponsor the amendment. To say it again, at the heart of this problem is the fact we are just not paying people for the work they do. Why is it people who do the dirtiest kind of work, the humblest kind of work--the kind of people you walk by, and you never notice them; you go into a restaurant, you go in to eat, and then walk out, and you do not notice them; a lot of times you go into stores, they are there, but you kind of walk by them--well, it is time we noticed them. They deserve to be noticed. They are Americans, and they are working hard. They are trying to raise their families and do the right thing, and what do we say to them? Forget it.

I almost hear echoes from some of the comments I have heard on this floor. I have heard echoes there should not even be a minimum wage. Now, I did not hear anybody say that. I said I sort of heard echoes of that: Well, if we set the minimum wage at $7, why can't we set it at $70 an hour or $700 an hour or $7,000 an hour or something like that? Well, that is sort of scoffing at these poor people who are working because it is almost like saying maybe we should not have a minimum wage at all.

There are a lot of countries that do not have the minimum wage. I suppose we could be like them. I always tell people: When it comes to things like having a minimum wage, just keep in mind, there is always someone poorer than you, more desperate than you, lower down on the ladder than you, who will work for less than you are going to work for because they need it. There is always someone poorer, more needy, more desperate.

Is that what our society says: The law of the jungle? Turn the clock backward and just have a welfare system? As Senator Kennedy said, rather than taxing the American people to provide food stamps and welfare benefits and things like that, it is better to raise the minimum wage and give them a decent living wage rather than putting them on welfare. That is bad for the people on welfare.

I supported welfare to work. I believe in it. But in order to move people from welfare to work, they need some health care benefits; they need some childcare. Fortunately, we passed the Snowe amendment. We need an increase in the minimum wage, and they need housing. But keeping them at this less-than-subsistence wage will not do it.

I have almost heard some echoes, also, that this is some kind of a partisan issue. I went back to look at this issue. Senator Kennedy pointed this out, and I have a chart to point it out again. I think it is very instructive. Since Franklin Roosevelt, when we got our first minimum wage in 1938, almost every President has raised the minimum wage, including Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. Interestingly, Reagan and this President Bush are both missing. But it has been bipartisan in the past. We have had Republican Presidents who have raised the minimum wage, as well as Democratic Presidents. So I do not think it is a partisan issue at all. It is an economic issue. And it is how you view the value of work.

Now if you believe people ought to go out there and work for whatever an employer wants to pay you, and if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else and try to get something better. We have tried that before in our country. We see that happening in other Third World countries because there is always some poor sucker worse off than you who will work for less than you will.

I really do not think that is the kind of country we want to become. Work should have honor and dignity, and the minimum wage today is not giving dignity to the work these people do.

I will close. I see the Senator from Idaho wants to speak. I will wrap up in a second.

We are talking about Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The bill on the floor is food assistance.

Listen to this. A 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors--these are not Democrats--looked at the hunger issue, and here is what they found: 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. Thirty-nine percent seeking food assistance were employed. This is from the Conference of Mayors.

They found a leading cause of hunger was low-paying jobs. The Conference of Mayors found emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families--children and their parents. Fifty-nine percent of those who sought emergency food assistance--which means they were at wits end; they had no money, and they had no other place to go, so they requested emergency food assistance--59 percent were members of families--children and their parents.

What did the mayors recommend? What did the Conference of Mayors recommend? They recommended raising the Federal minimum wage as a way the Federal Government could help alleviate hunger. We are being told we cannot do that; we cannot add it to this bill; we cannot even vote on it.

We saw the same thing on overtime: No, we can't vote on that. Put it someplace else. No, we can't vote on minimum wage either.

What is the Senate coming to? Why don't we do as the House of Representatives did, where we used to serve--have a rule where you can't do anything, just pass it. That is why the Senate is different than the House. That is why we are supposed to have open and free-form debate and be able to vote on these issues. But these parliamentary tactics keeping us from

voting on things such as overtime, extending unemployment benefits, and now the minimum wage are unworthy of the Senate, unworthy of this country, unworthy of our jobs.

I close by saying again, this is an issue that cuts very deeply. I remember I was in my home State in the last year, and I found an interesting thing, that more people were relying upon the food banks in Iowa. I thought to myself: Why is that happening? Our unemployment is not that high. It went up a little bit, but why were more people going to food banks in increasing numbers than the unemployment rate was rising?

I found out these are low-income workers. They are minimum-wage workers. They get food stamps. But because we have cut back on food stamps, their food stamps run out about the 20th of the month, and they have to go to the food banks for the rest of the month. I have to believe if it is happening in Iowa, it is happening all over the country.

It is time to give dignity to the people who do the humblest work in our country. Let's get them back up to what they had in the past. If their job in the past was worth what today would be $8.50 an hour, it is at least worth $7 an hour now.

What if we took corporate CEO salaries from 1968 and said they have to now have the same percentage reduction this year as those on minimum wage? Boy, the hue and cry that would go up on that one.

I have made my point. I hope we defeat the cloture petition. I hope we have a vote on increasing the minimum wage, and I hope it passes overwhelmingly. I hope the President will be on board and support it so we can give dignity to our workers.

I thank the Senator from Idaho for his patience and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I add my strong support for the Snowe/Dodd amendment to add $6 billion in childcare funding in the TANF bill. This will allow for urgently needed improvements to access and the quality of childcare.

Back in 1996, Congress passed a tough welfare reform bill that demanded personal responsibility. I supported that bill. It said that if you are on welfare and you can work, you must work. Our reform has had some substantial successes, but now is not the time for a victory lap. I am particularly concerned that this bill does not provide adequate funding to address what we all know is one of the major barriers to employment--childcare.

If we are going to demand personal responsibility from every American, I believe the Government has a responsibility to every American.

If we are going to help struggling low-income families and those trying to leave welfare over the long term, we have a responsibility to provide those families with access to affordable, high quality childcare. Nationwide only one in eight kids eligible for childcare assistance actually receives it. In Iowa the story is worse, only 1 out of 12 actually receives assistance. Parents cannot work if they cannot afford decent childcare. But the sad reality is that many are forced, too often, to leave their kids in substandard care--or no care at all.

In Iowa nearly two-thirds of mothers with kids under age six are in the workforce. That is the second highest in the Nation. This means that children in Iowa spend a large percentage of their formative years in childcare. Unfortunately the availability of quality daycare has not kept pace with the demand of daycare. I have heard countless stories of families who tell me they had to leave their kids in substandard care because they could not find quality care or because they could not afford better care. One woman told me that she knew her kids were in front of the TV most of the day, but that was the only option she had. She had to go to work. These stories are just devastating.

Even when a family can find childcare, it is often too expensive. Low-income working families often spend almost 50 percent of their paychecks on childcare. Meanwhile, higher income families spent only 6 percent.

In my State of Iowa, the average cost of childcare in rural areas is almost $6,000 a year. And that is just for one child. The average wage of someone on TANF is only $7.28. So if we do the math, someone making slightly more than minimum wage working 40 hours a week is spending almost half of their earnings on childcare. One single mom struggling to get off welfare in Iowa told me that she spends 45 percent of her income to meet the childcare costs for her two children--and she has to work a second job at night so they can survive. Her total yearly childcare for two kids is $12,000.

And regardless of income, parents worry about the quality of childcare. In Iowa the majority of growth has been in nonregistered, unregulated care as opposed to registered and accredited centers. Nationwide there is also a major shortage of quality childcare for children in rural areas, for children with special needs, and for infants and toddlers. In fact, in a recent Midwest study, Iowa ranked the lowest in providing quality care for infants and toddlers. This is alarming, because the years through age three are a critical time for brain development and emotional development. This is when a child lays the foundation--or fails to lay the foundation--for later success in school and life.

Data from the National Academy of Sciences shows that the first 3 years of a child's life are the most important--80 percent of brain development occurs before the child's third birthday. Children who do not have rich, enjoyable, emotionally, and intellectually stimulating learning experiences during these important years can be stunted for life.

In fact, more than a dozen years ago, in 1991, the Committee for Economic Development, made up of business leaders, found that investing in quality childcare and other early interventions was critical to securing this Nation's economic future. CED urged Federal policy makers to view education as a process that begins at birth.

We also know that good childcare prevents later crime and violence. I request unanimous consent that this op-ed, written by the Des Moines chief of police, be included in the Record.

Chief McCarthy says that ``my law enforcement experience has taught me that by giving children the right start in life through programs such as pre-K and childcare, we can dramatically reduce the chances of you or someone you love becoming the victim of violence.''

Yet despite all that we know about how important good quality childcare is, we fail to support our highly skilled childcare providers. In fact, we are paying them less than bus drivers, barbers and janitors. I think it is time that changed. The average childcare worker's salary in Iowa is $14,100, well below the national average. There is also a 50 percent turnover rate for childcare providers. This is particularly harmful as stable, consistent relationships are essential to healthy development.

Recognizing the inadequacy in quality as chairman of Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee of Appropriations, I began funding an additional $200 million in CCDBG to improve quality, with targeted funding directed to infant and toddler needs.

The Dodd/Snow amendment will bring us a step closer to the day when all young children have the opportunities and supports they need to embark on a lifetime of learning.

We talk a lot in this country about budget deficits, economic prosperity and how as a nation we have to prioritize. One of our priorities surely must be to strengthen families, encourage work, and provide decent childcare. I understand that many of my colleagues have concerns with the cost of this amendment. Well if we can find trillions of dollars for tax cuts, hundreds of billion of dollars for a prescription drug give-away to big pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, and tens of billions of dollars for a trip to Mars, then surely we can make key investments in programs like CCDBG. I urge my colleagues to strongly support the Snowe/Dodd amendment.

Mr. President, this year marks the 75th Anniversary of the League of United Latino American Citizens, commonly known as LULAC. This national organization was founded in 1929 to fight for the civil rights of all Hispanic Americans. The LULAC founders saw a need for an organization that would strive for equality, fight discrimination and injustice, help Hispanics to claim their rights as United States Citizens and to have access to the American Dream.

Due to their success in the southwest, LULAC continued to open up chapters all over the United States. LULAC's first council was formed in Iowa in 1959 and continues to have a strong presence today. They have prospered over the past 45 years and continue to be a leader in Iowa, fighting for the rights of Latino Iowans.

LULAC has worked to affect national policy so that it better reflects the different cultures living in the United States. They continue to work tirelessly to reduce discrimination, close the achievement gap and improve the immigration laws and system.

LULAC seeks to reduce disparities in political representation. They work to develop leaders among the young Latino men and women in Iowa. Rita Vargas, a previous member of my staff, was nominated as ``LULAC's Woman of the Year'' in 2001, and has since been elected to the position of Scott County Recorder.

The Latino community is a vital, growing part of today's Iowa. In this great country, we find strength in our diversity. Iowa is stronger economically and richer culturally thanks to the many contributions of our Latino friends, neighbors and colleagues.

I would like to say thank you to LULAC for all their hard work in Iowa and throughout the country. I wish them the best as they continue their community activism.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana for giving me this time. I thank the leader for his comments and those who have fought so valiantly on behalf of American workers and their jobs.

A Senator on the other side said this is about creating jobs or losing jobs. That is what overtime is about. It is about creating jobs or losing jobs, and it does not take a genius to figure it out. Common sense dictates if an employer can work you longer hours per week and not have to pay you overtime, that is exactly what they will do, and they will not hire new workers.

In fact, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, establishing the 40-hour workweek, President Roosevelt said at the time this was for creating jobs so people would not be working 50, 60 hours a week; they would be working 40 hours a week and spending more time with their families, and we would create more jobs. That is exactly what happened.

I agree with the Senator on the other side when he said this bill is about creating jobs and losing jobs and, yes, that is exactly what this amendment on overtime is about--creating jobs or losing jobs.

Last evening, the majority leader complained about extraneous amendments blocking progress on the bill. I don't know, but I assume he may have been talking about my amendment on overtime. He did not say so directly. But how can any Senator stand here on the floor and say with a straight face an amendment aimed at protecting overtime pay for millions of American workers is extraneous to a jobs bill?

Then I heard someone else on the other side say something about we have to have cloture. That is the vote coming up in about 10 minutes. We have to have cloture so we do not have these nongermane amendments on this bill.

The chairman of the committee and others have already added a whole package of nongermane amendments. So I guess what they are saying is we want to add our nongermane amendments but they do not want us to even attempt to add any of our nongermane amendments. It is sort of, my way or the highway. Well, that is not what this Senate floor is about. The Senate floor ought to be about open debate, discussion, and voting on important issues that matter to our constituents.

Right now there is nothing more important in front of the Senate than the issue of overtime. There is a lot of good in this FSC bill, much of which I will support. I would like to see the bill get through. But this bill, without a protection for American workers to protect their overtime, is not a bill worthy of passing, nor is it worthy of being called a jobs bill.

People say we are slowing this down somehow, that we are making it impossible to pass this bill. I have been on this floor day after day saying I will agree to a time limit. I say to my friend and colleague from Iowa, if he wants a time limit, we will have a time limit and then we will have an up-or-down vote. Plus, there are other amendments people want to offer. That is, again, why the other side wants cloture. They have their package of nongermane amendments but they do not want us to offer any.

I do not know if they will win but at least we ought to have the right to offer them and to have a vote on them. All we are asking for is fairness and openness on the Senate floor. I know that may sound kind of odd to people but all we are asking is just the right to offer an amendment, have it debated within a reasonable amount of time, and have a vote. I do not think that sounds too un-American to me.

Yet the other side, the Republican side, is saying they do not want to vote on my overtime amendment. They are going to go through all of these parliamentary maneuvers. But we will vote on this amendment. All of this parliamentary maneuvering that we are going through right now on the motion to recommit and filing cloture just puts off the inevitable. If the other side was really interested in getting this bill through, we could have had a vote on my amendment 2 days--well, at least yesterday, and been halfway through the bill, probably have the bill done today or tomorrow. So it is not our side that is slowing this bill down at all.

As I have said before, our friends in the majority leadership have tried to stymie and stop a vote on overtime. We voted on it last summer, with a strong bipartisan vote, to say no to the proposed regulations of this administration to take away overtime rights of people. The House of Representatives followed suit, but in conference the administration came in and got it taken out.

The American people spoke, and I can say with no uncertainty that the vast majority of American people want their overtime pay protected. In fact, a poll taken last fall, when this question was put to a representative sample of the American people, overwhelmingly showed they wanted their overtime pay protected. This goes back to a kind of taking of the right of people to earn a fair wage, a fair salary.

This is from the Wall Street Journal, and this says it all:

While employees like overtime pay, a lot of employers do

not.

That is not surprising.

Violations are so common that the Employer Policy

Foundation, an employer supported think-tank in Washington,

estimates that workers would get an additional $19 billion a

year if the rules were observed. That estimate is considered

conservative by many researchers.

Think about that. Because the rules are not being enforced, American workers are being cheated out of $19 billion a year in income. What has happened is employers in various parts of the country are trying to go around these rules and some of them have gotten caught redhanded.

We had a case on the west coast where people were clocking out and then coming back to work, working overtime but it was not showing up on the pay stubs. That case went to court and the jury found the company guilty. So what did the companies do? They said, well, if we are getting caught and hauled into court, we better get the rules changed.

Last year, the administration proposed the most fundamental sweeping changes ever in the Fair Labor Standards Act that would deny the right of up to 8 million Americans to get overtime pay. So now they can go ahead and work them longer than 40 hours a week and they will not have to be worried about being taken to court. That is the core of what we are talking about.

Quite frankly, there was a case in Oregon where a Federal jury, on December 19, found Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., guilty of off-the-clock violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was Wal-Mart--people checking out, coming back to work and not getting paid overtime. That is not fair. It is not right to the American worker, and that is why the American people, by an overwhelming margin, want us to vote on this amendment.

Here was the poll taken last fall. The question was:

There is now a proposal to change the Federal law that

determines which employees have the legal right to overtime

pay. This proposal would eliminate the right to overtime pay

for several million employees who now have that right. Do you

favor or oppose this proposal?

I am sure it comes as no surprise; overwhelmingly 74 percent said they opposed it, while 14 percent said they would favor it.

This goes to the gut of what we are talking about for the American worker in this country. We are already shipping jobs overseas. There is a small provision in this bill before us, subpart F--I will not get into all of that--that will actually make it easier for companies to ship jobs overseas. Now we are telling our American workers they have to work longer and not get any pay for it.

Already American workers are working longer hours than anyone else in the industrialized world and now we are asking them to work even longer.

The motion before us is a cloture motion. I say to my fellow Senators, defeat the cloture motion, because if the cloture motion is invoked, we will be prohibited from offering our amendment on overtime. That is not fair. That is not right.

Two weeks ago we had a unanimous consent agreement on the Senate floor that I would be allowed to offer this amendment. They knew that. But after a week's break, we came back and they decided to go through all of this parliamentary maneuvering to prevent me from offering my amendment and to prevent us from having a vote on it.

I ask my fellow Senators to think of their constituents, think of that man and woman out there who have a family, they want to be with their kids in the evenings or on the weekend, and they are being asked to work overtime. As one woman, who I quoted yesterday, said: My time with my family is premium time. My time at home is premium time. If I am asked to give up my premium time with my family, I ought to get premium time, which is time and a half over 40.

So when my colleagues think about voting on this cloture motion, do not think about the President of the United States, do not think about whether we can go against the administration. I do not see it in those terms. I only see it in the terms protecting the legitimate right of our American workers to get time and a half when they work over 40 hours a week. That is what this is all about, make no mistake.

I am hopeful when Senators come to vote that we will have a resounding ``no'' vote on the cloture motion. Then maybe we can get to this amendment and we can have a time agreement. We have already talked about it enough. We could have half an hour for closing arguments and then vote up or down on this overtime amendment.

I think the other side may be afraid it might pass. Well, it passed last year. I think it would probably pass big time now because more and more American people are aware of what the administration is trying to do to take away their overtime.

I think we have had our say. The American people are going to watch. People in the United States are working longer hours than their counterparts in any other country. They are working longer hours now than ever and they are now being told, well, guess what, we are going to work you longer but we are not going to pay you any more.

Last, the people who will be hurt the most will be women. Annual hours worked by middle-income wives with children went from 895 in 1979 to 1,388 in 2000. Women with these kinds of jobs are the ones who will be hit first because they have the type of clerical jobs that will be reclassified. They are the very people who are being asked to give up their premium time with their kids and their families--their second jobs at home. As one woman said: I have a second job, at home.

They will not be paid overtime. That is grossly unfair.

I ask for a resounding ``no'' vote on the cloture motion.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Shane Lowenberg of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's debate.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

The parliamentary inquiry I would like to make is where are we right now on the bill? Are we on the motion to recommit, at this point?

I understand also that a cloture motion has been filed on the motion to recommit.

Since there is a motion to recommit that is pending, is it not in order for an amendment to be made to that motion?

Do I understand that both a first-degree and second- degree amendment have been made already?

So, therefore, no amendments, then, are allowed, under the rules of the Senate, to be made to the motion to recommit?

Further inquiry, Mr. President: Yesterday this Senator offered an amendment dealing with overtime. Is that amendment still pending?

Is it further correct to say that if cloture is invoked, this amendment would fall, that it would not be allowed under the rules of the Senate?

I understand that. But then this Senator would be allowed to offer my overtime amendment on the new bill that will be before us at that point?

Further inquiry, Mr. President: If, however, cloture is invoked on the motion to recommit, is it not true that this Senator's amendment then would fall and not be allowed, under the rules of cloture, or am I wrong? Maybe my amendment would be allowed.

Yes.

I understand that. I want to make it very clear for those who may be watching in their offices and not present on the floor. If cloture tomorrow, when it ripens, is invoked, we will not be allowed to vote on an overtime amendment; is that correct? Because it will be deemed to be nongermane under the rules of cloture, is that correct?

I repeat my question. I want to make it clear to those who are watching in their offices and may not be on the floor right now. Under the rules of germaneness, under the rules of the Senate, because of the parliamentary tactics just taken by the majority, having a motion to recommit and then sort of filling the tree, as we call it around here in parliamentary parlance, having the first-degree amendment and the second-degree amendment and then filing cloture--that was filed, I guess, yesterday--that through all of this parliamentary maneuvering, if in fact the Senate votes for cloture, on Wednesday, on tomorrow, then Senators will be denied a right to vote on my overtime amendment; is that not correct?

I will ask one more time because I want to get this straight. There is pending a cloture motion. That cloture motion will be voted on tomorrow; is that not correct? It will ripen tomorrow.

If in fact there is a vote tomorrow on cloture and cloture is invoked--that is, a majority of the Senate votes yes on cloture--then this Senator's amendment on overtime will not be allowed under the rules of the Senate pertaining to germaneness; is that correct?

Then under the rules of Senate, if cloture is invoked, this Senator's amendment would not be allowed, I understand, because it will be nongermane.

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

Mr. President, I understand that under a previous order the Senate is going to recess at 12:30 p.m.

Mr. President, we are in a situation where it looks as though the majority on the other side simply does not want to vote on my overtime amendment. They are going to do everything they can to try to prevent it.

Again, there is talk about delay and who is delaying this bill. Look, I offered my amendment the other day and we could have had a vote by now. I was willing to enter into a time agreement. They would not do it. I offered the amendment under a unanimous consent agreement reached with the other side to bring it up. Now, the parliamentary games being played are not on this side; they are on the other side. One really has to ask, Does the other side really want to get this bill through?

Again, I have no doubt that the chairman, my friend and colleague from Iowa, wants to get it through. He is chairman. Having been in that position before on another committee, I know you want to get your bill through. I have no doubt that the Senator from Iowa would like to get the bill through. It looks as though the leadership on that side-- either the leadership or the administration; I don't know who is calling the shots--is simply saying they don't want to have a vote on overtime.

It is really unfortunate that they have now filed cloture on this bill. My friend and colleague from Iowa, and others on the other side, have referred to this as a jobs bill. They keep talking about it is a jobs bill. Well, all I can say in response to that is I believe the ranking member of our committee, Senator Baucus from Montana, would like to get the bill through, we would like to get completion of this bill and get it through, but that does not mean we should not be allowed to offer some reasonable number of amendments to try to improve it as we see fit. They may win, they may lose, but at least we ought to be allowed the right to offer and debate some amendments within reasonable timeframes.

One of the most important job-related amendments is the amendment on overtime. How could we possibly tell the American people with a straight face that we are passing a ``jobs bill'' on the Senate floor but we are not addressing the issue of overtime pay and the administration's proposed regulations that would have the effect of taking overtime pay protection away from millions of American workers?

This is an issue that goes right to the heart, the gut, of our American workforce: The right to be paid time and a half when one works over 40 hours a week. It has been in the law since 1938. Yet, as I said yesterday and I will continue to point out, last year the administration came out with a proposed set

of regulations to change the underlying overtime law. They did it without having one public hearing. Imagine that, changing something so fundamental to the American work ethic as the right to overtime pay without having a public hearing.

They put out the proposed regulations and the American public responded with thousands--I have heard maybe 60,000 to 70,000 comments. Then last summer, after a number of us had gotten wind of what they were trying to do and we started reading the proposed regulations, we offered an amendment on the Senate floor that would have basically denied that part of the overtime regulation that would take away this overtime right.

That amendment I offered last summer passed the Senate. It was bipartisan. I have heard a lot of references to the fact that this bill is a bipartisan bill. Well, the amendment I am offering is a bipartisan amendment because it was voted on last summer by both Republicans and Democrats and passed in the Senate, 54 to 46. Around here, that is pretty bipartisan.

Basically, what that amendment said is, no, we are not going to agree with the administration's proposed changes on overtime rules. If the administration wants to make fundamental changes in overtime rules, they ought to do it in the time-honored manner: work with Congress, have public hearings around the country, and then let Congress and the administration get together to revise, if revision is needed, overtime laws. But that is not the way the administration did it.

Again, if I hear correctly people on the other side say we are slowing down or stopping this bill, I am sorry; it does not ring true. This bill could have been brought up last fall, and it was not. We just spent a whole week in the Senate debating a gun bill that failed with over 90 votes against it. What was that all about? Why did we spend over a week doing that when we could have been doing this bill, if this bill is so important?

One has to raise some questions about what is going on because when one reads some of the publications around here--this was in Congressional Quarterly Today about this bill. According to the Congressional Quarterly, the chairman of the House committee, Congressman Thomas:

. . . told the Tax Executive Institute, a group of

corporate tax officials, on Monday that lobbyists seeking

specific changes in international tax rules had effectively

stymied his bill, according to the Associated Press.

So it is not us who are stymying this bill. Again, there are some corporate lobbyists downtown who are. Again, from CQ Today:

Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-

California, told a group of business tax officials on Monday

that the current House version of the bill (H.R. 2896) was

probably doomed.

So it is not us who are slowing this bill down, not at all. This Senator would like to see this bill get through. I think there are some good things in this bill. That does not mean we should not be allowed to offer our amendments and have an up-or-down vote on those amendments.

A jobs bill? Well, fine, call it a jobs bill, but do not tell me this is a jobs bill and then say we cannot have a vote on our overtime amendment. That is about jobs. We know it is about jobs because we know, common sense dictates, if an employer can work a person longer than 40 hours a week and not have to pay overtime, why, it would be much better to work the person longer, pay them less, and then not hire any new workers.

At a time when we have 9 million Americans out of work, we have a jobless recovery in this country, why would we now be wanting to give employers another incentive not to hire new workers?

We had an agreement to consider my amendment. It was the fourth amendment in the series we agreed to prior to last week's recess, but no sooner was I able to offer my amendment last evening than the majority leadership decided to move to recommit the whole bill and to file cloture on that motion.

I am not sure how that meets our previous agreement to take up my amendment, but that is where we are now. A motion to recommit the bill is pending. I would like to talk about overtime. I would like to have an amendment about overtime and have a vote on it. As my parliamentary inquiries earlier this morning showed, we can go through this whole charade, motion to recommit, file a cloture, we can vote on that, and we can still come back with this amendment.

I suppose then they will file cloture on the bill. That is why it was wrong on the majority side to file cloture on this motion to recommit and why I hope we will oppose that cloture motion and deny cloture until we can get a right to offer our amendments and have a vote on our amendments.

We are not asking for unlimited debate. I would agree with the manager of the bill right now to a time limit on my amendment with an up-or-down vote. So it is not about us stalling this bill. Forget about that. Get that out of your head. That is not what is happening. What is happening is the majority side simply does not want to vote on overtime. Why? Because I think they are afraid, and the vote will be even stronger this time than it was last summer because more and more American workers, more and more people have found out what this administration downtown is trying to do to their overtime pay.

I will be on the floor waiting for every opportunity to offer this amendment and to get a vote on it. If the other side believes that somehow by going through this charade and slowing this bill down and somehow blaming us for it when we are not doing this is somehow going to get rid of this overtime amendment, well, I am sorry to disappoint them. We are going to continue to debate and have a vote on this overtime amendment. It is that crucial, that important, to the American worker that this Senate express itself once again and say no to the administration, that we are not going to let them trample on the rights of American workers and take away their right to overtime pay if they work over 40 hours a week.

I see my time has expired. I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his continued strong support of our working families, especially on the issues of the minimum wage and overtime. I was listening to the Senator talk about the issue dealing with training in the armed services. I ask the Senator, is it not true that since 1938, when we have gone through World War II, the Korean War, the cold war, the Vietnam War, Gulf War, everything else, during that time our young men and women who served in the military who got training and then later got out were still eligible for overtime pay regardless of the kind of training they got?

I ask the Senator further, would this not then set up the oddest kind of circumstance with a veteran and a nonveteran? Let's say two young people just got out of high school. They see these ads on television that say join the Army, be all you can be, get all this training to help you out. One friend decides to go in the Army. The other doesn't. It is a volunteer force. The person who goes in the Army gets training as an aerospace mechanic on engines or something like that, and comes out. The other person has not gone in the military, has different jobs, gets some kind of on-the-job training. Could this not set up a circumstance where if both of them were working for the same company, the person who entered the military and got that training, because of the way it is written in the rules, could be classified exempt from overtime, and the person who didn't go in the military would still get the overtime for the same exact job? Wouldn't this be the kind of situation that could arise?

Mr. President, the Senator has put his finger on it. This proposal by the administration to take away the rights of up to 8 million Americans on overtime is what I call a job-killing proposal. The Senator is absolutely right. It is common sense.

Look, if you have people working and you can work them over 40 hours and not pay them time and a half, but regular pay, why would you hire anybody else? You would just work them longer. In fact, I say to the Senator--and he may well be aware of this--when they put out the proposed rules, they put out certain examples on how employers could get around paying overtime. One of the proposals--I will read it into the Record later; I have done it previously--was to say, look, what you do is simply reclassify your workers; you then pay them a little bit less, but work them longer so your out-of-pocket expenses are the same, but you work them over 40 hours a week. What a deal.

This is like the IRS telling people how to cheat on their taxes and giving them information on how to get around the IRS Code. At a time when we need jobs in this country, this is another disincentive to creating jobs. Not only do they want to outsource jobs to other countries, I say to my friend; they now want to tell the American worker to work longer every week and don't expect to get paid any more for it.

If the Senator will yield. Again, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for not forgetting his populace roots of North Dakota. When the Senator speaks on the floor, as he just has, he speaks with clarity, common sense, and the wisdom of the common man and woman. That is why I have always admired the Senator from North Dakota.

What he has just said strikes right at the heart of what the common man and woman in this country feel--that their rights to at least overtime pay, if they are working over 40 hours, are being taken away without their having anything to say about it.

As the Senator pointed out very clearly, we are not being allowed our right to represent the common man and woman--his constituents in North Dakota, my constituents in Iowa, or anywhere else in this country--in getting a vote on the Senate floor as to whether we will permit the administration to take away those overtime rights.

I say to the Senator this is something that should not be allowed to happen on the Senate floor. I thank the Senator for his stalwart support for our working men and women and for insisting we have a vote on this Senate floor. The Senator is absolutely right that we are having all kinds of games being played, all kinds of little parliamentary tricks, so we will not vote on this.

There is one other thing I want to ask the Senator from North Dakota, who also has a keen insight and judgment on issues dealing with fairness and taxation and jobs going overseas.

This morning, the senior Senator from Iowa, who is the chairman of the Finance Committee, went on to talk about how if we do not pass this bill there are going to be tariffs because the WTO said we are in violation, and so therefore we have to change the law or we are going to have to start paying tariffs.

I am reading from what basically he said this morning: The sanctions began on March 1, 5 percent. The Senator from Iowa said: It is like a 5-percent sales tax on everything we are going to sell overseas or stuff we are going to sell overseas. He said by March it would be 5 percent; 6 percent in April; 7 percent in May; 8 percent in June; 9 percent in July; 10 percent in August; 11 percent in September; 12 percent by November.

So will the Senator from North Dakota help me clear up my thinking on this? I hear now that the Republicans, since they do not want to vote on the overtime amendment, may actually pull the bill, kill this bill, which means then we will have to pay tariffs to Europe, we will have to pay a penalty, that may amount, according to the Senator from Iowa, up to $4 billion a year. Am I correct, I ask the Senator from North Dakota, that they would rather pay tariffs to Europe than overtime to our workers?

That is what they are saying. If they pull this bill, we will have to pay these tariffs; we will be paying money to Europe but we will not be paying overtime. Does the Senator from North Dakota see it that way, that somehow because they do not want to vote on overtime they will pay tariffs to Europe but not overtime to our people? I ask the Senator from North Dakota what kind of fairness is there to our working people in that?

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from North Dakota for the eloquence of his statement and I thank Senator Dorgan for his unwavering support through all the years I have been privileged to know him and be his friend, his unwavering support for the common man and woman in this country, for working families, for our farmers and ranchers out in the West and the Midwest.

Senator Dorgan is always eloquent in his remarks. As you listen to Senator Dorgan speak, you can hear the voice of that average man and that average woman out there who are not big time lobbyists down here on K Street; as Senator Dorgan said, they don't have the shiny shoes and suspenders and whatever else. They are out there working every day, feeding and clothing their families. They have a decent life. They give their kids a good education. They do what they can to make sure their kids have a little bit better life than they have had. It is called the American dream. And no one has been a stronger supporter of ensuring that American dream for our working families than the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan.

I thank him for all that support through all the years and for carrying on the fight for overtime and making sure our workers are paid the overtime that is due them when they work over 40 hours a week.

Earlier today I pointed out the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Thomas from California, according to the Congressional Quarterly, told a business group yesterday he thinks this foreign tax bill we have before us is doomed. Those were his words. He pointed the finger at the business community, according to today's issue of the national journal Congress Daily. Mr. Thomas, in other words, was blaming K Street lobbyists for this bill's likely demise in the House.

It seems to me what we have is a bill that is already being slow- walked by some of the majority leadership in the Senate because the leaders on the other side don't want to vote on overtime. I hope we don't hear anything from the other side saying somehow we are to blame for slowing down this bill. We had a unanimous consent agreement. My amendment was in line to be offered. I offered the amendment in good faith. I was even asking if we could have a time agreement. Imagine that. I offered the amendment. I offered a time agreement. I couldn't even be given a time agreement by the other side.

Then the Republican side goes ahead and files this motion to recommit with an amendment on it and then they filed cloture and all this gobbledygook parliamentary stuff. What it means is we will not vote today. We will have a cloture vote tomorrow. They will not get cloture. Then I hear rumors the leadership on the Republican side will then pull the bill and somehow blame Democrats, blame Democrats, us, our side, for not getting this bill through.

I will tell you, talk about chutzpah. That is like the person who went before the judge for having killed his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.

The other side is responsible for killing this bill. Have no doubt. Make no bones about it. They are responsible because they don't want to vote on overtime. They don't want to vote. They get kind of wobbly in the knees. Their ankles get weak. They break out in a cold sweat when they think they might have to vote on whether to uphold the administration's proposed rules that will take overtime pay away from hard-working American families. They have to vote against the administration.

Sometimes we are called upon to represent our constituents. As hard as that may be to believe by some, sometimes we are called upon to represent our constituents, not the administration but to represent our people.

The administration may want to take away overtime pay. That may be their position. But at least we ought to have the right to vote on whether we ought to uphold that decision.

I know it may come as a shock to many Americans, but sometimes we are not allowed to vote in the Senate. We are not allowed to vote on an amendment. I have my amendment pending. They won't let us vote on it because they filed this cloture motion, this parliamentary device.

As the Senator from North Dakota said, I don't care how many times we have to be here. We will be back, we will be back, we will be back to vote on whether we are going to take overtime pay away from American workers.

If we don't vote on it tomorrow, we will vote on it some other time, or my friends on the other side will continue to pull bill after bill after bill because they don't want to vote on it. Maybe they think they can just go ahead and issue the final regulations. Then it will be sort of a fait accompli. Evidently, we will not do anything.

I am sorry, Mr. President. If that is the case, we will be back with an amendment to say they will not go into effect until we have had open and public hearings on these regulations.

We will have a vote on it. My friends on the other side of the aisle are just putting off the inevitable. Maybe for one reason or another they don't want this bill to go through anyway. That is kind of an odd position, as I said to the Senator from North Dakota. As the chairman of the committee said this morning, under the international agreements we have on trade, the World Trade Organization rules that our pretax policy is an illegal export subsidy, and consequently the WTO has authorized Europe to go up to $4 billion a year against certain U.S. exports. The sanctions began on March 1. They started at 5 percent. Then they go up 1 percent a month, all the way up to 17 percent over the course of a year. I don't want to pay those tariffs. I don't want to pay those penalties.

I would like to get this bill through. The other side, though, simply because they do not want a vote on overtime, is saying they are going to go ahead and pay these tariffs. It seems to me what they are saying is they would rather pay tariffs to Europe than overtime to workers. That is exactly what is happening. Pay the tariffs to Europe but don't pay overtime to our workers.

A lot has been said about the American worker and working families. I wonder how many people know that right now American workers work longer per year than anyone else in the industrialized world. This chart shows it. For the years 2002 and 2003, American workers are working in the United States almost 2,000 hours a year--more than Australia, Japan, Spain, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, or Germany. Not only are we working longer hours per year, we are now being told if we work overtime we will not get paid for it.

Do you know what is going to happen if these rules go into effect? This bar will go way up because then employers will work their employees longer because they don't have to pay them overtime. We already work longer.

What is the history of this bill? This kind of gets to the crux again of what is happening here with the proposed rules on overtime. I said last summer when I offered this amendment and it was adopted by the Senate, the biggest impact of taking away overtime pay protection would be on women. People wondered why I said that. Why would women be impacted most? For two reasons: One, because the annual hours worked by middle-income wives with children in 1979 were 895 hours a year. By the year 2000, that had gone to 1,308 hours a year. Women with children are working more--not quite double but almost--than what they were a mere 21 years ago.

Most of these jobs are in certain types of clerical positions in which women have been engaged. Some of them are in positions which are going to be reclassified under the proposed rules as ``professions.'' These are the kinds of jobs that are mostly held by working women, and mostly by working mothers. The biggest impact will be on working women. The initial wave of impact will be on working women.

I have a statement from Susan Moore of Chicago. She said:

I am currently entitled to time and a half under Federal

law. I know for a fact that is the reason I am not required

to work long hours like the project managers who are not

entitled to overtime pay. My supervisor has to think hard

about whether to assign overtime to me because he has to pay

for my time. That means more time for my family and that time

is important to me. If the law changes and I lose my right to

overtime pay, I will be faced with the impossible choice of

losing time with my family or losing my job.

This is a statement from Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA. She said:

I began my career as a supply clerk earning $3.10 an hour

in 1976. I entered an upward mobility program and received

training to become an engineer technician with a career

ladder that gave me a yearly boost in income. It seemed,

though, that even with a decent raise every year, I really

relied on overtime income to help make ends meet.

I am a working single parent. There are many more single

parents today with the same problem. How does one pay for the

car that broke down or the braces for the children's teeth?

Overtime income has been the lifesaver to many of us.

When I as a working mother leave my 8-hour day job and go

home, my second shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes

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

done which adds another 3 to 4 hours to your workday. When

one has to put in extra hours at work, it takes away from the

time needed to take care of our personal needs.

Listen to Sheila Perez who is from Bremerton, WA, a single parent. She says:

It only seems fair that one should be compensated for that

extra effort of working overtime. Overtime is a sacrifice of

one's time, energy, physical and mental well-being.

Compensation should be commensurate in the form of premium

pay as it is a premium of one's personal time, energy and

expertise that is being used.

If I might interpret what Sheila Perez is saying, she says: I am a single parent. I work hard. I rely on overtime. When I get home from work, I have another job taking care of my kids, doing all of my laundry. My time with my kids at home on the weekends is my premium time. If I am being asked to give up my premium time to work on the job, I ought to be given premium pay.

I can't say it any better than Sheila Perez. Again, it is another example why this is going to hit working women the hardest.

I am just notified that CongressDaily, as of 3 p.m., which was only about 40 minutes ago, had this statement. CongressDaily comes out during the day, and at 3 p.m. said:

A senior GOP leadership aide reiterated today that GOP

leaders will refuse a floor vote on the amendment from

Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to strike a labor provision

involving overtime pay for white-collar workers.

I don't know if that is true. It is being reported in CongressDaily at 3 p.m. that they will refuse a floor vote on my amendment; refuse it. Why is it they get so wobbly in the knees, with weak ankles, and break out in a cold sweat? Maybe they are just afraid of George Bush. Maybe they are afraid of the administration downtown.

I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, don't be afraid of them; be afraid of the people you represent. They are the ones who pay your salary. They are the ones who vote to send you here. They are the ones whose overtime is being assaulted, not the President and the people down at the White House.

Last summer in August, Peter Hart Research Associates, a well-known national pollster, did a poll. This was the question: There is now a proposal to change the Federal law that determines which employees have the legal

right to overtime pay. This proposal would eliminate the right to overtime pay for 7 million employees who now have that right. Do you favor or oppose this proposal? In favor, 14 percent; oppose,74 percent.

That is not even close. I can understand why the other side would not want to vote on this. Maybe they feel dutybound, politically bound, party bound to support their President. Therefore, they would not want to vote because they know 74 percent of the American people are opposed to this proposal to take away their overtime pay, the right to overtime pay.

This is an issue that strikes, as so many before me have said, at the heart of fairness and equity to American workers. What could be more fair than if you have to work over 40 hours a week, you have to be paid time-and-a-half overtime? That is the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938.

What is a little known fact is that a debate raged in this country for a long period of time--I would say almost 40 years from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, at least until 1938--on restricting the number of hours that an American worker had to work without getting some kind of extra pay. Remember, in those days we even had child labor; we got rid of that. The American workers were working 50, 60, 70 hours a week with no protection by labor unions, no rights whatever. Finally, slowly but surely, organized labor grew, more and more rights were attained by our workers, and then the debate ensued about how many hours a week should a worker work without being paid overtime.

A little known fact: In 1937, this Senate, in this very Chamber in which we find ourselves today, right here in this Chamber, the Senate, in 1937, voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. Imagine, right here in the Senate where we are standing, the Senate, in 1937, voted for a 30- hour workweek. The debate ensued, and finally, by 1938 they compromised. The compromise was a 40-hour week with time-and-a-half overtime. Think about that: the Senate, in 1937, actually voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. Today, we cannot even get a vote in the Senate on whether we will pay people overtime to work over 40 hours a week. We cannot get a vote on it.

That says something about the difference of the Senate in 1937 from the Senate in 2004. I wonder how many votes the Senate would get today if someone offered a vote to establish a 30-hour workweek. Do you think it would get 10 votes? In 1937 they got a majority of the votes, right here in the Senate. Yet now they are working longer and longer hours every year. More and more people are being made to work over 40 hours a week and not being paid for it.

The reason I hear so much is we need to reclassify workers. The reclassification they are talking about basically would hit women the hardest, would reclassify them as being professional and therefore exempt from overtime. Again, they have done this without having one public hearing. I think they thought they could get by with it; just issue these rules and that would be the end of it. The American people have spoken loudly and strongly, saying they are not going to sit down and let their rights to overtime pay be taken away.

Congress Daily, today at 3 p.m. says, quoting a senior GOP leadership aide, GOP leaders will refuse a floor vote on my amendment.

As I said a week or so ago--and I see my colleague from California-- and I am not in the habit of quoting the present Governor of California, the movie actor, but I will quote him in saying ``I'll be back.'' We'll be back. This is not going to go away. If the other side thinks by doing these parliamentary tricks that somehow we will give up, they are wrong.

We will not give up because we are fighting for the rights of American workers to have justice and fairness in their working conditions. As Sheila Perez said, from Bremerton, WA, if she is forced to give up her premium time, her time with her family, she ought to get premium pay.

We will continue to fight for this.

I am delighted to yield.

Why don't I yield the floor so the Senator can be recognized.

Before I do, let me thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer, for her longtime unyielding support for our working families. No one has fought harder, more consistently, and with such eloquence than the Senator from California. I know the people of California recognize in Senator Boxer they have a fighter who will not give up and who will not back down in fighting for their families' rights.

I yield the floor.

Will my colleague yield?

I thank my colleague for pointing this out. I think this does clarify it. Because who better to respond than the people being affected, the police officers?

I say to my friend from California that this, right here, is very instructive:

We also believe it is unrealistic for unions to claim that

overtime pay granted under a current collective bargaining

agreement is likely to be revoked during a new negotiation.

I ask the Senator, am I correct that what she is actually saying is, however, now overtime pay will be a negotiable item?

See, now it is nonnegotiable.

Am I right on that?

I thank the Senator from California. This really does point out what is very important.

Again, I ask the Senator if I am correct in my interpretation, because I want to make sure I am clear on this, that right now, for these certain classes that are not being reclassified as it exists, if you work over 40 hours a week, you have a contract negotiation that is not even negotiable because you are covered by overtime law.

See, that is it.

The Senator has done something of great value to all of us by bringing this out. A lot of the time we hear these things, but this puts it in focus.

The Secretary says:

Hourly workers not affected by part 541 under either the

current or proposed rules.

But is there anything in the proposed rules that would prevent an employer from saying: OK, you were an hourly worker. We have now reclassified you. You are now a professional. Don't you feel good? You are now a professional. And guess what. You don't get overtime.

There is nothing to stop them from doing that.

The Senator, basically, is thanking the wrong person. The Senator should look in the mirror if she wants to thank someone. The people of California are privileged to have a fighter like Barbara Boxer representing them in the Senate. I mean that. Not only is the Senator a personal friend of mine but someone I admire so much because she never backs down. When Senator Boxer speaks, you hear clearly the voices of the common man and woman, the person who doesn't have a voice here, individuals who will never set foot on the Senate floor, who never will be privileged to speak in this hallowed Chamber. The Senator from California speaks for them.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent Emily Deimel of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

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

Madam President, I know we are a little stalled on the floor right now. There is an underlying amendment to the bill, and then there is a second degree that is now trying to be worked out having to do with tax extenders. I understand there may even be yet another second degree into this package.

I know the leadership has said there will be no votes today. I understand that. But I ask the Presiding Officer, is there now pending a unanimous consent agreement that after the disposition of the pending amendment, and any amendments thereto, that Senator Daschle or his designee would then be recognized to offer an amendment?

I thank the Presiding Officer because that was my understanding: that upon the disposition of the pending amendment, and any amendments thereto--any second degrees--then Senator Daschle would be recognized, or his designee, in which case he is designating me to offer the overtime amendment.

Now, I was here the other day, and I was going to offer the overtime amendment as a second degree to the underlying amendment, but then Senator Grassley got recognized, as is his right as the chairman of the committee, to offer a second degree, and that now is what is pending before the Senate.

I take the floor this afternoon to once again state how urgently necessary it is that we proceed to consideration of my amendment regarding the administration's proposed changes of the rules on overtime.

To recapture what has transpired, about a year ago, the Department of Labor issued proposed regulations that would fundamentally change how employers pay overtime to people who work over 40 hours a week. These proposed regulations came forth without having one public hearing, perhaps the most substantial change in our overtime laws since 1938 when they were adopted under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

You would think if any administration wanted to really change how overtime is paid, they would have gone around the country and had public hearings. This is normally what you do. No. These were issued without one public hearing.

Now that the proposed regulations have been out there, the Department of Labor has heard from America. I understand tens of thousands, maybe as high as 70 or 80,000, comments have come in on these proposed regulations. Still the administration has not seen fit to have public hearings about it. I think they thought they could do it quietly. This is a fundamental alteration, the biggest alteration since 1938 when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed.

Last year I offered an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have denied the right of the administration to issue the proposed regulations and would have forced the administration to work with Congress, to have hearings and come up with a reasonable approach to changing overtime rules. That amendment was adopted by the Senate on a bipartisan vote. The House of Representatives soon after had a vote on what they call instructing their conferees, which is basically a vote to say we agree with the Senate and this is what we want in the final bill. That passed the House of Representatives.

So they went into conference between the House and the Senate with my amendment intact. Somehow it never made it to the final bill. The administration came into the conference and said it had to be taken out. It was thrown out. And, of course, the Omnibus appropriations bill we vote on, as you know, cannot be amended. So, therefore, we were faced with an up-or-down vote on the bill without this amendment. We had to vote to keep the Government operating, to pay our troops in Iraq, and everything else.

I said at the time this is too important a matter just to forget about and move on. So when the Senate came back into session in January of this year, I immediately took to the floor and said: At the first opportunity, I will offer this amendment again. The American people now have heard about it, and they know about it. They are beginning to understand what it means to them and their jobs to have these changes go into effect. I believe the votes are here, once again, to say to the administration: No, don't take away the right of people to get time- and-a-half pay when they work over 40 hours a week.

By some estimates, up to 8 million American workers would have their right to overtime pay taken away. So I have said I would offer this amendment on this bill. They call this a jobs bill. Well, this amendment is about jobs. It is about not only protecting jobs and overtime pay, but it is about creating jobs.

I believe it is necessary to proceed to consideration of this amendment so that the administration, once again, will understand that prior to any final regulations being issued, they need to go back to the drawing board, hear from the public, work with Congress, as other Congresses have done. Since 1938, we have amended the Fair Labor Standards Act maybe a dozen times, but it has always been done in conjunction with Congress, Congress and the administration working together to come up with reasonable amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. There is nothing wrong with that. Times change. Conditions change. This should be done periodically.

But this administration did not do that. They just drafted these under the

cover of darkness, issued them and said: We are going to take away the right of about 8 million Americans to overtime pay.

So it is appropriate that we debate and vote on my amendment on the FSC JOBS bill because my amendment is about one thing--jobs. These new overtime rules will eliminate time-and-a-half overtime pay for up to 8 million American workers. But, again, it is not just about eliminating overtime pay. These proposed rules will retard the creation of new jobs. This is just basic logic. If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will push their current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With 9 million Americans currently out of work, why would you give an employer yet another disincentive to hire new workers. Yet that is exactly why the administration is pushing these new overtime rules. This is why these proposed new rules have the support of some major business groups in America but not all.

I always like to point out that I represent a lot of businesses in my State of Iowa--good, healthy, productive businesses. Not one business in my State of Iowa has come to me saying we need to change the overtime rules, not one. I am wondering, where is this coming from?

The National Association of Manufacturers says, well, they will reduce labor costs. It will reduce the need to hire new workers. It will have a direct destructive impact on jobs in the United States.

So let's be clear. My amendment on overtime is about creating jobs, overcoming the stagnant job market. And, yes, it is about making sure we protect the time-honored right to overtime pay when you work over 40 hours a week.

There was an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal which I think summed it up. It says: Shortchanged. Many firms refuse to pay for overtime. Employees complain. Others claim workers are exempt under the law or raise output targets, but the rules are confusing.

Here is the quote:

. . . While employees like overtime pay, a lot of employers

don't. That is no surprise. Violations are so common that the

Employer Policy Foundation, an employer supported think tank

in Washington, estimates that workers would get an additional

$19 billion a year if the rules were observed. That estimate

is considered conservative by many researchers.

In plain English, the Employer Policy Foundation, an employer- supported think tank in Washington, is basically saying American workers are being cheated out of $19 billion a year because they are working overtime and they are not getting paid for it right now.

Well, guess what happened, Madam President. A couple of these companies got caught. They got taken to court. They appealed and the appeals court found for the employees. One famous case on the west coast is where employees were clocking out of work after working an 8- hour day, and they were being forced to come right back in the door and work longer hours. Well, they got caught. More and more employers were getting caught.

So now what they want to do is change the rules. They want to work you longer. They want to work you more than 40 hours a week, but they don't want to pay you overtime. That is what the Wall Street Journal said.

So rather than being confronted with the fact that they might be taken to court, they change the rules. Now there won't be any court case. That is what the administration's proposal on overtime is all about. It is about taking away the rights of people.

You know, I had a quote that I will bring up in further debate on this amendment. One worker--a woman, if I am not mistaken--said something I thought was very poignant. She said:

My time with my kids and my family in the evenings and on the weekends is premium time to me. If I am being asked to give up my premium time with my kids and my family, then I think I ought to get premium pay. That is what overtime is about.

They are asking you to give up your premium time with your family, your children, to work overtime. You ought to get premium pay, which is what time and a half is all about. Again, the Bush administration thought they could put these new rules into effect quietly, with no hearings, before anybody knew what was going on. They were wrong. They got caught. The fact is, public outrage over the proposed new overtime rules has gotten stronger and stronger as Americans learn more about the details. They want these proposed rules to be stopped.

I understand if the other side, the Republican side, can drag this out and prevent a vote, well, then maybe in the next month or so they can issue these final rules taking away overtime pay, and then it will be very hard to undo that later on. They know that. That is why they don't want a vote on this amendment. That is why the other side is doing everything they can to keep me from getting a vote.

Madam President, we are not going to be quiet about it. This is the editorial from the New York Times: ``The Quiet Shift In Overtime.''

It says:

The Bush administration is engineering bread and butter

changes in the Federal regulation of overtime pay. . . .

The proposed Labor Department regulations have stirred

justifiable concerns.

They are being presented by the Labor Department as overdue

improvements.

But as they are doing it, as they said, they are doing it quietly, behind the scenes.

More problematical is the possibility that more workers--

millions, according to pro-labor analysts--could be forced

into unpaid overtime under the regulations, which do not

affect blue collar workers. By some estimates, veterans,

police detectives, or senior nurses might lose overtime

compensation that now accounts for as much as 25 percent of

their salaries.

They thought they could do it quietly, but the more we learned about it, we found that the American people were not going to sit by and let premium time with their families be taken away, being forced to work longer hours for regular pay.

With so many people unemployed, you would think you would want to create jobs. These proposed rules on overtime will be a disincentive to creating any new jobs.

Madam President, I hope we can get to my amendment. I will have more to say about it. I have more data and details I wish to bring out. For example, one thing I brought out before, since 1938, there has been a classification of learned professions, such as lawyers, doctors, architects, things like that--the learned professions, which were exempt from overtime. In all of the regulations since that time, there has never been any inclusion in the learned professions of what an individual learned while serving in the U.S. military. It wasn't until going through these proposed regulations with a fine-tooth comb that we discovered there were inserted into these proposed regulations four or five words about what these learned professions--as it goes through them all--learned while in the military, military training.

That had never been in the regulations before--never. Why were those in there? Here it is right on this chart. These are the changes, the new part of the regulations that had never been there before:

However, the word customarily means that the exemption is

also available to employees in such professions and

substantially the same knowledge level as the degreed

employees, but who attain such knowledge through a

combination of work experience, training in the Armed Forces,

attending a technical school, attending a community college,

or other intellectual instruction.

What is different? ``Training in the Armed Forces'' has never been in these rules before. So when we see all these ads saying ``join the Army and be all you can be,'' they talk about all the nice technical training you can get while you are in the military. What they are not telling you now is, if you do that, after you get out of the military, you will be exempt from overtime pay because of what you learned while you were in the military.

So we could have a situation where we have two individuals: one goes to the military and gets training and the other doesn't. They come out and they could have substantially the same kind of jobs. One could have had on-the-job training and one learned in the military. Both are basically equal. The person who served in the military gets cheated out of overtime, but the person who wasn't in the military would be able to get overtime. What kind of sense does that make? But it is in there.

``Training in the Armed Forces'' has never been in the rules since 1938. We

fought World War II, the Korean war, the cold war, Vietnam war, and every other war and we have never said to the men and women in uniform when they learn something in the military, we are going to take away their right to overtime. Why are we doing that now? Why are we doing that?

Again, these are some of the hidden little things in this proposed regulation that need to be brought out, with scrutiny in the sunshine. Let people know about it. Again, I hope we can get to my amendment. It has the overwhelming support of the American public. As more and more of them know about this, they don't want their right to be taken away. I have talked with workers who received no overtime last year, no overtime pay. They were expressing to me how much they were opposed to this proposed change in the rules.

I said: If you are not working overtime, why are you opposed?

They said: It is a right we have. We may not have gotten overtime, but if I do work it, I want my right protected. That just about sums it up. It is a right that should not be taken away.

Again, it is urgent that we proceed to the overtime amendment. Let's go to my amendment. Let's have a good debate. I am willing to have a time agreement, if the other side would like to have a time agreement. Let's have the debate. I want to hear from the other side why we should let these proposed regulations go into effect. Let's have the debate so the American people can understand what is at stake, and let's have an up-or-down vote on my amendment. Let's have an up-or-down vote on whether the Senate would agree with the administration that these proposed rules, these changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act, should go into effect or whether the administration should go back to the drawing board, work with Congress, do it in an open, aboveboard manner.

There are some changes that do need to be made in the Fair Labor Standards Act. There is one part of the proposed rules of which I am supportive, and that is raising the base from about $8,000 a year to $22,000 a year. That should have been done a long time ago.

My amendment does not affect that. My amendment leaves that in place. But in giving with one hand--that is, raising the base up to $22,000 a year--the administration is taking away the right to overtime pay from about 8 million Americans with the other hand. That is a bad deal.

I hope we can get to my amendment. I hope we can have a good debate and an up-or-down vote on it. I am prepared to do so whenever the leadership dispenses with these pending amendments.

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

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2881 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Iowa, the Senator from Montana, and also Senator Reid, our assistant leader on this side, for working out this agreement. As I have said all along, all we want is debate and a vote on the overtime issue.

This is an important issue that has come to a head right now because the administration shortly will be issuing final regulations on this issue without really having duly consulted with Congress. These regulations could take away the right to overtime pay for over 8 million American workers.

So I hope we can have a good debate on this, probably tomorrow--not tonight but tomorrow. Certainly I have discussed this with the Senator from Montana. We would be willing to enter into a time agreement.

I have heard some talk around that the other side, the Republican side, will now file a cloture motion. Obviously, if that cloture motion wins, then my amendment fails because it is ``nongermane.''

Now, we just saw--and I did not object to the amendments just being adopted which have to do with some extenders. There were some other things added. Those are also nongermane to the bill. So the other side cannot make the argument that they are not going to allow nongermane

amendments to this bill. We just adopted a whole bunch of nongermane amendments to this bill. So that is fine. We do that all the time around here.

I hope we can have a good debate on this overtime issue and have an up-or-down vote. I can assure the other side that if their goal is to cut off this amendment by filing a cloture motion, we will do all we can on this side to deny cloture on this bill until we have a vote on the overtime amendment.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and look forward to the debate tomorrow on overtime.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that David Sinsky of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's and tomorrow's debate.

I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, this amendment is offered on behalf of myself and the major cosponsor is Senator Feinstein; also Senators Durbin, Lautenberg, Bingaman, Landrieu, and Lieberman.

The Nation's health system is in crisis. There are nearly 44 million uninsured individuals. Skyrocketing health costs are leaving more and more people without insurance. We have shortages of health professionals all across rural America. Everywhere, health providers are stretched to the limit. Finally, as the Centers for Disease Control pointed out just this week, obesity will soon match tobacco use as America's No. 1 preventable killer.

This is not the time to cut Federal investments in health care. We stand on the brink of fantastic discoveries and breakthroughs in medical research. This is not the time to cut short this vital research, denying hope to tens of millions of Americans with chronic diseases. This is the time to increase our efforts not only to treat and cure illnesses, but also to dramatically increase our efforts to prevent illnesses. We need major new efforts to promote wellness in our health care system.

And yet, the President has proposed slashing function 550, the health care function in this budget. This is taking America in exactly the wrong direction.

Accordingly, I am offering an amendment that would increase function 550 funding by $6 billion in fiscal year 2005 and $30 billion over 5 years.

This new funding would go to medical research disease control, wellness, tobacco cessation, and preventive health efforts. It would help to recruit and retain our incredibly talented health professionals in this country--especially in rural areas. It boosts research into new medical treatments and cures. It includes funding for mental health and substance abuse programs. It includes funding for the prevention of chronic diseases, which account for 75 percent of our Nation's $1 trillion in health care costs.

The Harkin-Feinstein amendment fully offsets this new funding by levying a tobacco user fee of 61 cents per pack. That would bring the Federal total to $1 per pack.

This user fee will raise enough revenue both to fund the increase in function 550 and to reduce the deficit--steps that will be good for the physical health of the American people and the fiscal health of the federal government.

Bear in mind that tobacco use costs this country billions of dollars and millions of lives every year. Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causing 440,000 deaths each year and resulting in more than $75 billion in direct medical costs. Smoking causes chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke, as will as cancer of the lungs, larynx, esophagus, mouth, and bladder. In addition, smoking contributes to cancer of the cervix, pancreas, and kidneys.

This creates an enormous financial burden for the federal government. Smoking-caused Medicaid expenditures amount to a whopping $23.5 billion annually. Smoking-caused Medicare-expenditures are $20 billion per year. Reducing tobacco use in this country could save American taxpayers billions of dollars annually, while freeing up resources to invest in the country's public health system.

Study after study tells us that increases in the price on tobacco products have significant positive public health effects--especially with children. With a $1 user fee on tobacco products, we can decrease youth smoking by 18 percent. We can keep 105,000 young people from starting smoking in the first place.

Despite our efforts in the 1990's to curtail manipulative marketing targeted at children, the tobacco industry currently spends more than $11 billion a year to promote its deadly products--that is $30 million per day. We should be curbing this threat, this epidemic. And this amendment will do exactly that.

Prevention is the key. Today, Americans are plagued with more and more chronic diseases that are largely preventable. As I said, 75 percent of the $1 trillion we spend on health care in the United States goes to the treatment of these largely preventable chronic diseases. Without question, giving Americans an incentive to reduce or quit using tobacco products would be an urgent step in the right direction.

This amendment offers us a trifecta of benefits: It increases funding for health care services, medical research and prevention. It reduces the deadly pandemic of tobacco use in America. And it makes a solid contribution to reducing the budget deficits that are destroying our government's fiscal health.

Lastly, let me say that our amendment does not contain any provision dealing with the tobacco quota buyout and FDA regulation of tobacco. I believe we need to do both; both must be done together. This is one Senator who will stand here and do everything I can in my power, along with others, to make sure there will not be a tobacco buyout without FDA regulation of tobacco.

I believe we have to do both because I believe we need to help our tobacco farmers, those who are struggling to feed their families in small, rural areas all over the South and sometimes even to the Midwest. They need the tobacco buyout. But we also need to make sure we have meaningful oversight of tobacco use and promotion by the Food and Drug Administration.

With that, Mr. President, I now yield to the Senator from California.

Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.

How much time does this side have left?

Mr. President, how much time does this side have?

Mr. President, I will yield myself a couple minutes.

A lot of people might say: My gosh, Senator Harkin and Senator Feinstein and Senator Durbin, a dollar a pack is a lot of Federal tax on a pack of cigarettes. But this chart shows the history of the Federal excise tax on cigarettes going back to 1950.

Shown on this side of the chart would be for 1950. At that time, the Federal excise tax was 49 percent of the average wholesale price for a pack of cigarettes--49 percent. Today, it is 14 percent.

So those who say that a dollar a pack on that is too much, I point out it only brings it up to 30 percent of the average wholesale price of a pack of cigarettes. That would be 30 percent; and that would be less than what it has been many times in the past.

So it is not out of line with what we have had as a Federal excise tax on cigarettes, as I said, going clear back to 1950. Then all the way up until about 1983 it was more than 30 percent of the average wholesale price. So this is not out of line.

But what we get for this, as has been pointed out, is we get $30 billion over 5 years to invest in health research, wellness, prevention programs, anti-obesity programs, smoking cessation programs, and keeping our people more healthy. Plus, we also get out of this amendment about $9 billion in deficit reduction.

So this amendment does two things: It raises the Federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes from 39 cents to $1, which would bring it up to about 30 percent of the wholesale price, and it takes that money and puts it in the health function so we can invest in the health of our people in this country. That is all this amendment does. It does nothing else.

Yes, I yield for a question.

The Senator is absolutely right. We know with this amendment there will be a dramatic reduction. It is estimated youth smoking would go down by at least 18 percent with this amendment.

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his support and for pointing that out.

I reserve whatever time we may have remaining.

Mr. President, this amendment does what 400 public health organizations around the country say is vitally needed. It increases function 550 health spending by 12 percent. That is $6 billion in the next fiscal year and $30 billion over 5 years. It also provides for $9 billion in deficit reduction over the same 5 years.

The amendment pays for this needed investment with a revenue measure that delivers more public health benefits. We raise the current Federal tax on cigarettes by 61 cents a pack, from 39 cents to $1 a pack. This would provide $30 billion for public health over 5 years, and $9 billion of deficit reduction.

I showed this chart earlier. If you think $1 a pack is a lot of money, I point out in much of the history of the Federal excise tax on cigarettes we were as high as 49 percent of the average wholesale price on a pack of cigarettes. We are now down to 14 percent. This amendment would only raise it to 30 percent of the average wholesale price.

I ask unanimous consent a letter supporting this amendment be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased that the Budget Committee reported out a budget resolution that provided $232 million for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry to enable the extension of several expiring provisions of child nutrition law. This was the amount that Agriculture Committee Chairman Cochran and I noted in our letter to the Budget Committee would, at a minimum, be necessary to ensure that children who qualify for benefits under current law would not lose them.

However, more is clearly needed. Given the nutritional risks to American children today and the numerous unmet needs that exist in Federal child nutrition programs, I commend Senators Dole and Leahy for their bipartisan effort to provide additional funding for federal child nutrition programs. If these additional funds remain in the conference report, they will help the Senate Agriculture Committee to take important steps in pending child nutrition legislation. The need for additional funds is significant, including, for instance, the expansion the Summer Food Service Program and the fruit and vegetable pilot projects, lowering area eligibility for the Child and Adult Care Food Program, helping children who still face financial barriers to participate in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, and improving the entire nutritional environment in American schools.

If additional funds are provided in the conference report, it is, however, critical to understand that, by relying on function 920 to offset this amendment, a number of critical issues remain. The use of function 920 fails to specify the source of the new funds, meaning that they could accrue either by increasing the national debt or as a result of unspecified program cuts. Of course, the question of the actual cuts that may be specified is an important one. I am particularly concerned that any cuts that fall within the jurisdiction of the Senate Committee on Agriculture could pit one set of interests against another in a way that could reopen the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act passed just 2 years ago. Neither the members of the committee nor the interested stakeholders in the agriculture and nutrition communities would be well served by such an unfortunate situation. I, and I believe my colleagues on the committee, would be very hesitant to pit the needs of rural America against the similarly important needs of needy children and working families.

Madam President, I would like to take a few minutes to comment on the recent retirement of Elaine Raubach. Elaine served for many years as the director of the Budget and Analysis Group of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In that role, Elaine was responsible for putting together the budget and performance plan for CMS, as well as running the agency's financial management system.

Elaine previously played a lead role in the development and implementation of a major reorganization of the agency, then known as the Health Care Financing Administration. She also served the agency in information resources management.

Elaine began her Federal career in 1973 with the Social Security Administration and, soon thereafter, began

working with the Medicare program. She remained with Medicare when the Health Care Financing Administration was formed in 1977, and continued with work in Medicare, Medicaid and other Federal health programs.

Elaine graduated from Rutgers University and received her Master of Arts Degree from the University of Virginia and an Executive Master of Business Administration from Loyola College.

For the past several years, she provided invaluable service as liaison to the Appropriations Committee in the Senate and the House of Representatives. She has met each and every challenge given her with the utmost ability and professionalism. Elaine has been an asset in every position in which she has served.

On behalf of the members of the Appropriations Committee, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Elaine for her dedicated service, of her vision which so often guided us in formulating creative solutions to funding issues, and in caring for the people we serve. Best wishes for an enjoyable and well-deserved retirement.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the University of Northern Iowa's men's basketball team on their Missouri Valley Conference Championship. The Panthers vanquished Southwest Missouri State in double overtime, clinching a berth in the NCAA Tournament. Coach Greg McDermott has proven his mettle in his 3 years as head coach, and now UNI is heading to the Big Dance for the first time in 14 years. I wish them luck there, and will be cheering for them alongside all Iowans.