Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Wednesday, February 26, 2014, at a time to be determined, in room 216 of the Capitol Building to mark up the nominations of Vivek Hallegere Murthy, of Massachusetts, to serve as Surgeon General of the Public Health Service; Portia Y. Wu, of the District of Columbia, to serve as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training; Nomination of Christopher P. Lu, of Virginia, to serve as Deputy Secretary of Labor; Heather Lynn MacDougall, of Florida, to serve as a Member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission; and Massie Ritsch, of the District of Columbia, to serve as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, Department of Education; as well as any additional nominations cleared for action.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the Committee at (202) 224-5375.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet on February 27, 2014, at 10 am, in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Promoting College Access and Success For Students With Disabilities.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Alyssa Mowitz of the committee staff on (202) 228-3453.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Lauren Sarkesian and Bruno DiMascio, interns with my personal staff, be granted floor privileges for today's session.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about my two recent fact-finding trips to Cuba. During the first trip, which was an incredible journey across the nation of Cuba, I had conversations with Cuban citizens, farmers, doctors, nurses, students, a very broad cross section of the Cuban citizenry, also some government officials.

The second trip involved a 1-day visit to the U.S. Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay. I would like to begin with details of my first trip which took place during January's recess in the Senate. First, I wish to publicly thank Ambassador Cabanas, the Cuban--well, I guess since we do not have an embassy--he has the rank of Ambassador, but he is in charge of the Cuban interest section here. I wish to thank him and his staff personally for arranging this and overcoming a lot of difficult obstacles to make sure we could take this trip.

I guess I am the first Senator or Congressman to do this kind of a trip. First, we flew from Miami down to Santiago de Cuba. We spent 2 or 3 days in Santiago de Cuba. Then we drove from Santiago to Holguin, to Camaguey, Santa Clara and into Havana. So we traversed about 700 miles during the week's period we were there, seeing most of the entire nation of Cuba.

I have not seen--I have not been up to the Pinar del Rio out here in the western part. That is one part I have not been. I had visited as a Senator 11 years before, but that was only in Havana. This time I wanted to see the country. I wanted to see ordinary Cubans in small towns and communities, to get a feel for what it was like in the rest of the country.

Most people just go to Havana. That is akin to going to New York City and saying you have been to America. It is not the same. There is a lot more country to Cuba, a lot more things going on than just Havana.

It is clear to me this is a time that is very important in Cuban- American relations. So I just wanted to share some of the insights I gained during my travels across this Nation of 11 million people.

As I said, I arrived in Santiago on January 17. Over the course of the week, we traveled up through the countryside. Again, I wish to thank Bernardo Toscano, a Cuban who had been in the United States I think three or four times. He had been in Washington two or three times working in their interest section and I think once or twice in New York with their interest section in New York.

So we met him. He came with us to Santiago and then served as a host and was with us all during our trip.

Bernardo--I always say, he is an Italian Cuban, Bernardo Toscano-- again, another indication that there are a lot of different nationalities that people in Cuba have.

Bernardo was so gracious, so kind, so informative in taking care of things for us. He informed me that he had been to visit 20 States in the United States. So he has been to 20 States. Yet a U.S. citizen cannot go to Cuba to see Cuba. But the trip we took was fascinating. All along the way, from Santiago all up the way, we saw tour buses-- tour buses with people.

They looked like North Americans, but in fact they were from England and Germany and Sweden and Canada, mostly Canada, a lot of Canadians. But there were people traveling, visiting different things. Canada right now, they have a direct flight from Toronto to Santa Clara. Then you get on a bus and go out here, to those wonderful beaches out here, which we did not visit. A lot of Canadians and a lot of Europeans go there but not Americans. I will have more to say about that.

But, again, I wish to thank so many people of Cuba, so many people I saw, for the warm welcome, the hospitality they extended to me, my wife, my traveling companions, and my staff as we traveled throughout their country.

Prior to my election--long before my election to Congress, I was a Navy pilot stationed at Guantanamo Bay for 18 months. So this was interesting to see the rest of Cuba other than just Guantanamo Bay, which is right down here. This is the Guantanamo Bay area. It is right near Santiago de Cuba.

In fact, landing at the airport in Santiago was quite interesting. One of my traveling companions I was with was a Navy pilot with me when I was stationed in Guantanamo. He is Cuban American. We remembered how we were always kind of warned when we were out flying not to get mistaken between Santiago and Guantanamo because the runways look exactly the same.

They are both east-west runways, and they are right there on the ocean. There is a bay on both of them, and if we weren't careful, we might land on one rather than the other.

All that time that we were flying out of there we never went to Santiago--of course, we couldn't--but we used to see it as we patrolled the skies around Cuba. So now landing at Santiago was kind of an interesting flashback in time to when I was a young Navy pilot.

I wanted to get a firsthand look at the lives of ordinary people outside of Havana. Particularly, I have long advocated in this country for a strong public health infrastructure, and I wanted to examine the strengths and weaknesses of Cuba's public health system.

When we first arrived in Santiago, we went to visit the cancer hospital, which provides treatment for people from across the entire country. I found the doctors there and the leaders of that hospital to be very dedicated public servants. The institution has struggled to overcome the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, which hit Santiago very hard. Again, it would be mutually beneficial for both Cuba and the United States if we had better relations and if we had better trade relations with Cuba. They might need some medical equipment that we have, but we could also learn from them on some of the processes and procedures they use in treating cancer patients.

I was struck by one thing. This was Friday afternoon, and we were going through the hospital--yes, they have all the necessary equipment, the radiation machines and all the equipment they need to do radiation, infusion for chemotherapy. They have all of that. As I said, the hospital suffered some damage from Hurricane Sandy and that hasn't been all fixed yet--but what was interesting, as I was going through the hospital, I noticed a lot of empty beds.

As we were leaving the hospital, I said to the director: Where are all of the people? It looks like you have a lot of empty beds.

She said: Oh, it is Friday afternoon. We send them home for the weekend.

I said: Really?

She said a very interesting thing to me.

She said: Yes. You come to the hospital to get cured, but you go home to get well.

I thought about that, because not too long ago I had an instance in Des Moines, IA, where I had visited a friend of mine who was seriously ill with cancer--he has since passed away--but he wanted to leave. Literally, he wanted to leave the hospital for a Sunday meeting of the Methodist Church. He was a Methodist minister and the hospital wouldn't let him leave.

They said: If you leave, then you have to be all readmitted again through Medicare, and Medicare will cut off the payments and all of that.

There was all of this, and they wouldn't even let him leave for a few hours to go halfway across the city to partake in an award he was supposed to receive.

I thought about that when I saw this hospital and she said: No, we send people home for the weekend and then they come back on Monday.

There are interesting things such as that that we pick up. There is a lot the two of us could learn together.

In Camaguey--we stopped in Holguin, which is also kind of a small, rural community, again with a very kind of comprehensive clinic system. As we drove on up the road to Camaguey, in Camaguey we had an interesting visit. We visited the home of Dr. Carlos Finlay. Now some people might say who is Dr. Carlos Finlay?

Dr. Carlos Finlay was the person who discovered the origin of yellow fever that is transmitted by a certain mosquito. A lot of people didn't believe him. They just did not believe him, but he persevered. Later on it was a person who is sort of famous around here--at least we know the name, Dr. Walter Reed--who, when they were building the Panama Canal, discovered that Dr. Finlay was right, it was a transmission by mosquitoes.

We were able to visit his home and there is again a whole cadre of people there doing research on other transmissions of illnesses; for example, the transmission of different diseases by mosquitoes there, but again there is a heavy focus on medical research.

When we went to Santa Clara, we visited another clinic there. They call them polyclinics. In other words, they do a lot of different things. It is sort of what we might think of in this country as a community health center--it is a community health center. Unlike our community health centers, people don't have to just go there to seek help. The community health centers, the polyclinics, go out there. They go out in very rural areas to make sure kids have their vaccinations and to make sure people have checkups.

One of the reasons they have such a low infant mortality rate--which some have said is lower than ours and is, in fact, one of the lowest in the world, and they have one of the lowest rates of mortality of children zero to 5--is because when a woman gets pregnant in Cuba, she is visited immediately. As soon as they know about it, she gets visited by a nurse; visited by health officials who put her on a better diet, make sure she doesn't smoke, provide supportive services for her during her pregnancy, and make sure there is someone there for the birth. For that child, everything is covered from the earliest time of pregnancy through early childhood.

It is a hands-on approach. It is going out serving people rather than making people come in to them. This is one of the key features of what Cuba has done. They have made the practice of medicine a public service in all aspects. Whether one is a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse or various other health practitioners, it is a public service.

Cuba has put a great deal of emphasis on prevention, prevention of illness. In fact, I must say I was surprised in Cuba that they have gone on an antismoking campaign.

I was out one night in Santiago. We were out to dinner. We came back at about 10 at night, and I noticed a street was blocked off. There were a lot of people out there, and I asked Mr. Toscano what that was.

He asked somebody else and said: Well, in Santiago every Friday and

Saturday night they block off long streets and they have festivals, street parties.

I said: I want to go there.

So we parked our car and we walked out. We didn't have any guards or anybody around us. We just walked down the street. It was a mile long. It was a long street. Late at night, we went down the street, and along the sides of the street there were people cooking foods. There were little kiosks. We even saw one whole hog on a spit being turned, people eating. There were families with kids out there and a lot of young people.

There were a lot of young people out there looking for other young people on Saturday night. There was music. Every other block had some music, and it was just kind of a wonderful atmosphere.

I noticed two things that I was looking for during my walk down and back--how many people were smoking. I counted four people were smoking. There were thousands of people up and down these streets, and I counted four people who were smoking. There may have been more, but that is all I could find.

During this entire walk, with all of these people out in the street, 10:30 at night, Saturday night, I saw one policeman, and he didn't have any firearms. He just had a stick. He just kind of walked around with a stick. There was this wonderful thing, but the idea that no one was smoking, kind of fascinated me.

But I digress. I want to talk about the community-based health system and keeping people healthy. What they have said is it is not just the doctors' offices--that is only one component of keeping people healthy--it is the entire community, the schools, the community-based approach that keeps people healthy. That is something we could learn from and do in this country.

During my visit with health care professionals, they explained that in the early 1980s Cuba moved to a comprehensive family practice model throughout the country, with doctors, nurses, and other health professionals working in teams integrated into the neighborhoods where they live and they work. This has become the pillar of primary health care in Cuba and obviously has contributed to significant improvements in health outcomes. I think their longevity, lifespan, is now even longer than ours in the United States.

These changes and others have helped Cuba improve its health care system. There are several indicators of this. For instance, by the end of 2013, Cuba reported that its infant mortality rate had declined to 4.2 for 1,000 live births, the lowest in its history and one of the lowest in the world. By comparison, the United States had an infant mortality rate of 5.9 per 1,000 live births.

Also, over the past couple of decades, Cuba has increased the number of medical personnel it sends abroad to serve on medical missions, filling critical needs in underserved countries. There are currently nearly 44,000 Cuban medical personnel working in many countries around the world.

Last year I took a trip to Namibia and South Africa, and I saw Cuban doctors working there--actually, sometimes alongside our own doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interesting. We can work with them there, but we can't work with them here--so they do. They have sent them all over the world.

Also, in Havana I visited a very interesting place I had never heard about. It is called the Latin American School of Medicine. The Latin American School of Medicine is about 20 miles west of Havana. It was an old naval academy. Evidently, President Castro decided they didn't need a naval academy, so they closed it down and made it a medical school. Students come from not only all over Latin America but all around the world to go to medical school.

Believe it or not, there are students from America going to school in Havana--going to medical school. This blew my mind. I never heard of such a thing.

This is what I found out. In the year 2000, the Congressional Black Caucus had a trip to Havana. During that trip they met with President Castro. One of the Congressmen, Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, had said something about how difficult it was for them to get people in certain areas of Mississippi. He said there were large areas in his home district that didn't have a single physician. Also, they talked about how expensive it was to go to medical school.

So President Castro invited American students to come there, and they worked it out. I think the first class started, if I am not mistaken, in 2002. I believe that was the first class. Now, believe it or not, there are 108 U.S. students going to this school.

I didn't see them all because a lot of them, during their schooling, go out and work in hospitals, clinics, and different things such as that. I met with six of them and it was very interesting. From the left is Michael, who was from California; Nikolai from Queens in New York; Kimberly, also from northern California; Ariel was from Michigan; Olive is from Wisconsin; and Sarah is from New Mexico.

All of them are first-year students except for Sarah, who is a third- year student, watches over them, and is their tutor or their leader.

There are requirements before you go there. They have to be from an extremely low-income family and cannot afford to go to medical school. They have to be a college graduate and graduated with one of the sciences, such as biology or one of the physical sciences, something like that. So they must have graduated from college. Third, they have to agree that when they graduate they are going to come back to America and work in an underserved area.

Here is the deal: Every one of these students is going to medical school. Do you know what it costs them? Zero. Not one cent. The 108 students pay nothing. We have over 90 graduates of this school back here in America right now.

And that is another thing: Whenever we traveled over to Cuba, I went to the clinics and I talked to health people. I always asked them: What did it cost you to go to school? Do you have student debt? No. Medical school is free. There is no cost to going to medical school--none whatsoever. So here are these students, who would never be able to go to medical school and absorb that cost, getting a free medical education. So again, here is another of the things we could be working with Cuba on if we had a little better policy with Cuba.

The six students I met with are happy and grateful to have the opportunity. They were just out of their first 6 months. For the first 6 months all they do is learn Spanish--Spanish immersion. They had just finished that and they were very happy about that, and that now they would actually start studying medicine. Again, so many different things, but mainly I focused on health care and what they were doing on health care.

I also met with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. I had a long lunch with him, their former Ambassador to the United Nations and now their Foreign Minister. We had a long discussion about our relationship with Cuba.

He himself said it is time we have a new relationship with the United States. It is time for a new course. We can't be bound by old history. We need to make new history. I think that is what I would like to echo here; that we do have a constructive new policy between Cuba and America.

The last thing I did was to pay a visit to Mr. Alan Gross. Right here, Mr. Alan Gross. This is my staff member, Rosemary Gutierrez, who went with us on this trip and made sure what I was hearing was correct in terms of Spanish, since I don't speak Spanish fluently. Mr. Gross, as you know, has been in prison now for over 4 years. I am hopeful he will be released soon on humanitarian grounds. I will be working with our government to engage with the Cuban Government in serious and sustained talks to resolve his situation and other related issues.

I might add what we are holding in this photo is a little chain. What he does in his spare time is he puts things together out of bottle caps, plastic bottle caps. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence. I spent well over an hour with him. I think he is holding up pretty well, under the circumstances. Obviously, he is not very happy. Who would be happy, being locked up like that? He is confined to his room for 23 hours of the day, but he is allowed outside. He told me he walks 10,000 steps a

day and does 50 pullups for an hour each day. So he makes these bracelets out of the rings from the water bottles. He also reads and watches television. He says he has television and things to read.

I know other Senators have visited with him in Havana, but it is time to bring Mr. Gross home. It is time to end this. It is time we do some dealing with the Cuban Government on his issue and on some other related issues that I don't mean to go into right now but the administration knows of which I speak. There is no reason why we can't return Mr. Gross to this country this year, and I am hopeful that will be done.

It is time to recognize that Cuba is our neighbor; that it is not only our neighbor but it is a sovereign nation and we have to work to improve on this relationship with a country 90 miles from our shore. It is obvious to visitors, the Cuban people and the American people have a great deal in common. In all my travels through Cuba, as we stopped at various places--stopped to have refreshments here and there, stopped in small communities--I noticed that every small town we went through or by had a baseball diamond or maybe two baseball diamonds. It is amazing how many people play baseball in Cuba. They have town teams, and towns will have two teams, one section of town against the other section-- kids all playing baseball. Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of relationship where some of our small baseball teams in the United States could go to Cuba and play? We know they have some pretty good players because some have come here to play in our Major Leagues.

In every place I stopped, and with all the people we talked to, I never heard one Cuban--not one--ever say a bad thing about the United States of America or about the American people. I never heard it. I expected some would say: You know, you are doing bad things to Cuba with your embargo and we don't like Americans for this. I expected to hear that. I never heard it. Do you know the thing I heard most often from ordinary Cubans? Where are you from? I said: I am from Iowa and I work in Washington, DC. The usual response was: Oh. Do you know my cousin so-and-so, who lives in St. Louis or my cousin so-and-so who lives here or there? It seems as though every Cuban has a cousin in America someplace. One woman said her son lives in Michigan.

There is this sense we have a lot in common, and I never felt any animosity whatsoever. It is clear we have a lot in common. We are both nations of hard-working people who want access to basic health care and a good education for our kids.

That is another thing: I didn't spend a lot of time looking at education, but it was clear to me the literacy rate in Cuba is very high. Some have said it is the highest of all the Latin American countries. I can't attest to that. But it is clear that education is a very important part of the Cuban structure.

Over the years, I have met with many Iowans, business people, diplomats who want to improve our relationship with Cuba to facilitate more trade and travel with our neighbors. Even with the limited opening with Cuba's markets, we have seen tremendous benefits from agricultural exports to Cuba from my State of Iowa and other parts of the United States. It is only our official policy that stands in the way of much greater exports of U.S. commodities and food products plus related agricultural machinery, technology, and so forth.

Here is another thing I noticed: We went through a lot of farms and we saw a lot of agriculture--mostly sugarcane, but other things too--a lot of cattle. This whole section of Cuba here, in this area of the map, is almost all cattle; livestock--goats and cattle--and other agriculture. I want to say this: This is the first and only country I have ever visited where I went out to see agricultural entities and have never seen a John Deere tractor or a John Deere implement of any kind. I can go to China. I went almost to the Tibetan border in China and saw John Deere equipment. There is John Deere equipment in Africa, John Deere equipment in Pakistan, and India. If we had better trade, I might see some more John Deere implements down in Cuba, which would be great for their productivity.

We would also benefit from a two-way trade. There are many things grown in Cuba we have appetites for, such as fruits and vegetables-- fresh fruits that consumers in our country would enjoy.

Again, I think Americans really do want to change our policy. I have here the Atlantic Council. On February 11 they released the results of their latest poll which found that 56 percent of the American people support the normalization of relations with Cuba, including 63 percent of Floridians who want to normalize relations with Cuba. I think we have had a policy of isolation for far too long. As this latest poll indicates, the American people think so too. After being in place for over 50 years, this embargo has not been effective in any way. Our policy has benefited neither the Cuban people nor the American people.

Both the United States and Cuba have recently taken steps to allow for greater travel. It is a significant step forward. The Cuban Government has eliminated its long-standing policy of requiring an exit permit and a letter of invitation for Cubans to travel abroad. This change in policy has allowed for prominent dissidents and human rights activists to travel abroad from Cuba.

Additionally, restrictions on remittances have been lifted. I think remittances now from Cuban-Americans and their families are now their second largest export or second to sugar.

The United States and Cuba have resumed low-level talks on migration, search and rescue operations, and other issues. I might mention one other. When I was in Guantanamo a week or so ago, with a group led by Senator Tester, Captain Nettleton, who is the base commander, took me around the base. I had been stationed there, as I said, about 53 years ago, so I kind of wanted to see some of the old places. As he was driving me around, he took me up to the gate, and coming back I said: Do you ever have contact with Cubans? He said: Oh yes, we do. In fact, 2 years ago the last of the Cubans retired from working at Guantanamo. They lived in Cuba but worked on Guantanamo just until 2 years ago.

He told me that recently he went to visit the hospital in Guantanamo City. Now that is not on the map but it is right outside of Guantanamo Bay, our naval base. He went to visit the hospital there because they have a burn unit. They do not have a burn unit on Guantanamo at our facility. So they have made a handshake deal and an agreement that if we have burn victims on Guantanamo, we can take them to the hospital in Guantanamo City. Things like that are happening and are kind of opening the door, so we should build on these small but positive changes in the relationship.

The United States should abandon its policy of seeking Cuba's isolation. We should lift all restrictions on travel to Cuba. What is our justification for denying Americans the right to travel to Cuba? We should allow for all U.S. citizens wishing to go to Cuba to do so. This would expose more Cubans to our young people, our ideas and interactions.

When you go to Cuba you see a lot of Canadians, a lot of Europeans, and now Cuban-Americans can go to Cuba freely. If you are Cuban- American you can get on one of about four to seven daily flights from Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Key West to Cuba. If you are a U.S. citizen you can't get on one of those unless you have a permit from the U.S. Government. If you are a Cuban-American, you can get on the plane and go to Cuba and come back, and more and more are doing so. As of last year, I believe Americans are now the second largest group to visit Cuba, but they are all Cuban-Americans. We have this crazy policy. If you are Cuban-American you can go to Cuba, but if you are not, you can't. Someone please explain that one to me.

It is time for us to chart a new course. Our relationship is frozen in a Cold War mentality that has not achieved its goals and made it difficult to move forward on issues that encourage more trade and travel between our two countries. Our policy also fails to promote more openness and respect for internationally recognized human rights.

Multiple layers of sanctions remain in place, making it difficult for U.S. businesses to trade with Cuba. Both the Cuban people and U.S. national interests would benefit from a modernized and sensible policy. Now is not the

time to be bound and held back by history. It is time to make new history. It is time to begin a new chapter in the relations of our two countries.

I hope the Obama administration and the Cuban Government will seize this opportunity to do just that--to modernize, to move ahead, recognizing always and foremost that Cuba is a sovereign nation. They will not be dominated by America or any other country. We have to deal with them just as we do any other sovereign nation.

Guantanamo

I will conclude by saying I had an opportunity on a trip with Senator Tester and two other Senators to visit the Guantanamo Bay detention center. We toured Camps 5 and 6, which house the majority of the detainees held at Guantanamo. We also had a tour of the facilities that hold high-value detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Based on my own observations on my tour of Guantanamo and reports I read about previous conditions, it does appear that detainees are being treated more humanely now than previously and that conditions at Guantanamo are in line with how the detainees would be treated if they were held in the United States.

However, this trip reinforced my long-held conviction that the detention facility at Guantanamo should be closed as soon as possible. Its very existence--remote, offshore, not subject to the laws of the United States--makes it impossible to justify its existence. That is why I introduced a bill to close the facility as far back as 2007. That is why I continue to believe Federal courts and Federal prisons are fully capable of dealing with these detainees.

The indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals--some for over 13 years at this point--has harmed our image abroad, complicated relations with friendly countries, and I think really violates the basic principles of our Constitution. It is not acceptable. And the existence of this facility cannot be justified when there is an alternative--and there is.

I am not alone in advocating for this prison's closure. Military and foreign policy officials across the political spectrum have made it clear that we must close the detention center at Guantanamo. Leaders including Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Madeline Albright, Warren Christopher, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and CIA Director John Brennan have all said closing the detention center at Guantanamo is critical to our national security.

Yet I have no illusions regarding these detainees. Some are extremely dangerous terrorists with the determination and the ability, if given the opportunity, to inflict great harm on the United States and its citizens. But, indeed, prisons in the United States are already holding many of the world's most dangerous terrorists--criminals who have been found guilty in a court of law. These include Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Zacarias Moussaoui, the 9/11 coconspiritor; and Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber. If we can successfully try these terrorists in courts and hold them in our prisons, we can do the same with the Guantanamo detainees.

In closing, I think it is long past due that we reexamine our policy toward Cuba. I call upon the Obama administration to not waste any more time. Get to it. Let's change our policy. Let's start making new history and not be detained by the old history. Secondly, it is time that we close the prison in Guantanamo.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I want to talk today about a subject that has immense implications for America's future. In fact, I often talk about it as being perhaps the darkest cloud hanging over the future economic well-being of our country that no one ever talks about. It has been hugely ignored; that is, the issue of retirement income and what people are going to do when they retire in the future.

I have been focused on this for several years. My HELP Committee has, over the last 2 or 3 years, had 10 hearings on this issue. We have met with a

lot of the investment community and retirement benefits community to take a look at what is happening and to see whether we can have a better system for retirement than we have.

Right now young people who are working to pay off student loan debt, maybe buy a new home, put a little money away for their own kids' education later on or people who are close to retirement, a nurse who has been working all her life, someone maybe worked in a small business and they are 60 years old, are wondering what are they going to do when they retire. They are worried they will not have enough money to live on.

Quite frankly, they are very right to be worried. If you looked at the future work force of America today and you said: What is it this group of people will need to live on when they retire and what they have saved for retirement, there is a deficit. They do not have enough saved on which to retire.

How big is that deficit? Calculations in our hearings show it is about $6.6 trillion. That is a big chunk of change. That is a huge hole. So when you look at what is happening, half of Americans--half of Americans--have less than $10,000 in savings.

As I talk and as we look at this, we have to remember that retirement has always been thought of as a three-legged stool. One leg is a pension; one leg is savings; the other leg is Social Security. So what is happening now is that on the retirement pension system, the savings systems are falling down. Social Security is still strong. I will have more to say about that. But what we have to do is look at how much people have in savings. Half of all Americans who are working today have less than $10,000 in savings--less than $10,000 in savings.

When I came to the Congress in the 1970s, one out of every two workers had a pension. That means they had a pension that would pay them a monthly income until the day they died. And if they died, their spouse would get it. One out of every two. Today it is one in every five and it is getting worse. Only one in five.

By the way, this has fallen by 30 percent in just two decades. Again, 75 million people have no retirement plan at all. Seventy-five million people--that is about half of the workforce in America--have no workplace retirement plan at all--nothing, no 401(k), no IRAs, no defined benefit program. Nothing. Half, one out of every two, have nothing whatsoever.

Unfortunately, instead of trying to improve the pension system and lift up everyone, there are too many people out there trying to score political points by scapegoating public servants for State and local budget shortfalls. Pensions are not the cause of State fiscal problems, and retired public servants are not living high on the hog on the taxpayer's dime. These are simply malicious myths being spread by people who I think have two objectives: one, to discredit public sector unions; secondly, to dismantle the pension system.

Pensions are one of the best ways to ensure that middle-class people can have a secure retirement because they provide a guaranteed source of income that a person can count on for as long as he or she lives.

Can the current pension system be improved? I believe so. But there is no reason to abandon a system that has worked for millions of people.

The sad truth is that these days the vast majority of employees with any retirement plan at all have a 401(k). Again, I am not here to bad- mouth 401(k)s. They can be a very good way to help people put some money aside to supplement their pension. But 401(k)s were never intended to replace pensions. It was to be that other leg of the stool, the savings part.

Again, we know that savings rates are too low. As I said, most people have less than $10,000. There is no simple way for people to convert their savings into a stream of retirement income that they cannot outlive. The promise people made about 401(k)s was that more businesses would start them, more people would participate.

Well, I was here when 401(k)s started. It sounded like a good idea, an easy way for people to save. But decades after the start of 401(k)s, the number of workers participating in these plans has stayed flat. According to Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute, in 1989, participation in 401(k)s was at 46 percent of the workforce. In 2010, it was 45 percent. So it has stayed flat.

We have seen some modest increases in savings the last few years. That is what people told me at our hearings. We have seen some modest increases. I said: Really? Okay, let's take a look at that. This kind of surprised me, that we had an uptick in savings. But then we looked at the data. What does it show? It shows who is saving what. The top 10-percent income earners, the top 10 percent of income earners in America have 100 times more saved for retirement than the median household. So we charted it out. You see back here in 1989, well, they were not too far apart. Here is the top 10 percent. The top 10 percent now has nearly $239,000 set aside for retirement; the median household, $2,500. You say savings have gone up. Yes, look who has saved--the top 10 percent, those of us who work here. So $239,000 as opposed to $2,500 for the average family.

I might also add that buried in this, buried in this chart, is an unacceptable amount of racial and gender inequality in this system. The National Institute on Retirement Security recently found that Black, Asian, and Latino workers have significantly less access to retirement plans on the job than White Americans, especially in the private sector. As a result, the vast majority of working-age households headed by people of color have little or no retirement savings. For those with a retirement plan, the average account balances for Black and Latino households are less than one-fifth that of White households. So if I am not mistaken, one-fifth of $2,500 would be about 500 bucks. So buried in this--keep in mind--is unequal gender and racial inequality.

Addressing the issue of retirement security again would be particularly beneficial to women. We all know about the income gap between men and women. But what a lot of people do not realize is the gap worsens after retirement. When you think about it, you can understand that. In 2011, the median annual income of older women; that is, over retirement age--keep this in mind, the median annual income was $14,225. The median annual income of that same core of older men was $24,794.

Why is that? Think about it. Unequal pay during their working years. That means women have less opportunity to save. They may take some time off during their working years to start a family. They have less time to save. Additionally, women tend to be concentrated in jobs that do not traditionally offer retirement plans. It has been said many times that women save more money than men. Well, yes, they have higher rates, but they are starting from a very low point. So women still lag behind men when it comes to total retirement savings.

That sort of sets the stage for our committee and for me to introduce the USA Retirement Funds Act, S. 1979--if anybody wants to write down the number of the bill. It is a new retirement program, and I am going to explain, basically, how it operates.

The USA retirement means it is universal, it is secure, and it is adaptable. That is what the USA stands for. It would tackle the retirement crisis head-on by ensuring that the 75 million people-- remember my earlier chart--without a workplace retirement plan would have the opportunity to earn a safe and secure pension--universal, secure, and adaptable.

The concept is very simple. Employers who don't offer a pension or a well-designed 401(k) would automatically enroll their employees in this retirement fund. If an employee wanted to opt out, he or she could. No one would be forced to participate. But by making the system opt out instead of opt in, we get millions more people participating.

Employer and employee contributions would go into a fund that would be managed by a board of trustees. When a participant retires, the fund would provide the retiree with a monthly benefit as long as he or she lives, and if that person died it would go on to their spouse.

Over time, as people contribute, they would earn a real retirement benefit that will be a better bang for their buck than what they could have gotten on their own. That is because these funds would spread retirement risk over large groups of participants.

A recent report by David Madland at the Center for American Progress found that the USA Retirement Fund, with risk pooling and professional management, would make retirement much more affordable for working families. In fact, it would cut in half the amount people would need to save over the present system of defined contribution 401(k)s.

So it is basically universal access; everybody is in. You could work for an employer--with three employees, four employees, two employees-- or you could be self-employed and have universal access.

You would get monthly benefits for life. You wouldn't be borrowing against it. You wouldn't be taking out a lump sum. It would be there, and you would get a monthly benefit for life with a spousal survival.

``Professionally managed'' means that it would be managed by a board of trustees who would have a fiduciary responsibility to this pool to invest it wisely--fiduciary responsibility. That relieves the individual from trying to figure our out what is the best place to put my little, meager amount of savings.

You wouldn't have to consider whether or not you should follow Uncle Fred's advice about this stock that he has that is going to make you a lot of money in the future or Mr. Ponzi's--what was the Ponzi guy's name again--where all you had to do was give him a lot of money or maybe Bernie Madoff in later years. You wouldn't have to worry about that. This would be a professional board that would have a fiduciary responsibility. As I said, it would have lower costs--about 50 percent.

In other words, what this means is if you were 35 years old and working, and you figured under your 401(k) you would need $2 million by the time you retired in order to live out your life and have a decent retirement income, if you were involved in this program, you would only need $1 million because the costs would be that much less.

A big portion of that $2 million goes into fees during the life of that 401(k). So that is the big savings. USA retirement, that is for the personnel.

Let's take a look at what it means for the business, the business community itself. These are the benefits to the business. It is easy to offer. They don't have to set up a plan. For a small mom-and-pop business, if they are filling out FICA taxes anyway, they just have a separate line for this, send it off, and they haven't anything else to do. They don't have to manage it--no risks and no fiduciary responsibility as an employer, none whatsoever--and they get quality benefits.

This is what this means. A lot of employers want to make sure their employees have a good retirement benefit because as they get older they earn more. Let's face it, you would like to have people retire so you could bring younger people into the workforce.

If you have people now who can't retire because they don't have enough money, they stay working. If you have a good, quality benefit, when people get to the age of retirement, basically they can retire now; they have their retirement set up. It means for an employer, for a business, they get the kind of turnover they need to bring in new, younger workers.

As I said earlier, it is professionally run. The company has no fiduciary responsibility whatsoever such as they do under a defined benefit program. They don't have to manage it, don't have to do anything and, as I said, no risk to the business whatsoever.

I would add also that under the bill employers could voluntarily contribute to the program. They don't have to, but they could voluntarily contribute.

If you are signing up one of your workers at 6 percent, the employer could say: I want to have a good workforce; I want to hire really good people. I have good people, and I want to keep them, but I will tell you what, I will kick in 2 percent, 3 percent or 2.5 percent.

They can kick in whatever they want as a management tool, maybe even as a recruitment tool to recruit very good workers. Again, it is a good recruitment and management tool for businesses.

For the economy in general, this would be good. This is what a lot of people don't consider. By bringing more people into this retirement system, there are going to be more savings, and there are going to be savings that are long-term type savings.

It is what we call patient capital. In other words, with the capital that comes into these big retirement pools, they don't need to earn and think about the quarterly bottom line, but they do think about the long term.

Haven't we spent a lot of time in this body and around the country talking about the need for infrastructure, long-term projects for this country, energy systems, electrical systems, roads, bridges, sewers, all of these. Plus, we need long-term capital for the new entrepreneurs starting these new businesses that may take a long time for them to return some capital, but they need that access to that long-term patient capital that something like this could provide for them.

As I said, it creates a lot of jobs. Again, because of this ability to invest over the long term, they are going to be able to start creating more jobs in our country.

I want to emphasize two more key points before I yield the floor.

First, USA Retirement Funds would not replace pensions or 401(k)s. Employers could and should continue to offer these plans at the workplace. But what this would do is give people without access to a quality employer-provided plan the opportunity to earn a retirement benefit.

The second point I want to make is that USA Retirement Funds isn't a new government program. There have already been some stories written about this in the paper.

Someone said: Harkin has come up with a new government program.

No, I haven't. This is not a government program. This is a 21st century retirement plan run entirely by the private sector, just like pensions and 401(k)s.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about that third leg of the stool, and that is Social Security. We have to improve the most efficient, most effective retirement program we have, and that is Social Security. Last year, I, along with others, introduced a bill, S. 567--a nice, easy number to remember--to expand the benefits by $65 a month. That means that if you are at the lower end of the income scale when you retire, your replacement rate will be a little bit better. You get $65 a month.

For some at the higher end, $65 a month is not that big of a deal, but it sure helps those at the bottom end. So it would increase that by $65, and it would index the living adjustment so you would have improved cost-of-living adjustment in the future because it would look at the CPI--the cost-of-living for elderly. I look at that and adjust it for that.

Secondly, it would strengthen the trust fund by lifting the cap on the payroll tax. If we do all of that, we strengthen Social Security, we actually increase the benefit a little bit, and it extends the life to 2050. So it makes Social Security stronger for future beneficiaries.

By improving the private retirement system, bolstering Social Security, we can do a lot to take away that dark cloud. We can tell people, assure people, that they will be able to save and have a retirement benefit, an annuity, every month, as long as they live.

Secondly, we make it easier for businesses to set it up. Third, it creates jobs in our economy by long-term types of investment. During this time of economic insecurity, it is more important than ever that working people have the opportunity to prepare for retirement.

I urge my colleagues to help rebuild the pension system in this country by supporting the USA Retirement Funds Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will to meet on February 13, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled From Poverty to Opportunity: How a Fair Minimum Wage Will Help Working Families Succeed.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Sarah Cupp of the committee staff on (202) 224-5363.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Elizabeth Lievens and David Pope, interns in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of today.

Mr. President, the conference report for the 2014 farm bill represents a true compromise in the longstanding tradition of the Agriculture Committees. The proposal continues numerous reforms and progressive policies that we created, expanded, or strengthened in previous farm bills when I served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

This agreement is not perfect, and each side had to give. For example, we were very far apart and had to negotiate on how we were going to support the food assistance programs we have. But, in this bill we have preserved SNAP and rejected the draconian House provisions that would have meant the end of food assistance for nearly 4 million people. I take solace in knowing that no one who needs this assistance will be kicked off the program.

As a conferee and as a longtime supporter of SNAP, what we used to call food stamps, I am proud of what we have done in this bill to improve SNAP--the Nation's most effective nutrition program. It has been a crucial support to needy families around the country, particularly during the recent economic downturn.

First, we took a number of steps to improve overall program administration and program integrity. While SNAP is extremely efficient and effective with low rates of fraud, we can always strive to do better. This bill equips States and USDA with a number of new tools to continue their strong track record on program administration.

In this bill we have provided USDA with additional resources to improve integrity. USDA has a strong and commendable commitment to rooting out fraud in the program. But the number of stores accepting SNAP has increased significantly, which means that USDA must continue to improve its efforts to monitor retailers. This bill provides USDA with additional resources to boost its use of technology, for example, by taking advantage of innovations like data mining, which can show patterns of redemption among retailers and help pinpoint outlets that may be abusing the program. We expect USDA to use data analysis and other smart tools to uphold the program's high compliance standards.

The bill also provides funding for pilot projects for State and Federal partners to address retailer fraud. States selected for the pilot must demonstrate a commitment of resources to recipient trafficking and they must prove that they have accurately determined fraud. The States that have successfully found and fought fraud should receive priority in partnering with USDA on the retailer fraud pilot projects. But success is not defined as a State that has used threats to persuade recipients to accept disqualification. Subsequent audits must confirm that the State disqualified participants who truly were guilty of fraud and not confused about their rights or scared

about the possibility of being prosecuted under criminal law, as it is understandable that some innocent people may be.

One of the thorny issues we wanted to tackle was the issue of how to handle when clients request to have their EBT card replaced multiple times. The concern was that some households were repeatedly reporting their cards stolen or lost. USDA thought that some households requesting that their cards be replaced 10 or more times per year were selling those cards. We wanted to empower the agency to address that issue. In the case when a household requests an excessive amount of card replacements, the household must provide an explanation about why they need another card. We know from experience that some households request multiple cards because they are confused about program rules. We heard one report about an elderly woman who requested a card replacement each month because she thought she was supposed to throw away the card after she used the benefits. By asking households to provide an explanation, States will be able to accommodate individuals who need more help to access their benefits. Of course, making a household wait to receive a new card until it provides an explanation is a burden for the household. Increasingly, States aren't answering their phones in a timely way. So this requirement should not be imposed on households unless we have a reason to believe there is a problem-- either with their ability to use the card or with program integrity. We expect that USDA will not impose this new requirement on households that lose their cards a few times. We understood that they would set the trigger for the explanation at least at 4 times a year.

It is also important that households be able to provide their explanation through any number of options, such as over the phone to their EBT customer service center, via e-mail or mail. Most important, we don't want SNAP agencies requiring households to provide their explanation in person. That is too burdensome a requirement, particularly when many offices may be far away from a given recipient and have long lines and delays to see someone. And, no matter what the reason a household provides, States cannot withhold their card or use withholding the card as leverage to compel some other action. Obviously, if the State believes the household has committed fraud or doesn't believe their explanation, the State should investigate. If they discover illegal activity, they can pursue a fraud violation through regular program rules. Those are steps that come after the State reissues the food card. I am particularly concerned about how this provision is implemented with respect to vulnerable groups such as the homeless, people with disabilities, or seniors. We don't want these individuals or any struggling household to lose access to their food benefits because their lives are chaotic and messy. We do not want vulnerable people to feel that their food benefits are conditioned upon giving the right answer about why they lost their card. We cautioned USDA to make sure that this provision was not used to delay benefits in any way. We can balance program integrity needs with compassion for our most vulnerable citizens.

The farm bill also tightens SNAP eligibility in response to some rare cases.

One of the provisions that got a lot of attention was the provision that reiterates that felons who have been convicted of certain crimes such as murder and who violate their parole or probation cannot be eligible for SNAP. SNAP has long banned fleeing felons from the program. My good friend former Senator Lugar championed that rule. But Members felt that it was important to reiterate this rule with respect to ex-offenders who served time for particularly heinous crimes. As has been the case for many years now, those who serve their sentence and are in compliance with the terms of their parole or probation and who are otherwise eligible for SNAP may apply for and receive assistance through the program. This provision does not change anything with respect to program eligibility or program operations. States already have the processes in place to implement this provision.

Second, over the last several years, there have been highly publicized instances where SNAP participants who won big at the lottery continued to receive SNAP. My understanding is that both of these winners lived in Michigan. Of course, people who win millions of dollars from the Powerball do not need the help of SNAP, and for the most part program rules would already exclude them. But we wanted to be sure that this type of thing never happens again. We included a provision to prohibit households where someone won a substantial amount of money from a lottery or gambling from participating in SNAP. We are leaving it to USDA to define ``substantial''. Our expectation is that they will not include nominal winnings that don't permanently change the household's economic circumstances or their ability to purchase food.

We also expect USDA to work with States to ensure that this provision is implemented behind the scenes without asking questions of clients. While we had two lottery winners, the nearly 47 million people who participate in this program are struggling. We don't want them to be asked if they had won the lottery when they are going through the process of applying for benefits. State lotteries and gaming commissions must report winners that exceed the threshold to state SNAP agencies. That way, State agencies can remove individuals with substantial lottery or gambling income without requiring reports from every participant or adding questions to current SNAP forms.

While I am focused on using back-end data matching to implement this provision, I would like to discuss the bill's provisions that have to do with what we call data matches. Data matching helps SNAP to preserve its record of strong program integrity and also cuts States' and applicants' paperwork requirements.

First, the bill makes it possible for SNAP to more easily exchange data with other programs by adding Federal standards for such data sharing. This sensible provision means that our systems can ``talk'' with each other across the various State and Federal programs. It is a welcome and timely change. We expect the administration to protect individuals' personal private information and prevent it from being misused.

We also are requiring States to use HHS's National Directory of New Hires when certifying a household for SNAP to help the State determine eligibility and what level of benefits the household should receive. Right now States' use of the database is optional. We think the Federal database could be helpful to States to find important information about the employment of noncustodial parents who live or work in other States.

Finally, the bill puts in statute the existing State practice of using the Federal Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, or SAVE, to verify immigration status. States can use this to efficiently determine eligibility without requiring a household to fill out unnecessary forms or find paperwork. This does not change anything with respect to immigrant eligibility rules or households' responsibilities. This requirement is another example of a behind-the- scenes administrative efficiency in the bill. The use of the Income Eligibility Verification System, or IEVS, will remain optional, though. It is sensible for the administration to set standards for how to verify immigration status through a national immigration data set. Given low rates of error and fraud in SNAP, we did not want to dictate how and when States use IEVS.

On the topic of data matches, I want to make clear that we want States to use available data sources containing up-to-date, accurate information that helps determine SNAP eligibility and benefit levels as States are making their decisions. Matches can help us to verify what clients tell us and reduce burdens on them. Matches can also identify information that clients failed to reveal. However, data matches are sometimes wrong and they can require a lot of staff work to correct, as well as place undue burdens on clients. This bill should not be interpreted to force States to seek or to use unhelpful data matches or where they determine the data match is not cost-effective. We expect the Secretary will help States determine the best ways to use the data sources. It is not sensible to pay for matches for all individuals or to do the

matches every month or quarter, rather than as the State is making an eligibility decision or if the State has uncertain information about a SNAP recipient. States need the flexibility to determine that an individual living a 2-hour drive from the State border with a verified long-term job in the community does not need to be checked in the new hire data base to determine if he is working out of State. We expect USDA to work with HHS to find ways to hold the costs of the match to State agencies and the Federal Government in check, while maximizing payment accuracy. As always, States must ensure that SNAP applicants and recipients always have a chance to prove that data matches are inaccurate.

As useful as data matching can be, we need to remember to ensure some balance on program integrity efforts. It is an inefficient use of resources to have eligibility workers looking for information about clients every minute of the day. Asking States to follow up on matches that may not yield any changes in eligibility or benefit levels isn't a good use of States' time and resources. In the last two farm bills, we took steps to establish certification rules such that States would carefully assess eligibility at certification and recertification. In the interim, unless States had information to suggest that clients were income ineligible or participating in two households, households were to continue to receive benefits without disruption or inquiries about their circumstances. Those changes worked. Overall program participation is up among eligible households, suggesting that we were right to make it easier for households to maintain benefits. States need to focus on adjudicating eligibility at application and renewal. This framework informed our approach to the use of datasets. We want States to use third-party data to make eligibility renewals as efficient as possible. But, this information is not meant to be used in fruitless fishing expeditions to prove households ineligible or to find data that requires needless back-and-forth between the client and the agency during their certification period.

I would like to turn now to talk about one of the more exciting aspects of the nutrition title. The final bill includes several reforms of SNAP's employment and training program, including new investments in identifying innovative job training opportunities for this population.

Most SNAP participants who can work, do work. As we know, however, millions of Americans are out of work. So we want to find more ways to help those who are able to work but have been unable to secure a job. We also want to find ways to build and grow the skills of workers so that they may find better jobs with better pay.

SNAP work programs will receive better, and more, funding in this bill. It gives $200 million to pilot and evaluate new state employment and training programs. States can draw these pilots from SNAP E&T components, but the programs can also include work supports, like child care or transportation assistance, that those with low-paying jobs often cannot afford. We want to help States build pioneering volunteer programs, which if focused on skills building or education programs, might boost an individual's employability. It was imperative in this effort that States be creative and try different approaches to addressing the barriers that could be keeping individuals from working, such as stable housing or childcare.

We recognize that it is far better for the long term for people to secure and keep unsubsidized jobs in the private sector. So we have allowed those types of arrangements to be considered part of the pilots. But because States will have much less control over information about what private employers are doing, we needed to include significant safeguards. We fully expect that these pilots will operate under longstanding protections from the SNAP law and other laws against the displacement of other workers, as well as workplace protection laws such as those for health and safety, wage and hour standards, family leave, workers' compensation, and the like.

The initial House proposal in this area was surprising in its harshness. The House essentially gave States incentives to throw off of SNAP people who could not find jobs. Furthermore, the proposal allowed States to then spend on whatever they wanted the savings obtained from throwing people out of the SNAP program. I thank the leadership of the conference committee, especially Chairwoman Stabenow, for holding firm to the principle in designing these work pilot projects that we should not give States any new authority to take away people's SNAP benefits when they cannot find jobs. The rules under the pilot project for sanctioning people will be the same as under current law in terms of when sanctions can be applied and for how long.

When it comes to sanctioning individuals for refusing to cooperate in employment and training programs, we already have in place protections to ensure that if there are good cause reasons for noncompliance that individuals cannot be sanctioned. Similarly, for how these are extended to employment activities under the pilots, the agreement ensures that unless clear evidence shows that an individual wilfully refused to take actions that she or he could safely and properly take, participants in employment activities in the work pilots may not be subject to sanctions. For instance, no sanction will apply if the employer gives the individual fewer hours than expected or if the individual's mental or physical disability prevents the individual from succeeding at the work or if childcare or transportation is not available at the time when he or she has been asked to work. Willful refusal to cooperate is different from failing to perform adequately at work. Some low-skilled workers will fall short at the workplace as a result of taking jobs that may be at the outer limits of their ability. This is a difficult determination, and a State may have a hard time telling with a private sector employer whether an individual wilfully refused to comply or whether the employer made demands that the employee could not, for whatever reason, comply with. In such instances, it is inappropriate for States to take away SNAP benefits.

In designing the pilots, we did not intend in any way to take away from States' existing authority to treat jobs that SNAP applicants and recipients have found for themselves as allowable work activities and support such work with support services like childcare and transportation.

Figuring out which services and activities work the best for different types of people is a hard nut to crack in the job training world, but it is one of the main goals of these pilots, and so we have required a careful evaluation. With the low-wage labor market the way it is and such a high percentage of SNAP recipients working already, we must ask how we will know whether the State's program and services made a difference. So we have required that only projects where the State can guarantee they will participate fully in the evaluation should be included in the pilot. We especially want to know more about how States can most effectively assess SNAP participants' needs early and match those needs to the right education and training programs and other supportive services that will positively affect that individual's job prospects.

Even though we have invested heavily in these handful of pilots, we also want to learn more broadly what is working and not working so well across the country in getting SNAP participants the skills and training they need to get and keep a well-paying job. So under the bill States must report more on the results of the services that they provide to SNAP participants. Using this information, USDA will work with the other experts in job training to improve assessment of whether SNAP employment and training can attain more longlasting results and will push States to focus on proven activities. We will rely upon this information when we reauthorize the program five years from now. We understand that SNAP participants are often poorer and have lower education and skills than people who participate in other job training programs, and as such, we made clear we must have appropriate expectations of these services' outcomes and take those differences into account. In this slow-growing economy, everyone will not find work immediately. Sometimes we have to invest now in building skills to see a better outcome for people in the future, and when designing measures, we expect USDA to take a long-term view.

As I mentioned above, upfront assessment is key, and so, while individual assessments already are a requirement for SNAP work registrants, we expect the USDA to have a focus on assessment as part of the state measures.

Now, let's turn to how this farm bill modernizes SNAP through a number of improvements for retailers.

The way we buy our food is evolving rapidly, and this bill helps SNAP remain in step. This bill gives the Secretary authority to test mobile technology use in SNAP, such as applications for smartphones that have become increasingly common and hold special promise to simplify SNAP transactions at farmers markets and vegetable stands. But we don't want recipients to see higher prices and we don't want program integrity to lapse as we seek additional ways to accept benefits. As a result, we start in this bill with a pilot project to test the idea. We expect USDA to pay special attention to testing fraud-prevention measures, so that these new technologies do not open the program up to new schemes for criminal activity. Some things will be tricky in a mobile environment. USDA currently relies on inspections of retailers' stores as a way of keeping out unscrupulous retailers, and so will need to find ways to reliably distinguish between eligible and ineligible or disqualified retailers in a comparable fashion as it implements this provision.

Pilot projects testing purchasing food online with SNAP benefits also are allowed under the bill, reflecting a trend in the food industry towards online transactions. The delivery of groceries could potentially help elderly or disabled recipients to access food more easily. Of course, we worked here too, to ensure that the same strong program integrity standards apply to this potential new way of redeeming benefits and we require, in the bill, that the agency stop the expansion of online transactions if the Department determines the fraud risk is too great. We were clear that SNAP benefits cannot pay for any delivery fees associated with online purchases, but we also expect USDA to also set standards for the fees to ensure that they are not so high that, on balance, this provision results in more hunger. After all, SNAP recipients rely on the program because they cannot purchase enough food--high fees would make hunger worse. USDA should ensure that fees are capped at very low levels and are clear to the recipients so that they are not surprised at the time the food is delivered.

On the topic of modernizing SNAP benefits, I am troubled by the recent reports of States seeking to include photo identification or fingerprinting as a way of supposedly ensuring program integrity. That is not a direction I think the program should go. One of the main advantages of moving to SNAP benefit cards, away from the paper coupons, was that the transaction looks the same and so there is less stigma. USDA should not approve State attempts to require photos on SNAP cards unless there is an airtight way of making sure every household member can use the card, as well as any other person who is authorized to shop for the SNAP recipient. There is no need for SNAP to pursue such measures when other card issuers, like credit card companies, have not insisted on such measures to maintain security even though those cards are issued to individuals.

One final point I want to make about EBT cards. Last fall, because of a glitch with the computers at an EBT contractor, Iowa and about 15 other States had their EBT systems go out of commission for hours, wreaking havoc in grocery store aisles and leaving thousands without food. In this bill we have taken another step to ``modernize'' by restricting the ability of States to routinely issue manual vouchers, but we have created an important exception for disasters or system outages. We expect USDA to create a simple, fast way for States to declare that they need to invoke this back-up plan.

In addition to these changes for how retailers take SNAP benefits, the bill also raises the bar for retailers in an effort to increase the availability of healthy foods. Stores that want to participate in SNAP have an obligation to participate as full partners in making healthy food available to low-income Americans.

Some retailers have sought to spread SNAP issuances out over longer periods during the month for the purposes of evening out their business. This is allowed now through staggered issuance, and some language in the statement of the bill managers encourages USDA to allow benefits to be staggered throughout the month.

I am sympathetic to the need for retailers to not have spikes and troughs in their business, but I am deeply concerned about a practice in some States I have heard of where, as part of a State's staggered issuance plan, households may receive no benefits for as long as 10 days during a month. Apparently this is in the ``transition'' to staggering benefits, but this kind of hardship in the name of smoothing retailers business is very troubling. SNAP benefits already are low and run out for many households before the end of the month. To add on another 10 days before the household receives the next month's benefits could be a devastating hardship and means more children, senior citizens, and people with disabilities going to bed hungry or facing heart-wrenching decisions.

The SNAP law regarding staggered issuance actually does provide a requirement to protect households from stretches without food during the transition. We revisited this provision in the last farm bill and again reaffirmed that households may not experience a cut as a result of staggering benefits over the month. Nonetheless, I understand that the Department has not fully enforced this rule. One solution would be for the Department to allow States to protect households during the transition with a one-time increase in the month prior to cover the transition period.

In this debate over the last several years I heard repeated concerns, particularly from some House Members, that SNAP was somehow out there recruiting people who don't need food assistance to sign up. This is a ridiculous claim. Quite the opposite is true. Some people need help learning about the program, and there are many groups around the country who are working day in and day out to ensure that people who need some assistance have the information they need to sign up, have misperceptions cleared up, and can get some help navigating what is a very complicated and burdensome process.

At the insistence of the House, we included some narrow provisions to prevent some perceived, uncommon abuses. We ended the USDA's collaboration with the Mexican consulate and we prohibit groups who help sign up eligible households from being paid on a ``bounty'' basis for each successful application, a practice I don't believe occurs very often, if at all.

But we have been assured that we have done nothing in this bill to undermine the great work that goes on around the country by dedicated individuals and community groups to help educate and assist our low- income neighbors. We still hear that the main reasons eligible households don't sign up are that they are not aware of the program, they don't understand how it works, or they don't understand the program rules and can't get through the process. In this bill, we have done nothing to change the education and application assistance activities that states and community groups can engage in. We have long prohibited ``recruitment,'' which is trying to talk someone into applying if that person has made an educated choice to not apply. In this bill we codify that definition. But we fully expect that it will continue to be allowable for USDA, States, and other partners to share information about the program, the advantages of participation, how the rules work, and to assist people in applying for benefits. Such activities may change someone's mind about applying, but it is acceptable to change your mind because you learned new, accurate information or because you understand what you have to do to apply. That is not persuasion, but rather, is education, and is still completely appropriate under this bill.

So to be clear, we have severed the relationship with the Mexican Government related to SNAP. And while it is inappropriate for anybody to receive their pay as a ``bounty'' per application, it is fine to be tracking how many people a group assists in applying and the outcome of the application process. That is just a common, responsible

practice for assessing whether the group successfully is achieving its goals. Section 16(a) already prohibits tying anyone's pay to the number of people disqualified from SNAP and we have extended that principle to application assistance.

I do want to address the one significant cut in SNAP benefits that the nutrition title includes. I am disappointed that as a result of this bill 850,000 very low-income households are going to lose food assistance. There are certainly many ways we could have reinvested these funds into SNAP to improve the program and reduce hardship, but I have to agree with my colleagues that the practice of issuing a household just $1 in energy assistance so that they can deduct more income than we had intended goes too far and it is sensible to address this issue.

In this bill we have limited this practice. It is a painful loss for families who benefit from this policy, but the change repairs the unintended oversight. What happens is that States can give SNAP households without heating or cooling expenses a token LIHEAP payment of $1 or less, which enables them to qualify for a utility deduction and in turn increases their SNAP benefits.

But we do not want this provision to affect any households in the States that have not engaged in this practice or to cut benefits for households that do pay for utility expenses in the States that engaged in the practice. I know LIHEAP is a critical program in helping low- income families meet their energy needs, especially in cold weather places and in winters like the one we're having this year. When the State has already determined that a household needs help paying for utilities, it is wholly appropriate for SNAP to piggy-back on that information. We expect the Secretary to work with States to ensure that where a legitimate LIHEAP payment is made--that is, when LIHEAP has determined the household pays heating or cooling costs that such information still can be used to authorize a utility allowance in SNAP and that nothing should change in how the State makes this determination. All we wanted to do was shut down the inappropriate practice of very small LIHEAP payments to households without utility expenses from triggering a full SUA.

In addition, we also expect USDA and States will work to ensure that households that do not receive LIHEAP but that do incur utility expenses will continue to be able to receive the appropriate allowance. Many households do pay separately for utilities and need the SUA to receive adequate benefits. In cases where the cost of gas for heating is included in rent but the household pays for air conditioning or where the landlord has a surcharge to rent for utilities, the tenant should be able to claim the higher standard utility allowance.

We understand and regret that some of the effective dates in this legislation will result in considerable time pressure for the Department and States as a result of the slow process by which the final bill came together. We hope they make their best effort to meet these deadlines. But agencies should not establish any claims against households for benefits that would have been proper under prior rules because new rules have not yet been implemented. None of this is the fault of any household, and they should not have to experience the hardship of recoupment or tax intercept because the policymaking process moved slowly.

Several other provisions in the bill's nutrition title deserve a mention.

In Puerto Rico the Nutrition Assistance Program block grant plays a unique role in the safety net because the island does not receive significant funds from other programs that are available in States, such as TANF and SSI. Despite this, Puerto Rico remains shortchanged on nutrition assistance too--if NAP operated as SNAP does in the States, participation would be 15 percent higher and the program would cost more than 22 percent more in Federal dollars. Because of these inequities, Puerto Rico can currently issue 25 percent of its SNAP benefits to households as cash, rather than in a form that can only be spent on food. As a result, some of the benefits likely are spent on other essential household items. Although I have no objections to current law, responding as it does to the unique circumstances of Puerto Rico, on the Agriculture Committee we have been under pressure to end this cash allotment. However, I fear that such a change could be very problematic for some participants who really need access to certain nonfood items and lack any other means of obtaining them. This bill requires a study on how eliminating the cash portion of the nutrition grant would affect Puerto Ricans. Assuming the study shows that it's feasible to make such a change, the cash allotment will be gradually phased out. But we wanted to be sure to protect poor Puerto Ricans, and so under the bill, if the Secretary determines that eliminating the cash portion would cause hardship, he or she can exempt categories of participants. The exemption could apply to the entire NAP caseload if the study shows that changing the policy would significantly and adversely affect all participants.

The bill also requires USDA to test changes to food assistance in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. USDA will explore whether CNMI's food aid can be configured more like the national SNAP structure and then a pilot is authorized subsequently to test this new approach. We understand that many of SNAP's administrative requirements may not be appropriate for CNMI, so we don't expect an identical program, just one that moves in that direction. If the Secretary finds that it is not feasible to run such a pilot, the funds available in this bill can be used for any of the things that the existing CNMI block grant currently allows for.

The bill also provides for a pilot program to test the provision of canned, dried, and frozen fruits and vegetables in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The program, as the name suggests, currently allows for only fresh fruits and vegetables. The pilot in the conference report was included at the suggestion of some in Congress who believe that providing other forms of fruits and vegetables will be beneficial for the health of children.

I myself am skeptical of the need to make changes to current law with respect to the program. As we know from a recent, rigorous evaluation of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, the program is currently effectively improving child health and increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables. In addition, the program is extremely popular with both children and with schools, with far more schools desiring to be included in the program than are able to do so because of limited funding. This doesn't sound to me like a program that is not working.

But the pilot program will settle the question of the health impact of canned, frozen, and dried fruits and vegetables, allowing us to know from a sound scientific study whether allowing canned, frozen, and dried fruits increases consumption at a level consistent with a fresh- only program. Luckily, we have a sound benchmark for purposes of comparison that can be found in the evaluation of the fresh-only program. And it will be interesting to learn whether other forms of fruits and vegetables improve kids diets in the same way the current program does. In carrying out this pilot, we expect USDA to put together the soundest methodology possible so that we can compare the performance of the fresh-only program with one that also provides canned, dried, or frozen fruits and vegetables.

In addition, the bill makes a couple of changes to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program, known as WIC.

WIC provides healthy foods, nutrition education, and health care referrals to nearly 9 million pregnant and postpartem women, infants, and very young children, and has a strong track record of improving birth outcomes as well as the diets and health of participants. One reason that WIC has been so effective is that the foods the program provides were selected through a rigorous, science-based process to fill gaps in the diets of the low-income women and very young children who participate. There have been many efforts over the years to get Congress to intervene in the specific foods offered by WIC, the most recent of which has been an attempt to require WIC to offer white potatoes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's decision to exclude

white potatoes was based on the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine, which found that Americans already consume plenty of white potatoes and providing them through WIC would crowd out purchases of other vegetables, like leafy greens, that are truly lacking in participants' diets. The absence of such a requirement in this legislation reflects a firm commitment by Congress to protecting the integrity of the WIC Program by keeping the process of selecting which food to offer science-based.

Another one of WIC's hallmarks is that it is very cost-efficient. Each year Federal WIC spending is reduced by $1.5 billion to $2 billion as a result of a competitive bidding process for infant formula, which results in sole-source contracts between State WIC programs and infant formula manufacturers. In light of the tremendous savings associated with these sole-source contracts and the valuable health improvements that WIC participation brings, Congress has remained strongly committed to WIC's competitive bidding process for infant formula. This legislation calls upon USDA to study the implications of sole-source contracting across all nutrition programs, as well as upon retailers and consumers, including the important role that sole-source contracts play in WIC. Our consideration of the WIC Program when it is next reauthorized will benefit from a comprehensive assessment of the implications of WIC's infant formula bidding process for participants, retails, and other consumers, as well the implications for federal cost-containment efforts and the ability of the WIC program to serve all eligible applicants.

As I said at the start, this agreement is not perfect. Each side had to give a little, but I am proud that we have rejected provisions that would have kicked worthy SNAP recipients off the program and this proposal is a sound, balanced, bipartisan bill. It contains significant reforms, and extends and funds progressive elements that I was proud to include in previous farm bills. Coming to agreement wasn't easy, but this farm bill takes an important step forward in dealing with the Nation's most important food and agricultural issues. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on February 4, 2013, at 10:30 a.m. in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Hearing on the nomination of Surgeon General designate, Vivek Hallegere Murthy.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Emily Schlichting of the committee staff on (202) 224-6480.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on February 6, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Supporting Children and Families through Investments in High-Quality Early Education.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Aissa Canchola of the committee staff on (202) 224-2009.

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

Mr. President, earlier this month we commemorated the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's declaration of ``unconditional war on poverty.'' That war on poverty was a massively successful initiative. It helped tens of millions of Americans lift themselves out of poverty, reduced hardship, empowered people to build new opportunities for themselves and their future.

We see some of the residue of this. Today, food stamps ensure that children do not go to bed hungry at night. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act insisted that all children, regardless of background, can learn and have an equal opportunity for education. Legal Services helps people with limited resources seek protection from exploitation. Low- income families fight poverty in their own communities by helping to lead community action agencies. The war on poverty and the Great Society encompassed a tremendous list of achievements that I cannot even begin to do justice to today.

However, we know we still have more work to do. Too many of those successful programs and policies have been reduced or rolled back under subsequent Presidents and Congresses. What is more, our economy has changed and in fundamental ways, with decades of waste, stagnation, and rising income inequality.

Now we must urgently turn our attention to policies that will ensure that working families can still get ahead in America. We must recognize that tens of millions of working Americans struggle to put food on the table, a roof over their head, and pay their bills every month. This is a fundamental failing of our economy. It is something we not only have a moral obligation to fix but we have the ability to fix. We can do so first by raising the minimum wage, one of our Nation's simplest and most effective means of lifting working families out of poverty.

I am so pleased President Obama has taken the first step in this effort. Last night at the State of the Union, he announced he would issue an Executive order that will require future Federal contracts to provide wages of at least $10.10 an hour to our Nation's contract workers for the Federal Government. I applaud President Obama's bold step to ensure that the Federal Government is a leader in promoting good jobs that pay fair wages. I think most Americans would agree that taxpayer dollars should not support companies that pay poverty wages. This Executive order is a strong step in the right direction. But now we in the Congress have work to do, to raise the minimum wage for the rest of American workers.

Again, I am so grateful for President Obama taking a strong leadership position, as he did last night, in calling for Congress to expeditiously work to increase the minimum wage.

We need to agree in this country that if you work hard and play by the rules you can earn enough money to support your family, keep a roof over your head, put some money away for a rainy day, have a secure retirement. The minimum wage played a critical role in doing that, which is why Presidents and elected leaders from both parties in the past have supported fair increases in the minimum wage. From time to time, we adjusted the minimum wage on a bipartisan basis to help working families keep up with inflation and the changing economy. But recently we have heard a new and disturbing set of talking points from our friends on the other side of the aisle. They claim that raising the minimum wage does not actually reduce poverty. They argue the minimum wage workers do not come from poor families or that no one stays at a minimum wage job long enough to be trapped in poverty.

Those all sound good on the talk shows, but the facts simply prove those statements are not true. The fact is a majority of people who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage come from low-income households. Many of them have been trapped in jobs at or near the minimum wage for years and years at a time. Indeed, when you listen more closely, the offensive underlying premise of all these arguments is that anyone can rise out of poverty if they just work harder.

Tell that to Nereida Castro of Des Moines. She and her husband both work minimum wage jobs in the fast food and construction industries. They have five children to support. But Nereida says they live day to day because of their bills and expenses. She said her family ``has to limit many things to give to our kids to only make rent, to cover expenses. We have to limit everything.''

A raise in the minimum wage would allow her to ``live a life where I don't feel like I'm drowning.''

Tell that tale about ``you just have to work harder'' to Nancy Salgado, 27-year-old single mother with two kids, ages 2 and 7. She worked at McDonald's for the past 10 years but makes only $8.25 an hour. That is the minimum wage in her own State of Illinois. She struggles to be able to pay for necessities such as milk and shoes for her kids. She recently confronted the president of McDonald's USA, saying:

I'm a single mother of two. It's really hard for me to feed

my 2 kids and struggle day to day. . . . Do you think this is

fair, that I have to be making $8.25 an hour when I have been

working at McDonald's for 10 years?

For Senators and Representatives sitting comfortably here in Washington to preach to working mothers such as Nancy, struggling hard to get ahead, working 10 years at McDonald's--to tell them they are not working hard enough, that is beyond offensive.

No one disputes that hard work is a big part of the path out of poverty, but you also need a basic foundation of economic security to start building that better life. How are you supposed to pay for a community college course on $7.25 an hour? How are you supposed to find a better job when you are standing in line at a food bank because your wages won't cover all your household expenses, and neither will your food stamps? How are you supposed to build a better life for your kids when you can't even find them safe childcare while you are at work? They just can't get ahead if their job traps them in poverty.

It has not always been this way. We used to agree that minimum wage works. People who perform some of the most difficult and essential jobs in our society should not have to live in poverty. The minimum wage kept families above the poverty line in the 1960s and 1970s. In today's dollars, a minimum wage worker in 1968--when the minimum wage was 120 percent of the poverty line--took home $10.71 an hour or $22,000 a year working full time.

Since the 1980s, the minimum wage has not kept up. Today the minimum wage is about 80 percent of the level of poverty. This is how far we have come down. The same family whose breadwinner worked at a job making minimum wage in 1968--look at where they

are--would be way below the poverty line today. It is no wonder working people have to turn to the safety net of food stamps and all other kinds of things just to help them get by.

A recent study found that our taxpayers have to pick up the tab for millions of working families to the tune of about $240 billion a year for food stamps, Medicaid/CHIP, earned-income tax credit, and temporary assistance to needy families. I wish to make it clear that these are not people sitting at home watching TV. These are people who work, but they are making minimum wage. What we want and what they want is not to have the Government and the taxpayers pick up the tab. They want to be able to support themselves with the jobs they have.

We have to rectify this. My legislation, the Minimum Wage Fairness Act, which I introduced--along with Majority Leader Reid and Congressman George Miller on the House side--will raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in three annual steps and will get it above the poverty line by 2016 for the first time in over 20 years. That is what we are talking about--getting this minimum wage up.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate on both sides of the aisle sometime soon so we can bring this bill forward. I hope we can do it on a bipartisan basis and recognize it is indeed time to get families--working families--out of poverty by paying them a decent minimum wage.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I was privileged to be in our capital city of Des Moines 2 days ago, on Monday, January 27, and I was privileged to visit a lot of my friends in the Iowa legislature. I was in the Iowa House on Monday morning when a resolution was brought up by Representative Dan Muhlbauer and read and adopted unanimously. It was a resolution requesting the U.S. Congress to immediately enact a new Federal food, farm, and jobs bill. I won't read it all, but ultimately I will ask unanimous consent to have this resolution printed in the Record. The resolution basically points out how much a farm bill means to our fellow Iowans.

The resolution states:

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives--

That is the Iowa House of Representatives--

that with the reconvening of the United States Congress after

its holiday recess, the United States House of

Representatives and the United States Senate should enact a

new food, farm, and jobs bill with all possible speed but no

later than January 31 of 2014.

I guess the good news I have now for Representative Muhlbauer and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Iowa legislature is that we heard them. Under the great leadership of Senator Stabenow, we now have a farm bill ready to come to the floor after the House passes it, I hope sometime today. We hope to have it on the Senate floor maybe as early as tomorrow--if not, the first of the week--to get the job done. I think everybody has signed off on it. It is a good farm bill. It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get there, but a lot of good people worked together on both sides of the aisle in both the Senate and in the House to get it done. So I thank Representative Muhlbauer and his colleagues for holding our feet to the fire and sending us this resolution.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record House Resolution No. 102.

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Patrick Miller-Bartley, Kyle Brewster, and Danielle Corley of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I rise today to correct some unfortunate remarks made on the floor this month and reaffirm my long-standing support for the medical research programs at the Department of Defense, most of which fall under the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, or CDMRP. This program has led to major scientific breakthroughs since its creation in 1992 and it is one of my proudest accomplishments here in the U.S. Senate.

This program was created by me and together with my Defense Appropriations colleagues Senator Ted Stevens and Senator Daniel Inouye specifically in response to grassroots advocacy spearheaded by those who suffer from breast cancer, those who have survived it, and their families. The Department of Defense runs one of the largest health systems in the country, serving 9.6 million servicemembers, their families and military retirees, and as a result offered a unique opportunity to undertake Breast Cancer Research. Military families suffer from the same conditions and diseases that affect our society at large, and they also have disproportionate rates of some diseases as a result of their service. My colleagues and I believed that offering potentially lifesaving research specifically focused on this population was a logical step.

So we started with Breast Cancer research in 1992. In the 22 years this program has been funded, we have spent almost $3 billion on Breast Cancer research, and $7.5 billion overall on important research on numerous conditions through the Department of Defense. Millions of Americans, including those who receive their health care from DOD, have been touched by conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--or Lou Gehrig's disease--autism, lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, neurofibromatosis, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, tuberous sclerosis complex and many others.

And what has that investment yielded? It has paid dividends, with breakthroughs in our understanding of breast cancer. It led to the development of the revolutionary drug Herceptin that is saving and prolonging the lives of millions of American women every day. DOD breast cancer research directly contributed to the discovery of a frequently mutated gene that contributes to several cancers and the OncoVue breast cancer risk assessment test.

But this program's payoff has not been limited to breast cancer: Those who receive Coenzyme Q10 treatment for gulf war illness can thank DOD medical research. The prostate cancer treatment Zytiga received FDA approval in 2011 due to the rapid early-phase clinical testing funded by DOD. Research jointly funded by CDMRP, the National Institutes of Health--NIH--and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are creating advanced prosthetics that are accurately recreating the movement of the human hand--which in recent trial allowed a quadriplegic to feed herself for the first time in years. These are just a few small examples of the many research, diagnosis, and treatment breakthroughs this research has brought about.

DOD medical research has also made direct contributions to the understanding and treatment of medical conditions that uniquely or acutely affect those who serve. In addition to the research on gulf war illness, servicemembers and veterans who suffer from traumatic brain injury, tinnitus, or vision problems know that they can receive the most advanced treatment possible thanks to this medical research. DOD medical research is also finding biomarkers to better treat mental illness, so individual servicemembers do not have to go through the trial and error of being prescribed psychotropic medications that may or may not be effective for them. These research programs are helping to provide a better quality of life for those who have recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For a number of years now, some in Congress have made the argument that this program does not belong at the Department of Defense, suggesting that these programs are duplicative and that this funding should be spent elsewhere. In fact, the medical research done at the Department of Defense is complementary to and coordinated with the research done at NIH, and other Federal agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs. While the medical research done at DOD and NIH may have overlapping goals, including many research grants that have been jointly funded, CDMRP has a different mandate, uses different criteria in selecting grants, and uses a unique two-tiered review process that assures high quality of research.

I simply say to those critics of the program, the outcomes speak for themselves. Any suggestion that I believe this program should have been created elsewhere or should be moved is incorrect, and I want to make sure the Record is clear on this point.

I thank my colleagues on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Chairman Durbin and Ranking Member Cochran, and the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby, for providing $1.55 billion in funding for these critical and successful medical research programs in Fiscal Year 2014. I look forward to many more years of breakthrough medical research conducted by the DOD that will directly address the needs of our military members and that will have broad application to millions of Americans.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Wednesday, January 29, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to markup the nominations of David Weil, of Massachusetts, to serve as Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, Department of Labor; France A. Cordova, of New Mexico, to serve as Director of the National Science Foundation; Nomination of Steven Joel Anthony, of Virginia, to be a Member of the Railroad

Retirement Board; James H. Shelton III, of the District of Columbia, to be Deputy Secretary of Education, Department of Education; Michael Keith Yudin, of the District of Columbia, to be Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Department of Education; James Cole, Jr., of New York, to be General Counsel, Department of Education; Theodore Reed Mitchell, of California, to be Under Secretary of Education, Department of Education; and Ericka M. Miller, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, Department of Education; as well as any additional nominations cleared for action.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee at (202) 224-5375.

Madam President, I come to the floor to speak in favor of the Omnibus appropriations bill we now have before us. First and foremost, it is noteworthy that this is a bill, not a continuing resolution. For the first time in years, Congress has returned to regular order in the appropriations process. Senior members of the Appropriations Committee from both parties have come together to negotiate their priorities, program by program.

As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, I view this as a huge step onto a better path. The Labor-H bill, as it is sometimes called, has been in continuing resolution every other year since 2009. This is an irresponsible way to allocate $160 billion in taxpayer funds, and I am pleased that we are putting a stop to that kind of destructive trend today.

For the past year I have had people come up to me and say: There is no way you are going to have an agreement on Labor-HHS. Labor-HHS will be left behind, and it will be folded into a continuing resolution.

I guess no one could imagine that Democrats and Republicans would be able to sit down and come to a fair agreement on health and education issues. I think that attitude sold our subcommittee short. I am proud to say we have worked out a fair agreement with my ranking member Senator Jerry Moran from Kansas, as well as my colleagues on the House side, including Chairman Jack Kingston and ranking member Congressman Rosa DeLauro. No one got 100 percent of what they wanted in this bill, which is often a sign of a pretty good deal.

Despite the fact that I wanted to do more to alleviate the disaster cuts for 2013, I would like to speak about a few of the essential investments in this bill that I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting.

First, the bill advances my long-standing priority of shifting the American health care system--so-called--from a sick care system to a genuine health care system, emphasizing prevention, wellness, and public health. It provides a $1 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, as well as major new funding for brain research and a new initiative to discover ways to prevent and cure Alzheimer's disease.

In addition, this bill allocates nearly $1 billion from the Prevention and the Public Health Fund, which I created in the Affordable Care Act, title IV, which I was in charge of drafting. There has been some confusion about this fund in news reports, so I will correct the record.

In the past years resources from the fund have been diverted to other health care purposes. This year, however, this omnibus allocates 100 percent of the resources from the fund to prevention and wellness activities. It has been reported that the omnibus cuts or eliminates the fund. I read that in the paper this morning. I read that the prevention and wellness fund was cut by $1 billion.

Well, that is just not so. That is a misinterpretation. Believe me, if they cut $1 billion from prevention and wellness, I would not be here supporting the bill. Section 219 of division H of this bill allocates the money, so that is what we did. Far from eliminating the money, we identify where that money is to go, including $160 million for immunization programs, $104 million for cancer screenings, and $105 million for smoking cessation programs. On October 1, another appropriation of $1 billion will be deposited in the fund under the Affordable Care Act, and, again, I intend to allocate the fund just as we did in this omnibus.

If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the fund is alive and well and fulfilling the purpose for which it was intended, consider this: The American Public Health Association has praised this Omnibus bill specifically for allocating the prevention fund. They said:

We are also pleased that the bill fully allocates available

funds from the Prevention and Public Health Fund for the

first time.

As the author of that fund, I consider the allocation of these resources to prevention and wellness as a major achievement in this bill.

This bill also includes significant new investments to support early learning initiatives. We included an increase of over $1 billion for Head Start, which will more than restore cuts from sequestration. Nearly half of that increase will be used to expand early Head Start for kids from birth through age 3. In addition, the bill provides $250 million which can be used to help States develop high-quality early learning programs for low- and middle-income 4-year-olds. Both of these investments improve access to high-quality early learning experiences for children from birth to kindergarten. I truly believe these investments lay the foundation for future prosperity by preparing America's next generation.

One of the reasons it is important to reassess programs every year is to respond to current events and changing needs. The Nation was devastated by the tragic shootings that occurred last year in Newtown, CT. This bill provides increased resources for providing the mental health and school safety activities we have been talking about for over a year. The bill includes $140 million--an increase of $29 million--for specific activities that support safe school environments. The bill also provides $1.13 billion--an increase of $213 million--for mental health programs, such as mental health first aid training grants, the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative, suicide prevention, and the mental health block grant.

Other highlights of this bill: It supports the economic recovery by providing workers with job training and by protecting workers' rights. In education, it makes it possible for the

maximum Pell grant to rise by an estimated $85, to $5,730 this year. It allocates an additional $700 million for community health centers, which is so important to my State of Iowa and, quite frankly, to every State in this Nation. It provides higher funding for activities that support safe and healthy workplaces and, as I said, school environments.

Most in Washington know that the staff of the Appropriations Committee worked diligently on this bill all through the holidays. We all appreciate and commend their excellent work. I would like to thank these unsung heroes for all of the long days and nights and weekends they worked.

I first wish to thank my clerk, the head of my group on Labor-HHS, Adrienne Hallett, and her team: Mark Laisch, Lisa Bernhardt, Mike Gentile, Robin Juliano, Kelly Brown, and Teri Curtin. On the minority side, I thank Laura Frih-Dell, Jennifer Castagna, and Chol Pak.

I also thank Chuck Keifer and Gabriel Batkin--on the full committee-- for their hard work and diligence and for sticking with us through this to make sure we got it done. On the minority side, I thank Bill Duhnke for all his hard work.

I also thank the two principals who are here today. First, I will thank my longtime friend, going back to our days in the House together, Senator Dick Shelby from Alabama. These were long and tough negotiations, but the one thing I have always appreciated about my friend from Alabama is that he is fairminded and willing to negotiate. He understands it is a two-way highway around here. You give a little, you take a little, and we work these things out. Again, I thank my friend for hanging in there and getting this hammered out.

There are not enough accolades in my book or any book I know that has been written to say what a great job Senator Barbara Mikulski did. She gave it her all and really worked hard with Senator Shelby and her counterparts on the House side to bring this bill to fruition.

There were a lot of doubters who said: No, we won't get it done; they are not going to be able to hammer it out.

Barbara Mikulski never gave up. She was willing to stay there for long hours days on end to get this job done. Again, I think a lot of us who served on the Appropriations Committee for a long time--30 years for me--I guess in all the time I was on appropriations, we had four chairmen. We had John Stennis from Mississippi when I first got here and, of course, Senator Byrd, Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, and Senator Dan Inouye from Hawaii. We think of them as sort of the giants of the Senate, which is a well-earned accolade or praise, I might say. People probably wondered what would happen now that they are gone. We had the sad passing a year ago of Dan Inouye. Well, I can tell you, no longer are they wondering who is going to take over the Appropriations Committee. Senator Mikulski has stepped in and pulled us all together-- I think on both sides of the aisle--and worked this out. Again, I give my highest compliments to Senator Mikulski for her hard work, her intellectual approach, and her rigor in working with others to make sure we got to this point.

Most in Washington, as I said, know that our staff works very hard, but there is just one other person I want to single out. He is not here. In fact, he is not even on the Senate side, but I worked with him for a long time, going back to when Congressman Obey chaired the House committee on Labor-HHS back in the early 1990s. He has been a longtime member of the House appropriations staff. David Reich is currently the minority clerk for Labor-HHS. He is retiring once this bill passes. David has spent nearly his entire career working on the issues in this bill. He has been on or around the Labor-HHS subcommittee since 1996. His collaborative nature, his insightful questions, and his thoughtful approach to the drafting of this bill will be sincerely missed. I wish David well and thank him for his dedicated public service to our country and especially to this committee.

In light of the investments I mentioned, plus many more that I simply don't have time to talk about, I urge all of my colleagues to support the Omnibus appropriations bill. Given the tight overall budget, these are all remarkable achievements.

I have always taken pride in the fact that the Labor-HHS bill, as it is called--Labor, Health and Human Services, Education bill--is a bill where we invest in America's human infrastructure, and that is what this bill does. We have had to make some tough choices, but this new bill lives up to that high calling of investing in America's human infrastructure.

Again, I thank my friend and colleague from Alabama. We were together on the Labor-HHS committee until he took the position as the ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee, but we always had good comity of working together, and I appreciate it very much.

With that, I yield the floor.