Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we are presently on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill which is the funding bill for next year for all three of those Departments plus others--NIH, for basic medical research, and for a number of other independent type agencies, libraries, and things such as that.

Perhaps the biggest part of this bill in terms of where we ought to focus our energies and our attention is in the area of education. We know that without a good education, our hopes for the future of this country are much dimmer if we do not provide a class 1, world class education for all of our kids. Our future will be bleak indeed if in fact we start leaving some kids behind.

Thus, when the President talked a couple years ago about his proposal to leave no child behind, that sounded like something we could support and move ahead on because we do not want to, nor can we afford to, leave any children behind.

Now that we are here this week after Labor Day, it is back to school time. Back to school time means one thing: More claims from President Bush that he is serious about leaving no child behind.

When the President signed the No Child Left Behind Act nearly 2 years ago, he promised to give schools the money they need to improve. He said:

We are going to spend more money, more resources, but they

will be directed at methods that work.

Most people probably believed him. I know I did. There were long negotiations. I also serve on the authorizing committee that worked out the agreements with the White House on the No Child Left Behind Act. One of the major reasons I voted for it was that I trusted the President. I took him at his word that in fact we were going to have the resources.

In the No Child Left Behind Act, we made a major departure from what we had been doing in the past in terms of Federal funding for elementary and secondary education. This was the biggest mandate ever put upon local public schools by the Federal Government. The biggest mandate ever put on our local public schools by the Federal Government was Leave No Child Behind.

So I believed then, and I believe now, that if we are going to mandate certain performance levels for our schools, and we are going to penalize these schools for failing to make adequate yearly progress--if we are going to do that--then we must, by all rights, give them the money they need to meet these mandates and to improve.

President Bush seemed to agree. We took him at his word. But ever since he signed that law, the President's record on education has been long on spin and woefully short on spending. Saturday was a characteristic example of what I am talking about. The President used his radio address on Saturday to boast about how much funding he has provided for schools since he became President. He said--and again I quote; this is an exact quote from his radio address on Saturday--

My budget for next year boosts education funding to $53.1

billion, an increase of nearly $11 billion since I took

office.

Keep these figures in mind: $53.1 billion, his budget for next year; and he says: ``an increase of . . . $11 billion since I took office.''

Well, first, the statement is factually correct. The education budget has increased $11 billion during the Bush administration. And it is factually correct that next year's budget does call for $53.1 billion. But let's take a look at those two. The $11 billion increase during his administration has taken place, but no thanks to President Bush. The budgets increased $11 billion because Democrats in Congress insisted on it over the White House's strong objections. It is like I was saying last week about the weather, it has rained a lot around here during President Bush's administration, sometimes it has been hot during his administration,

sometimes it has even snowed during his administration, but his administration did not actually have anything to do with the weather.

The same thing with education funding: President Bush deserves as much credit for the recent education funding increases as he does for the weather outside. This chart will explain what I mean.

In fiscal year 2001, the last budget of the Clinton administration, education funding was at $42.2 billion. The next year, President Bush's first year, in his budget he asked for an increase to $44.5 billion. That would be about an increase of $2.3 billion.

Now, at the end of the day, at the end of the year, the actual funding went up to $49.9 billion. Why? Did President Bush come down here and ask for more money? No. Education got up to $49.9 billion because we Democrats insisted on it during the negotiations for the No Child Left Behind Act. We said, if you are going to have these mandates, let's get the money in there. And since the President wanted to get votes for his bill, he agreed. But he never asked for it. We insisted on it. So the next year we went up to $49.9 billion.

Now, the next year, President Bush asked for $50.3 billion. That was an increase of only $400 million from the previous year, seven-tenths of 1 percent. That is what he asked for. That is all he asked for. Again, we got it up to $53.1 billion. Again, why? Because Democrats insisted on it. We fought for it hard. We fought for it on the floor of the Senate, and we got it up to $53.1 billion.

Now, the real kicker is this: In his radio address, the President said:

My budget for next year boosts--

--``boosts,'' ``boosts''--

education funding to $53.1 billion. . . .

Mr. President, we are already at $53.1 billion. You have asked for $53.1 billion for next year. That is not a boost. That is the same as we spent last year.

Well, actually I want to be factually correct. His budget would increase funding by $26 million, .05 percent over last year. It is such a minuscule amount it does not even show up on a chart.

As I said before, it is true education spending has risen $11 billion during the Bush administration, but President Bush has only asked for $2.7 billion of that $11 billion. All the rest resulted from Democrats here in Congress pushing for and fighting for increased education funding. So I wanted to make that record clear.

Now, what is more, the President is trying to take credit for these education increases at the very same time the White House, this President, is working to defeat Senator Byrd's amendment, one of the pending amendments on this bill, that would fully fund title I at the fiscal year 2004 authorized level. The title I program is the key to the success of No Child Left Behind because title I helps the students who need the help the most, the millions who are now being left behind--low-income, poor kids, kids from low-income areas. It is the program also, under the No Child Left Behind Act, that will hold schools accountable for improving student performance. So title I is a program that has been in existence for a long time, and it funnels Federal funding to those most in need, the kids who are now being left behind.

In the No Child Left Behind Act we put in there the mandates that will hold schools accountable, that will penalize schools if they do not improve student performance.

President Bush and Members of Congress spent a lot of time negotiating over how much money was needed year by year for title I. This was part of the negotiations process when we passed No Child Left Behind. What we settled on was a figure of $18.5 billion for fiscal year 2004. That is the second year after the law went into effect. That is the authorized level.

Unfortunately, the bill before us provides $12.35 billion for title I. That is the amount requested by President Bush. Again, some on the other side want to play games with the numbers. They argue title I funding has risen by $2.9 billion during President Bush's administration, again, as if the President deserves the credit for it. The fact is, President Bush requested only $1.3 billion of the $2.9 billion title I has increased between 2001 and 2003. Again, the only reason title I increased more than he asked for was we Democrats here in Congress insisted on it.

Again, this chart shows the story. In fiscal year 2001, title I got $8.8 billion. In fiscal year 2002, the President requested a minuscule increase of just $300 million to $9.1 billion. The authorized level was $13.5 billion. Again, we Democrats in Congress fought hard, and we got it up to $10.35 billion.

Some on the other side have said, well, the Democrats ran the Senate for fiscal year 2002, and they didn't fund title I at the authorized level. Well, that is true, but remember, we only controlled the Senate, we did not control the House, and we did not control the White House like the Republicans do now, and we managed to get more for title I than the President requested.

In fiscal year 2003, the year we are in right now, the President requested $11.35 billion for title I, when the authorization level had risen to $16 billion. Again, thanks to Democratic pressure here in Congress, we got it up to $11.7 billion.

Now for fiscal year 2004, the President has requested $12.35 billion, $6 billion short of the authorized level of $18.5 billion.

People have said: That is the authorized level. We hardly ever fund to the authorized level.

In most cases that is true. But in this case, we have a different situation. We have mandates. Schools, you have to do this, this, this. You have to meet annual yearly progress of this, this, and this. We have now mandated it. We never did before. And, in the negotiations on No Child Left Behind, we agreed on these figures: $13.5 billion for 2002, 16 for 2003, and 18.5 for 2004, and so on. So this is not just like something else. This is the biggest Federal mandate ever on our public schools.

The biggest part of No Child Left Behind is title I, and the President has shortchanged it by over $6 billion this next year. I think we need to help President Bush keep the promise he made when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act by approving Senator Byrd's amendment. The Byrd amendment, more than any other, will show the Nation how serious we are about leaving no child behind. Do we give the schools the money they need to improve? Or do we just give them a bunch of mandates and hang them out to dry? That is what is at stake with the Byrd amendment.

I emphasize, the Byrd amendment is not just about dollars. If you want to hire good teachers, it takes money. If you want to reduce class sizes so teachers can teach, it takes money. This Byrd amendment would provide enough funding to hire more than 100,000 highly qualified teachers for the students who are at most risk of being left behind. That means over 2 million disadvantaged students would be taught in smaller classes. They would receive the full range of instructional services called for under the No Child Left Behind Act.

In his radio address on Saturday, the President said:

Schools are getting the Federal resources and help they

need to improve.

I am sorry, Mr. President. That is factually incorrect. They are not getting the Federal resources. They are not getting what you promised 2 years ago when you signed this bill into law. So I say let's help the President keep his promise. I urge my colleagues to support the Byrd amendment when it comes up for a vote. All we are asking for is $6.2 billion to get it up to the authorized level.

The President says he doesn't have the money for that. We have this huge deficit. We don't have the money to get out to these schools to fully fund this. We don't have the money.

Last night when I turned on my television set to watch the President address the country, he said he is going to send up a supplemental appropriations request for $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan--mostly Iraq. We had an earlier bill this year that was $79 billion, of which $70 billion was for Iraq and Afghanistan. So 70 and now 87; in the space of 6 months this President has asked us to take taxpayers' dollars and put $157 billion into Iraq and Afghanistan. And we don't have $6 billion to leave no child behind, the poorest kids in the poorest areas, the low-income areas. We don't have it. Somehow we don't have that.

Mr. Bremer is talking about rebuilding schools in Iraq. They are going to

rebuild schools or build schools. I don't think we bombed schools in Iraq. Maybe we are going to build new schools. I don't know. What about the schools here in America? What about our kids here who are being left behind?

One hundred fifty-seven billion dollars? At the beginning of the Iraq war, the Department of Defense estimated we were going to be spending about $2.2 billion a month after the war. In June, that went to $3 billion. As of July, they said they were spending about $3.9 billion a month in Iraq, and another $1 billion in Afghanistan. Well, if I am not mistaken, there are 12 months in a year. If we assume that is the end of it for the whole year, 12 months, $87 billion, it seems to me that comes down to more than $7 billion a month. And they told us earlier it was going to be $2.2 billion for Iraq, and going down quickly. And now it is up to $6 billion in Iraq and $1 billion in Afghanistan, if we assume they are not going to ask for any more. And I would not make that assumption. So in 1 year, $7 billion a month for Iraq and Afghanistan.

In February, the administration said Iraq's oil reserves would help shoulder much of the burden for its own reconstruction. Mr. Wolfowitz said on April 6:

There are enormous resources available from other sources

than just the American taxpayer to help the Iraqi people in

reconstructing their country. And the oil revenues of Iraq

now for the first time in decades will be dedicated to the

welfare of the Iraqi people.

Well, it sure looks like the American taxpayer is footing the bill to me. I don't know when those oil drills are going to start coming back again and when we are going to start making money off that. Right now it is the American taxpayer.

My point is, for Iraq and Afghanistan they have asked for $157 billion in 6 months. Yet we can't fund title I. That doesn't make sense to me at all. We should have--we do have the resources. Quite frankly, if we don't meet those needs and if we don't fund No Child Left Behind, then obviously children are going to be left behind. And they are going to be the kids of the poorest, low income, because their schools will not meet the annual yearly progress reports, the mandates that are out there. We are going to lose teachers because schools won't be able to pay them what they are worth. Yet we are going to ask the American taxpayer to keep coughing up money for this quagmire that we are in now in Iraq.

A lot of people have said: This isn't Vietnam.

I am one of those who lived through Vietnam. I was in the military during the Vietnam war. This may not be Vietnam, but, boy, it sure smells like it. Every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it is costing like Vietnam, too. No one wants this country to be vulnerable to terrorists. We want to take all reasonable diligent steps that may be necessary to protect the American people. That is the duty of the Commander in Chief. But the Commander in Chief, being an elected person, also has to be accountable for how he has gone about ensuring the security of the American people. At what cost? At what impact on our society?

So the President has to be held accountable for this. I don't pretend to have all the answers for what ought to be done in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I do know something--that if we as a nation decide to go it alone in the world in anything--but especially in the war on terrorism--if we decide to go at it alone, in our way and only in our way, without the concurrence of and the help and support of our allies, old and new, and of our friends in democratic countries around the world, then I think that two things will happen. One, we will not address the scourge of terrorism as fully and all-encompassing away as it needs to be done--globally--because we are going to need the help of other countries in finding terrorists, locating them, breaking up their cells, giving you advance warning and giving themselves advance warning. That will be the first. We will do it in a military rifle- shot-type of manner. You may accomplish something for a little bit but that doesn't wipe out the terrorist network or the nests. That is the first result of our going it alone. The second result is what is quite obvious right now--the American taxpayer will foot the bill for everything.

Those are the two things I see happening right now in the world. So I think it is time to have an accounting.

Quite frankly, I think it is time we begin to reach out to other nations--our friends and our allies--to enlist their aid and support, and to vow that never again are we going to go marching off with just the word of the President of the United States. The threat of terrorism is not just at us; it is at people all over the world. It is not just up to our President--any President--to decide when and how to go after these terrorists. It is up to us globally. It is up to the United Nations. It is up to NATO, our allies and us working together to decide how and when to go after these terrorists.

I say this because in this bill now there is a shortage of funding for education, for health care, for medical research. We are even shortchanging the National Institutes of Health on medical research. I think Senator Specter will have an amendment later on that, which I will support. But we are told we simply don't have the funds. But we do have $157 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, it is all a matter of priorities. I think we have to get our priorities back in order.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Well, if the Senator will yield without losing his right to the floor, I will try to respond to his question about the schedule. I do want to respond also to my friend's earlier comments on education funding, but I will do that when I get the floor in my own right.

To respond to the inquiry about the schedule, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, there are two observations on who is running the Senate. The Senate right now is 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 1 Independent. The Independent, Mr. Jeffords, caucuses with the Democrats, although he maintains an independent status. So it is not the case where we have a dictatorship. It is a case where the Senate is very closely divided and where there should be a comity in which people work together--as the Senator from Pennsylvania and I have done for 13 years, by the way, I would note for the record--in terms of accommodating and trying to reach reasonable accommodations on votes.

I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I mentioned last week I was going to offer an amendment on overtime. It was no secret. I read it into the Record. It was not my side, nor was it this Senator's decision, saying that we would only have two votes on Friday morning and then go home. We could have stayed Friday and voted. It was not this side or this Senator's decision to have one vote on Monday and then later cancel it and not even have any votes on Monday.

The Senator from Pennsylvania knows as well that on Fridays there is a vote or two in the morning, everybody takes off, and then we have maybe a vote at 5 or 5:30 on Monday--what we call a bed check vote. It was this Senator's judgment that most of the votes--and we have a finite list of amendments for this bill, I say to the Senator. We agreed. Senator Reid, our assistant leader on this side, got a finite list of amendments, which is very important because that tells us we can bring closure to this bill.

So it became clear that the big voting day was going to be Tuesday. Everyone is going to be here. It will be a long day. We can wrap up. We can have a whole series of votes on Tuesday, maybe bring this bill to a close by Wednesday--certainly Thursday at the latest.

I say further to my friend from Pennsylvania that the record shows that in the last several years about the average length of time spent on this bill, whether it has been in Democratic hands or Republican hands, has been

about 5 to 7 floor days because this is such a big bill. There is a lot in it. There are a lot of amendments, and usually a lot of debate on different aspects of this bill. So it would not be unusual for this bill, under the leadership of my friend, and very good leadership I might say, that we would be on the Senate floor for 5 or 6 days on this bill.

We were on it Wednesday. We had no votes Tuesday--again not our decision. The decision was made by the majority leader that we would not vote on Tuesday. We were on it Wednesday and Thursday. That is 2 days. We had two votes on Friday. Today, we are here talking but no votes. So Tuesday and Wednesday, that would give us about 5 legislative days that we would be on it. We can probably finish this bill by Wednesday night, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania.

So that is the schedule. I am not holding up anything. We couldn't vote today anyway. We couldn't vote on anything. The majority leader made the decision that we were not going to have votes on this bill today.

When I heard that, I said, OK, I am going to offer my amendment, and I will object to going off of my amendment for anything else until we vote on it because we can vote on it first thing tomorrow morning. We can come in tomorrow morning and vote on it, or tomorrow afternoon we could vote on this amendment. We will vote on it.

I did not mean to go on. I yield.

That is true.

That is true.

I agree. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

I have a hard time seeing it over there.

Will my friend yield for a question?

I don't understand why there is a flareup. This bill, we are moving ahead on it. Wednesday and Thursday we had good debates. We had amendments. We voted. We brought up amendments, most on our side. I think there were a couple on the Republican side that came up.

I don't know why there should be a flareup. We have the amendments pending. We said let's set a time to vote on it. We can move ahead. That is the sort of comity you work out. We will work out a time. We know we are going to vote on it, so let's find a time that is agreeable. In fact, in the well Thursday night, I thought there was an agreed-upon time, for the afternoon, for two. I said that is fine; I don't care. Then when I came in Friday morning, I found out that had been blown out of the water--not by our side but by the Republican side.

Will the Senator yield on that point?

Thursday night--you don't have to take my word for it. We were in the well with the majority leader----

The minority leader on our side, Senator Reid. I was involved in the discussion. We were just talking about moving ahead and getting a vote on this amendment on Tuesday.

I wouldn't say that hands were shaken and it was agreed, but someone said 3 or 3:15 on Tuesday. I said--someone said that to me. I didn't say that--I said, fine, OK, let's work it out. We will have a time on Tuesday we can work.

The Senator is right. Some of this does have to do with the fact that there are a number on our side running for President. We know that. They have been out. But everyone is going to be here tomorrow. The point is, not everyone is here today, Monday, not even on your side or our side, but everyone is going to be here tomorrow; so that Thursday night there was sort of a gentlemen's agreement--the assistant leader was there, too--that we would set a time on Tuesday to vote on this. That is the kind of thing we work out here.

If I could just finish? Then, when we come in Friday, I find that has been yanked away from us, that we can't have a time agreed upon to vote.

That is when this Senator decided, I am going to lay down my amendment and I am going to object to going off it until we get some kind of agreement worked out. It is not blackmail. It is just trying to move this process forward.

If my friend will yield further, I say why not? Tomorrow everyone is going to be here. If you want to agree on a time, you and I could agree on a time. I don't care. Everyone is going to be here tomorrow. We will agree on a time and we will move forward. There is no reluctance or resistance on our part to doing that. I don't know what the blocking is.

You have the floor.

I would be glad to set it aside. I would be willing to agree on a time tomorrow and set it aside.

What happens to the amendment? Will the Senator absolutely assure me if I set it aside that we will vote on this amendment tomorrow afternoon?

Well, there you go.

I say to my friend, we will work it out. I am sure it will be worked out.

Mr. President, I know my friend from Louisiana wishes to speak. I want to take a couple of minutes to respond to the remarks of my friend from Pennsylvania about the education bill.

I am constrained to, once again, point out some facts, as I did with this chart. I want to hold it up again. Perhaps my friend wasn't on the floor when I held this chart up before. This is education funding from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2004. In his radio address on Saturday, President Bush was boasting about the fact that he had an $11 billion increase in funding in his administration. That is true. It went from $42 billion to $53 billion. That is $11 billion. But no thanks to him.

As I pointed out before, in fiscal year 2001 it was $42.2 billion, and in 2002 Bush asked for $44.5 billion--a very slight increase.

In negotiations with the President on the No Child Left Behind Act, Democrats insisted and got it up to $49.9 billion. The next year President Bush asked for $50.3 billion--a $400 million increase, a .05- percent increase.

We Democrats fought hard and got it up to $53.1 billion. Now the President said in his radio address that he has a boost in education funding for next year. As I pointed out, this year it is $53.1 billion, and he asked for $53.1.

Those are the facts. Facts are stubborn things. You can have all the rhetoric and dress up your words but facts are stubborn things. The fact is, of the $11 billion increase for funding in education since this President came to office, the President has only asked for $2.7 billion of that increase. That is the fact. Facts are very stubborn things.

My friend from Pennsylvania dresses it up. But as we say in Iowa, you can put an apron and a pink ribbon on a pig but it is still a pig. You can dress this up in all kinds of fancy language. Quite frankly, we are leaving education funding behind.

I wanted to, again, bring out the facts and make sure that people had the facts in education funding and why we need to get the Byrd amendment agreed to on title I.

Again, when we negotiated No Child Left Behind, the President and the Congress agreed on these funding levels for title I. Now we are $6 billion less than what we agreed upon earlier.

Facts are very stubborn things.

That is why we need to adopt the Byrd amendment.

I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her patience. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I understand the first vote this morning will be on the Harkin amendment; is that true?

Mr. President, I want to speak a couple minutes on my amendment. The amendment we will be voting on has to do with school construction. Actually 3 years ago, this Congress appropriated almost $1 billion for school construction around the United States. This money has gone out to States all over the country. Some of it has been used and some of it still is going out for construction and renovation purposes. But what it has done is leveraged for every Federal dollar about $15 or $20 of local money. So we are getting a heck of a bang for the buck by putting money into school construction and renovation. That happened in Iowa, and it is happening in every other State in the country.

The American Society of Civil Engineers 3 years ago gave a report card on the infrastructure of America, and they gave the schools a D minus, the lowest grade of any category, lower than sewer and water and highways and everything else. They said schools were a D minus 3 years ago. Just yesterday they came out with their report card again and said there has been no progress at all.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 504(b)(2) of House Concurrent Resolution 95, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2004, I move to waive section 504 of that concurrent resolution for the purpose of the pending amendment, and also for the amendment that I offered, which would be following this vote at 9:30 on the Clinton amendment.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on both amendments.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendments.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment about which I spoke at some length yesterday and the day before on the floor. Others spoke on it also. This is the amendment that would preclude the administration from issuing final proposed regulations that would take away the right of up to 8 million to 10 million Americans to get overtime pay if they work over 40 hours a week.

Just to recap for a minute, earlier this year, sort of under the cover of darkness, without one hearing, the Department of Labor issued proposed regulations to modify the Fair Labor Standards Act that would basically modify, in a very drastic manner, how employers would decide who was covered under overtime law and who was not.

Now, again, this has been in existence since 1938. We have had some changes in it since that time, but none as sweeping as the Administration has proposed this spring and that would result in millions of working Americans losing their overtime pay protection.

The Department of Labor has said this only affects about 644,000 workers. Well, they're only counting the people are currently, routinely work overtime and receive overtime pay. There are about 8 to 10 million people who are qualified to get overtime pay, but they are not working overtime.

Again, if an employer were to ask them to work overtime, then they would get time and a half. Well, this pending regulation would take that away for many workers. And then we'll see their employers require them to work longer hours, without pay.

The first wave of people who will be most affected by this will be working women, women who work on a salary basis, maybe as accountants, working in banks, insurance companies, whatever, women who have children in childcare, daycare centers. Now they are going to be asked to work longer hours with no more pay, but they are going to have to continue to pay more for childcare. This is antiworker. This is antifamily. And its bad economics.

Obviously, if I am an employer, and I don't have to pay overtime pay, and I can work people longer than 40 hours a week, I'm not going to hire new people.

And I will--not today; I know others want to speak this morning--but when we come back next week I will be laying out in even more detail how it is that American workers are working longer than workers in all other industrialized countries, and now they are being asked to work longer without even being paid for it.

I think this is one of the most crucial issues facing this Congress this year: whether we are going to sit back and let the administration change, sort of by fiat--not by legislation, not through the hearing process and the developing of legislation and the votes here--but just through rules and regulations, to just wipe out--wipe out--the protections 8 to 10 million working Americans have to guarantee that if they have to work over 40 hours a week, they are going to get at least time-and-a-half overtime. Just wipe out the 40-hour work week, that has been law for 65 years now.

Yes, I am delighted to yield to the assistant leader.

I say to my friend from Nevada, I consider this--well, we have a lot in the bill for education, but in terms of what we are going to do to protect working Americans, to protect their families, and to ensure their right to get time-and-a-half overtime, this is the key vote.

I am delighted to.

I say to the leader, yes, that is right. In fact, I was part of a conversation that took place on the floor just last evening regarding that. There were no surprises. The amendment I have offered I actually read into the Record yesterday so everyone knew what the amendment was. It has been out there. It is not a very convoluted amendment. It is just a very simple, straightforward amendment. So everyone knew what it was.

Since it is such an important issue, I think we all thought it would be advisable to have as many Senators here as possible to vote on this amendment. Therefore, as I understood it, there was at least some agreement made that we were going to vote next Tuesday on this amendment.

Yes, I yield without losing my right to the floor.

That is my understanding. I saw the list. I think it was drawn up last night with a finite list of amendments, yes.

The leader has it correct. I feel so strongly about this, and the fact that we worked with the leadership on the other side and on this side to try to get a finite list of amendments, to get a time certain on Tuesday to vote on this so there would be no surprises to anyone, and then I am told today that has fallen through for some reason. It was not my intention until now, but it is my intention. I have laid down the amendment. There are no more votes today. The leader on that side said there would be no more votes today, that we would have one vote or maybe two on Monday evening, I don't know on what. There are other things up there.

Yes.

But as I understand it, that cannot happen now. So it is my intention, since this is such a vitally important issue----

In just a second, as soon as I finish my statement.

Since there are no more votes today, and there are only going to be one or two votes on Monday, at the most--I don't know what is lined up--it is my intention that I will object to setting aside my amendment until such time as we have an up-or-down vote on it, which should occur on Tuesday, so there should not be any problem. But I will object to moving off this amendment for any other amendment.

Without losing my right to the floor, I yield to the Senator.

I was yielding without losing my right to the floor. I thought you wanted to ask me a question.

Oh, OK.

OK.

I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, who has been cooperative, as he said, we have worked together well over a decade. We have always worked these things out to make sure we get a bill through. We will this time also.

My point is that there were at least some conversations last night with leadership on both sides about accommodating schedules and having votes set up on Tuesday.

The fact is that nothing has hindered the progress of this bill because four Democrats are running for President. We have had votes every day. We haven't filibustered anything. We haven't done anything. We have offered our amendments. We have had good debates and discussions, and we have had up-or-down votes. We had two votes today. It was not my decision to have two votes today. I could have had four or five votes today. Someone else above my pay grade made the decision that we would have two votes today and go home.

It was not my decision that on Monday we will have one vote late in the day. Again, the leadership makes those decisions, not I. So Tuesday looks like a day when we will all be here. Everyone is going to be here. That is the day when we can get a lot accomplished.

We are making good progress on this bill. I say to my friend from Pennsylvania and others, when you look at the past, this is a big bill. This bill covers more spending and more Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government than any other bill considered in Congress. In terms of total spending, it is second only to Defense. But it covers a host of Agencies and Departments, more than the Defense Department does.

In the past, in 2001, we had 5 days of floor action on this bill; in 2000, we had 7 days; in 1999, 5 days. In 1998, it was passed in an omnibus, but in 1997, 9 days. So as you can see, it has always taken 5, 6, 7, 8 days to finish this bill because it covers so many different subjects.

We went on the legislation on Wednesday. Monday was Labor Day. We came in, by agreement of the leadership, with no votes on Tuesday. That was, again, not our decision. That was a leadership decision on the Republican side. So we had Wednesday and Thursday and two votes today. Basically, we have been on the bill, at least voting, really only 2 days. To say we are going to have another couple days or 2 or 3 days on this bill is not exorbitant. It is in line with what we have done in the past.

We would like to finish the bill as quickly as anyone. I think we have been very diligent in bringing up our amendments, offering them, and moving ahead.

Again, I will object to setting aside any other amendment until we vote on this because it is that important. Everyone is going to be here on Tuesday. So we can vote on it on Tuesday, and we can vote on a lot of other things on Tuesday, too, and get a lot of this bill finished on Tuesday when the maximum number of Senators will be here in the Chamber.

That is absolutely true.

I thank the assistant Democratic leader for his support and for the support of our working families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know we are still on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations, and I wish to speak for a little while on the pending amendment which I have laid down prior to the distinguished Senator from New York speaking. I want to follow up and speak for a little bit longer on that. I know my colleague from Alabama and maybe others are here so I will try to be as succinct as possible, but I did want to, before the weekend came, to again lay out for the Senate and for the Nation why it is so important for us to take action, to stop the implementation of these proposed changes in rules and regulations that deal with overtime pay.

I thought I would take some time now to, number one, respond to some arguments made by the Senator from Wyoming yesterday, Senator Enzi, but also to again give some personal stories of what is happening to people around the country today and how others might be affected with these changes in rules and regulations.

As I have done with the rules and regulations, you can read them. If you want to go to sleep fast, try reading rules and regulations sometimes. That will put you to sleep. It becomes a blur out there as to what all these fancy words and phrases and subparagraph and titles all mean. But when you get through it all, it means people are affected one way or the other, either for good or for ill. It means workers are either supported in their jobs and their family life or they are not.

That is what these changes and rules are about, affecting human beings and their lives and how they live and how they work and what their quality of life is going to be.

Again, a couple of things I want to lay out. One, to lay out what the industry has said about the proposed overtime rule. I also wanted to bring specific examples and then show what has happened to the workforce over the last few years because, as I said earlier, the first wave of people to be hit by this proposed change in rules and regulations, if they go into effect, are working women. I will show why that is so in my comments this morning.

First of all, the Bush administration has said the proposed rules on overtime will not substantially change the exempt and nonexempt status of American workers. They say they merely want to ``clarify the current rules.''

I believe this is misleading, at best. The proposal will have a sweeping effect on millions of Americans and will unalterably change, will change fundamentally, the basic principle of the 40-hour workweek as we have known it since 1938.

Don't take my word for it. Look at some of the comments from industry. In May 2003, an analysis by Hewitt Associates, which advertises on their Web site as a global human resources outsourcing and consulting firm, says on their Web site their client roster includes more than half of the Fortune 500 companies. Here is their analysis of the proposed rule changes:

These proposed changes likely will open the door for

employers to reclassify a large number of previously

nonexempt employees as exempt. The resulting effect on

compensation and morale could be detrimental as employees

previously accustomed to earning in some cases significant

amounts of overtime, would suddenly lose their opportunity.

That is from Hewitt Associates.

And from the Society for Human Resource Management, which on its Web site says it is ``the world's largest association devoted to human resource management.'' And regarding the proposed overtime changes, the society said:

This is going to affect every workplace, every employee,

every profession.

So, again, whether we hear from the administration, from the Department of Labor, that this is simply a clarification, these are simple little clarifications. Meanwhile, the main human resource management association and a human resource consultant for Fortune 500 companies say this is big stuff. It is going to affect every workplace, employee, every profession, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

This same Society for Human Resource Management said the proposed rule is not clearer than current regulations. Deron Zeppelin told the Chicago Tribune:

It looks like they're just moving from one ambiguity to the

next.

Again, as I said, according to the Chicago Tribune:

The Labor and Department's [Wage and Hour Administrator

Tammy] McCutchen predicts a deluge of lawsuits as employees

and employers press for clarifications once the new rules go

into effect.

I thought we wanted to reduce the number of lawsuits. My friend from Wyoming argued that we have all these lawsuits out there right now. But this is going to open the door for even more lawsuits. The reason we are having lawsuits out there now is because employers are already violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, in terms of the 40-hour workweek. I will refer to that more later.

The Chamber of Commerce said, on the proposed rule, in their formal comments:

We support raising the minimum compensation necessary to

qualify as an exempt employee provided that such change is

made in conjunction with significant reforms of the duties

and salary basis test.

Understand what they are saying. They are saying we can raise the minimum compensation, that is fine, but not unless we have significant reforms of the duties and salary basis test--significant; not minor, not simple clarification but significant reforms.

The American Corporate Council Association, and I am quoting from their statement:

. . . also supports other aspects of the present draft,

including creating a new computer employee exemption;

eliminating discretion and independent judgment test as a

criterion of the professional exemption;

eliminating the primary and nonprimary duties criterion of

the administrative exemption; and the changes made to the

outside sales exemption.

For the uninitiated, in all this fancy jargon, what the American Corporate Council Association says is that they want a major exemption for computer technicians from overtime protections. They also want to really relax the current ``duties'' test to be exempt from overtime to incorporate more workers in the overtime exemption.

These are big changes, sweeping changes in who would get overtime pay and who would not.

Last, the National Association of Manufacturers said, on eliminating the academic study requirement for the professional exemption--right now it is generally based on 4 years of college. If you have 4 years of college that is sort of the first hurdle that you would be exempt as a professional employee. It doesn't necessarily mean you are exempt, but its one of the key requirements to be exempt. The proposed rule changes all that. It just says you can replace that academic requirement with work experience or training. I get it, you do the exact same job for a couple of years--let's say, nursing--so you go from getting overtime to being reclassified as a professional from all of that experience--and you no longer receive overtime pay although you're doing the exact same job. Well, the National Association of Manufacturers appears to think that's a great idea. They applauded the Labor Department for including this alternative means of establishing that an employee has the knowledge required for the exemption to apply.

Again, what does that mean? You don't need 4 years of college. You could have on-the-job training, a high school degree and, bang, all of a sudden you are a professional, and they can say you are exempt.

So when you hear people say these are minor changes, they are not minor at all. That is why 8 to 10 million people are going to be affected by this.

Again, there is the argument that we need to update these rules. I am all for updating them. The Senator from Wyoming spoke the other day about some of the occupations that are still listed. I think one of them was straw man--I forget what some of the others were. Oh, a leg man and a straw man and all that--fine. If they want to tweak the regulations to get rid of those jobs that no longer exist, fine by me. But don't take overtime pay protection from those workers, those jobs that currently have it.

The fact is, the Department has revised overtime regulations several times since 1938 just because, obviously, jobs change. Some of the things they covered before don't exist. Obviously a straw man, whoever that was, or a leg man, whatever that was, doesn't exist anymore. If they want to do away with that or change that, that is fine. But that is not what they are doing. So if they want to update them to match current occupations, that is fine. If the administration had done that, that would have been OK. But they went far beyond that.

I have just a few other brief things. The Senator from Wyoming said the other day the amendment I offered would not allow the Department of Labor to review the 78,000 comments they got in. That is simply not true. My amendment says they can't promulgate these rules and regulations. They can have the comments, they can look at them, they just can't issue a rule that would take away the present overtime protection that workers now have. That is all my amendment does.

And he said my amendment would block an increase in the income threshold for low-income workers. Again, that's just not true. My amendment specifically only prohibits implementing a rule that would take overtime pay protection to those millions of workers who currently have it. We would support new rules to increase overtime pay protection for workers.

Then the Senator from Wyoming said the union contracts protect overtime. That is true, union contracts do. But union contracts right now only cover 13 percent of the workforce in America. What about the other 77 percent who are not covered? And right now when a union goes out and the contracts expire, overtime is not an issue. Why? Because the law says they have to pay overtime.

So when the contract comes up, that isn't even an area for negotiation because the law says they have to pay them overtime over 40 hours. Now with these proposed changes in rules and regulations, every time a union contract expires, that is a negotiable item. We have to negotiate for whether or not they will get paid overtime. That means they will have to give up something else in order to get overtime.

There is something floating around about first responders, nurses and such, and that somehow that wouldn't be changed. But we have been through these rules and regulations. There is no exemption. There is no carve-out for policemen, for firemen, and first responders. Not one thing in this carves them out. I have heard it said that the administration said sort of quietly that maybe they will not include this. I don't see that anywhere.

Lastly, it has been said that wage and hour cases now exceed discrimination suits. Well, I wonder which. Maybe it is because a lot of employers are now basically violating the Fair Labor Standards Act because they can get away with it.

For example, Wal-Mart, the largest retailer, is facing 37 lawsuits in 29 States from employees alleging they were illegally forced to work extra hours to meet corporate productivity demands--not 1 but 37 lawsuits in 29 States.

In fact, in December, a Federal jury in Portland, OR, found Wal-Mart guilty of asking workers to clock out and then to return to work unpaid. A Federal jury found them guilty of doing that. Workers clocked out and then they had to come back and work overtime without getting paid.

About 270 insurance claims adjustors have filed here in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, alleging that their employer, GEICO Insurance, broke the law by improperly classifying workers as exempt from overtime pay.

Again, maybe it doesn't surprise me that wage and hour cases are now exceeding discrimination cases.

The proposed rules and regulations would make this legal and say to Wal-Mart you are off the hook. All these lawsuits would just fall by the wayside because of a change of law, and they could exempt these people. They are big changes.

I said earlier that the first wave of people who would be hit by this would be working women. I want to show you what I mean by that.

This chart shows basically what is happening in the workforce in America--from 1948 it 2002. As you can see, the labor force participation rates for men and women have steadily declined. Look at what has happened with women--going from slightly over 30 percent to a little over 60 percent of the workforce in that period of time. More and more women have entered the workforce over that period of time.

Here are some other statistics.

In 1975, 44.9 percent of women with children were in the labor force in 1975. In 2001, 70.8 percent of women with children were in the labor force. In 1975, 30.8 percent of the women who worked had children under the age of 2.

Today, 58 percent of the women in the workforce have children under the age of 2.

Here are two more statistics.

Twenty-eight percent of working mothers work nights or on weekends. Forty percent of working mothers work different schedules than their spouses.

What that adds up to is families are working longer and longer, and they are taking time away from their families to make ends meet. This chart shows the average weeks worked per year by middle-income families with children.

In 1969, the average family with children worked 78.2 weeks per year. We know there are 52 weeks in the year. That means that perhaps someone worked 40 or 52 weeks, and someone had a part-time job and they worked maybe 28 weeks during the year in 1969. In 2000, the weeks worked by the average middle-income family with children was 97.9 weeks per year.

Where is that coming from? It is coming from the women in the workforce who are working longer hours, working nights, and working weekends. They are the first ones who are going to be hit by these changes in overtime laws. Many of these women are working as secretaries, as claims adjustors,

as nurses, bookkeepers, social workers and paralegals. They are salaried. They work in insurance companies and banks. Right now, if they work over 40 hours, they are paid overtime. Under these changes, their employers can legally take away their overtime.

Let me give a couple of examples of people who would be affected by these changes.

Here is Michael Farrar who works at the NAV/AIR depot in Jacksonville, FL. He is a cost estimator at the NAV/AIR depot who specializes in aircraft engine and component production and repair. If he loses his right to overtime pay, he will be paid straight time for any hours over 40 per week.

He says:

If I don't get my overtime, it will be hard to exist.

He and his wife rely on overtime pay to support their 21-year-old disabled son who lives with them.

He says:

When I took this job, it was clear that I was supposed to

work more than 40 hours a week, and I agreed to that because

I knew I would need the money. We would be devastated without

the overtime. We have no more corners to cut.

Let us not go back 40 years with these proposed Bush regulations. Let us go forward and pay people what they deserve.

Here is Susan Moore, a planning coordinator from the Chicago Park and Planning District, a member of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

She says:

I am currently entitled to time and a half under Federal

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

required to work long hours like the project managers who are

not entitled to overtime pay. My supervisor has to think hard

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

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

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

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

losing time with my family, or losing my job.

Yes. I would be glad to yield to my friend from California.

I thank the Senator from California for her observations and her questions. I again thank my colleague from California for her many years of working so hard on behalf of our working families. There is no one who has worked harder and longer and fought more diligently for the rights of working families, working men, working women, in this country than Senator Boxer of California.

I say to the Senator, I am proud to have you on our side in this fight, too, because it is a fight for justice. It is a fight just to make sure people are treated decently as human beings.

I guess in my fondest, perhaps, hopes, maybe President Bush didn't even know about this, and this was going on underneath him. Maybe through our debates here he will find out about it and say: What is happening? Who is doing this on my watch? Well, the buck does stop at the President's desk. Maybe he doesn't even know this is going on but the people he has hired underneath him are implementing this. So maybe our debate will enlighten the President. Maybe some word will get to him and he will say, ``What is going on?'' and he will become alarmed at what people under him are doing, and perhaps he will put a stop to it. That would be my fondest wish.

Yes, without losing my right to the floor.

Well, no, as I say, hope springs eternal. I was hoping maybe the President might learn about this. We did get this veto message from the White House.

I say to the Senator from California, this is mind-boggling. Here is an appropriations bill that funds all education, all health care, all research at the National Institutes of Health--on breast cancer, on emphysema, on diabetes; all this wonderful research done to help people live their lives better--Head Start Programs, job training programs, and he is going to veto the whole thing if we stop these rules and regulations from going through that takes away overtime. To me this is mind-boggling.

Again, I hope it is his underlings doing this, and maybe he doesn't know about it yet, and maybe he will learn about it. I hope he will learn about it. Maybe he will tell his people to stop this nonsense.

I hope he would take that letter back and say he wouldn't. The idea of having a veto threat out there, to veto this entire bill, if the Senate works its will and says: No, we are not going to let these rules and regulations come into effect, this almost borders on the bizarre that something like this would happen.

I thank the Senator.

I see my great leader. Again, talk about a fighter for working families in America, there is no one, including me and the Senator from California, who has fought harder and longer for working families than the Senator from West Virginia.

I yield.

As I said, hope springs eternal. And I always believe in redemption. The hope for redemption is

always there, that the wayward will come home and find the true path. And I hope the President will sit down and think about this and understand what is happening on his watch with regard to this issue.

So I appreciate what my friend from West Virginia has said. I would hope this would happen. But again, we can't go on hope around here. We have to go on what reality is. And the reality is, the Department of Labor, under this administration, has promulgated these proposed changes in overtime. They will go into effect unless we take this action. That is the real world we live in. That is why I have offered this amendment. And that is why I feel so strongly about it.

Oh, there are maybe a few things that each of us gets interested in and gets involved in because we feel deeply about them. One of the issues I always get involved in and for which I take the floor is to make sure we expand and promote opportunities for people with disabilities in our country. This goes back to when I was the chief sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act. So this is another area in which I always keep a close watch and find out what the administration and the Supreme Court and others are doing to cut down on the rights of people with disabilities. That is one area.

Another area I feel so strongly about is our working families, working people who don't have a lot of say-so over their jobs. They go to work every day. They do what their bosses tell them. They put in extra effort and extra energy. A lot of times they don't get paid overtime for that extra few minutes every day, that extra effort. But if they are asked to work overtime, they should get paid. If they are taking time away from their families to work overtime, they ought to be justly compensated for it. That is why I feel so strongly about this.

I couldn't say it any better than Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA. Here is what she said:

I began my career as a supply clerk earning $3.10/hr in

1976. I recognized early in my federal career that in order

for me as a working single parent to support my family, I

needed to find more lucrative employment. I entered an upward

mobility program and received training to become an engineer

technician with a career ladder that gave me a yearly boost

in income. It seemed though that even with a decent raise

each year, I really relied on overtime income to help make

ends meet. There are many more single parents today with the

same problem. How does one pay for the car that broke down

or the braces for the children's teeth? Overtime income

has been a lifesaver to many of us. When I as a working

mother leave my 8-hour/day job and go home, my second

shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes to wash,

laundry, and all the other housework that must be done

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

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

time needed to take care of our personal needs. It seems

only fair that one should be compensated for that extra

effort. Overtime is a sacrifice of one's time, energy, and

physical and mental well-being. Compensation should be

commensurate in the form of premium pay as it is a premium

of one's personal time, energy, and expertise that is

being used.

That is a great sentence that Sheila writes:

Compensation should be commensurate in the form of premium

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

expertise that is being used. It has been a crime that many

engineers and technicians were paid less than even their

straight time for overtime worked. It has never made sense to

me that the hours I work past my normal eight are of lesser

value, when those additional hours are at a cost of my

personal time.

Sheila Perez from Bremerton, WA. I could not say it any better. That is what this fight is all about. It is about people who get up and go to work every day. They pull their load, pay their taxes. They are good citizens. They raise their families. They want to spend time with their families. If they are being asked to work overtime, as Sheila said, that is premium time. That is personal time. That is family time. They ought to be paid for it. They ought to be paid time and a half for it.

What these proposed changes would mean is that Sheila Perez could be asked to work over 40 hours a week and not get paid one penny more than what she is being paid right now. She would not be paid anything more if she were on a salaried basis. It is sort of free time.

That is why I said the other day, not only is this President and this administration shipping jobs out of the country, they are now importing into this country Third World labor standards: work 60 hours a week, no overtime, no commensurate pay.

We will have another issue on pensions where they are trying to change the pension program, take away the rightful pensions which people have earned, privatize Social Security, privatize Medicare. It doesn't sound like the America I grew up in and the America that built a strong and viable middle class.

Right now American workers work longer per year than workers in any industrialized country. The International Labor Organization found that American workers put in an average of 1,825 hours a year, average. In Europe, French workers have an average of 1,545 hours per year; German workers, 1,444 hours per year. So we are already working longer. Now they want us to work longer without any pay. That is why I have said this is antiworker. It is antifamily to change these rules and regulations as they want.

I have had my say. I know others want to speak. I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Johnson as a cosponsor of my amendment.

I will have more to say about this next week. I hope we will vote on this up or down when next Tuesday comes. But I hope the American people get the word about what is happening. These proposed rules came out without one public hearing, not one. There still haven't been any public hearings. Why don't they go to Dallas, TX, or Des Moines, IA? Why don't they go to Detroit or Los Angeles? Why don't they go to West Virginia, have public hearings and listen to what people might have to say about this? No, they just want to ram them through without any public hearings.

This is our public hearing. This is the public's house, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Here, as we once said, the people rule. Here we are supposed to do the work of the people, not the special interests. The American people want us to fight for them and for their rights, to support them in the workplace and to support their families. That is what this fight is about--nothing more, nothing less. That is why this Senate needs to speak, and we need to vote early next week to say no to the Bush administration's proposed changes in overtime rules and regulations.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I take the floor for a few minutes to discuss an amendment Senator Kennedy and I and others plan to offer to address a very important issue, one that affects the livelihood of millions of American workers and their families. It is an issue that bubbled up earlier this year when the Department of Labor--and I choose this word carefully--sort of surreptitiously issued proposed regulations, changes in regulations that would affect the 40-hour workweek and take away overtime protection for millions of American workers.

They did not have one hearing on that. They published it, put this out as a proposed change in the rules and regulations. Not too many people knew about it. However, I am now aware that over 78,000 comments have come in on this issue from around the country. So now the Department of Labor is hearing back, and more and more Americans are beginning to find out about this proposal.

Senator Kennedy and I, and a number of our colleagues, will offer an amendment to protect the 40-hour workweek and to make sure overtime protections are there for American workers.

What the administration has proposed is a change in our regulations that would eliminate the 40-hour workweek by allowing employers to deny millions of workers overtime pay, workers who are currently covered and guaranteed overtime pay protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

This proposal by the administration is antiworker, it is antifamily, and it is bad economic policy. It is an attack on America's middle class. It won't create one job in our struggling economy. In fact, it will do just the opposite. It will cost us jobs. It is part of what I call the ``economic malpractice'' of this administration. And it is working Americans who are the victims.

Unemployment continues to climb. It is now at 6.2 percent, the highest level since 1994. That means 9.4 million people looking for work can't find any.

Since President Bush was sworn in, we have lost 3.1 million private sector jobs. We are losing jobs every month. The economy is limping along. Our deficit continues to bloom. It is now over $450 billion, I am told, by the end of this year and may be $500 billion by the end of next year. So the administration passed two record tax cuts for the wealthy to explode the deficit. And instead of trying to put money in the pockets of working Americans, the administration now wants to take it away, taking money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans, hard-working Americans who may be working overtime to help pay some extra bills.

Late last month, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that analyzed the reach of this administration's proposal. It found that up to 8 million workers who currently are eligible for overtime pay will lose that eligibility. And as they noted, overtime pay for many of these workers can make up to 25 percent of the family's income. We are talking about people such as nurses, police officers, firefighters, retail managers, journalists, medical technicians, surveyors, among a whole host of others. For most of these men and women, that overtime pay is not spare change or for frivolous spending; it is essential. It helps pay the mortgage, feed the kids, and maybe put a little bit away for college for their kids or save a little bit for retirement.

I have a recent letter from the National Association of Police Organizations that represents thousands of law enforcement officers from across the country. They oppose the administration's proposal because, as they said:

[U]nder such regulations, America's State and local law

enforcement officers, already strained by countless overtime

hours ensuring community safety from terrorist threats, could

lose their basic benefit accorded for their efforts.

A recent national survey shows that working Americans are now becoming more aware of this proposal and have great concerns about it. A survey released this past week by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, pollsters, found that Americans overwhelmingly disagree with the Bush administration proposal. By 17 to 1, the public believes that Federal laws governing overtime should be changed to cover more employees rather than fewer. Fifty-one percent said it should cover more employees. Only 3 percent said it should cover fewer employees. Seventy-four percent of Americans in this poll oppose the Bush administration's proposal to eliminate several million employees' legal right to overtime pay.

I would like to take a few minutes to explain briefly how the rules work right now under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Hourly workers are generally guaranteed overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. That has been accepted since 1938. Many salaried workers are also eligible for overtime pay under current law.

So what the administration's proposal would do would be to make it much easier for employers to deny salaried workers overtime pay protection. The result is that millions of salaried workers, earning more than $22,100 a year, currently eligible for overtime will be denied overtime under these proposed changes. This proposal will keep workers from spending time with their families, working longer hours without compensation. Employers will be able to force workers to work longer hours without pay.

In case someone says that isn't happening, I suggest they might want to go back and read the story in the Sunday Post of August 31 by Kirstin Downey, who documented some of the things that are happening in the country today.

For example, Wal-Mart Stores, Incorporated, the Nation's largest retailer, is facing 37 lawsuits in 29 States from employees who allege they were illegally forced to work extra hours free to meet corporate productivity demands. In December, a Federal jury in Portland, OR, found Wal-Mart guilty of asking workers to clock out and then return to work unpaid. About 400 current and former Wal-Mart employees

participated in the lawsuit, with some workers testifying that they falsified their time records to keep their jobs because they live in small towns with few other jobs.

About 270 insurance claims adjusters have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, alleging that their employer, GEICO, broke the law by improperly classifying them as workers exempt from overtime pay.

Stan Fortune, quoted in this article, age 47, a former Wal-Mart manager in Weatherford, TX, said he felt driven to climb into store management ranks during the 17 years he worked there. On one temporary assignment in Las Vegas, he said he worked 13 to 14 hours a day from September 1 through December 26 with only 1 day off. Said Fortune:

It builds up to where that's the norm. You get three or

four hours' sleep. It becomes what you are used to. Now that

I look back it is pretty sad.

That is happening around the country today. More and more workers are being asked to work longer hours. What the administration wants to do is say: We will make that legal. We are just going to exempt them.

American workers already work longer hours than any other industrialized country. Right now, according to this article in the Washington Post, according to the International Labor Organization, American workers work more than other people in developed economies. They found that American workers put in an average of 1,825 hours per year. French workers, by comparison, average 1,545 hours per year; German workers, about 1,444 hours per year. According to Lawrence Johnson, chief of the ILO's employment trends team:

The European Union and the United States have two different

systems and react to economic conditions differently. . . . A

lot of what Europeans have--longer vacations, shorter hours--

are legislated, and in the United States, it is handled

through collective bargaining.

The problem is now only 13 percent of American workers are covered under collective bargaining. So most workers are not in the collective bargaining agreements that cover overtime.

Major women's organizations, including the National Partnership for Women and Families and the American Association of University Women, oppose this proposal because they fear that an increase in mandatory overtime would take time away from families and disrupt the schedules of working parents as well as impose additional childcare and other expenses.

Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute has shown that this proposal, probably more than anything else, affects women in this country. It is women who are working in these jobs that are about at that level, but it is also the women who have to take their children to childcare. So get this: What the administration is saying is that you will have to leave your child in childcare longer hours during the day. You will be forced to work overtime, longer hours, but you won't get one more nickel for it. Talk about fairness. Talk about compassion.

This proposal will not create one new job. It will do just the opposite. What it will do is give employers a disincentive to hire people because it will allow them to work their current workers longer hours, force them to work longer hours without any extra pay.

When President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law in 1938, he made that exact point, that if a worker is working 50 hours a week and not getting paid for that, it does two things--takes him away from his family and, secondly, it is a disincentive to hire anyone else to work. So that is what this proposal will do. It will add to the unemployment figures in America, not put people to work.

As columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote in the New York Times:

You would think that an administration that has presided

over the loss of millions of jobs might want to strengthen

the protections of workers fortunate enough to still be

employed. But that's not what the administration is about.

Again, as I said in my opening, the administration does not want the American worker to find out what they are doing. They didn't hold one hearing on its proposed rule. Maybe they thought they would slip it through and people would not know about it.

I don't think we should in the shadows set policy that would affect millions of workers and their families. We need to do it in the open. That is why I plan to offer this amendment.

My amendment is very simple. It would prohibit any money, any taxpayer dollars, from being spent to in any way implement any administration proposal that would exempt more workers from overtime pay protections, who are now currently eligible. Very simple and straightforward. It would allow the administration today, tomorrow, or at any time, to increase the number of workers who are eligible for overtime pay.

Again, I wish to take a couple of minutes to clarify some of the claims that some of the opponents of our amendment have made about the administration's proposal.

The first claim is that the proposed regulation will only result in denying overtime pay protection to 644,000 workers, not 8 million. Well, that is because the administration is only counting people right now who are getting overtime pay. There are millions more eligible for overtime pay but they are not getting it because the employers don't want to pay the overtime. However, if you now exempt them, the employer has no disincentive whatsoever. They can work those people longer than 40 hours per week and not have to pay them one additional nickel. So the administration's estimate completely ignores the incentive that will be built in for employers to work these eligible people longer hours per week.

Claim No. 2: The administration's proposal will actually guarantee an additional 1.3 million low-income workers overtime pay.

This is an overstatement. They are saying it because they are raising the current income threshold from $8,060 a year to $22,100 a year--no one is opposed to that--and it is long overdue. Of course, it has been raised several times since 1938.

According to the National Employment Law Project--a coalition representing the interests of low-wage workers--most, if not all, of those 1.3 million workers were already covered by overtime protections because they were working in low-paying nonexecutive jobs. They add that the DOL's proposed threshold increase ``does not help nearly enough workers, because 80 percent of the workforce still makes over the proposed threshold [of $22,100], and workers earning more than the threshold are barely making ends meet in today's economy.'' Again, I point out that my amendment does not affect the increase in the threshold limit.

The third claim they make is that first responders--police and firemen--will not lose their overtime protection with this proposal. They have been making this claim all along. Unfortunately, the proposed regulation as written would, in fact, put many first responders--police and firefighters and others--at risk of losing overtime eligibility. There is no specific carve-out for first responders. This proposed regulation is so vague that it would apply to many first responders who may have minimal supervisory duties.

The National Association of Police Officers and the International Union of Police Associations both oppose the regulations as written.

The fourth claim: This proposal simplifies current regulations, and it will make it easier for employers to determine who qualifies for overtime and who doesn't. It will also reduce litigation.

Well, perhaps that is so. It would reduce litigation because it is going to exempt all these people from overtime protection. But it is not going to make it easier. In fact, it would make the rules more confusing by replacing well-established standards with vague and ambiguous language and would spawn litigation over the meaning of these new rules.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

The Labor Department's [Wage and Hour Administrator] Tammy

McCutchen predicts a deluge of lawsuits as employees and

employers press for clarifications once the new rules go into

effect.

Also, a recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service found that the proposal is vague--it will be largely up to the interpretation of employers and the Labor Department to determine who qualifies and who doesn't qualify for overtime pay protection.

So what that says to me is that employers will have wide discretion-- compared to what they have now--to reclassify and disqualify all kinds of

workers from overtime pay protection in order to make them work longer hours without compensation. I don't really expect the Labor Department to proactively go around and check on these employers. They don't do it now. What if a worker complains? How many workers are going to risk losing their jobs by complaining? As a person who worked for Wal-Mart said, ``In a small town there are no other jobs. Therefore, when they want you to work overtime without any extra pay, that is what you do.''

I close by saying that I also believe this proposed regulation is designed to give cover to employers that are already abusing standing overtime laws. Lawsuits by the hundreds--cases pending before the Labor Department that are now months and years backlogged--will be wiped off the books because now the employers that are denying overtime pay will be legal in doing so.

So why do we want to make it easier to deny American workers overtime pay? How does it help the economy to take money away from millions of low- and middle-income men and women?

Again, the administration's proposal will do nothing to put money in the pockets of working Americans. It will not create new jobs. It will keep people away from their families longer hours. It is a slap in the face to millions of hard-working Americans--men and women who are starting to make ends meet and yet spend some time with their families. It is bad policy. We have an opportunity to stop it with my amendment. I plan to offer that shortly. I urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

I first wish to thank the senior Senator from Massachusetts for his many years of leadership and support on issues that really affect working families in America. No one has fought longer and harder and more successfully in the past to protect the working families of America than the senior Senator from Massachusetts. I am very proud to have his support for this amendment and for his joining us in trying to do what we can to stop this assault on the American working families, as the Senator so ably pointed out.

I must say to the Senator that people ask me all the time: Why would they do this? Why would the administration, sort of under the cover of darkness, want to at this point in time, or any time, take away the protections of overtime pay for millions of Americans? I must tell the Senator from Massachusetts that I am hard pressed to answer that question. Why would they want to do this? I throw up my arms. It makes no sense economically. It is antifamily, as the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out. It is bad economic policy. We are not going to create more jobs. In fact, we will cause the loss of more jobs. I am hard pressed.

I wonder if the Senator has any ideas to help me answer constituents and others who ask me why the administration proposes an outlandish assault on working families. I am at a loss. I don't know if the Senator can help me. Maybe they have given in to some of the people in the business community. As I say, it is not all the people. Not all the people in the business community agree with us. But there are a few who are pushing.

Maybe the answer is that people in the business community just want to be able to tell their workers what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, with no restrictions whatsoever on how they tell their workers what to do and when they can work. That is the best I can come up with.

I just respond to the Senator, he made a great point. I can only say what Reuters news agency reported 1 day ago, yesterday, saying:

The White House issued a veto threat . . . against a

Democratic bid to derail its proposed changes in federal work

rules that [would] cost millions of Americans overtime pay. .

. .

If the Senate adopted the amendment, President Bush's

advisers would recommend he veto the spending bill, the White

House budget office said.

I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, this is again mind-boggling, that if the Senate expresses its will that we do not want these rules to go into effect, they are going to veto this bill that has money in it for vital basic medical research for all of NIH, the National Institutes of Health, all of the funding for higher education and Pell grants--and, by the way, I know the Senator and others have amendments to make sure we get those Pell grants up, and I support him in that effort--all of the funding for elementary and secondary education, Head Start programs, maternal and child health care programs. They are going to veto the whole thing because they are so adamant that they want to take away overtime pay from American workers.

I hope this is a mistake. I hope Reuters was wrong, but I can only rely upon what they have said. The White House has not communicated this to me directly, but this has been reported from the White House, that they are going to veto this bill over this.

I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, I am glad he mentioned that because, again, it just shows to me the zeal--the zeal--with which this administration and their advisers want to attack working families in this country and to take away overtime pay; that they are willing to put out that threat of a veto and take away Head Start Program funding, maternal and child health care, elementary and secondary education, all the other things that are in this bill, simply because they want to take away overtime pay from millions of American workers. Again, I find this bordering on the bizarre.

I respond to the Senator from Massachusetts, from all the polls we have seen, all the data we have seen, the American people do not want this. They want more overtime pay protection, not less.

I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, while he was speaking, I was thinking about something I said a few days ago about the fact that the administration is turning the clock back prior to 1938 when we passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. And someone said that was sort of overblown rhetoric on my part--that of course no one wants to turn the clock back.

As I started doing more research into what happened with the Fair Labor Standards Act, I came across an interesting item. The first kind of strikes that occurred asking for an 8-hour day started in 1886, the famous Haymarket Square riot in Chicago. That was trying to get an 8- hour day at that time. This finally built up to the 1930s during the Great Depression. The 40-hour workweek was a compromise. The Senate, in 1937, passed a measure providing for a 30-hour workweek. Think about that. If we were to propose a 30-hour workweek around here, I don't know how many votes you would get. You would not get many.

In 1937, the Senate passed a measure providing for a 30-hour workweek. It was only because business ganged up and they said they had to compromise, and they compromised on a 40-hour workweek.

So when I say they are turning the clock back to before 1938, I mean it. That is exactly what they are trying to do, put us back to a time when people worked 10, 12 hours a day with no compensation for it and had little time with their families. That is exactly what this measure is intended to do.

You couple that with what the Senator from Massachusetts said about Davis-Bacon, the fact that we can't even get a vote on the minimum wage. The Senator from Massachusetts for the last couple, 3 years has been trying to get this vote up. We can't get a vote up. They won't let us vote on it. I hope we will vote sometime this year on the minimum wage. But these are all attacks on workers.

All of them.

(Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina assumed the Chair.)

Go ahead.

What a jester you are. I wouldn't mind it.

Does that mean you will accept all our amendments and just go to third reading?

Waterloo, MO.

I would like to ask my good friend, the chairman of the committee, does he know from the leadership on his side whether we will be having votes tomorrow? If we are, that is fine. We will get some votes packed in tomorrow, on some amendments tomorrow. I don't know. No one has advised me.

I understand there are some amendments coming down this afternoon. There are some amendments pending right now.

We have a vote at 5 o'clock, I understand. Was that already ordered? Oh, not yet.

There is the rural education amendment.

I understand we can have votes tomorrow on certain amendments. The Senator has an amendment which I am supporting on NIH. Is that going to be offered here this afternoon? We could vote on that. We have amendments on both sides. I am supporting that amendment, as my friend knows. Why can't we vote on that?

I understand we want some people back for that, too, on

Mr. President, shortly, I am going to offer another amendment dealing with school renovation and construction on behalf of myself and Senator Clinton from New York. This is an issue I have been involved with for over almost 12 years now. I first started talking about the need for the Federal Government to be involved in school construction and renovation back in 1991. At that time, when I was seeking my party's nomination to be the candidate for President, I had come up with sort of a blueprint for America. But one of the cornerstones was the need to invest in the infrastructure of our country. In that infrastructure, aside from water and power generation and transportation, communications, one of the elements of the proposal was for the Federal Government to provide for meaningful funds for the renovation and reconstruction of schools throughout the country. I had picked up on this after reading ``Savage Inequalities'' by Jonathan Kozol from which it became clear to me that Mr. Kozol had provided a great service to our country by pointing out that all over America, the poorest schools--the worst schools, I should say--the schools that are the most rundown and in the most need of repair were those located in very low-income areas.

It became obvious the reason they did is because they were in low- income areas where they had low property tax values, and they simply didn't have the wherewithal to fix up the schools. However, the schools that were in high-income areas basically were in pretty good shape. Thus he termed it ``Savage Inequalities.''

Based upon that, I said: We ought to embark upon an effort to get the Federal Government involved in reconstructing schools. One of the reasons I proposed that and have been proposing it for the last 12 years is that I do firmly believe in local control of schools, local control in terms of curriculum, teachers, hiring, the general sort of thrust of the schools, how they are operated. That has been one of the geniuses of the American educational system. We have had this diverse approach to education in our country.

The fact is, giving construction money to the schools in no way takes away from local control. It just provides the funds they need. I also thought at the time that we would have a matching. We would have the States then come up with funds. For example, a low-income area that has low property tax values could take, let's say, a grant, a Federal grant of money that would lower the total cost of the bond or whatever is needed to be passed to provide for new construction; thus they might not only be more willing but at least able to build new schools or to reconstruct and renovate old schools.

Nothing happened on that in the early 1990s. Obviously, I did not get my party's nomination. I tried to get the Clinton administration to provide some of this. In fact, in 1994, we did get money for school renovation and reconstruction. It was rescinded the next year. I then embarked upon an effort to test my theories in the State of Iowa.

So beginning about 1997-1998, I got some money to go to the State of Iowa for school construction and renovation. And the State department of education handled that money and put out a requirement that there had to be certain local matches to get this grant money.

Local communities, at least in my State, could match that money one of three ways: They could either pass a bond, raise money through further bonding, they could have a local option sales tax, which we have in Iowa, or they could do it with what we call a plant and equipment levy. In the State of Iowa local jurisdictions are allowed to do that.

When we first put out several millions of dollars for this to test this theory, it turned out that the leveraging was incredible. The leveraging was over almost 20 times. In other words, for every Federal dollar we put out, we got about 20 times that in local moneys coming in to help. That is because they got the grant money, and they could see they could get maybe $100,000 or $200,000. And if they matched that with a local option sales tax or something or a bonding, then they get it. Many of these jurisdictions that had trouble passing bonds in the past found that with this carrot approach they were able to get the bond passed because obviously they didn't have to pass as big a bond as what they had in the past. Therefore, their local property tax levees would not be that great.

So it worked very well. In fact, there are schools all over the State of Iowa that have gotten these Federal grants now going back almost 5, 6 years. There are new classrooms; there are new schools; there are renovated buildings all over the State of Iowa that are testament to the fact that the theory I had actually does work.

So in 1991, we had $1 billion we had put into this program nationwide. That $1 billion was cut down to about $800 million in conference, but we got about $800 million out for school construction and renovation all over the United States. Every State has participated in this. Again, not all that money has been spent because it took some time to get the money out. People had to make contracts for construction, things such as that. But the reports we are getting back are that this has been something the States have found they can use and, as I said, multiply the amount of money. There is a multiplier effect to every Federal dollar that goes out.

It is estimated 14 million children in this country attend schools that are deteriorated. Just this morning, the American Society of Civil Engineers, a decidedly nonpartisan group, issued one of its periodic report cards which assess the condition of the Nation's physical infrastructure. In 2001, the ASCE awarded the Nation's schools a grade of D minus, the lowest grade for any individual category. That is bridges, water systems, sewage disposal systems, of all the infrastructure of America, schools got D minus, the lowest grade.

This morning, the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded there had been no progress in the condition of our schools. The report states: Due to aging, outdated facilities, severe overcrowding, or new class sizes, 75 percent of our Nation's school buildings remain inadequate to meet the needs of schoolchildren.

The ASCE also found that the average cost of capital investments needed to upgrade and replace our schools is $3,800 per student. That is more than half the average cost to educate that student for 1 year. They estimate the total cost to fix our schools at more than $127 billion nationwide.

I have said many times, it is a national disgrace that the nicest places that our children see are shopping malls, sports arenas, and movie theaters. The most rundown place they see is their public school. What kind of signal, what kind of message are we sending to our kids when the nicest things they see are shopping malls and movie theaters and sports arenas, and one of the most rundown places is the public school they attend every day?

What message does that say about the value we place on their education and their future? It is not just a matter of appearances. Numerous studies demonstrate the link between safe and healthy school buildings and student performance. That is basic common

sense. If buildings are making teachers and students sick, obviously, they will not learn as well.

The Healthy Schools Network has reported many such problems around the Nation. For example, several parents have complained that their children were getting sick at a large city school near Albany, NY. The county inspected the school and found unsafe levels of lead and mold. The school has not been able to correct the problem, citing a lack of funding for repairs, but children are still attending the school.

A child in North Carolina missed several days of school suffering from headaches and stomachaches. During the summer break, the child's illnesses abate but come back when school resumes in the fall. The child attends class in an old trailer that has a musty odor and poor ventilation and mold.

A Virginia parent said her son felt sick at school and was doing poor in social studies. An inspector found nonfunctioning ventilators and several water-stained ceiling tiles.

We talk a lot about leaving no child behind but children such as these are being left behind all over the country today in bad school buildings. It doesn't have to be this way.

Last year I visited Longfellow Elementary School in Council Bluffs, IA. Longfellow school was built in 1939, the year I was born. Now you know how old I am. That was the year the school was built.

Basically, in the 2001-2002 school year, Longfellow recorded 4,893 student absences. The next year, after all the modifications and changes and everything, absences dropped by more than a half, to 2,357--cut in half in 1 year. Why? Well, that school received this Federal grant to make improvements to the school. Before this, they had an old boiler in the basement, an old water heating system. It was always leaking and it was many years old. There was mold all over the basement and mold on the ceilings. Kids were getting sick, plus there was poor ventilation. When you have these hot radiators in the middle of the winter, if you have a mild day, they are still hot. They just had all these problems, so they put in a new geothermal heating and cooling system. They put in better plumbing. They put in new window glazing with double-paned windows. They cleaned up everything. The mold and mildew has disappeared. The indoor air quality has risen dramatically. The building is not just a nicer place; it is a healthier place. In 1 year, they cut absences in half just by putting in this new system.

Another bonus came with the school's utility bill. As I said, they put in a new geothermal system. I looked at all the wells they drilled for this new system. Last winter the custodian at the school told me that when they first fired up this system on one of the coldest days of the year, the gas company called him to report what they thought was a broken meter in their school because they weren't using very much gas. The meter wasn't broken; it was just that the new system was so efficient. So this school district is now going to save money every single year because it won't be paying the high utility bills.

Here is a story of another school from a recent report by the Rural School and Community Trust, titled ``Save a Penny, Lose a School: The Real Cost of Deferred Maintenance.''

This report cited a 1998 incident in which the failure of a $12 gasket caused the flooding of a 6-year-old gymnasium, as well as the main building of the school. The problem might have been prevented by some routine maintenance. Instead, classes were canceled for 2 days and the gymnasium closed for 5 weeks. The total bill was nearly $200,000-- $26,000 for emergency response and $160,000 for repairs.

Now, compare that with what happened in Waterloo, IA, where the school district in 1999 received another one of these Federal grants to upgrade their fire alarm system at West High School. A few months after they had put this new system in, an incident at the school one evening caused the water pipes to burst. But the upgraded alarm alerted authorities of the problem and an immediate response was taken to contain the damage. Without this early warning, the problem would not have been discovered until the next morning. Not a single day of instruction was lost. In addition, the new alarm saved the district money. The district officials estimated if the water had not been contained immediately, large areas of the school would have been flooded and over $400,000 in damages sustained.

I wish more schools could see results such as these. Unfortunately, the Federal Government is doing virtually nothing to help school districts address this critical problem.

As I said, in fiscal 2001, we provided $800 million for school repair. This program was extremely well received all over the country.

Unfortunately, President Bush zeroed out the program in his fiscal year 2002 budget, and we never have been able to restore it. That is why Senator Clinton and I are introducing an amendment today to provide $1 billion, as we did in 2001, for a national school repair program. Grants would be made to school districts to make urgent repairs to fix a leaky roof, replace faulty wiring, or make repairs to bring schools up to local safety and fire codes. Funds could also be used to expand existing structures to alleviate overcrowding or make the school more accessible to students with disabilities.

Under this program, my own State would receive about $5.2 million, enough to create 125 jobs. Now, the amendment was fully offset and achieves this by rescinding the fiscal year 2004 advance appropriations and reappropriating those moneys in 2003. This is the exact same mechanism that the committee used in adding $2.2 billion to the base bill. The Harkin-Clinton amendment builds upon this and adds a billion dollars more for school renovation.

Let me also add a couple of other items I wanted to mention. I mentioned Longfellow school that was built in 1939 and the problems the kids were having and how sick they were getting with the mold and mildew and old heating system, and how absences were cut in half after they got the new system in and how the utility bills are lower. There is one other thing about that school I found. When I went into the school, I noted that it had been built in 1939 because it says so on the cornerstone. The principal of the school showed me the actual bill for the new school--how much it cost and everything.

The interesting thing was, guess who built the school. It was called the WPA, the Work Project Administration, instituted under President Franklin Roosevelt, supported by Congress. So it was a Federal Government project. They built that school in 1939.

Imagine that. It is still being operated today, with these modifications made with the new Federal grant. So this idea that somehow it is unheard of for the Federal Government to provide construction money or renovation money to local public schools is not so. It may have been unheard of in the recent past, in the last few years; but back in the 1930s and 1940s, we put a lot of Federal dollars into building new schools around the United States. So we have precedents for this. Many of the schools that are still being operated today were built by the WPA in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Secondly, this grant money that goes out to the schools, as I said, is money that would be used to reconstruct, renovate, make sure it is healthier and safer, and the results we have had back not only from Iowa but from around the country that this is not only needed but the amount of multiplier effect we get from this is much more than 10 to 1 nationally. In fact, it is approaching, if I am not mistaken, probably closer to 15 to 1 nationally for every dollar we put out.

Mr. President, I am proud to support this amendment with my colleague from New York. I will refrain from offering it until the Senator can be on the floor. I know Senator Clinton is tied up, and I know she wants to speak on this amendment.

I will go ahead and send the amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Clinton, Senator Corzine, Senator Kerry, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Murray.

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

Mr. President, I see my colleague from Michigan on the floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator from New York for her remarks. I just appreciate her eloquence and her strength in supporting this proposal to rebuild and modernize our schools.

I wonder if the Senator from New York is aware of the number of jobs being created. I understand there is an estimate that this $1 billion would create about 24,000 jobs in the entire United States.

There is an article in this morning's paper which said the President is going to come up with a new budget request for Iraq of between $60 billion and $70 billion--twice what we were told about two months ago.

In July, we had a briefing by Mr. Bremer, who is our counsel over there. He gets to write all these checks for money in Iraq. He said something I couldn't believe I heard, so I wrote it down. He said they were putting a lot of money into rebuilding infrastructure in Baghdad-- the streets, the sewers, and rebuilding schools because they found they got more bang for the buck when they put it in that.

I can't understand why we can do that in Iraq but we can't do the same here in the United States.

The leveraging of money has been great in the past with what we have done for schools.

I might ask again if the Senator will yield for a question. I am sure the Senator is aware the offset we are using we already used before to get an additional $2.2 billion for the bill. I am told there is about $13 million that could be used as an offset. I am wondering why we can't use this offset to get money to help rebuild and modernize our schools.

I am sort of at a loss. I wonder if maybe the Senator might know why we can't use this money. Since we have already used some of it before in the bill, why we can't use it for this?

Mr. President, pursuant to section 504(b)(2) of H. Con. Res. 95, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2004, I move to waive section 504 of that concurrent resolution for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

I thank my chairman, friend and able leader on this appropriations bill. I think we all wish we had a little bit more 302(b) allocation but that is for another time and place.

Earlier today I spoke about offering an amendment that would basically prohibit the administration from moving ahead on implementing a proposed rule that would basically undermine and do away with the 40- hour workweek that we have had in the Fair

Labor Standards Act since 1938. Earlier this spring, the administration proposed some rule changes. Not one hearing was held on it.

As we looked through these proposed rules this summer and dug into them, it would drastically undermine the ability of working families, working men and women in America, to get justly compensated for overtime work in the future.

I was talking to one of my colleagues today about this, and he said to me, I have not really had a big clamor in my State for these changes. I got to thinking about it. I got to thinking I really have not had anybody in the past year or 2 years ago, or earlier this year-- I have seen no real groundswell or anything about the fact that these rules as they exist now need to be changed. I do not know where this comes from. All of a sudden they are proposing this massive change in the way people's work is defined in this country and whether they are exempted from overtime pay or not.

So I have an amendment that I drafted that basically is just very simple. It says:

None of the funds provided under this Act shall be used to

promulgate or implement any regulation that exempts from the

requirements of section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of

1938 (29 U.S.C. 207) any employee who is not otherwise

exempted pursuant to regulations under section 13 of such

act (29 U.S.C. 213) that were in effect as of September 3,

2003.

So this is an amendment that I will be laying down sometime tomorrow. I mention again that this proposed rule change could affect up to 8 million workers, but the first wave of people that will be affected by this rule change will be women who are working in salaried positions that today would be paid overtime if they worked more than 40 hours a week. These would be women who work as bookkeepers, accountants, secretaries, nurses, nurse's aides, a whole host of different occupations. I say women because the way that theworkforce is structured, where the salary level is, they will fall in that lower spectrum of salary level where it will be above the minimum but it will be in the range where they will now be exempted from overtime work. That will be the first wave. That is just the first people who would be affected by it.

After that, there would be many other people affected by it--police officers, firefighters, first responders, and others.

There is no carve-out in the proposed rules and regulations for police, firefighters, and emergency personnel. They are thrown in with everybody else. So somehow I keep hearing this kind of a rumor or statement that keeps floating around that, oh, police officers will not be affected.

Well, would someone show me in the proposed rules where it says that police officers will not be affected? It is nowhere in there. So I do not know what they are talking about. They are thrown in with everybody else.

Again, I do not want to take too much more time. I will lay down the amendment tomorrow morning at the appropriate time. For the life of me, though, I cannot understand why the administration is proposing this drastic change when there has been no big groundswell for the change.

I have heard some people in this room say we have to change it because it has not been changed since 1938. That is nonsense. We have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act several times since 1938. In fact, a number of times this has been changed without taking away overtime for people in our country. So to say it has not been changed since 1938 is simply erroneous. A number of times we have addressed ourselves to new types of work, new definitions, new people in the workforce, by changing some of the definitions. In every case in which these definitions were changed they were changed to make it easier, to include more people in the overtime provisions, not to exclude people.

For example, the Department of Labor revised the overtime regulations in 1940, 1949, 1954, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1975, and 1981. In not one of those instances was the framework narrowed to exclude more people from overtime protections. These changes were made basically to enlarge, enhance, and to better define who was covered, and that is why it never really invoked much debate or consternation because we recognized that we wanted to protect people for overtime pay.

The minimum salary threshold has been raised seven times since 1938. So to say that somehow we have never touched this since 1938 is absolutely wrong. What is correct is that since 1938 we have not circumscribed, we have not narrowed, the definitional framework to exclude more people from overtime pay.

That is what these proposed regulations would do, and that is why the Senate has to speak strongly, I hope next week sometime, in supporting this amendment that would basically prohibit them from moving ahead with this kind of a regulation.

I would point out that the House of Representatives narrowly defeated this 213 to 210, with a number of Republicans supporting not allowing the administration to proceed with these changes in rules. So, again, I hope next week we can have a further debate. I intend either tomorrow or Monday to again point out the people who are going to be affected, what it means for their families and their income. What it basically means is that we are going to have people working longer hours but they are not going to be compensated for it.

As I said, many of them are women who are now paying for childcare. Well, now they have to pay to keep their children in daycare maybe longer but they do not get any extra pay for that.

So that is why this proposed change in rules and regulations is one that we have to say no to. We have to make sure we continue to protect and enhance the 40-hour workweek and make sure people who work over 40 hours, if they want to work over 40 hours or if they are compelled to work over 40 hours, are justly compensated with it for time and a half over 40 hours.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I am very pleased to join my colleague and friend, Senator Specter, in bringing to the Senate floor the fiscal year 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services, and related agencies appropriations bill.

Let me begin by thanking my good friend and partner in this endeavor, Senator Specter, and his excellent staff, for always working closely with me and my staff in putting this bill together on a bipartisan basis. It is always one of the most difficult bills to put together and it is also one of the most important. Our Nation's health and the strength of our tomorrows are shaped by the critical health, education, and labor investments made by this bill.

I will say at the outset that this bill is not perfect--at least in my estimation. I will also say that my distinguished chairman did the best he could with the bad hand he was dealt by a very shortsighted budget resolution. As we have done in our over 12-year partnership working on this subcommittee--sometimes I am chair and sometimes he is chair, and it goes back and forth. But it has been a great partnership working together on this subcommittee over all these years.

This bill is no different. It is truly the product of bipartisan work and negotiation. We have worked closely to shape it. We have done our best to accommodate the literally thousands of requests. I assume Senator Specter has gotten about the same number as I have--which adds up to about a thousand, I suppose--to try to accommodate those requests we have received from colleagues.

Again, at the outset, I don't think our subcommittee allocation was adequate to meet the demands we face in job training, health care, and, of course, education. I will be speaking again shortly on the pending amendment that was just offered by Senator Byrd because we are very short in the area of education.

I look forward to the Senate debate. There will be a number of amendments offered. I don't know the exact number that will be offered, but this bill always attracts a number of amendments, and rightfully so.

As I said, I think we are short in the bill in meeting the critical health, education, and labor-related issues that confront the country. For example, with this allocation, we are only able to increase education funding by 2.8 percent over fiscal year 2003. The President promised that the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act would be accompanied by the money needed to implement those reforms. In that act, we put a lot of mandates on local school districts and authorized monies to back up those mandates. We are $8.4 million short of meeting those funding goals.

I look forward to the Senate debate as we consider this important bill and hope to work with my colleagues to increase funding for a number of important programs funded in this bill before the bill leaves the Senate floor.

amendment no. 1543

Mr. President, I will speak for a few minutes on the amendment offered by Senator Byrd. First, I thank him for his leadership in offering this amendment on title I funding for education. This amendment, more than any other that will be offered on this bill, will show the Nation--our parents, teachers, kids, and school boards--how serious we are about leaving no child behind. Do we give schools the money they need to improve or do we give them just a bunch of mandates and leave them out to dry? That is what is at stake with Senator Byrd's amendment.

Now, to make the record clear, as most Senators, I supported and voted for the No Child Left Behind Act. Being a member of the authorizing committee under the able leadership of the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg, and the ranking minority member, Senator Kennedy, and also being the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee that funds these programs, I followed the development and was involved in the discussions with the White House as the bill was developed.

The No Child Left Behind Act, more than any other educational bill in our history, holds schools accountable for performance. It demands that we hold every student, including those most disadvantaged, to the same high standards. That is fine. We all agreed on that. We all want high standards. We want those standards to be met even among the most disadvantaged of our kids.

But the bill we passed also says that schools should have the money to do

the job, that they should have the resources to hire the teachers, reduce class sizes, update their curricula, get the new technologies that are out there, and make all the improvements they need to leave no child behind.

Now, in particular, the No Child Left Behind Act sets specific authorization levels for title I. We did that because title I is the key to the success of the No Child Left Behind Act. This program is designed to help the children who are most at risk of falling behind. It is also the program that includes the loss accountability measures.

President Bush and Members of Congress spent a lot of time negotiating over how much money was needed for title I. This wasn't something just plucked out of the air. This was during a long period of negotiation. What did we need to put into title I so that the most disadvantaged kids could really be held to the same high standards because they would be given the resources they need to achieve those standards? Well, we settled on an authorization of $16 billion for fiscal year 2003, $18.5 billion for fiscal year 2004, and so on, for every year through fiscal year 2012.

Looking back on it now, as I voted for the bill, perhaps I was a little bit too overeager to believe that the President would, indeed, step forward and ensure that we had the resources to do the job. I believed him when he said he was serious about increasing funding for education to meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. Well, now we have a bill before us that underfunds title I by more than $6 billion.

As I said, the authorization for fiscal year 2004 is $18.5 billion, which we negotiated and put into the law. This bill provides $12.35 billion, which is exactly the amount requested by President Bush. So, again, my question is, if the President was serious about both the mandates and the resources needed to meet those mandates--the President was very eager to sign the bill and get the mandates but when it came time to get the money out, he shortchanged it by $6 billion. That is his request.

Again, I don't blame anybody on our committee. I don't blame our chairman or anyone else. We worked together closely. I am sure a lot of us would have liked to have provided more for title I but we simply didn't have the resources. We were hemmed in by the budget agreement. So now the bill is exactly where President Bush wanted it for title I. It is nowhere close enough. It is $6 billion short. That is why we need Senator Byrd's amendment to fund title I at the level we agreed during the negotiation process. We need to fulfill the commitment we made to the students, parents, and educators of this country when we passed No Child Left Behind.

I can already tell you what some on the other side will say about this amendment. They are going to say President Bush has already done a lot to increase funding for title I. They will say title I funding has increased from $8.8 billion to $11.7 billion during his administration. I love that phrase, ``during his administration.'' When my friends on the other side say ``during his administration,'' they want people to think title I funding went up because of President Bush's administration. But they cannot truthfully say that, so they use the phrase ``it went up during his administration.''

It is like the weather: It has rained a lot during President Bush's administration. Sometimes it has been very hot during President Bush's administration. It has even snowed during his administration. But his administration did not have anything to do with any of that. It is the same with title I. President Bush deserves as much credit for recent title I increases as he does for the weather outside.

The fact is, President Bush requested only $1.3 billion of the $2.9 billion we increased during his administration. The only reason title I increased more during his administration was because we Democrats in the Congress insisted on it over the White House's strong objections. And now President Bush wants to underfund title I by more than $6 billion.

I guess what Senator Byrd is saying and what I am saying and I know a lot of others will be saying is we have to help President Bush keep the promise he made when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act, and we intend to help him keep his promise.

This is back-to-school time across the Nation. I was driving in this morning, seeing kids waiting on a corner for a school bus, remembering when I used to walk my daughters down to the same corner to catch a school bus. Parents were standing there. The kids were eager and excited, looking forward to going to school.

I met teachers in Iowa when I was there in August, excited about the new school year and the prospect of getting these kids interested in learning, expanding their horizons and their knowledge of the world around them. But mixed with that excitement was a lot of worry about this new education bill. I have not met one teacher, I have not met one principal, I have not met one school board member who is afraid of reforms, who is afraid of accountability, who is afraid of high standards. They all want those standards. What they are really afraid of is the law is going to designate their school as failing, leaving them out to dry with no additional funding.

Throughout the summer, we have gotten our first look at how big a challenge we face, as States have been reporting how many of their schools are making ``adequate yearly progress''--that is the phrase, ``adequate yearly progress''--under the No Child Left Behind Act. It is not a very pretty picture. In many States, more than half the schools are falling short of their goals. If they do not turn it around, they will face sanctions. They get tougher and tougher every year until ultimately the school can be taken over by the State or everyone who works in the school can be fired. It is a whirlpool effect, and once they get in the whirlpool, they cannot get out unless something reaches in to either stop that whirlpool or yank them out, and that is what title I does. But we are underfunding title I.

What is going to happen is the schools that are located in high- income areas, where they have a high property tax base--and we see them in the suburbs. Both my kids were privileged to go to Fairfax County public schools, one of the great public school systems in America. A lot of wealthy people live in Fairfax County. The county has a high tax base.

How about kids who are not so fortunate, kids just across the river, maybe in southern Prince George's County or maybe in places in Iowa, my home State. We have the same problem. In some places there are great schools located where they have a good property tax base. Others schools, where they have a low property tax base, cannot make it. That is where the kids are disadvantaged. The mandates we put on schools under No Child Left Behind do not distinguish between those schools that are located in high-income areas and those schools located in low- income areas. They all have to meet these annual yearly progress reports.

What is going to happen if we do not pass the Byrd amendment and if we do not step up and fund title I as we previously agreed we were going to with the administration? Simply, the schools that are already in trouble are going to get in worse trouble. They simply have no other recourse. The schools that are in good shape are going to be fine; they have a high property tax base. They are in affluent areas. They are going to be fine. So we are going to have a division in this country. We are going to have two educational systems: One that will be moving up, meeting the mandates of No Child Left Behind, and schools that will be going down because we are not reaching in to help fund the mandate.

Make no mistake about it, No Child Left Behind is the biggest Federal mandate on public schools ever enacted by the U.S. Congress. It is a Federal mandate. I hear all this preaching around here all the time about local control of schools and letting the States run the schools and local communities run the schools. The great genius, I think, of our education system in America is it has been widely dispersed because they have experimentation and new programs happening in different parts of the country. We do not have top-down bureaucratic control of all these schools, as they do in some countries. We have had a wide dispersal of control of education in our country, and that has been the real genius of our school system.

The failure of our education system is how we pay for it: paying for it on

the basis of property taxes. I have asked many times: Would someone please show me in the Constitution of the United States where it says that public education is to be funded by property taxes? We will not find it anywhere. But that is the way the system evolved in our country. Public education is basically funded on the basis of property taxes.

Congress came along after a couple hundred years, first in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, and later with the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, IDEA, and title I, and said we need to help provide additional resources, and that has been good. Then the Federal Government comes along and lays a heavy mandate on these schools to meet certain requirements and they refuse to come up with the money.

The burden lies upon President Bush, but if he will not do it, then we have to do it. We do not want these schools to be taken over. We do not want them to fail. We want them to meet these high standards.

Again, we will hear people say: Money is not just the answer. They will say: Harkin, all you want to do is throw money at this problem.

I do not think money is the only solution for our schools, but I ask this question: If we want to hire good teachers, can we hire them on the cheap? We already know how many teachers are leaving education today, especially in the elementary schools, because today the private sector can compete for those teachers, and when those teachers find that their hands are tied, that they have all these mandates, and they do not have the resources to meet their annual yearly progress, they become frustrated. They want to teach, but, quite frankly, they can get paid more and put up with less of those frustrations on the outside. So today there is a huge exodus of teachers in elementary education in America. These mandates are one of the causes of it.

If you want to hire teachers, it takes money. If you want to reduce class sizes, with fewer kids per teacher, guess what. That costs money. If you want to replace 20-year-old textbooks and get new technologies in the classrooms, guess what. It takes money. If you want to fix up some of our crumbling schools that now have inadequate heating and ventilation systems which have mold--I visited a school in Council Bluffs, IA, a couple years ago. This is a school that was built in 1939. It is in not a very high income area of Council Bluffs. It is an elementary school. They had an old heating system in the basement, a boiler, and there was mold all over everything. Every year, kids would get sick from all of this mold.

Well, they received a grant through our committee. They replaced the heating system with a brandnew heating system. They put in new windows. They fixed up the school. In the first year, the number of kids staying home from school because of illness fell 90 percent, simply because they were not getting sick.

Now they are proud of their school. It is well lit. It is a wonderful thing to see. But that costs money. When one is in a low-income area and they do not have the property taxes to pay for it, that is when we have a responsibility to step in.

So again, Senator Byrd's amendment meets the other half of No Child Left Behind. We have already fulfilled one-half of it, and that is put in the mandates. That half has been enacted into law and it is proceeding right now. Schools have to meet those mandates. The other half, which was President Bush's assurance that we would have the money to do that, is not there. It is about $6 billion short. That is why Senator Byrd's amendment helps us help President Bush keep his promise to the teachers, the kids, and parents of our country.

I urge my colleagues to give us the 60 votes necessary to overcome the point of order. This is the education amendment. This is the amendment that will send the signal whether or not we really care about the future of our kids and care about making sure all of our schools can meet these annual progress levels, making sure our kids and our teachers have the wherewithal to meet these mandates.

This is the amendment. Make no mistake about it. I hope we get the 60-plus votes. I hope we get 70 or 80 votes to send a strong signal that we are not going to leave any kid behind, especially those who are disadvantaged.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I understand the consent request is for the Senator from Arkansas, then the Senator from Louisiana, and then the Senator from Texas. For how long is the Senator from Texas going to speak?

Mr. President, I would like to amend that request so that after the Senator from Texas speaks, this Senator from Iowa be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Alabama be recognized for 3 minutes after which I then be recognized for my 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I am a long-time supporter of policies designed to open foreign markets to our Nation's exports through new trade agreements. I have fought to break down the barriers that many other countries have erected to block our exports, and I have sought to reduce the practices by which many of them seek to compete unfairly in world markets. More fair trade can create jobs here at home, and American consumers can benefit from the resulting competition.

In 1991, I took a trip to Chile to gauge the prospects of entering into a free trade agreement with Chile, and I returned favorably disposed. I thought that we should negotiate a free trade agreement with Chile before doing so with Mexico, and I communicated that to the President at the time.

However, trade is not just about commercial transactions and whether or not imported products become cheaper and exporting companies increase their profits. Trade policy and the consequences of trade are linked with the preservation of the natural environment in both countries that are party to an agreement, as well as the legal rights and working conditions of workers. I take these matters into consideration when I determine whether or not to support a given trade agreement, as well as the economic gains that may be generated.

I am aware that U.S. groups representing a considerable variety of agricultural products support the Chile FTA. A total of 32 farm groups, producer groups, and agribusiness interests signed a letter in July, urging support for the agreement. Even some of those organizations have concerns about market access for specific products, or about addressing trade reform through a bilateral, rather than a multilateral agreement.

Over the 1998-2001 period, U.S. companies shipped an average of $125 million worth of agricultural goods to Chile, accounting for about 10 percent of their total agricultural imports. Until now, or major competitors in the hemisphere, Argentina and Brazil, have had an advantage in the Chile market because of their proximity and Chile's status as an associate member of Mercosur, the South American regional trade agreement. This FTA should help to level the playing field, although the cost of shipping goods more than 5,000 miles to the Chile market will always be a factor in determining the attractiveness of U.S. products.

Both of the trade agreements we are considering--the Chile and the Singapore agreements--also are good for the U.S. financial services sector. The president of Principal International, Norman Sorensen, testified recently before the Senate Finance Committee, and he listed a number of benefits for Principal and for other financial services companies. I note that Principal Financial Group is a major private employer in my State of Iowa.

Trade agreements--on the right terms--promise many benefits and opportunities. Notwithstanding these

benefits, we have increasingly come to realize in recent years that issues previously not considered to be trade issues in fact are trade issues intellectual property being one of those most prominent. That is why I have worked hard to improve the labor provisions in various trade measures, concentrating particularly on abusive and exploitative child labor. I want trade agreements to promote fair trade, fair competition, environmental protection and good labor conditions in all countries. That means trade agreements that support and reinforce existing international child-labor standards, not undercut them.

In examining any trade agreement, we must weigh the balance of these considerations. In the cases of the agreements now before us, I have reluctantly concluded that the benefits do not outweigh the potential harm.

As many of my colleagues know, I have been working on reducing abusive and exploitative child labor around the world for over a decade. I first introduced a bill on this issue in 1992. According to the best estimates by the International Labor Organization--ILO--there are at least 352 million child laborers between the ages of 5 and 17 who are engaged in today's global economy.

Of these 352 million child laborers, 246 million have never seen the inside of a classroom. These 246 million powerless children are working in the most hazardous conditions in mines in fishing operations and on plantations. It is appalling that this is still occurring in the 21st century. These children are robbed of their childhoods. Many are denied any hope for a brighter future. In this new century, they will grow up illiterate and exploited, creating a wellspring of future social conflict and strife.

We have made some progress over the years by increasing funds for programs to rehabilitate child laborers through our contribution to the ILO's International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labor--IPEC. In 2000, I and Senator Helms successfully amended the Trade and Development Act with a provision directing that no trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences--GSP--be granted to any country that does not live up to its commitments to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. We required that the President submit a yearly report to Congress on the steps being taken by each GSP beneficiary country to carry out its commitments to end abusive and exploitative child labor.

I want to explain clearly to my colleagues what I mean when I refer to abusive and exploitative child labor. It is not children who work part-time after school or on weekends. There is nothing wrong with that. That is not the issue. What I am referring to is the definition set out by ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

This is not just a Western or a developed world standard; it is a global standard that has been ratified by 138 countries. It has been ratified by Chile. It has been ratified by Singapore. The United States, I am proud to say, was the third country to ratify this convention. Unfortunately, the implementing legislation now before the Senate for free trade with Chile and Singapore actually would take us and the world a step backward when it comes to protecting children. That is right. This freetrade agreement with Chile, which replaces GSP provisions in governing the trade between our two countries, will take us backward with respect to abusive and exploitative child labor.

Under GSP, the President must report to Congress annually regarding Chile's child labor practices. And under GSP, if Chile is not meeting the obligations that Chile undertook as a signatory to the ILO Convention 182, if Chile is not acting to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, then trade sanctions are available to us to require enforcement in Chile of internationally recognized child labor standards. That is so that our companies, and our workers here in America, are not subjected to the unfair competition that abusive exploitation of children allows.

Under this new implementing legislation for free trade that we have before us now, if it is enacted, neither of those things I just mentioned will be true. The President will not be required to report on Chile's practices or Singapore's. And even if egregious violations of international child labor standards are reported, no trade remedy will be available. This new agreement merely allows voluntary cooperation between the two countries on issues such as abusive and exploitative child labor.

Our trade negotiators, for some reason, in this agreement before us, explicitly weaken existing protections against abusive and exploitative child labor.

They took us from mandatory Presidential reporting, with trade sanctions available, to the mere possibility of voluntary cooperation with no recourse to trade sanctions as enforcement.

My colleagues, we voted here in the Senate 96 to 0 in the year 2000 to include these protections. Senator Helms and I offered that amendment to the GSP. This Senate voted--with our eyes open, ears open--96 to 0 to include these protections in the GSP. It received unanimous, bipartisan support.

None of us in this body have voted for, and I am sure none of us have sought to have, those child labor protections undercut by our trade negotiators in an agreement with Chile or Singapore or any other country. But that is what they have done. And now, thanks to fast-track rules, which don't allow us to amend this legislation, we will not even be able to restore the protections we voted for 3 years ago in this agreement. If we vote for this trade agreement, we are voting to remove the protections that all of us here--96 Senators--voted 3 years ago to put into place to end the practice of abusive and exploitive child labor.

I would like to support a free-trade agreement with Chile. As I said, I went there 11 years ago to help promote a free-trade agreement. But I cannot vote for this because our negotiators took away from us the one thing we put in 3 years ago to end abusive and exploitative child labor.

This takes us in the wrong direction with respect to the world's children. Supporting abusive and exploitative child labor abroad does not help create jobs in America, it is just the opposite; it hurts that effort. Our workers and our local businesses should not be competing with the worst forms of child labor abroad. Our trade negotiators should not be weakening protections that we in Congress put in place to ensure that free trade can be consistent with respect for international child labor standards. What our negotiators did is wrong.

It has been said that these trade agreements with Chile and Singapore can be a model for future trade agreements, for example, with Central American countries. In the area of abusive and exploitative child labor, I hope that is not the case. A better model would be the free- trade agreement with Jordan, which we adopted in September of 2001. That agreement had broad support from business and labor. I supported it. In that case, we successfully moved the issue of abusive and exploitative child labor and other labor rights right into the body of the agreement where they rightfully belong. I cannot understand why we would turn back from that agreement and from the GSP provisions.

I am sorry to say this is not an academic or rhetorical issue in the case of labor practices in Chile. Chile is far from the worst government, even in our hemisphere, when it comes to meeting its international obligations to protect its children.

I don't mean to single Chile out. In fact, Chile has done a great thing in getting rid of the Pinochet dictatorship and returning democracy and free markets to Chile. But there is broad agreement among international observers--our own Department of Labor, the Department of State, UNICEF, the International Labor Organization--that the problem of abusive child labor persists in Chile. Approximately 65,000 Chilean children between the ages of 12 and 17 are working rather than attending school as they should. This is according to the ILO, UNICEF, and our own State Department. These kids are engaged in mining, agriculture, including street children, domestic workers.

The Government of Chile may be seeking to reduce the problem, as it should. But we should not be weakening our sole existing trade mechanism that allows us to monitor their progress and to back up the international standard with trade action. That is not the way forward for free and fair trade. That is not the way to lift up the Chilean economy or working families in the United States. Abusive

child labor perpetuates the cycle of poverty across generations. No country has achieved broad-based economic prosperity on the backs of working kids. Weakening our existing protections against the worst forms of child labor certainly should not occur in an agreement that might be a model for free trade with Central America.

Lastly, I am also concerned about the selective changes in immigration law on these trade agreements. These trade agreements would allow 1,400 foreign workers from Chile per year and 5,400 workers from Singapore per year to obtain 1-year visas to work in the United States, visas which are renewable indefinitely. That is a significant change from our current H-1B visa policy, where workers are granted 3-year visas that can be renewed only once. We should not be promoting the importation of skilled foreign workers for indefinite stays in the United States when there are 9 million Americans currently out of work.

I have a further concern with a provision inserted in the Singapore free-trade agreement. The integrated sourcing initiative, or ISI, allows predominantly information technology goods produced in third countries to be treated as if they had been produced in Singapore for the purpose of satisfying rules-of-origin provisions.

This ISI provision could allow goods produced in countries that routinely violate workers' rights, such as Indonesia, and possibly Burma, to be transshipped through Singapore in order to avoid United States limitations and bans. That is in the Singapore free-trade agreement.

I regret that our negotiators have presented us with flawed agreements. In the case of Chile, it is either sloppy work or they deliberately changed the child labor provisions. By allowing third countries to transship through Singapore, again, it is either sloppy work or deliberately trying to undercut United States limitations and bans on certain countries.

I particularly hoped that I could support an agreement for free trade with Chile. I started working for that over 10 years ago. But I do not believe trade can be called free when it promotes the exploitation and abuse of children by weakening our existing protections against the worst forms of child labor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am appalled at the House's refusal to provide needed emergency supplemental funding to AmeriCorps.

There was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday describing their rationale for the House position. The WSJ says, ``the concept of federally subsidized volunteerism strikes us as something the country can't afford '' and ``if Congress lacks the nerve to kill AmeriCorps, then we're glad it at least won't throw good money after bad.''

The Wall Street Journal can say that this is something the country can't afford. But I know differently. AmeriCorps is something the country can't afford to do without.

I will be the first to say that the administration's mismanagement of funds is disappointing to say the least. It is further upsetting that they are unwilling to put up the money it takes to keep those mistakes from hurting the volunteers.

I am also disappointed that the President promised to promote and grow the program, but is unwilling to put up the money to do so. It is really unfair for the President and the House to talk out of both sides of their mouths, supporting volunteerism, but then refusing to pay the comparatively small cost involved in keeping volunteerism afloat.

But this is not a problem with AmeriCorps volunteers, or with the communities they serve. Senators Mikulski and Bond in the ``Strengthen AmeriCorps Act'' are doing the things that need to be done to prevent future financial discrepancies.

These funding cuts don't punish those who are guilty for the problems.

These cuts punish volunteers, and communities, and the beneficiaries of the volunteers' work.

In Iowa, AmeriCorps volunteers have improved 30,000 acres of wildlife habitat. They work to improve water quality, they restore prairie land, they prevent soil erosion, they fix trails, they provide interpretive centers, and they work with communities to teach people to do these things year-round on their own.

AmeriCorps volunteers give presentations on disaster preparedness. In Dubuque, Iowa, 13 year old Korey Monahan took one of those classes. She went home, and helped her family develop a plan in case of a fire. Around midnight on April 1, their house did catch fire. But Korey, her mother Kristy, and her four brothers and sisters survived that fire because they had a solid plan. Korey won a national award from the American Red Cross for her outstanding preparedness.

In Davenport, IA, vandalism and crime in city parks have been reduced sharply in just two months, as AmeriCorps members have begun patrols through a Park Ambassador program. AmeriCorps members provide a welcoming presence and act as ``eyes and ears'' for local law enforcement. They walk through parks, and provide a welcoming presence. They connect with nearby neighborhood watch groups to recruit volunteers to join them in helping keep the parks safe and clean.

The REACH, Rural Education and Community Help, AmeriCorps program provides assistance to battered women and children in rural Iowa and minority communities where services for victims of domestic violence are minimal or non-existent. REACH members also provide programs in schools, including conflict resolution, sexual harassment, diversity and dating violence.

During the 2001-2002 program year, members made 5,994 victim contacts. Members also provided court accompaniment to battered women as they navigate the legal system. In both 2001 and 2002, members provided legal advocacy at over 600 court hearings.

The original goal was to ensure that no battered women would need to drive more than thirty miles to receive services. They are well on their way to making that dream a reality. Four stand-alone offices are now open. They have secured other sources of funding and have hired full-time staff. In addition, members have opened offices in sixteen counties and provide additional coverage to surrounding communities. Before AmeriCorps, roughly a third of Iowa's 99 counties had services, now only four in Iowa are without a victim outreach program.

Apparently, helping people like Korey Monahan to save her family from fire, repairing our environment, reducing crime, and assisting battered women is ``throwing good money after bad.'' that's not what I call ``bad money,'' and I am glad that Congress saw fit to appropriate it. I will do all I can to see that we continue to spend ``good money'' for great purposes.

the amtrak board of directors

For 10 minutes.

I thank the Senator from Washington for yielding to me. I want to help her on this amendment. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor to the Cantwell amendment.

Mr. President, after listening to Senator Cantwell's exposition of the crimes, manipulations, and the fraud perpetrated on the American people by the Enron Corporation, it is, again, amazing to this Senator that we have not done something about this situation before now. I am amazed this is not taken care of in the underlying bill.

We know that what Enron did can happen again if we do not address it. If we do not ban it, as Senator Cantwell does in her amendment, it will keep happening over and over.

In the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, Congress realized one of the most important factors was the collapse of the electric utility industry. It turned out this basic industry had been built on fraud after fraud, shell game upon shell game, and when economic troubles hit, it collapsed like a house of cards.

Congress's attempt to prevent this from happening again was the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, otherwise referred to around here as PUHCA. That was our attempt in the 1930s to prevent what was happening then from happening again, with all the frauds and the collapse of the house of cards of the electric utility companies.

Then we go forward 60 years to about the midnineties, and we were told that

the restructured electric utility industry would be built upon markets and trading, that the markets would ensure the soundness of the industry, that the PUHCA now was just a hindrance to cheaper power, more available power, for all of our consumers; that PUHCA was not only irrelevant but probably even a hindrance.

Enron was both the leading participant in and the leading advocate of this new scheme of electricity markets. They were not the only one, but they were the leading one. They were the ones that had the closest ties to people in Congress and to the Bush administration.

It turned out that Enron, like the electric companies of the 1910s and 1920s, was also built upon frauds, shell games, and out-and-out criminal activity. When troubles hit, Enron, too, collapsed like a house of cards. Again, this is what we saw in the 1930s.

As Senator Cantwell has brought out, we had a whole new set of terms of art that entered our vocabulary: Fat Boy, Get Shorty, Death Star, and many more. Enron had legions of employees who were paid to dream up ways to defraud the public and manipulate prices of electricity and transmission capacity. They ranged from affiliate structures, creative loans, trading strategies.

We have heard about Wheel Out, about how they tried to sell electricity through nonexistent lines. Again, Enron was not the only one. FERC has found dozens of companies were involved in fraud, that market manipulation was epidemic.

The whole energy industry still has not recovered. In fact, the whole economy is hurt by investors who have lost their trust in American corporate management.

Now we see that PUHCA, the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, was, in fact, irrelevant to Enron schemes. Why? Because FERC had determined that Enron was exempt from the law. Even that was not enough for Enron's chairman Ken Lay, who later threatened to remove the FERC chairman if he did not back his beloved markets and schemes more strongly.

Where is Ken Lay today? Is he in prison? Is he behind bars? Well, of course not. I understand he had to sell a couple of his big houses, one in Colorado and one someplace else, but he is out free. He may be on the French Riviera for all I know. I do not know where he is. He made a lot of money. He sacked it away and he is living a grand life.

Now I guess a couple of his underlings went to jail because they got caught, but Ken Lay, the brains behind the whole scheme, the person who threatened to remove the FERC chairman, is scot-free. So much for justice in this regard.

At this point I doubt this Justice Department is going to do anything to really go after Ken Lay because of his closeness to the Bush administration. But Enron showed more clearly than any episode since the Great Depression that strong Federal oversight is needed in the electric industry; that fraud hurts consumers, investors, and our whole economy.

The Domenici substitute bans one particular trading scheme, round- trip trading, but it leaves all the other schemes with these names we have heard of from Star Wars. It would still leave them there, and Senator Cantwell just laid all of those out for us. So it would leave all of those untouched.

Why just ban one and leave all the other ones there? Well, as one step to restoring confidence in the energy industry and thus getting the economy moving again, we need to ban all such market manipulation. That is what the Cantwell amendment does and that is why I support it.

The Presiding Officer is from the State of Missouri, the home State of one of my political heroes, Harry Truman, a great Democrat. Harry Truman once said when he was campaigning in 1948 in the Midwest and talking to a bunch of farmers who had lost a lot in the Depression and he was telling them that his opponent, Mr. Dewey, was going to turn the clock back and they were going to get rid of all of the support they had had for agriculture. Truman uttered one of his great lines. He said: How many times do you have to get hit on the head before you figure out what is hitting you on the head?

Well, I would like to take Harry Truman's line and apply it to us and the electricity industry. How many times do we have to get burned by fraudulent schemes in this industry before we figure out what we ought to do about it and ban all of these activities? How many times do we have to get hit on the head before we figure out there are deep problems in the electricity industry and they have to be solved? Because if they do not, it is going to continue to hurt our economy.

Our economy right now is in terrible shape. I will divert just a little bit from this bill for a few minutes if the Senator does not mind.

I ask for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. President, in March of 2001, President Bush visited Western Michigan University to stump for his tax cuts. He said:

. . . we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget

deficits, even if the economy softens.

Of course, today we know that what the President said that day was not true, and I think it is time now that the White House comes clean on this issue. We do not know whether the President was aware at the time he made this statement that it probably was not true, but somebody should have known.

Surely, someone in this administration knew that trillions of dollars of tax breaks, combined with a downturn in the economy, would lead to massive budget deficits.

Following that speech, this administration gave trillions in tax breaks to the wealthy, the economy softened, and we have gone straight from record projected surpluses to record projected deficits and debt. In fact, just 2 years later, the United States now faces massive, prolonged, record-setting projected deficits--over $450 billion this year, $475 billion next year, and trillions of dollars of deficits over the coming years.

So, what the President said that day in 2001 was in fact woefully false.

Now, I know the other side is going to accuse me of making a mountain out of a molehill on this issue. They will say I am just taking 16 words from one speech and blowing them out of proportion in order to challenge the President's credibility. They will ask: How can 16 words in one speech be the test of a President's credibility?

Yes, I can hear the President's defenders already. They will say: This speech was cleared by the Council of Economic Advisors. It is not the President's fault. He relies on the technical advice of experts on these matters.

Maybe that is the case. Maybe the President thought he was telling the truth when he said we could reduce Government revenues by huge amounts without causing deficits. But somebody should have known it was not true.

If not one in this administration knew that passing enormous tax breaks for the wealthy, combined with an economic downturn, might lead to exploding deficits, that does not exactly inspire a lot of confidence, either.

The President's defenders on this issue may also say:

Well, actually, the statement is technically accurate, and

did not mislead anyone. After all, it says we can proceed

without fear of budget deficits. It does not say we will not

actually experience massive budget deficits. It just says we

do not need to fear them.

Unfortunately, that explanation will not work, either. As Alan Greenspan has reminded us repeatedly, large deficits do matter, and they are something to be concerned about.

In truth, it is pretty obvious that the White House intended to communicate that the President's massive tax cuts would not create corresponding massive deficits. It is now apparent that someone misled the public in that speech by the President.

``Well, but even if what the President said was not true,'' I can hear his defenders say, ``it does not matter. What matters is that we did what we really

set out to do. We provided the most affluent Americans with large tax breaks. We rewarded our largest campaign contributors with millions.''

Now, I hope that is not the real explanation. But that is what actually happened.

These days the administration does not want us to pay too close attention to what the President actually says. In fact, sometimes they would rather we disregard it altogether, especially when it is only 16 words. They say it does not really matter.

In this case, as in others, what the President of the United States says does matter. The President needs to come clean about these remarks. He needs to admit his mistakes. Otherwise we are left with the distinct impression the President, his advisers, or both, purposefully misled the American people about the economy in order to get tax breaks for the wealthy.

If they were a mistake, these 16 words, then the President ought to admit it. The resulting policy is driving our economy into the ground. If they would acknowledge the statement was wrong, hopefully we could all come together to remedy the President's economic malpractice and get the economy moving again.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joanna Bush, Angela Wilson, and Michael Kuehner, interns in my office, be given the privilege of the floor during the debate and vote on amendment No. 1419.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased that my amendment to the Energy bill to create a demonstration program on production of hydrogen from renewable resources was adopted at the end of last week. The hydrogen title in the Energy bill contains a number of important provisions, many of which closely overlap with the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Energy Act of 2003, which I introduced in April. Perhaps most important, it authorizes several significant demonstration programs for various applications of fuel cells. These programs are the critical next step in bringing hydrogen and fuel cells from the laboratory bench into widespread commercialization. They provide a realistic test of how the laboratory technologies work in the real world, and they provide funding for pre-commercial prototypes of the technologies, including starting to build a hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

However, there were no demonstration projects in the title on how we will obtain the hydrogen to run the fuel cells. The bill reauthorizes the Matsunaga Act to continue and improve research on a variety of hydrogen technologies, which we have been trying to enact for more than 2 years now. Elsewhere, the bill contains a massive and dubious subsidy for a nuclear plant in part to produce hydrogen, as well as support for production of hydrogen from coal, but there is nothing to demonstrate production of hydrogen from renewable resources.

Currently, most hydrogen is made by reforming natural gas. This is a relatively clean and efficient way to use natural gas. But there are still emissions of greenhouse gases and some pollutants. Equally important, use of natural gas for hydrogen continues our dependence on natural gas supplies. As the recent price runup on natural gas has shown us again, supplies of natural gas may not always meet demand, and prices can be volatile. I support use of natural gas to make hydrogen in the near future, but in the long run, hydrogen and fuel cells must help us reach an economy based on clean, domestic, renewable sources of energy.

This amendment will help us get there. It authorizes $110 million over 5 years to conduct demonstration programs on production of hydrogen from renewable resources. The resources might include biomass, such as switchgrass and ethanol, wind energy, solar power, and other sources. The program would help prepare a variety of emerging technologies for renewable

hydrogen production for widespread use. These demonstration programs would be conducted using competitive merit review of funding proposals from a wide variety of companies and organizations, and they would require cost sharing from awardees.

Technologies that combine production of hydrogen with other activities show particular promise for clean, efficient production of hydrogen at this time. Two approaches are specifically included in the scope of the program. Biorefineries can make hydrogen, along with other products, from biomass. And in ``electrofarming'' the hydrogen is produced and used on the same farm or in nearby facilities. The hydrogen might be made by growing and reforming biomass, from wind energy, or from farm waste; it could be used in farm vehicles and equipment and for heat and electricity in farm buildings. By placing production and use together, this approach saves on transportation of the fuel or the hydrogen. It also avoids any large-scale energy facilities that might present security risks.

I am pleased this program will be in the portfolio of measures in the hydrogen title of the Energy bill that will help develop and commercialize hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, and turn into reality a vision of cars that don't pollute, of power that won't go out, and of feeling less dependent on an area of the world where we recently fought the second war in recent years.

Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed S. 1399, legislation that names the Glenwood, IA Post Office for former Iowa Congressman William J. Scherle. I understand that the President will soon sign that measure--I hope this week.

Congressman Bill Scherle--or Bill, as his friends call him--and his wife Jane live on their family farm just outside of Henderson, IA, in Mills County. Glenwood is the county seat of Mills County. Bill served 4 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning with 3 terms in 1967 in what was then Iowa's 7th Congressional District, and a term in the redistricted 5th Congressional District. I think it is appropriate that Glenwood's Post Office will soon permanently bear Congressman Scherle's name.

Bill long served this Nation. He started with military service in the navy and Coast Guard during World War II, then afterward served in the Naval Reserve. He chaired the Mills County Republican Party for almost a decade starting in 1956. He served in the Iowa legislature from 1960 through 1966. He then was elected to the U.S. Congress and served through 1974, including service on the Education and Labor Committee as well as on the Appropriations Committee. His public service continued in 1975 and 1976, when he was appointed to a senior position at the Department of Agriculture.

In January 1968, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, imprisoning and torturing the crew. Congressman Scherle led the effort in Congress to free the crew of the Pueblo. I have always admired Bill's tenacity in never letting the Pueblo crew be forgotten. Bill was the only member of Congress invited to attend Pueblo reunions, and, as their health has allowed, Bill and Jane always have attended.

Bill and I are at different places on the political spectrum, and I ran against him for Congress twice. He won the first time, and I won the rematch. We disagreed on many issues, but I always understood that he acted on the basis of strongly held views about what he considered were the best interests of those he represented and of the Nation.

Long after we ran as opponents, I got to know Bill and visited on his farm. He is a good person who cares deeply about his community and rural America. Politics has always had a certain amount of rough and tumble.

But while Bill was certainly a good Republican who wanted to see consistent victories for the GOP, he also could see the good in all people.

One area of our mutual interest was the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs. Bill always did what he could for the school my brother attended years ago, and for deaf people in general.

Congressman Scherle always cared about children and their welfare. He wrote a children's book, ``The Happy Barn.'' He gave away thousands of copies to schools, hospitals and individual families in Southwest Iowa and the Omaha area, reading to young children time after time. He had lots of fun reading to children, and I believe that there are few more valuable things we can do as adults than to read to children and get them started on that most important activity.

Bill was a businessman and farmer, proud of both professions. He received the Alegent Health Mercy Hospital Heritage Award for his contributions to business in Southwest Iowa.

Bill Scherle remains a good father to his two sons, and a good husband to his wife of 55 years, Jane. He is blessed with six grandchildren--five girls and a boy. Bill has lived a dedicated life, full of patriotism, family and public service. I am please that my colleague, Senator Grassley, joins me in sponsoring this legislation. Congressman King introduced the companion legislation in the House of Representatives, which was cosponsored by the entire Iowa delegation.

I thank my colleagues for helping us all to honor Congressman Bill Scherle, and I look forward to hearing that the President has signed this bill--hopefully this week.

Mr. President, I am introducing today the Wind Power Tax Incentives Act of 2003. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Dayton. This legislation makes it easier for farmers and others around the country to invest in wind power for commercial electricity production. Wind power is a clean, economical, and reliable source of renewable energy abundant on farms and in rural areas in Iowa and elsewhere.

With this legislation we can help farmers help themselves by developing a new source of income, and help the rest of the country in the production of renewable energy. Farmers are ready to take on this effort. A recent study found that 93 percent of corn producers support wind energy generally. They also strongly support the farm bill's historic energy title.

This bill complements the farm bill's energy programs and other wind power initiatives currently being considered by this body. The bill would make changes to Federal tax law to make the section 45 wind production tax credit more widely available to farmers, farm cooperatives, and other investors. Section 45 of Federal tax law provides a tax credit, currently 1.8 cents per kiowatthour, for electricity actually produced and sold during the first ten years of the life of a wind turbine. The credit has been extraordinarily successful in spearheading the installation of new wind power capacity by utilities and in bringing down the cost of this sustainable energy source to consumers. However, certain barriers have prevented wide use by farmers and other investors.

It's time to take the next step and help our family farmers and other investors benefit from the credit as well. Our legislation does this by making three changes to the tax code. First, under current tax law most losses, deductions, and credits from passive investments cannot be used to reduce taxes on wages or other income. So a farmer who passively invested in wind energy could not use the tax credits to offset taxes on farm income. This bill creates an exception to passive loss restrictions for an interest in a wind facility that qualifies for the section 45 credit. The wind facility's loss or tax credits could then offset the income or taxes on the taxpayer's farming business. Similar exceptions currently apply to oil and gas investments. To prevent potential abuse by wealthy taxpayers, the exception is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million.

Second, under current law individual and corporate taxpayers are subject to an alternative minimum tax (AMT) if their tax rates fall below certain levels. Taxpayers subject to an AMT cannot currently use the section 45 wind tax credit. This bill allows a farmer or other taxpayer who invests in a wind electric generating facility to use the resulting tax credit against the taxpayer's alternate minimum tax (AMT). Similar provisions already exist for several other tax credits. Again, this provision is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million.

Third, the bill allows cooperatives to invest in qualified wind facilities and pass through the section 45 credits to cooperative members. This will allow farmers to join together and pool their resources in a cooperative and still take advantage of the credit.

The benefits of this legislation are obvious. Increased renewable energy production lessens our dependence on foreign oil, provides environmental and public health gains, bolsters farm income, creates jobs and boosts economic growth, especially in rural areas. The Nation must move toward energy independence, and domestically produced wind power, along with other forms of renewable energy like biofuels, play an important part in this endeavor.

I want to thank Senator Dayton for co-sponsoring this legislation with me. His leadership in this area will be instrumental to moving the bill forward. I am hopeful we can pass this legislation soon to help secure a brighter future for our Nation's farmers and fellow citizens.

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

Mr. President, I am introducing today the Wind Power Tax Incentives Act of 2003. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Dayton. This legislation makes it easier for farmers and others around the country to invest in wind power for commercial electricity production. Wind power is a clean, economical, and reliable source of renewable energy abundant on farms and in rural areas in Iowa and elsewhere.

With this legislation we can help farmers help themselves by developing a new source of income, and help the rest of the country in the production of renewable energy. Farmers are ready to take on this effort. A recent study found that 93 percent of corn producers support wind energy generally. They also strongly support the farm bill's historic energy title.

This bill complements the farm bill's energy programs and other wind power initiatives currently being considered by this body. The bill would make changes to Federal tax law to make the section 45 wind production tax credit more widely available to farmers, farm cooperatives, and other investors. Section 45 of Federal tax law provides a tax credit, currently 1.8 cents per kiowatthour, for electricity actually produced and sold during the first ten years of the life of a wind turbine. The credit has been extraordinarily successful in spearheading the installation of new wind power capacity by utilities and in bringing down the cost of this sustainable energy source to consumers. However, certain barriers have prevented wide use by farmers and other investors.

It's time to take the next step and help our family farmers and other investors benefit from the credit as well. Our legislation does this by making three changes to the tax code. First, under current tax law most losses, deductions, and credits from passive investments cannot be used to reduce taxes on wages or other income. So a farmer who passively invested in wind energy could not use the tax credits to offset taxes on farm income. This bill creates an exception to passive loss restrictions for an interest in a wind facility that qualifies for the section 45 credit. The wind facility's loss or tax credits could then offset the income or taxes on the taxpayer's farming business. Similar exceptions currently apply to oil and gas investments. To prevent potential abuse by wealthy taxpayers, the exception is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million.

Second, under current law individual and corporate taxpayers are subject to an alternative minimum tax (AMT) if their tax rates fall below certain levels. Taxpayers subject to an AMT cannot currently use the section 45 wind tax credit. This bill allows a farmer or other taxpayer who invests in a wind electric generating facility to use the resulting tax credit against the taxpayer's alternate minimum tax (AMT). Similar provisions already exist for several other tax credits. Again, this provision is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million.

Third, the bill allows cooperatives to invest in qualified wind facilities and pass through the section 45 credits to cooperative members. This will allow farmers to join together and pool their resources in a cooperative and still take advantage of the credit.

The benefits of this legislation are obvious. Increased renewable energy production lessens our dependence on foreign oil, provides environmental and public health gains, bolsters farm income, creates jobs and boosts economic growth, especially in rural areas. The Nation must move toward energy independence, and domestically produced wind power, along with other forms of renewable energy like biofuels, play an important part in this endeavor.

I want to thank Senator Dayton for co-sponsoring this legislation with me. His leadership in this area will be instrumental to moving the bill forward. I am hopeful we can pass this legislation soon to help secure a brighter future for our Nation's farmers and fellow citizens.

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