Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have spoken many times in this Chamber about the promise of stem cell research. For more than a decade, ever since scientists first succeeded in deriving human embryonic stem cells, I have done my utmost to promote this exciting field, which offers so much hope for so many people.

President Obama has promised to lift the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research that were put in place by President Bush, and I hope and expect that he will do so soon. But we have to make sure that the freedom to pursue this research is also protected by Federal law, not merely by an executive order that can be reversed during a future administration.

That is why Senator Specter and I, along with Senators Kennedy, Hatch, and Feinstein, are introducing the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2009. This is the exact same bipartisan bill that both houses of Congress approved in 2007, but was vetoed by President Bush. I urge Congress to pass this law again, and for President Obama to sign it, so our scientists can move forward with this research posthaste, without fear of further political interference.

Let me spend just a moment reviewing what this bill will accomplish. More than 7 years ago, the President announced that federally funded scientists could conduct research on embryonic stem cells only if the cells had been derived before August 9, 2001, at 9 p.m.

I never understood that. Why 9 p.m.? Why not 9:30? If stem cell research is morally acceptable at 8:59 p.m., why isn't it OK at 9:01? It's totally arbitrary.

When the President announced his policy, he said that 78 stem cell lines were eligible for federally funded research. But, today, only 21 of those 78 lines are eligible--not nearly enough to reflect the genetic diversity of this Nation. Many of those 21 lines are showing their age, and all were grown with mouse feeder cells, an outdated method that raises concerns about contamination.

Meanwhile, hundreds of new stem cell lines have been derived since the President's arbitrary deadline. Many of those lines are uncontaminated and healthy. But they're totally off-limits to federally funded scientists.

That is a shame. If we are serious about realizing the promise of stem cell research--about helping people with Parkinson's, cancer, juvenile diabetes, and so many other diseases--our scientists need access to the best stem cell lines available. We need a stem cell policy that offers credible, meaningful hope. And that's what this bill would provide.

Under this bill, Federally funded researchers could study any stem cell line, regardless of the date that it was derived, as long as strict ethical guidelines are met.

Most importantly, the only way a stem cell line could be eligible for federally funded research is if it were derived from an embryo that was otherwise going to be discarded.

There are more than 400,000 embryos in the United States that are left over from fertility treatments and are currently sitting frozen in storage. Most of those embryos will eventually be thrown away. All we are saying is, instead of discarding all 400,000 of those leftover embryos, let's allow couples to donate a few of them, if they wish, to create stem cell lines that could cure diseases and save lives.

Mr. President, it is time to lift the restrictions that have handcuffed stem cell research for more than 7 years. I urge the Senate to pass this bill as soon as possible and send it to the President for his signature.

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

Madam President, the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 111th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Chambliss, I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of the committee rules printed in the Record.

I agree with my colleague from Pennsylvania that our Nation faces this growing threat and that we must respond accordingly.

The capability that we are discussing is vital to our Nation's defense. It would also be a critical source of innovation, developing novel countermeasures faster and cheaper. I will also work with Senators during conference.

I would like to first thank the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee for working to include Farm Service Agency loan program money in this bill. In the coming months farmers will be applying for operating loans for the spring planting season. They will face tighter credit standards from lenders. Some farmers who were eligible for commercial credit last year may not be eligible this year.

Access to adequate and affordable credit is vital to our Nation's farmers and ranchers--particularly now. Like many people across the Nation, farmers are feeling the impact of the economic downturn. The decline in commodity prices, high input costs, and declining exports have significantly strained producers' fiscal circumstances. It is important the money provided in this bill be used in accordance with the priorities established in the farm loan programs and focus on those eligible borrowers who are struggling to maintain their farming operations.

Regarding the recent sharp decline in dairy prices, I was pleased to work my colleagues on the letter to Secretary Vilsack to help remove a surplus of dairy products from the markets which they have both mentioned.

Comparative Effectiveness Research Funds

Yes, the Senator's understanding is correct. I included a provision in this recovery bill that reinforces the requirement in the WIA to use adult State grant funding to serve certain priority populations, such as those with low incomes or on public assistance. I believe that we should target these funds on the delivery of services to those who have been adversely impacted by our recent economic crisis. I also believe local workforce boards should utilize existing authority to support needs-related payments to help engage individuals in training, if such support is appropriate and effective.

Absolutely, it is essential that the workforce services provided through this legislation, are delivered through the most effective means possible, ensuring that the unemployed and underemployed are provided with relevant employment and training assistance that will enable them to find good, family sustaining jobs. It is also essential that these programs provide the skills that are relevant to local and regional employers that will help to rebuild our regional and U.S. economies.

The Senator is correct. As chairman of the Labor Appropriations subcommittee, I supported the $120 million in the recovery bill for the senior community service employment program. These funds will support employment and training opportunities for low- income, older Americans. The funds benefit both older Americans hurt by the current economic crisis and community service organizations struggling to keep up with increased demand under decreasing budgets.

Individuals with multiple barriers to employment, including older workers, those with low skill levels, and individuals with disabilities, should indeed be an important focus of services for the funding provided to the Department of Labor. Offering these workers, particularly low skilled workers, the tools they need to secure good jobs in new or growing industry sectors can help them enhance their quality of life and achieve economic self-sufficiency as a member of the middle class.

The Senator is correct. While the primary purpose of this funding is to provide meaningful paid work experiences for at risk youth, educational enrichment, necessary skills training, and support services that enable young people to participate and succeed in these and future endeavors are necessary and fully support the intent of the legislation.

My colleague is correct. This provision was included in the recovery bill to facilitate the use of funds provided to train individuals in the areas needed in their local community. It would be my expectation that a very significant portion of the funds provided would be spent quickly and effectively in training individuals in health care and other high-demand occupations, as well as emerging ``green'' industries.

Investing in America's Workers

Mr. President, it is with a heavy heart that I note the passing of a long-time friend and native Iowan, Karen Rae Ford. Karen passed away last week after a difficult battle with liver disease. I knew Karen well through her work as the executive director of the Food Bank of Iowa, a position she held for over a quarter of a century. Karen was a founding force for the creation of the food bank, where she dedicated herself to improving the lives of countless thousands of low-income families in Iowa.

Let me start by expressing my deepest sympathies to Karen's family and friends. It is never easy to lose a loved one, and particularly hard when the loss is due to a medical illness that cuts that loved one's life short. In times of mourning, words fall far short of the comfort we wish we could provide, but hopefully words let those who were close to Karen know that our thoughts and prayers are with them.

Karen has played a leading role in the fight against hunger in Iowa for many years. In the last several years the Food Bank of Iowa distributed nearly 5 million pounds of food a year to almost 300 partner agencies. Just think of all the hungry, low-income families that have benefited directly from Karen's work during her nearly 30 years of work at the Food Bank of Iowa the parents that were able to put food on the table for their children so that they did not have to go hungry.

Though I am sure Karen would never say so, these families owe her an incalculable debt of gratitude for the hard work and devotion she has shown to the cause of improving their lives over her professional career. And her impact extended far beyond the State of Iowa. On more than one occasion Karen testified before the Congress to advocate for improvements to our food assistance laws and policies so that the programs upon which low-income families depend for a safety net in tough times are as effective as possible. That testimony was always received with the recognition and respect that it came from an advocate who was in the trenches every day fighting to provide food to hungry people.

Though the Food Bank of Iowa will continue to operate, and the families that depend upon it will continue to be well served, we have all suffered a loss with Karen's passing. Her activism and leadership over a lifetime of work in the anti-hunger community is a testament to her tremendous spirit and dedication to helping those less fortunate.

Mr. President, I still believe we need a strong auto industry in this country. I think the best way to do that is to get people to buy cars. The best way to do that is to give low-income and moderate-income individuals and families the wherewithal to buy those cars. That is what this amendment was about.

However, I must say, in the current desire to reduce the size of the bill, I am going to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment, but it will come back at some time in the future.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 338 and ask for its consideration.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about the amendment I will be calling up at some point. There is no doubt that the automobile industry is the heart and soul of America's manufacturing sector. It is absolutely critical to a healthy and diversified, vibrant U.S. economy. Right now this essential industry is on life support, hemorrhaging jobs, slashing production, closing dealerships, and, in the case of GM and Chrysler, dependent on Federal loans to avoid bankruptcy. Chrysler announced a 50-percent decline in January sales compared to a year ago. GM had a 49-percent decline in sales. Ford had a 39-percent decline. Toyota, with major plants in America, suffered a 32-percent decline in U.S. sales. These numbers are shocking, and people who think this is only an automakers' problem just don't get it.

The auto industry is not just a few assembly plants in Detroit. The Big Three and foreign automakers have plants in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

There are car dealerships and auto parts manufacturers in thousands of communities all across America. Directly or indirectly, the auto industry supports one 1 of every 10 jobs in this country.

So let's be very clear, we are not going to have a strong economic recovery in the United States without a strong recovery in the automobile industry. That is why it is important this economic stimulus bill provide a major boost to automakers. The real question is, What is the best way to give a boost to the automakers? Is it giving them money at the top and letting them deal with it as they will? Well, that is like old trickle-down economics; all we have to do is give it to the top and somehow it will all trickle down.

Some of us have a better idea, and I think a better approach. It is to put it in at the bottom and let it percolate up. Here is what I mean by that.

The auto workers want nothing more than to be back on the job producing full time, producing high-quality cars, providing for their families, paying their taxes.

Now, I am offering this amendment which will give low- and modest- income consumers a $10,000 subsidy for the purchase of a new car that is assembled in America--a car or pickup truck assembled in America.

Now, here are the conditions that apply to this. First of all, the car you are bringing in has to be at least 10 years old. You have to have title for the car in your own possession prior to the date of the enactment of this bill. The new car you are purchasing has to get at least 5 miles per gallon more than the car you are bringing in. The new car must have a fuel economy rating of 25 miles per gallon or better or, in the case of a pickup, 20 miles per gallon or better. And the old car you are bringing in must be relinquished to the Government and be destroyed. This offer, this $10,000 subsidy, would be available only to individuals with incomes of $50,000 a year or less or couples with an income of $75,000 or less.

So let me run through that again. Here is the way it would work. If you have an income of less than $50,000--or for a couple less than $75,000--if you have a car that is at least 10 years old, and you have had title to that car since before the enactment of this bill--actually before January of this year--you could take your W-2 form to show your income, take the title of the old car to show you have owned it, show how old the car is, and you can go to any auto dealer anywhere you want and buy a new car and the subsidy will be $10,000. You will get $10,000. All you have to do is relinquish your old car, and that car has to be destroyed.

Well, what would this amendment accomplish? First of all, it will bring a lot of customers back into the auto showrooms, and they will not just be looking, they will be buying. This will be a shot of adrenaline right into the bloodstream of the domestic auto industry. Secondly, it will accelerate the shift from older gas-guzzling vehicles to new high mileage cars. Third, and very important in these tough economic times, it will make it affordable for ordinary working Americans to buy a new car.

Think about it. Think about people who make less than $50,000 or a couple who makes less than $75,000 a year. Chances are, they are the ones who have the old clunkers. They need it to go back and forth to work. If you live in a rural area, it is absolutely essential. These are the people who have these old cars, and they put repairs in them--a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there--because they can afford to do that, but they cannot afford to buy a new car. But it is a much different story if the Federal Government is going to give you $10,000 to buy that new car.

For example, let's take this example: A basic 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt gets 34 miles per gallon on the highway. It has a manufacturer's suggested retail price starting at $16,330. After the Federal subsidy-- assuming you are under the income limits, and you have this 10-year-old car--you will be able to buy that car for $6,330.

Now, what is also important is that you will be able to get financing under this program. Because the lender, with a $10,000 reduction in price, will be offering a car loan for far less than the car's worth after it leaves the lot.

We had a session today, and we heard Mr. Larry Summers. We all know who he is down at the White House. He said there are a lot of willing lenders out there, but they do not have worthy borrowers.

Well, now, if you are a person--a low-income, moderate-income person--and you are making $50,000 a year, and you need a new car--you have an old clunker, and you keep paying for repairs on it, but you wish to buy a new car--let's say it costs you $20,000 to buy a new car--you can go to your local bank and try to get a loan for $15,000 or $18,000 for a $20,000 car, and you will not get it. You will not get it. But if you go to that bank to try to get a loan for a $20,000 car and $10,000 of it is a subsidy from the Government, and you are only borrowing $10,000 for that car, you will get the financing.

So that is another important thing this amendment will do. It will start opening channels of credit. Money will start to begin to flow through banks

and other lending organizations--savings and loans, credit unions, institutions such as that--for people to buy a car.

This amendment will make it affordable for a modest-income American to buy a new car. Make no mistake about it, it would stimulate a surge in auto sales--not just the automakers, but a broad swath of the economy impacted by the auto industry. Think about all of the other things that go into these cars in almost every community in America.

The Federal Government has given General Motors and Chrysler a few months to come up with a plan to ensure their long-term viability as businesses while producing a greener mix of vehicles. But we have failed to address two big questions.

In the midst of a severe recession, how do you boost demand for cars assembled in America? How do we get rid of that surplus we have out there? Go to any auto lot in your State. There are new cars all over the place, and there is no one buying them. So we failed to address that. How do we boost demand? Secondly, how do we give consumers compelling incentives to purchase fuel-efficient cars, especially at a time when gas prices have fallen dramatically? I was in my home State of Iowa this week, and gas is $1.77 a gallon. I have not seen it that low for a long time.

So this amendment provides a realistic answer to both questions. It would boost demand incredibly. We estimate that for the $16 billion this amendment would provide, it would cover more than 1.5 million purchases of new fuel-efficient, domestically assembled cars. It would accelerate the transition of our U.S. vehicle fleet toward more fuel- efficient cars, and this would be a gain for our whole country, reducing the demand for gasoline, reducing the dependence on foreign oil, lowering the operating costs of these new cars.

It will do little good to extend loans to GM and Chrysler if consumer demand for new cars remains dead. Now, we had the Mikulski amendment earlier today--today or yesterday--and that will help a little bit. But it is a tax deduction for modest-income Americans. It probably will not mean that much, maybe $1,000, $1,500. It is better than nothing. But if you want to sell those cars, give them $10,000, give $10,000 to modest- income Americans. Say: Go buy a car with these conditions.

We are very good around here at passing billions of dollars. What are we up to, $900 billion now on this bill? There is a lot of good stuff in this stimulus bill, and I support it. We are good at giving a lot of money to Wall Street and banks and GM and Chrysler at the top. We seem to be very good at giving a lot of money at the top. How about giving some money down at the bottom?

You want to talk about rebuilding confidence in America? Think what would happen to all these modest-income Americans who could now go out and get a new car. Think of all the old clunkers we would take off the road and destroy. That would rebuild confidence. As I mentioned, we would get our lending channels going. There would be a lot of loans made out there for these cars. With lending institutions, my gosh, loaning $6,000 on a $16,000 car, that is not everyone breaking a sweat.

So it is going to do little good for us to demand that automakers shift production to fuel-efficient cars if consumers are unwilling to buy them or they cannot buy them because of the recession.

This amendment is designed to address these challenges, to stimulate demand for new fuel-efficient cars, accelerate the shift toward a more fuel-efficient fleet, and help working-class Americans. As I said, you only qualify as an individual if you make $50,000 a year or less, or for a couple making $75,000 or less. Let's help working-class Americans. Now, people might say: Gee, that is a lot of money, $16 billion. But aren't we trying to stimulate the economy?

Again, in closing, I say, you are not going to get economic recovery until we address the automobile sector. That is the big driver in this country, no pun intended, of course. But that is what we have to address. We are not doing it. We keep punting the ball down the field: loans to GM, loans to Chrysler; they come up with a plan. But with all those new automobiles sitting out there, no one is buying them. Well, let's give them a subsidy. Let's give a subsidy to working-class Americans for a change, and give them a little hand up--not a handout, but a hand up. I will tell you, it will reverberate all through our economy if we are to do something like this.

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

Madam President, first, let me thank my friend and my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, for his continued support of basic research, biomedical research in this country. Ever since I first got on this committee back in 1988, Senator Specter, of course, was chair and I was ranking member, and later I became chair and he became ranking member, and then he became chair and I became ranking member. It has passed back and forth a lot of times since 1988. But the one person who has always been consistent in his support of biomedical research and support for the National Institutes of Health has been my friend, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

I support his amendment, I wish to say right off the bat. Everything that is in it I support. We do have to bring NIH back up to its funding level. I say to my friend, one of my proudest achievements in the Senate was working with the Senator from Pennsylvania to double the funding of NIH over a 5-year period. To show my colleagues how bipartisan it was, it started under a Democratic President and ended under a Republican President. There was one change in there for a couple years when I was chair and the Senator from Pennsylvania was ranking member and then it went back and forth, but as the Senator said, that has always been kind of seamless in terms of passing the gavel back and forth. But doubling the funding for NIH over 5 years was a Herculean task and the Senator from Pennsylvania was a leader in that effort. We worked hard on that, and we got it done. That was in 2003.

Now, since 2003, we are 10 percent lower now in real funding for NIH than we were in 2003. I am sure my friend from Pennsylvania would agree that we did not work hard on both sides of the aisle and with two different administrations to get this done only to have it sort of sit there static, and then come back 10 years later or something, and then have to double it again. Our goal was to get NIH back up to a funding level so that the number of peer-reviewed grants that were funded would be closer to the 1-in-3, 1-in-2, 1-in-3 area that it had been in the earlier days of NIH. By the time we got to the point where we started the doubling--and that was in 1998, if I am not mistaken; it might have been 1999, 1998--we were down to where 1 in 10, 1 in 8 peer-reviewed grants were being funded. Sad to say, we are right back almost to that situation again. We are down to where maybe somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 grants are being funded.

Now, what does that mean? That means researchers at NIH--let me back up here. That means that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, at the University of Iowa, at the University of California, at universities in New York State, universities in Florida, universities in Illinois, universities in Wyoming, universities in Arizona, every State in the Nation gets funding through the NIH for research. These are universities, basically. So this funding goes all over the country.

So what does that mean, that we are now back at the level where 1 out of 6 to 1 out of 10 peer-reviewed grants are being funded? Well, what it means is that young researchers--and these are people who are at the top of their class; these are the brightest of the bright;

these are students who have gone through either medical school or genetics or biomedicine or biology, a lot of different disciplines involved here, and they have some ideas they want to pursue, some basic research they want to pursue. They are in their twenties. They spent a lot of money going to college. They want to pursue a field of inquiry. Now they are told that the average age for getting their first grant is 42 years of age.

Well, if you are a young person and you are just out of college, are you going to wait around until you are 42? No. You are probably going to go to work for the private sector, private industry some place.

So what we are doing is we are losing a lot of bright young researchers. When we doubled the funding for NIH, a lot of young researchers started there, and they are there now, but we are losing a whole other generation of these young researchers. So that is the effect of what has happened at NIH.

What it means also is that we are losing our preeminent role in the world as the leader in biomedical research. We have to maintain it. We have always been sort of--if you want to talk about a city on a hill, when it comes to biomedical research, we have always been that to the rest of the world. The rest of the world looks to NIH. Keep in mind it was through the NIH that we mapped and sequenced the entire human genome, mapped and sequenced the entire human gene. Guess what. It is out there for researchers all over the world. Any researcher anywhere in the world can tap into the database at NIH and find out all the information they want on the genetic structure and use that for their research. Guess what. It is free of charge. Free of charge. That was a great investment by the taxpayers of this country and already paying big dividends.

So it pains me, I know as it pains my friend from Pennsylvania, to now see NIH going back down again in terms of its support. As I said, right now, NIH funding has dropped more than 10 percent in real terms since 2003. That was at the end of the doubling period.

Some people might say, Well, what does this have to do with stimulus? Well, this does stimulate the economy, both in the short term and in the long term. As I have said many times about this stimulus bill, it is two things. One, it is to, yes, put people to work right away. That has to do with a lot of the construction projects that are in here. But there are a lot of other things in this bill that provide for a foundation for solid recovery down the pike--2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now. Now, every time in the short term, when we think about NIH in the short term, every time a researcher gets a grant, it supports an average of seven jobs. Let me repeat that. Every time a researcher gets a grant, on average, it supports seven jobs. So it is not just one researcher in a lab by himself or herself; it is lab technicians, postoperative fellows, research assistants, and on and on. So there is a great multiplier effect.

There is also a ripple effect from this research. Keep in mind this is basic research. These are asking the most fundamental of questions.

Well, maybe the grant has led to basic research that will lead to a new compound that a pharmaceutical company wants to develop into a new drug that helps save lives. Senator Specter talked about the research at NCI, National Cancer Institute, and the great strides they have made. The Senator is living proof of that. We watched the Senator go through a long hard period, and it is wonderful to see him here as healthy, vibrant, and determined as ever to make sure we fund NIH. He is living proof of the great strides we have made. So that has a ripple effect. If there is more money now in the economy, maybe an entrepreneur will use some breakthrough on research to form a spin-off company. That happens all the time, and that stimulates the economy.

As I said, this money goes to researchers all over the country, not just to Bethesda, MD, where the headquarters is. Very little of it goes there. It goes to every State--to 90 percent of all congressional districts. So it helps the entire country.

Now, that is in the short term. There is a longer term benefit, which is improving people's health. After all, that is the purpose of this research in the first place. It is called the National Institutes of Health, not the National Institutes of Biomedical Research. The goal is health. In the long term, it is going to be a healthier workforce, healthier people, cutting down on health care costs, making people more productive in their lives because of the research we do through NIH. We always say ``at,'' but it is ``through'' NIH. If our workers are healthier, they are going to be more productive.

Again, I support this amendment almost in its entirety--except for the way we are going to fund it. My friend spoke about that, and I have a small disagreement. The Senator's amendment would take the money as an offset out of what is called the State fiscal stabilization fund. Here is the problem as I see it.

The State fiscal stabilization fund provides critically needed funding for education. Just this afternoon, I had the presidents of most of the independent colleges in my State visiting me. A lot of this money will go to help them in their colleges. It will help our community colleges. A lot of money will go to community colleges to help retrain workers for the future. Our pre-K through 12th grade money comes from the stabilization fund. There is a lot of money in that stabilization fund that goes for public safety and other government services. We don't need to be laying off teachers. We need to keep our teachers hired.

That is what this money would go for. So I don't think we ought to be cutting into that fund. I strongly support Senator Specter's amendment--the main purpose of it--to increase funding for NIH. Again, I just have a slight difference on how it should be funded. Let's face it, this whole bill is emergency spending. We are up to about $900 billion right now. As I have said before, a lot of economists, both liberal and conservative, have said we are not doing enough. We had Milton Friedman, President Reagan's economist, a very conservative economist, who said we may not be doing enough; Alan Blinder, Mark Zandi--a broad spectrum of economists are saying this is one time when we should err on the upside not the downside.

If this whole bill is emergency spending, why, I ask, should the funding for NIH not be the same? Why would we want to take it out of education, take it out of public safety, out of other areas to pay for NIH. This whole bill is emergency spending. Quite frankly, I think it ought to be. We are in an emergency. Things are going downhill very rapidly in this country--in my State, and I know in every other State. Companies are shedding jobs every day--9,000 every day.

Since the whole bill is emergency spending, I think NIH ought to be right in there with everything else. It is that important. I think it ought to be emergency funding, so I have a second degree that I will be offering to the amendment by the Senator from Pennsylvania that would basically make the funding for the amendment the same as everything else in this bill. I hope we will get support for that. Why discriminate against NIH? Don't do that. Put it in with everything else.

With that I yield the floor.

If the Senator will yield, I thought the Senator's amendment was not yet at the desk. I am informed it is.

I send my second-degree amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration.

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

I will check on that.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified with the changes I just sent to the desk.

I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. President, I move to waive the relevant parts of the Budget Act and ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I regret to say I will be voting against the nomination of Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Treasury Secretary in the new Obama administration. I say ``regret'' because I believe strongly that, save extraordinary circumstances, any President should have the right to select his own team and because I believe Mr. Geithner is a person of obvious talent and experience. I certainly bear no ill will toward him on a personal basis whatsoever. Moreover, I know President Obama believes Mr. Geithner is the best person for the job, and it pains me to go against the President's wishes on this matter. However, after careful deliberation, I simply have not been able to overcome my very serious reservations about this nominee.

As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner would oversee the Internal Revenue Service and would be responsible for ensuring that Americans pay their taxes as required by law. Yet it has come to light that while he was serving as a senior official at the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Geithner failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. He has stated this was an innocent mistake and that there was no intent to deliberately avoid paying the required taxes.

However, the IMF informs us that in order to avoid exactly this kind of situation, its U.S. citizen employees are fully informed of their obligation to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and must sign a form acknowledging that they understand this obligation.

Moreover, the IMF gives its U.S. citizen employees quarterly wage statements that detail their U.S. tax liabilities. The IMF pays its U.S. citizen employees an amount equal to the employer's half of the payroll taxes with the expectation that the individual will use that money to pay the IRS.

So a serious question is raised as to how a person of Mr. Geithner's financial sophistication could run the gauntlet of these many warnings and quarterly reminders and still somehow innocently overlook his obligation to pay these payroll taxes.

I am also troubled by the fact that when the IRS audited Mr. Geithner in 2006 and discovered that he had not paid his payroll taxes from 2001 to 2004, he, Mr. Geithner, repaid the taxes only for 2003 and 2004. After that audit, he chose not to repay the taxes for 2001 and 2002, years for which the statute of limitations had expired.

Surely, if the failure to pay the payroll tax was an innocent mistake and oversight, then Mr. Geithner would have been eager to make amends by willingly paying the payroll taxes for 2001 and 2002, regardless of the statute of limitations. But he chose not to do so until he learned he was going to be nominated for Treasury Secretary.

Given this record of failing to pay taxes, if confirmed as Treasury Secretary, how could Mr. Geithner speak with any credibility or authority as the Nation's chief tax enforcer? Would his admonition be: Do as I say, not as I do? That is not acceptable.

Unfortunately, on another point, Mr. Geithner has been equally unwilling to accept responsibility with regard to his role in the current financial meltdown. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. Geithner was a key regulator of the large, mostly New York-based financial institutions that have been at the center of this meltdown. Their reckless practices--reckless practices--have brought America's financial system to its knees, pitching our economy into what could be the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression.

I am specifically concerned about Mr. Geithner's history vis-a-vis Citigroup, which has now received $52 billion in taxpayer money. As a regulator of Citigroup, Mr. Geithner made a number of troubling decisions that relaxed oversight of Citigroup, including, one, lifting a prohibition against Citigroup's acquiring new firms; second, ending the requirement that Citigroup file quarterly risk management reports; and third, allowing Citigroup to use ``hybrid capital,'' which, I might parenthetically say, was a product of the Greenspan Fed back in 1996-- using hybrid capital to prop up its capital base. These decisions allowed Citigroup to increase its already sizable risks and allow Citigroup to claim that it had a healthier capital ratio.

I am troubled that instead of taking enforcement actions in the face of a weakened capital ratio, Mr. Geithner chose only to write a letter to Citigroup criticizing its risk management practices. I bet they shuddered when they got that letter.

Given this action, it is clear that Mr. Geithner was aware that Citigroup's capital base was not sufficient. Yet he did not take the appropriate steps to correct this glaring problem; he wrote a letter.

While I would be much more supportive of the nominee if he had taken responsibility for these failed decisions, he has not done so. For example, in a written response to questions from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, Mr. Geithner wrote:

Citigroup's supervisors, including the Federal Reserve,

failed to identify a number of their risk management

shortcomings and to induce appropriate changes in behavior.

He says Citigroup's supervisors, including the Federal Reserve, failed. Why didn't he say ``I''? Why didn't he say Citigroup's supervisors, including me as the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, I did, I failed to identify those risk shortcomings, and I failed to induce a change in their behavior? He says it is the Fed. He was the head, he was the person making those decisions. And yet he kind of brushed his hands and said: That was the Fed. No, Mr. Geithner, it was you.

We need to know what specific failures occurred under his supervision, what he has learned from those failures, and how the nominee believes he can correct them in the future. After all, again, Mr. Geithner was the key decisionmaker in the Federal Reserve on these points.

Without the answers to these questions, I am not convinced that Mr. Geithner is the right person to lead the Treasury Department at a time when we need a strong regulator in charge, one who will act with transparency and accountability and forcefulness.

I am sure these big bankers and these Wall Street people are nice people, but they are tough and they are going to protect their turf. Yet what they don't need is a Treasury Secretary who is going to write them a letter. We need a Treasury Secretary who will start banging some heads around and will stick up for our small bankers, our independent bankers, the people in your State, Madam President, and mine who are out there loaning the money for small businesses and small business expansion, who are getting mortgages on houses that have 30-year fixed rates, they are conservative about it. We don't need to focus all of our efforts and money on the big city banks and then allowing the big city banks to get bigger by buying up other banks with taxpayer money.

I want a Treasury Secretary, as I say, who is going to start banging some heads, who is going to call in these big city bankers and say: You know what, you have had a free ride for many years. We have deregulated you. We deregulated all these financial institutions. We have allowed you to engage in what I call--this is my own term--``casino capitalism.'' But it is over. It is over. You are now going to be regulated, and I am going to lead the charge in imposing stiff new regulations. We are going to be looking over your shoulder, and we are going to make sure you are accountable to the taxpayers of this country.

The issues of responsibility and judgment are extremely important as we go forward. Two weeks ago, I voted in favor of releasing the second installment of the TARP funding, but it was after several phone calls with now-Vice President Biden when he assured me--and I spoke about this on the floor; he

said I could say it publicly--that President Obama will sign off personally on any significant future disbursement of TARP money and Vice President Biden will be consulted and be a part of it.

So now at least we know where the buck stops with President Obama. I am glad he is willing to say the buck does stop there. Yet here is what bothers me. If Mr. Geithner is confirmed, he will be the principal person making recommendations to President Obama regarding TARP expenditures. In short, President Obama will sign off on future disbursements, but he would do so on the recommendation and judgment of Mr. Geithner.

I wonder, I really wonder what that means for some of these big city banks in New York and what is going to happen with Wall Street and what is going to happen to my small banks in Iowa or independent banks all over this country. What is going to happen to our farmers who need an adequate supply of low-cost capital coming up this spring. And they are having a hard time finding it, by the way. They are in a terrible cost- price squeeze right now.

Is all that TARP money going to be focused on the big banks or are we going to start thinking about the little guy out there?

Mr. Geithner made serious errors of judgment in failing to pay his taxes. He made serious errors in his job as chief regulator of the financial institutions at the heart of our current crisis. So at this point, I cannot vote to promote Mr. Geithner to the all-important post of Treasury Secretary. I cannot do so at this time.

As I told Mr. Geithner on the phone, I bear him no ill will. I do not know him personally. I have friends who say he is a very nice person, and I am sure he is. But I wonder, again, about his approach. As I told Mr. Geithner on the phone, I hope I can come back to the floor a year from now, 2 years from now and say my vote against him was wrong. I hope I can do that, but I will have to be shown.

There is no question Mr. Geithner will be confirmed by an overwhelming vote in the Senate. As I said, I bear him no ill will personally or anything else. I wish him every success as Treasury Secretary. To repeat what I said, nothing would make me happier than for Mr. Geithner to prove me wrong by serving with distinction as Treasury Secretary and cracking down on some of this casino capitalism that is going on in this country. I will be joining those rooting for his success.

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

Madam President, it is unbelievable to me that more than four decades after the passage of the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act women are only making 78 cents on the dollar for every dollar a man makes. Discrimination takes many forms. Sometimes it is brazen and in your face, like Jim Crow and apartheid, and sometimes it is silent and insidious. That is what is happening in workplaces all across America today.

Millions of female-dominated jobs--social workers, teachers, childcare workers, nurses, and so many more--are equivalent in effort, responsibility, education, et cetera, to male-dominated jobs, but they pay dramatically less. The Census Bureau has compiled data on hundreds of job categories, but it found only five job categories where women typically earn as much as men, five out of hundreds.

Defenders of this status quo offer all manner of bogus explanations as to why women make less. How many times have I heard the fairy tale that women work for fulfillment but men work to support their families? This ignores, first of all, so many single women who work to support themselves and their families, and married

women whose paycheck is all that allows their families to make ends meet and educate their kids. It also ignores the harsh reality that so many women face in the workplace that they have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously or they get pushed into being a cashier instead of a more lucrative sales job. These acts of discrimination deny women fair pay, but they also deny women basic dignity.

Let me cite one example of what I am talking about. Last year, in a hearing before our Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, we heard testimony from Dr. Philip Cohen of the University of North Carolina. Dr. Cohen compared nurses' aides, who are overwhelmingly women, and truckdrivers, who are overwhelmingly men. In both groups the average age is 43. Both require ``medium amounts of strength,'' and in some cases nurses' aides have to be stronger than truckdrivers. Truckdrivers now have power steering and power brakes and stuff like that. Nurses' aides have to pick up patients and turn them over and stuff like that. Nurses' aides on average have more education and more training than truckdrivers. But nurses' aides make less than 60 percent of what a truckdriver makes.

Given that this discrimination is so obvious and pervasive, you would expect that women would have no trouble obtaining simple justice through our court system, but in a major decision in June of 2007 in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the Supreme Court took us back. In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Court made it extremely difficult for women to go to court to pursue claims of pay discrimination, even in cases where the discrimination is flagrant. A jury acknowledged that Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at Goodyear, had been paid $6,000 a year less than her lowest paid male counterpart. But the Supreme Court rejected her discrimination claim. Why? The Court held that women workers must file a discrimination claim within 180 days of their pay being set when they were first hired, even if they were not aware at the time their pay was significantly lower than their male counterparts.

That is important to note. The Court said you have to file your discrimination claim within 180 days of your pay being set when you are hired, even if you don't know, even if you did not know that your pay was significantly lower than your male counterparts.

As Justice Ginsburg said in a forceful dissent, this is totally out of touch with the real world of the workplace. In the real world, pay scales are often kept secret, employees are often kept in the dark about coworkers' salaries. Lacking such information, how can you determine when your pay discrimination begins? Furthermore, the vast discrepancies are often a function of time. If your original pay was just a little bit lower than your colleagues' pay, but you worked there for 20 years and you all get pay raises, you can see over 20 years that gap widens and widens and widens.

So what started out to be a small gap winds up being a big gap over a period of time. Now, in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, not only was she discriminated against for all of her lifetime of work at Goodyear because she started out at a lower pay scale, that gap widened over time, but she is also now going to be discriminated against for the rest of her life in terms of her pension. Because she is making so much less than her male counterparts, her pension is going to be less.

But Lilly Ledbetter did not get discriminated against once, she got discriminated against for over 20 years, and now for the rest of her lifetime in terms of the pension she gets. So what the Supreme Court decision means is that once that 180-day window for bringing a lawsuit is passed, this discrimination gets grandfathered in. This creates a free harbor for employers who have paid female workers less than men over a long period of time. Basically, it gives the worst offenders a free pass to continue their gender discrimination.

Think about it. Once the 180 days has passed, the employer is home free. So you hire women, you pay them a little bit less than their male counterparts, but they do not know that because you do not publish the coworkers' salaries. After 180 days, you are home free. You can continue that discrimination for the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and there is not a darn thing a woman can do about it under that Supreme Court 5-to-4 decision.

Well, now, I also heard several businesses were complaining that if we peg, if we peg the 180-day limit to the continued payment of discriminatory paychecks, which is what this bill before us does, they will keep accruing liability. So the companies will continue to accrue liability.

Well, there is a simple answer to that. They can stop the clock anytime they want. Go through the books one day, make sure all the women are being paid fairly. On that day, you stop sending everyone discriminatory paychecks. On that day, everyone gets a fair deal. On that day, you stop accruing liability.

The very thought that an employer would say: Well, we cannot have this bill, the Lilly Ledbetter bill we are talking about, because, gee, you know, after 180 days I keep accruing liability. Well, stop it. Stop paying the discriminatory pay. Go through your books, find out what the discrimination is, if it exists, and pay everyone fairly.

Ledbetter was a bad decision. As Justice Ginsburg says, it ignores the reality of today's workplace. I am glad to work together with Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski, champions of this effort, to reverse the damage done by that decision.

This bill would establish that the unlawful employment practice under the Civil Rights Act is the payment, is the payment, of a discriminatory salary, not the original setting of the pay level.

It would be a great miscarriage of justice for this Senate to tell Lilly Ledbetter that her 20 years of discrimination, and the resulting loss of income in retirement, in her pensions should go unchecked because she did not have a crystal ball telling her what her coworkers were making at the time her pay was set. She had no way of knowing that.

While the need for the passage of this legislation is critical and immediate, it is not enough. It is not good enough to go back to the way the law worked 2 years ago, because at that time, women were still making only 78 cents on the dollar as compared to men. That should be intolerable in our society.

Moreover, if pay scales are kept secret, if there is not some transparency, how can women know if they are being discriminated against? That is why we need to pass the Fair Pay Act, which I have introduced in every Congress starting in 1996, the Fair Pay Act. Not only does that act require that employers provide equal pay for equivalent jobs, my bill also requires the disclosure of pay scales and rates for all job categories at a given company.

This will give women the information they need to identify discriminatory pay practices. This could reduce the need for costly litigation in the first place. Now, I am not saying a company has to publish the salary of every single person. That is not what I am saying. What our bill says, the Fair Pay Act says, is you have to make transparent what the pay scales are in categories, certain categories.

Now, I asked Lilly Ledbetter, when she appeared before our committee a year ago, I think it was, I asked her about the Fair Pay Act. I said: If you had had this kind of information when you first went to work, could you have negotiated for better pay and avoided the litigation? And she said: Yes. But she did not have that information. Well, there are countless more Lilly Ledbetters out there who are paid less than their male coworkers but will never know about it unless they have this kind of information. My Fair Pay Act amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to prohibit discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, race, national origin. Most importantly, it requires each individual employer to provide equal pay for jobs that are comparable in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

We know about the Paycheck Fairness Act. I support that also. But we have the Equal Pay Act that was passed in, I think, 1963--1963--which says that, if a woman has the same job as a man, equal pay for equal jobs, you have to pay them the same. That has been in law since 1963. To be sure, it has not been enforced enough, and that is why we need the paycheck fairness bill that is here, to enforce it more.

But the fact is, it has been the law since 1963, equal pay for the same job. What we now need to address 45, 49, 46 years later is equal pay for equivalent work because so many jobs in our society are kind of denoted as ``women's jobs.'' Are they crucial to our society? You bet they are.

But for some reason, because they are ``women's jobs,'' they get paid less. I used the example of a truckdriver. Philip Cohen, from the University of North Carolina, testified before our committee, and he gave this example. They did a large study. I will repeat it again for emphasis sake of truckdrivers and nurses' aides.

Truckdrivers, overwhelmingly men; nurses' aides, overwhelmingly women; medium age for all of them, 43. They both require median levels of strength. Truckdrivers do not need a lot of strength anymore; they have power steering and power brakes and everything else. Nurses' aides still have to lift people and duties such as that. So a median amount of strength is required. Nurses' aides actually have more education and more training than truckdrivers. Yet nurses' aides are paid less than 60 percent of what a truckdriver makes.

Why is that? Is it somehow nurses' aides are not as important as a truckdriver? I will be glad to debate that any day of the week. When you are ill or when you need long-term care, do you want a truck driver or a nurses' aide? Answer me that question. I think a truckdriver is important, I do not mean to denigrate them, but I am saying nurses' aides are every bit as important.

Childcare workers. What could be more important to our country than taking care of our country's youngest children? Mostly women, grossly underpaid, compared to male workers in terms of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

A lot of people say: Well, you know, we cannot--this is all nice pie- in-the-sky stuff. We cannot do it. But 20 States, 20 States have fair pay policies in place for their State employees, including my State of Iowa. I would point out the State of Iowa passed a fair pay bill for all State employees in 1985, when we had a Republican governor and a Republican legislature.

Oh, the sky was going to fall. This was going to cost our taxpayers enormous sums of money. Well, the sky did not fall. Women are making more money, and our State is better for it. I might point out that our neighbor to the north, Minnesota, not only has fair pay policies for their State employees, they have it for their municipal and local workers also.

Twenty States have done this for State employees. So, again, this should not be any kind of partisan issue. Some people say: We do not need any more laws, that market forces will take care of the wage gap. But experience shows there are some injustices the market simply will not rectify. That is why we did pass the Equal Pay Act in 1963, why we passed the Civil Rights Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the bill that has my name on it, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Were there market forces out there pushing to end discrimination against people with disabilities? No. But we did it. We are better off. That is the same way market forces are not going to take care of this, this issue of unequal pay for women in so many jobs in our country.

I guess now that we are on the Enzi amendment, which would eliminate the language saying that those affected by discriminatory pay practices can sue--well, I am glad about one thing, that my colleagues are acknowledging discrimination hurts everyone because it does. It hurts everyone in two ways. First, an injury to one is an injury to all. But, second, I defy you to find a person in America who does not have a woman in their family, a person of color, someone with a disability, someone who observes a different or any religious practice. That is the point we have been trying to make all along.

But this bill, as written, does not allow all those very indirectly affected parties to bring suit. This is patterned after language in the 1991 Civil Rights Act, and that legislation has not resulted in all the people who are hurt by discrimination to bring suit.

It has been interpreted all those years to mean the party directly injured by the discriminatory practice. However, if we strike this language, we risk failing to fix the full extent of the problem caused by the Ledbetter decision.

It is important to use precise language to make sure all the employees affected by discriminatory pay decisions by their employer are covered, not just the one who was discriminated against but all those employees affected.

I would like to close with a story from a woman from my State, Angie. She was employed as a field office manager at a temp firm, temporary workers firm. The employees there were not allowed to talk about pay with their coworkers. Only inadvertently did Angie find out that a male office manager at a similar branch who had less education, less experience, was earning more than she was.

Well, in this case, the story has a happy ending. She cited this information in negotiations with her employer, and she was able then to get a raise. But the experience left her feeling bewildered and betrayed, and this ultimately led her to quit her job. Had she not inadvertently found this out, she would have continued to have been discriminated against.

So I think there is a twofold lesson in this true story. The first lesson is that if we give women information about what their male colleagues are getting, they can negotiate a better deal for themselves in the workplace.

The second lesson is that pay discrimination is a harsh reality in the workplace. Not only is it unfair, it is also demeaning and demoralizing, and it should cease its existence in our society.

Individual women should not have to do battle in order to win equal pay. We need more inclusive national laws to make equal pay for equal work a basic standard and a legal right but also equal pay for equivalent work so that we don't discriminate against whole classes of people just because of the job they do. Childcare workers, social service workers, nurses aides, nurses, homemakers--why should people who are cleaning houses make less than janitors? People who clean houses are generally women and janitors happen to be men, but they are both doing the same kind of work.

We have to come to grips with this before we will ever really end discriminatory pay. The Lilly Ledbetter bill before us is a step in the right direction. But unless and until we pass the Fair Pay Act, which has been supported by the business and professional women of America since we first introduced it in 1996, until we pass that, discrimination against women will continue wholesale in America. We will continue to demean the kinds of jobs so important to us-- childcare, nurses, nurses' aides, teachers, Head Start workers, the women who clean our homes, take care of our elderly in long-term care facilities. Go into any long-term care facility, go where your grandparents are or maybe your parents. Who is taking care of them? Nine times out of ten, it will be a woman. Their responsibilities are immense. Their effort, the training they need is important. They have to have all that. Yet they are making much less than their male counterparts in other parts of society.

The Lilly Ledbetter bill is important. We have to pass it, but we have to get the Fair Pay Act passed one of these years. As I said, I have been introducing it since 1996. Then they get the paycheck fairness bill up. We have to do that. That is important. Don't get me wrong, that is important. But the biggest discrimination in our society is the discrimination that occurs against women who have what has been denoted as ``women's jobs'' in our society. It is time to end that discrimination.

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

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 1 p.m. the Senate resume consideration concurrently of the pending Enzi amendments No. 28 and No. 29, that they be debated concurrently for 1 hour, and that the time be equally divided between Senators Enzi and Mikulski or their designees; following the use or yielding back of time on the Enzi amendments, the Senate resume consideration concurrently of the Specter amendments No. 26 and No. 27; that they be debated concurrently for 1 hour, and that the time be equally divided between Senators Specter and Mikulski or their designees; following the use or yielding back of time on the Specter amendments, the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the Enzi and Specter amendments in the order listed below:

Specter No. 26, Specter No. 27, Enzi No. 28, and Enzi No. 29; further, that no amendments be in order to the pending Enzi and Specter amendments prior to the votes; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between the votes; and that all rollcall votes after the first vote be limited to 10 minutes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, while I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 7 on amendment No. 25, had I been present I would have voted ``nay.''

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

Mr. President, I take to the floor right now to talk about my good friend, the former Governor of Iowa and our soon to be Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

Before I do, I would be remiss if I did not at this time talk about what it was like to be at the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. This is my ninth inauguration. My first was Jimmy Carter when I was a freshman Congressman in 1977 and then two Reagans, Bush, two Clintons, two more Bushes. And so this is my ninth.

I can tell you, I have never seen anything such as this. To be out there today, I mean this is once in history that something such as this happens. I was watching a television program yesterday, a news program, and Jim Clyburn, our colleague on the House side, was talking about the importance of today and what it meant to him.

He went on to talk about not only himself but so many people from where he is from in South Carolina and other places, elsewhere. He said, I remember my grandparents telling me about their parents being slaves and how close the connection was. And to think that today America saw inaugurated as our 44th President an African-American.

Not only does this say a great deal about Barack Obama, but it says a great deal about America and how far we have come. Someone asked me what I thought earlier about his speech. I thought three things: uplifting, sobering, and challenging. I think that is what we want from a President. We want a President who will lift us up, a President who will be honest and square with us but a President who also challenges us.

That is what I thought President Obama did in his speech today. So it was a great day, not only for President Obama and Michelle and their family, for our great friend, Joe Biden, now our Vice President, and Jill and his family, a great day for America, a real turning point, I think, in our history.

So we look forward with confidence and with optimism to the future. I wished to take the floor today to say a few words about my friend, Tom

Vilsack, who I hope the Senate today will concur in his being passed through for being Secretary of Agriculture.

I have known Tom well since the 1980s. He was a lawyer in Mount Pleasant, IA, at that time. We had a terrible catastrophe in agriculture; farmers were going broke, a lot of suicides were being committed in my State and around rural America.

Tom Vilsack was a small-town lawyer. I did not know him from anybody. But he took upon himself the job of defending a lot of these small farmers, helping them to work through their problems, and getting them through these hard times.

That is the first time I ever came in contact with him. I thought he was one of those rare individuals who saw something that was wrong which needed to be done and he would involve himself in it. He did not make any money doing this. There was no money to be made. But he got involved in it, and I can tell you, he helped many small farmers hang onto their farms.

Well, later on, by then a tragedy happened in Mount Pleasant, IA. Tom Vilsack was then on the city council. There was a terrible tragedy in which the mayor had been murdered, and they asked Tom to take over as mayor--again, another catastrophe in that small community. So Tom Vilsack then took over as mayor of Mount Pleasant, pulled the city together, kept it going, and lifted it up.

Shortly after that then, he ran to be a State Senator and was elected as a State Senator. He served very admirably there. He then later ran to be Governor and served for two terms as the Governor of our State of Iowa. He had a great two terms--8 years, 4 years each--as our Governor. Again, he showed he could bring people together. That is why I think he is going to be good with our former colleague, now President Obama.

For the entire 8 years Tom Vilsack was Governor, he had a Republican legislature, but he worked with them. They worked together. We got some good things done in the State of Iowa, both with a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor. I think that showed his method. That, plus what he had done earlier, I think showed the true mark of this individual.

So I could not have been happier when I found that President Obama had picked him to be Secretary of Agriculture. Tom Vilsack knows production agriculture. He knows what is happening out on the farms. He also is one of the strongest proponents of the conservation of natural resources and clean water and clean air. Suffice to say, I think all my friends at Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited and all the people I go hunting with every year love Tom Vilsack because of all he has done to encourage wildlife habitats and the conservation of our natural resources--something, again, I feel very strongly about.

Then, again, in his hearing before our Agriculture Committee, he talked about nutrition and the role nutrition plays in health care reform and how we have to think about prevention and wellness. That starts with our kids. And what starts with our kids? School lunches and school breakfasts and the foods they eat in school, the women, infants, and children's supplemental feeding program, what kind of food are they getting?

Now, before the Agriculture Committee this year, Senator Chambliss and I will be working together on our committee to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. That is the school lunch, school breakfast, and the WIC program, the women, infants, and children's supplemental feeding program. We have to do better for our kids. We have to get better food, locally grown foods, healthier foods, fruits and vegetables, and things such as that for our kids to eat. He talked about this in his hearing before our committee.

So I do not wish to take any more time of the Senate. I see our distinguished leader is in the Chamber. But I wished to thank President Obama for asking Governor Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture. I have asked Senator Chambliss. We know of no objections--not one objection on our committee--to his nomination.

So I hope the Senate will, this afternoon, by unanimous consent, clear him so tomorrow he can be at the door. He said: As soon as I am confirmed, the first thing I want to do is go to the Department of Agriculture and stand outside at 7 o'clock in the morning to greet all the people coming in because I want them to know I care about them, that I honor their work and look forward to being Secretary of the Department. The one Department I always say, of all the Secretaries we have--the Secretaries of State and Treasury get all this publicity, and they travel around the world and all that and get a lot of publicity-- the Secretary of Agriculture hardly gets any publicity. But no Department--no Department--touches every American every day as closely and as intimately as the Department of Agriculture: the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the food safety programs. Things happen to our kids in school, what they eat--all this is in the Department of Agriculture.

So I hope the Senate will, by unanimous consent, follow the lead of the Agriculture Committee in unanimously approving Tom Vilsack to be our next Secretary of Agriculture.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter, dated January 20, 2009, be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes.

Madam President, I wish to make it clear from the beginning that no vote--well, there have been a few votes I have cast in my 24 years, now going on 25 years, that I have regretted. We are all human. We make mistakes. We try to get the best information we can, and then we vote.

Last fall, the information we got is we were on the verge of collapse, we had to do something, we had to get this TARP bill through, so I voted for it.

Then I became more and more dismayed as the weeks went by and the months now to see how it was mishandled completely, not in accordance with what we in Congress were told they were going to do. They said they were going to purchase toxic assets. But then Secretary Paulson and his friends did the old bait and switch. Instead of doing that, they pumped tens of billions of dollars into purchasing equity in major banks.

I said many times it is sort of like Secretary Paulson and his buddies doing all for whom I call the graduates of Goldman Sachs, sort of taking care of their buddies and bailing out their buddies in the banking industry.

So when this new TARP came up, I must tell you I was adamantly opposed: no more of this, we are not going to put any more money out there like this. Then I began discussions with the new administration coming in. They have come up and talked with us a number of times. I had about three phone calls last night with my good friend, Senator Joe Biden, who will be our next Vice President.

He said: What is troubling you?

I said: What is troubling me is that no one seems to be responsible for what happened to the first 350. You have Paulson, but then there is President Bush, and somebody else seems to be responsible.

I said: Secondly, they didn't use the money for what we wanted and there is no transparency. We don't know what happened to a lot of it. And I said: Third, there has to be more of this money put out there for middle-class America. It has to be put out there for them--not this trickle down where you put it in investment banks--but put it down below so it can percolate up. He talked with the President-elect. We had three phone calls last evening.

I see a letter from Lawrence Summers was sent up to us today which reiterates what soon-to-be Vice President

Biden said to me last night. First, no substantial amount of money will go out of this fund unless it is signed off by President Barack Obama. He has to sign off on it. So we know where the buck stops.

Second, the way the system is set up, Vice President Joe Biden will be in there, he will be a part of this process, and the President will rely on him for his input into this process. I know Joe Biden. There has never been a stronger fighter for middle-class America and for working families than Joe Biden. So that reassures me we have another source of input into this effort.

And third, they are going to make it absolutely transparent and put it out for everyone to see where they are going.

Again, there were a couple of other things they agreed to do. No. 1, executive compensation cannot go above a certain threshold until the Government has been repaid. That is good.

No. 2, shareholders will not be rewarded until the Government has been repaid. For firms receiving exceptional assistance, quarterly dividend payments will be restricted to 1 penny per quarter until the taxpayers are repaid. That is pretty darn reassuring to me.

And now this: preclude the use of Government funds to purchase healthy firms rather than to boost lending. That is exactly what happened with the last 350.

I find myself now in a position of saying: Look, we still have problems out there, we have credit problems out there. We didn't answer these problems. We have a new team. Barack Obama--and I served with him in the Senate as all of us have--said time and time again--and I know where he is coming from--that we have to help middle-class America, that we can't just put the money in at the top anymore. Joe Biden has said the same things.

With these assurances that there is a new team down there, now I am going to be able to support the release of the next $350 billion.

I close with this: I felt a little bit, after the last one, like Charlie Brown and Lucy--she is always pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown. I said: That is not going to happen to me again. Well, Lucy is not holding the ball now. We have someone new holding that ball, someone by the name of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their team.

I am going to put my trust in them based on this letter that has been sent up, which I understand was made part of the Record earlier today. With those assurances that we can get that money out, down to homeowners, to help on foreclosures, to help out some of our smaller banks with their credit problems, I see my way clear now to vote to make sure we get this money released for the new administration.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, I am reintroducing legislation--the Derivatives Trading Integrity Act--which calls for establishing stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of financial swaps and other over-the-counter derivative contracts as a critical step toward rebuilding and restoring confidence in the financial system. Over the years, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and laws enacted by Congress have allowed instruments that are in form and function futures contracts to be privately negotiated without the safeguards provided through trading on exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC.

The economic downturn in this country is forcing us to examine all contributing factors to the crisis in our financial markets. By restoring reasonable safeguards and regulation of swaps, including credit default swaps, along with all other futures contracts, this legislation will go a long way to restore confidence in the markets and reestablish soundness and integrity in the financial system. My bill will end the unregulated ``casino capitalism'' that has engendered great risks in swaps trading. And it will bring these transactions out into the sunlight where they can be monitored and appropriately and responsibly regulated. This legislation will establish authority and safeguards to ensure that parties can meet their obligations to manage and reduce danger and risk to the entire financial system and economy.

Virtually all contracts now commonly referred to as swaps fall under the definition of futures contracts and function basically in the same manner as futures contracts. This bill amends the Commodity Exchange Act to eliminate the distinctions in the regulatory treatment of futures contracts among ``excluded'' and ``exempt'' commodities, and the transactions in them, and regulated, exchange-traded commodities and transactions in them. Futures contracts for all commodities would be treated the same in the law and regulations.

In addition, the bill eliminates the statutory exclusion of swap transactions from regulation, and it ends the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority to exempt such transactions from the general requirement that a contract for the purchase or sale of a commodity for future delivery can only trade on a regulated board of trade. In effect, this proposed change

in the law means that all futures contracts must trade on a designated contract market or a derivatives transaction execution facility. The requirement for exchange trading would thus include over-the-counter trading of financial derivatives just as it does for futures contracts in physical commodities such as corn, soybeans and petroleum.

We have seen large negative consequences from the lack of price transparency and the failure to properly measure and collateralize the risk in trading over-the-counter derivatives. The problems have not been seen in the trading of financial futures on regulated futures markets, subject to the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

This legislation I am introducing will establish the standard that all futures contracts trade on regulated exchanges. The regulated exchanges will work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure that trading on the exchange is fair and equitable and not subject to abuses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the experience and expertise to oversee these matters.

Bringing necessary openness, transparency, soundness, and integrity to trading in contracts which are now unregulated over-the-counter swaps and related derivatives is a key element in restoring trust and confidence in the financial system so that we can rebuild our economy on a solid foundation.

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