[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9797-S9811]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 2007

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of S. 1642, which the clerk will 
report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1642) to extend the authorization of programs 
     under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other 
     purposes.

  Pending:

       Coburn amendment No. 2369, to certify that taxpayers' 
     dollars and students' tuition support educational rather than 
     lobbying activities.
       Kennedy amendment No. 2381 (to amendment No. 2369), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The senior Senator from 
Massachusetts is recognized for 10 minutes.


                    Amendment No. 2381, As Modified

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I have a modification to my amendment 
that is at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be 
modified.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment (No. 2381), as modified, is as follows:

       Strike all after the first word, and insert the following:

     __. DEMONSTRATION AND CERTIFICATION REGARDING THE USE OF 
                   CERTAIN FEDERAL FUNDS.

       (a) Prohibition.--No Federal funds received by an 
     institution of higher education or other postsecondary 
     educational institution may be used to pay any person for 
     influencing or attempting to influence an officer or employee 
     of any agency, a Member of Congress, an officer or employee 
     of Congress, or an employee of a Member of Congress in 
     connection with any Federal action described in subsection 
     (b).
       (b) Applicability.--The prohibition in subsection (a) 
     applies with respect to the following Federal actions:
       (1) The awarding of any Federal contract.
       (2) The making of any Federal grant.
       (3) The making of any Federal loan.
       (4) The entering into of any Federal cooperative agreement.
       (5) The extension, continuation, renewal, amendment, or 
     modification of any Federal contract, grant, loan, or 
     cooperative agreement.
       (c) Lobbying and Earmarks.--No Federal student aid funding 
     may be used to hire a registered lobbyist or pay any person 
     or entity for securing an earmark.
       (d) Demonstration and Certification.--Each institution of 
     higher education or other postsecondary educational 
     institution receiving Federal funding, as a condition for 
     receiving such funding, shall annually demonstrate and 
     certify to the Secretary of Education that the requirements 
     of subsections (a) through (c) have been met.
       (e) Actions to Implement and Enforce.--The Secretary of 
     Education shall take such actions as are necessary to ensure 
     that the provisions of this section are vigorously 
     implemented and enforced.


[[Page S9798]]


  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that the 
Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, be added as a cosponsor of the 
amendment at this time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this amendment gives the assurance to our 
colleagues here in the Senate that over the evening we were able to 
work with Senator Coburn and to take into consideration his concerns to 
do this in a way which I think is consistent with our legislation. I am 
very pleased the Senator from Oklahoma and I, and Senator Enzi, were 
able to come to agreement on this amendment.
  We all agree that universities should not be using Federal money for 
lobbying. That is why our amendment bans it. We all agree that Federal 
student aid should not be used to secure an earmark. That is why our 
amendment bans it. We all agree there should be a mechanism to ensure 
that these rules are being followed, and that is why our amendment 
requires colleges to certify they are following the rules.
  This amendment will keep the Federal funds from being used for 
lobbying while maintaining the ability of colleges to engage in 
appropriate communications with Government officials. It will allow 
preeminent research scientists to communicate with the NIH about cancer 
research; it will allow meteorologists to advise Homeland Security on 
better ways to predict and prepare for imminent natural disasters; and 
it will allow scientists to convey to the Department of Defense the 
latest advances in armor and other protections for our troops.
  This amendment strikes a good balance between prohibiting the 
inappropriate use of Federal student aid dollars while keeping the door 
open for colleges and employees and officials to communicate with 
Government in other important matters. That is what our amendment does, 
so I am pleased we could come up with an agreement, and I thank the 
Senator for his concern and for his cooperation.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I strongly support passage of S. 1642, the 
Higher Education Amendments of 2007.
  This important bipartisan legislation, which I helped craft as a 
Member of the Senate Education Committee, would reauthorize the Higher 
Education Act for the first time since 1998, expand college access and 
affordability for students and their families, and ensure that teachers 
have the necessary skills and supports to effectively raise student 
achievement in the classroom.
  This bill builds on our passage last week of the Higher Education 
Access Act, which makes a nearly $14 billion investment in additional 
need-based grant assistance for low-income students. That bill also 
helps middle-class students and families pay down and manage their loan 
debt by capping monthly loan payments at 15 percent of their 
discretionary income. And it sends a signal about the need for more 
talented young people to become nurses, teachers, and librarians by 
offering them loan forgiveness if they continue in public-service 
professions for 10 years.
  Earlier this year, I introduced a bill aimed at making it easier for 
families to fill out the financial aid form that all students have to 
fill out to see if they can get tuition assistance. I called the bill 
the FAFSA Act, Financial Aid Form Simplification and Access Act. It is 
based on the recommendations of experts and should help make a 
sometimes difficult process less time consuming and frustrating. First, 
it would phase out the complex, one-size-fits-all long form at 7 pages 
and over 90 questions, using the savings to employ ``smart'' technology 
to create a tailored online application form to ensure that students 
answer only the minimum number of questions necessary. Second, the bill 
would establish a short paper EZ-FAFSA application form, similar to the 
IRS's 1040-EZ, for the lowest-income students. Third, this legislation 
allows students to apply for financial aid earlier, and it creates a 
pilot program to test an early application system under which students 
apply for aid and receive an aid estimate or determination in their 
junior year of high school. I am pleased that these provisions are 
included in the bill the Senate is passing today.
  The Higher Education Amendments of 2007 also include provisions from 
another bill that I introduced earlier this year, the ACCESS Act. 
Accessing College through Comprehensive Early Outreach and State 
Partnerships Act--S. 938, modeled on successful programs like Indiana's 
21st Century Scholars Program. Indeed, students in the Indiana 
initiative were nearly five times more likely than nonparticipants to 
enroll in college. The ACCESS Act creates a new incentive under the 
Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership or LEAP program to spur 
states to form partnerships with colleges, businesses, and 
philanthropies to increase the amount of need-based grants. This new 
initiative would also make sure that students are aware of this 
opportunity for more aid in the 7th grade and provide early 
intervention, mentoring, and outreach services so they can stay on 
track for college. Again, research has shown that successful college 
access programs offer these components, and I am glad the bill before 
us includes them.
  Furthermore, the Higher Education Amendments include several 
provisions from my PRREP--Preparing, Recruiting, and Retaining 
Education Professionals--Act, S. 1231, to strengthen the existing 
Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants program and improve college teacher 
preparation programs. These provisions ensure that prospective and 
beginning teachers, including for the first time, early childhood 
educators, have effective teaching skills, intensive, year-long pre-
service clinical experiences, and high-quality, sustained multiyear 
mentoring and support in their first years of teaching. Too often, new 
teachers lack this kind of training and leave the profession. This bill 
aims to change that.
  This legislation also includes my LIBRARIAN--Librarian Incentive to 
Boost Recruitment and Retention in Areas of Need--Act, S. 1121, to 
provide Perkins student loan forgiveness for full-time librarians with 
a master's degree in library science. Librarians working full-time in 
low-income areas would qualify for up to 100 percent Perkins student 
loan forgiveness depending on their number of years of experience. 
Indeed, a love of reading and books is essential to an educated 
workforce, but too often schools go without a trained librarian.
  We hear often that serving in the military permits our military 
personnel to gain help with the costs of college when they leave the 
service, but all too often it is not enough. That is why I included 
language in this bill to increase Perkins loan forgiveness for members 
of the Armed Forces from 50 to 100 percent. The legislation also 
includes provisions I authored to create a career pathway for students 
with disabilities by providing training and support to middle school, 
high school, and university staff to encourage interest and 
understanding of educational and work-based opportunities for students, 
including those with disabilities, in disability-related fields.
  I am also pleased this reauthorization bill includes provisions 
responding to recently uncovered conflicts of interests between lenders 
and college financial aid offices. This legislation provides students 
and families with increased disclosure about special arrangements 
between lenders and colleges and the terms and conditions of a school's 
``preferred lender list''; prohibits payments, gifts, and other 
inducements from lenders to colleges and financial aid administrators; 
and requires colleges to establish and follow a student loan code of 
conduct.
  The bill we are passing today is significant legislation that 
addresses one of the top concerns of American families. It tackles the 
twin goals of increased college access and affordability for students 
and their families as was intended when the Higher Education Act was 
created in 1965. It represents an important step in ensuring that every 
student with the drive and talent to go to college has the opportunity 
to do so. I thank Chairman Kennedy and Ranking Member Enzi, and their 
staffs, particularly Carmel Martin, J.D. LaRock, Missy Rohrbach, Erin 
Renner, and Emma Vadehra for their excellent work on this bill. I look 
forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that this important 
bill becomes law, so that we continue our commitment to creating and 
expanding educational opportunities for all students.

[[Page S9799]]

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am pleased to vote for the Higher 
Education Reauthorization Act because it will open the doors of college 
to more students across the country. I want to commend Senator Kennedy 
for his leadership on this bill. I have been honored to work with him 
and the other members of the committee to produce this comprehensive 
solution.
  In response to the recent student loan scandals, this bill reforms 
the student loan process so that it puts the interests of students 
first and makes the system more transparent. To help address rising 
college costs, this bill takes a number of steps to increase user-
friendly information available to students and parents about college 
costs. I am also pleased that this bill will make it easier for 
students to apply for financial aid by replacing the current 10-page 
application with a new 2-page version. This bill offers more help for 
students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Specifically, it strengthens 
TRIO programs to make students more prepared for higher education. It 
also expands and improves GEAR UP programs, which are a critical tool 
to help guide and prepare disadvantaged students for high school 
graduation and college enrollment.
  I am especially pleased that the bill includes my proposal to train 
math and literacy coaches in colleges of education. As I have been 
working to improve our schools, I have recognized that we need to 
provide additional support to students in math and reading. By 
addressing those areas, we can improve the graduation rate and help 
students graduate prepared for college and careers. When I introduced 
the PASS Act, S. 611, earlier this year, I included reading and math 
coaches as a key way to improve the graduation rate. I am pleased that 
this higher education reauthorization includes a grants program that 
will help train those coaches, so we have a ready pipeline of qualified 
coaches to address these critical areas.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Chairman 
Kennedy and Ranking Member Enzi on passage of this very important 
legislation. I also thank them for their assistance in including within 
the Higher Education Amendments Act of 2007 a bill I have worked on, 
the Early Federal Pell Grant Commitment Demonstration Program.
  The Early Federal Pell Grant Commitment Demonstration Program will 
bring us one step closer to making sure that every child has the 
opportunity to go to college. Our current higher education system is 
riddled with barriers that students must overcome to obtain the keys to 
their future--a college education. This program will break down some of 
those very barriers by making an early promise of Federal aid to 
students early enough in their academic careers so that the reality of 
a college education is firmly in their grasp.
  How we choose to support our students today will have broad 
ramifications for not only them but for our country 10, 20, and 30 
years down the road. The consequences are dire if we do not take a more 
aggressive approach to make sure the doors to a college education are 
open wide enough so every student that wants to pursue a college 
education can do so regardless of their family income. If we maintain 
the status quo, the outlook for too many students is grim. Take, for 
example, the fact that over the next decade 2 million college-ready 
students from households with an income below $50,000 will not attend 
college because they cannot afford the costs. Every door we fail to 
open for our students is a door closed--a missed opportunity--for our 
country down the road.
  I commend my colleagues for their leadership in developing meaningful 
reforms regarding the cost of and access to a college education in this 
bill as well as the recently passed Higher Education Access Act of 
2007. I am pleased that the Early Federal Pell Grant Commitment 
Demonstration Program is one component of those reforms--providing 
students and their families with a commitment of Federal aid early in 
their academic careers, information about the costs of college, and 
information about the various types of available financial aid. Right 
now, students don't find out whether they are eligible for Federal aid 
until their senior year--much less how much they will receive. This 
timeframe doesn't work for many families. Making a commitment--a 
promise--of Federal aid to students at an early age will begin the 
conversation about college earlier and continue it through the day they 
receive the acceptance letters from the schools of their choice.
  If you have seen the news articles, or if you are putting a child 
through college, you know that the cost of a college education can be 
daunting to a student and their family. Many children think--
erroneously--that they can't afford to go to college, and they go 
through high school thinking their futures are limited. We should not 
wait to tell those that need it that they will receive help to pay for 
college. Committing a Pell grant--the maximum of which is $4,310 under 
current law and $5,400 in the Senate-passed Higher Education Access 
Act--will critically alter the expectations of low-income students. For 
those students whose future plans often do not include college, this 
program will provide a financial promise, and the hope that comes with 
knowing you can afford a college degree.
  Under this early commitment plan, four States will receive funding 
for a demonstration program, each of which will work with two cohorts 
of up to 10,000 8th grade students; one in school year 2008-2009, and 
one in school year 2009-2010. Schools with a National School Lunch 
Program participation rate above 50 percent would be eligible for the 
program, and by using the same eligibility criteria as the National 
School Lunch Program, students would be identified based on need in the 
8th grade.
  The Early Federal Pell Grant Commitment Demonstration Program will 
also provide funding for states, in conjunction with the participating 
local educational agencies, to conduct targeted information campaigns 
beginning in the 8th grade and continuing through students' senior 
year. These campaigns will inform students and their families of the 
program and provide information about the cost of a college education, 
state and federal financial assistance, and the average amount of aid 
awards. A targeted information campaign, along with a guarantee of a 
Pell grant, will allow families and students to not just plan ahead for 
college, but to dream of a future that includes higher education.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today, marks the culmination of yet another 
journey towards making college more affordable with the passage of the 
Higher Education Amendments, and with the passage several days ago of 
the Higher Education Reconciliation Act. It represents the single 
largest Federal investment in higher education since the GI bill. I am 
pleased to support this legislation because it reflects a commitment to 
expanding access to higher education and making it more affordable. It 
opens the door to those previously denied educational opportunity due 
to a lack of adequate financial resources or who could not carry the 
burden of excessive student loan obligations.
  This legislation is a great victory for students and families across 
America, including my home State of Michigan, which would receive over 
$80 million above the current $429.8 million in new assistance for the 
upcoming academic year and an additional $689.6 million over the next 5 
years.
  I have long supported efforts in the Senate to expand the 
availability of student aid and to ensure that students have access to 
a postsecondary education, including raising the maximum Pell grant 
award. This much-needed legislation increases the maximum Pell grant 
from $4,310 to $5,100 in 2008, building upon our efforts in February of 
this year when we passed a significant increase in the maximum Pell 
grant award to $4,310 from $4,050, the first increase in 4 years.
  This legislation also increases the income level at which a student 
is eligible for the maximum Pell grant; caps monthly student loan 
payments at 15 percent of discretionary income; encourages public 
service by providing loan forgiveness for borrowers who commit to 
public service; simplifies the financial aid process for all students; 
and reforms the student loan system so that it works for students 
rather than lenders.
  There is one fact that we cannot escape, which is that more and more 
students and families are struggling to pay for college at a time when 
access

[[Page S9800]]

to a higher education is increasingly important in a competitive, 
global economy where training beyond a high school education is 
required.
  The legislation will protect working students by increasing the 
amount of student income sheltered from the financial aid process. The 
cap on Federal student loan payments at 15 percent of a borrower's 
discretionary income will bring much-needed relief to students with the 
burden of excessive loans. For example, a social worker in Michigan 
with one child earning $45,620, with student loan debt of $19,000, 
would have his or her monthly payments reduced by 12 percent. Forgiving 
the debt of borrowers who continue in public service careers, such as 
law enforcement, nursing or teaching for 10 years will be provided 
significant relief under this bill. For instance, a starting teacher in 
Michigan earning $35,557 with the State average loan debt of $18,942 
could have monthly payments reduced by 20 percent. After 10 years of 
teaching, all remaining debt would be forgiven, in this case, a benefit 
worth $10,906.
  A student's access to higher education ought not depend on his or her 
family's income. Working families and aspiring students across this 
country are struggling to obtain the financial resources to secure a 
college education. Low and middle income students who have managed to 
enter and stay in college are graduating with unprecedented levels of 
debt. This legislation responds to this crisis.
  The passage of this bipartisan legislation is a notable 
accomplishment.
  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)
 Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I first want to thank the chairman 
and ranking member of the HELP Committee--Senator Kennedy and Senator 
Enzi--for their leadership in bringing this important legislation to 
the floor. I also appreciate their willingness to incorporate the ideas 
and concerns of the various committee members. I am pleased to urge my 
colleagues to support this comprehensive package to improve higher 
education. This is a worthy conclusion to the discussion that began 
last week, with the passage of the Higher Education Access Act, to make 
college more affordable and more accessible.
  Education is the centerpiece of a deal America has entered into with 
its students: if you work hard, if you gain the right set of skills, 
and if you accept responsibility for your learning, you have a chance 
for a better life. That is the basic premise of education in our 
country.
  And this deal includes a college degree. A college education and a 
diploma improve the chance of getting a good job, increase earning 
potential, and ease entry into the middle class.
  Last week, we passed legislation making a college degree more 
accessible for many students, by increasing student financial aid. 
Today, we must move forward on the remainder of a comprehensive package 
for college students and their families. In this legislation, we are 
asking colleges themselves to look more closely at the increases in 
their costs, and to report more information, so that students and 
families have a clearer picture of the cost of attendance.
  We are reforming the student loan system, by shedding more light on 
the process, illuminating more clearly the arrangements between 
colleges and lenders, and prohibiting payments that give some lenders 
an unfair advantage. Instead, we must make sure that the system works 
to the advantage of students. We must act to curb the financial abuses 
that have been so widely reported at a few institutions, and that have 
hurt too many students. In this legislation, we have also increased 
access for many by making the process more user-friendly, by 
simplifying the financial aid application process, and by helping 
students plan for their college education earlier in their high school 
career. All these provisions of the Higher Education Amendments are 
worthy of the support of my colleagues.
  There are two provisions in this legislation which I would especially 
like to thank my colleagues on the HELP Committee for supporting, and 
advancing. The first establishes an innovative method for teacher 
preparation. We know that teachers are the most important resource for 
students in our schools. And yet, too many students in high-need 
schools are taught by inadequately prepared teachers, who are often not 
ready for the challenges they face, and who often choose to leave the 
classroom too soon.
  We must recruit talented Americans to become teachers, and we must 
help transform teaching, restoring its luster as a profession. We must 
better prepare prospective teachers, so that when they join the 
profession, they are successful and choose to stay, so that their 
students may share in that success. As we ask teachers and school 
leaders to accept more responsibility for student learning, we must do 
our part to adequately prepare teachers to achieve success.
  Research shows that good preparation programs can make novice 
teachers effective more rapidly. This legislation includes a provision 
for residency programs to effectively prepare teachers for the reality 
of challenging classrooms. Teaching Residency Programs are school-based 
programs in which prospective teachers teach alongside a mentor teacher 
for one year, while undertaking coursework to attain teacher 
certification. Graduates of the program are placed in high-needs 
schools and continue to receive strong mentoring and support for their 
first years of teaching.
  I am particularly proud that such Teaching Residency Programs are 
included in title II of these Higher Education Amendments, because it 
is a model of effective teacher preparation that I have advocated since 
before I was elected to the Senate. I have seen firsthand the success 
of such a program in Chicago.
  Teaching Residency Programs are based on what we know works best to 
prepare teachers. We know that mentoring is critical to help novice 
teachers improve their skills, and to retain many who might otherwise 
leave the profession within their first few years. We can no longer 
afford to lose high quality teachers because they are not adequately 
supported, or because they realize that they are not progressing in 
their chosen profession.
  I am also pleased that the Higher Education Amendments we consider 
today contain a provision to support predominantly Black institutions--
a proposal first suggested by my good friend, Representative Danny 
Davis. These are colleges which serve a growing number of African-
American students, most of whom are the first in their families to go 
to college and most of whom receive student financial aid. It is 
appropriate that we support such institutions, to help ensure that 
these colleges, in turn, support the efforts and talents of these 
students. Over the years, Congress has acknowledged the key role of 
similar institutions through provisions supporting historically Black 
colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other 
colleges and universities whose mission includes educational 
opportunities for minority students.
  The Higher Education Amendments we consider today contain much that 
will help our students be more successful. I am proud to have been 
involved in developing this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to 
support its passage.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of 
Wisconsin's students and families. Students work hard to get into 
college. Along with their families, they are working even harder to pay 
for college. However, the high cost of college, combined with the slow 
growth of family income and insufficient grant aid is pricing many 
Wisconsin students out of a college education. Today help is on the 
way.
  To reverse this trend the Senate has acted on two bills that will 
significantly improve access to college and make a college education 
more affordable for students and families. The Higher Education Access 
Act will provide $17.3 billion in new aid to students, paid for through 
reforms to the student loan industry, and the Higher Education 
Amendments extends a variety of important programs, such as--work 
study, Perkins loans and TRIO. Both bills passed with strong bipartisan 
support and together, they represent a major victory for students and 
families.
  Wisconsin students will benefit from $32 million of new financial 
aid, including an increase in the maximum Pell award from $4,310 to 
$5,100 next school

[[Page S9801]]

year. Pell-eligible students should expect an additional $430 in aid to 
help offset the cost of school. This legislation will also cap loan 
payments at 15 percent of a student's discretionary income, bringing 
needed relief to students from excessive loan burdens. Lastly, this 
bill provides loan forgiveness for students who choose careers in 
public service such as, nursing, teaching, or law enforcement for 10 
years.
  The Senate has made college access and affordability a top priority. 
I am proud of the bipartisan way the Senate has acted to give students 
around the country access to college and a chance at a better and more 
productive life. I am proud to support this bill.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the 
reauthorization of the Tribally Controlled College or University 
Assistance Act of 1978, which is reauthorized in conjunction with the 
Higher Education Act. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian 
Affairs, I have been working closely with the Health, Education, Labor, 
and Pensions Committee to ensure that amendments enhancing tribal 
colleges and universities are included in S. 1642, the Higher Education 
Reauthorization Act.
  Title IX of S. 1642 reauthorizes the Tribally Controlled College or 
University Assistance Act of 1978 and includes a new title to authorize 
Department of the Interior funding for institutional operations of the 
two tribally controlled postsecondary career and technical 
institutions: United Tribes Technical College and Navajo Technical 
College. Funding authorized under the Tribally Controlled College or 
University Assistance Act is essential as it provides the resources 
necessary for these institutions to continue to provide high quality, 
culturally relevant higher education opportunities for Indian students 
in Indian country.
  I have been a longtime supporter of the Nation's tribal colleges and 
universities because I see how they benefit both their communities and 
individual students. There are 34 tribal colleges and universities 
throughout the United States. My home State of North Dakota is 
fortunate to have five of these remarkable institutions.
  Tribal colleges and universities offer a wide range of accredited 
academic programs including many from areas of high need such as 
teacher education, business administration, and nursing. In addition to 
college level programming, tribal colleges and universities also offer 
much needed high school completion programs, job training, and college 
preparatory courses.
  These vital institutions are essential to their tribal communities, 
many of them serving as community centers, public libraries, tribal 
archives, career and business centers, economic development centers, 
public meeting places and child and elder care centers.
  Approximately 28,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students 
attend tribally controlled colleges and universities across the 
country. Tribal colleges are located in isolated, remote areas, with 
high unemployment rates where average family income is approximately 
$14,000.00--27 percent below the Federal poverty level. As a result, 
the cost of attending a mainstream institution, which for many 
reservation communities is several hours away, is prohibitively high, 
especially when tuition, travel, housing, textbooks, and other expenses 
are considered.
  Most students attending tribal colleges are the first generation in 
their family to go to college. American Indians who earn a bachelor's 
degree or higher can expect to earn two times as much as those with a 
high school diploma and four times as much as those with no high school 
diploma. Tribal colleges are proven agents of change and provide real 
hope for the future of their graduates and their tribal economies.
  I have been fortunate enough to hear from many American Indian 
students who have benefited from tribal colleges and universities, 
including one young woman who faced many challenges growing up on the 
Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.
  As a young child, this young woman often felt isolated at school, but 
realized at a very young age that education was the key to making a 
better life for herself and enriching her community. This belief stayed 
with her throughout a particularly challenging period of her life in 
which she dropped out of high school and became a mother. This series 
of events provided her with even more incentive to seek education, so 
she enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Tribal College. She loved college, 
excelled and has earned her Ph.D. Her story illustrates the important 
role tribal colleges play in lifting Indian children and young adults, 
who have faced so many obstacles and adversity in their lives, out of 
poverty and despair.
  In addition to the Tribal College Act reauthorization, S. 1642 
reauthorizes a program for developing institutions under title III of 
the Higher Education Act specifically for the Nation's tribal colleges 
and universities. I fully support the adoption of the proposed changes 
that I believe will greatly enhance the tribal college's ability to 
provide higher education opportunities to their reservation 
communities.
  Lastly, I applaud all institutions that serve American Indian 
students but we need to make sure that the proposed new title III 
program for ``Native American-serving, nontribal institutions'' 
included in S. 1642 does not negatively impact the already limited 
funding available for tribal colleges and universities.
  I remain committed to finding ways to increase access to quality 
postsecondary opportunities for American Indian students and to further 
strengthen the capacity of tribal colleges. S. 1642 provides solid 
steps towards doing just that.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I speak today in support of passage of 
the Higher Education Act of 2007.
  Last week, the Senate took an important step toward increasing access 
to higher education for low-income students by passing the Higher 
Education Access Act of 2007 which would increase student aid by 
approximately $17 billion by cutting Federal subsidies to lenders and 
banks. Today, the Senate expands on last week's important work by 
passing the Higher Education Act of 2007, which reauthorizes programs 
under the Higher Education Act of 1965, including title II teacher 
education programs and title IV student aid programs.
  Many students today dream of going to college but face hurdles to 
making that dream a reality, including financial hurdles, which for 
many low-income students can become insurmountable. This legislation 
helps students make their dreams of going to college a reality by 
reauthorizing a number of important programs that I support, including 
the Pell grant program, TRIO, GEAR UP, and LEAP. These programs seek to 
reduce the financial and college preparation barriers that many 
students face when applying to and attending college.
  Higher education is one of the most important investments our Federal 
Government can make, and Congress created need-based student financial 
aid programs to ensure that individuals from low-income families are 
not denied postsecondary education because they cannot afford it. I am 
deeply concerned about the emergence of a widening educational gap 
between rich and poor. Statistics illustrate that students from low-
income families are pursuing postsecondary education at a much slower 
rate than individuals from middle and upper income families.
  Increasing the maximum award for Pell grants can help in closing the 
gap between college attendance rates of low-income students and 
students from middle and upper income families. I have led and 
supported many efforts to increase the maximum Pell grant award in 
recent years, including earlier this year when I joined with Senators 
Kennedy, Collins, and Coleman in leading letters to the Senate Budget 
and Appropriations supporting the highest possible increase in the 
maximum Pell grant award. I am pleased that the Higher Education Act of 
2007 increases the authorized maximum for Pell grants to $6,300 by the 
2011-2012 academic year, and I will continue to work with my colleagues 
to push for fiscally responsible increases in the Pell grant program in 
the coming years.
  This legislation also makes important changes to the title II, 
Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program to better train and prepare 
teachers for working in our Nation's classrooms. Access to high-quality 
teachers is a key determinant in student academic success at the 
elementary and secondary level. The provisions in this

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legislation that promote mentoring and training new teachers through 
residency programs will help to ensure that new teachers entering our 
Nation's schools are better prepared and receive the support they need 
during their beginning years of teaching.
  I was also pleased that the committee accepted language into the 
managers' package to ensure that the grants for training of teachers 
will promote a wide range of teaching skills, including measuring 
students on different forms of assessment, such as performance-based 
measures, student portfolios, and formative assessments. In an era of 
increased accountability at the local, State, and Federal level, we 
need to do all we can to promote more responsible and accurate 
assessment of students in our K-12 schools.
  I remain concerned about the increased use of high-stakes 
standardized testing at the K-12 level, including using high-stakes 
standardized tests to make decisions regarding school accountability. 
By broadening the definition of student learning and teaching skills as 
this new title II language does, we can better ensure that teachers are 
trained to more accurately and responsibly measure student achievement 
through alternatives to high- stakes standardized testing.
  This bill also takes important steps toward addressing the abuses in 
the student loan industry by requiring lenders, banks, and universities 
to provide more disclosure to students before these students take out 
education loans. The bill also prohibits campus employees from 
receiving gifts of more than nominal value from lenders or banks. I was 
pleased to cosponsor Senator Kennedy's Student Loan Sunshine Act 
earlier this year and support the inclusion of those legislative 
provisions in this reauthorization bill.
  The bill also includes language based on previous legislation I 
introduced that defines the terms ``different campus'' and ``different 
population'' for purposes of administering the Federal TRIO Program. I 
have long supported increased funding for TRIO Programs which provide 
education outreach services and support students from disadvantaged 
backgrounds as they pursue higher education. The language included in 
this bill ensures that higher education institutions with branch 
campuses geographically apart from each other can compete on equal 
footing for the important TRIO grants.
  I am concerned that this bill may not adequately protect the privacy 
of individuals whose information is contained in Federal and State 
databases. Almost a year ago, I wrote to the Secretary of Education's 
Commission on the Future of Higher Education regarding the Commission's 
first draft report which contained language proposing the creation of a 
national student unit record tracking system, and I questioned whether 
such a system, if created, could adequately protect the privacy 
interests of the students it would be tracking. The bill, while 
purporting to prohibit such systems, exempts any existing data systems 
that are used to operate programs authorized by the act, as well as any 
successor systems. Moreover, while the bill includes provisions to 
restrict access to the National Student Loan Data System, it includes 
no similar provisions for other Federal databases.
  The bill also includes a pilot grant program to develop State-level 
postsecondary student data systems in five States. Grant recipients 
must comply with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which 
prohibits certain policies and practices relating to disclosure of 
information; however, I believe additional protections may be necessary 
to ensure individual privacy. I plan to work with my colleagues on 
these matters as the bill moves forward.
  Mr. President, the Higher Education Act of 1965 was one of the key 
Great Society programs that sought to extend the opportunity to pursue 
higher education to Americans of all backgrounds, regardless of their 
economic circumstances. With Senate passage of both the Higher 
Education Act today and the Higher Education Access Act of 2007 last 
week, we have acted to continue and expand upon these essential college 
access programs. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the 
coming weeks and years to continue to support and strengthen higher 
education programs. In an increasingly global and competitive 21st 
century, ensuring access to higher education for all Americans who wish 
to pursue it must remain a priority in Congress for many years to come.
  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I wish to speak on behalf of an amendment I 
was very proud to cosponsor with Senator Warner, the senior Senator 
from Virginia, that was passed by a unanimous vote while I was outside 
the Senate when we came into session yesterday. I thank Senator Warner 
for his leadership on this bill, and I express my appreciation to the 
Senate for their support.
  This amendment is called the minority-serving institution digital and 
wireless technology opportunity amendment. It will help close what is 
clearly a digital divide at minority institutions in the country. This 
was a bipartisan effort, as I pointed out, and it is directed toward 
ensuring we are addressing the current needs that exist in our colleges 
and universities by giving our students an opportunity to compete with 
anyone anywhere around the world.
  Over 60 percent of jobs require information technology skills these 
days, and many jobs in the information technology field pay 
significantly higher salaries.
  It is vital to our global competitiveness that all institutions of 
higher education provide their students with access to the most current 
information technology and equipment.
  I commend our leadership and the HELP Committee for making these 
sorts of issues a priority on the bill we voted on today and for 
ensuring that our students have the tools necessary to succeed and 
compete in our changing economy.
  This particular amendment will establish a new grant program to be 
administered by the Secretary of Education to assist historically Black 
colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal 
colleges. These grants have a 5-year time period in which they have to 
be used. I believe they are highly appropriate in helping these 
minority institutions reach a level playing field.
  Virginia is home to six historically Black colleges and 
universities--Norfolk State University, St. Paul's College, Virginia 
Union University, Hampton University, Virginia University of Lynchburg, 
and Virginia State University. These are examples of some of the 
universities that will be helped by this amendment.
  Investing in our minority-serving institutions will give our students 
an opportunity to compete far more effectively in our global economy.
  This amendment addresses the inequality of access to technology that 
exists in many cases because of technical and economic restraints.
  I am looking forward to working closely with the appropriators to 
ensure that necessary funds are provided for this critical program.
  I again thank my colleagues, in particular the esteemed senior 
Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, for helping make adoption of this 
important amendment possible.
  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, with the passage of the Higher Education 
Amendments of 2007, we have given the millions of students and families 
the key to unlock the door to a college education and the American 
dream. This bill represents an incredible victory for students and 
families, and we can be proud that in this new Congress we have renewed 
our commitment to students working hard to achieve the promise of 
America.
  The Higher Education Amendments of 2007 is the first reauthorization 
of the Higher Education Act in nearly a decade and is the result of 2 
years of bipartisan compromise. This legislation will reform the 
student loan industry and serve the best interests of our students.
  I believe student loans should be an investment in the future. Sadly, 
for too many students, their student loans have become a barrier to 
following their dreams. That is why I am pleased this bill includes 
provisions from my Student Borrower Bill of Rights Act. My provisions 
will ensure all student borrowers have accurate and timely information 
on their loans and will provide much needed help to borrowers with 
disabilities. These provisions are a major step forward for students 
who have become disabled and are overwhelmed with student loan debt.

[[Page S9803]]

  I am proud this legislation also includes provisions from my Non-
Traditional Student Success Act, as the number of nontraditional 
students continues to increase on college campuses across America. 
These are students with children, students working while studying, and 
so many others. By including a provision to make Pell grants available 
year around, the Higher Education Amendments of 2007 provides the 
critical support these students need to complete their college 
education and makes college more accessible and affordable for them.
  I also worked with my colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee to author two new initiatives to help more students 
arrive at college ready for success. The first provision will provide 
the training and support necessary to place 10,000 new teachers in 
disadvantaged communities over the next 3 years. The other provision 
will supply comprehensive data and offer targeted assistance to 
increase the college-going rates of high school students in 
disadvantaged communities.
  The Higher Education Amendments of 2007 will produce transparency in 
college cost for students. It will also promote strategies to recruit 
and prepare qualified teachers and will invest in financial literacy 
for students and parents. This legislation will simplify the Free 
Application for Federal Student Aid to improve the process of applying 
for student assistance and give families tools to plan for the cost of 
higher education. In addition, this bill will improve the TRIO/Upward 
Bound and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness of Undergraduate 
Programs, strengthening the pathway to higher education for millions of 
low-income and first-generation students.
  I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. I thank 
my Senate colleagues for making this groundbreaking investment in the 
next generation of American leaders.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate passed 
today 5-year extension of the Higher Education Act to renew major 
programs that help ensure our Nation's students attain a college 
degree.
  This legislation, with strong bipartisan support, also includes new 
measures to address rising college costs and would reform the student 
loan system so that it better serves students.
  Last week, the Senate passed an important piece of legislation that 
will provide over $17 billion in new grant aid to low-income college 
students--$2.5 billion of which would go to help California's students 
afford college.
  Nationwide, students and their families are struggling to pay the 
growing costs of a college education.
  Four-year public university costs increased 52 percent, while the 
median family income only increased 3 percent during the school years 
from 1995-96 to 2005-06.
  In California, even after financial aid is taken into account, 33 
percent of the median family income is needed to pay for 1 year of 
college at a 4-year public college.
  As a result, many students rely on loans to finance their education--
the percentage of undergraduates at 4-year public colleges with student 
loans has risen to 66 percent, especially among low-income students.
  At the same time, lenders have been provided substantial government 
subsidies beyond what is required for participation and competition.
  Specifically, this bill would raise the authorized level for the Pell 
grant maximum award by $1,990 over 5 years--from the current $4,310 
level to $6,300; authorize the U.S. Department of Education to award 
competitive grants for Teacher Preparation Programs that help recruit 
and retain high-quality teachers in high-need schools; improve programs 
that help low-income middle and high school students prepare for 
college. For example, GEAR UP program grantees, which serve over 
150,000 California students, would be permitted to use funds for 
tutoring, extended school day programs or scholarships; create a 
nationwide ``Higher Education Price Increase Watch List'' of colleges 
whose costs are increasing at a rate greater than other schools and 
create a higher education price comparison index to help students and 
parents compare college tuition costs; require colleges to recommend 
lenders to their students based on the best interests of the students. 
It also prohibits payments from lenders to schools that create 
conflicts of interest; and simplify student financial aid forms by 
creating a new 2-page form for low-income students, and phasing out the 
current 10-page form for all applicants within 5 years.
  The key reforms in this legislation will help ensure that college is 
more affordable for our young people and that they receive the 
education they deserve to succeed in our global economy. I am pleased 
that the Senate will pass this important legislation today.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues Senator Enzi and 
Senator Kennedy for making sure that the managers' package includes my 
amendment to add Kentucky State University to the list of historically 
Black colleges and universities, HBCU, that are eligible to receive 
funding for their graduate programs.
  Kentucky State enjoys a proud heritage as the Commonwealth's only 
HBCU. Chartered by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1886, Kentucky 
State is one of the 15 original HBCUs recognized in the historic 
Morrill Act of 1890. In recent years, Kentucky State has developed 
strong undergraduate and graduate programs in the natural sciences, 
most notably aquaculture.
  Earlier this year, I was pleased to visit with Kentucky State's 
president, Dr. Mary Evans Sias. During our meeting, Dr. Sias called my 
attention to the fact that Kentucky State's graduate programs were not 
eligible to receive the Federal funding set aside for HBCU graduate 
programs because the institution was not among those schools listed in 
the Higher Education Act.
  I told Dr. Sias I would try to help Kentucky State, and last week I 
introduced legislation, S. 1826, to add Kentucky State to the list of 
eligible institutions under the Higher Education Act. I thank my 
colleagues, Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy, for including this 
legislation in their managers' package. I am confident that it will go 
a long ways towards strengthening Kentucky State's ability to serve the 
Commonwealth's students.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, paying for college is harder than it used 
to be. Over the last 5 years, the combined cost of tuition, fees, room 
and board at 4-year public colleges and universities increased by 42 
percent, and more students are leaving college saddled with debt. More 
than two-thirds of 4-year college students now borrow to pay for 
school, and their average debt more than doubled between 1993 and 2004.
  Unfortunately, we have learned that some lenders and some 
universities are engaging in practices that are not always based on 
what is in the best interests of the students. The New York Times 
revealed that some lenders have offered schools incentives to be placed 
on a college's ``preferred lender'' list. One example was an all-
expense paid trip to the Caribbean for school officials and their 
spouses to attend an education ``summit'' held at a luxury five-star 
beachfront resort. Between symposiums and discussions on how important 
it is to address the cost of higher education, guests could enjoy 
complimentary water and beach sports, volleyball, and access to an 18-
hole championship golf course, a 10-court tennis complex, two 
beachfront pools, and a luxury spa. News of the trip drew such a 
negative response that the sponsor of the trip, Loan to Learn, 
ultimately cancelled it. Other examples of incentives to schools 
include iPods given away at a financial aid administrators meeting and 
bonuses based on how much students borrow. Nothing about these 
incentives ensure that the lenders or the schools are looking to 
provide the best loan available for students.
  The bill we are considering on the floor today, the renewal of the 
Higher Education Act, includes major provisions from a bill Senator 
Kennedy and I introduced earlier this year, the Student Loan Sunshine 
Act. The Student Loan Sunshine Act reforms the student loan system so 
that it works for students, not lenders. The bill we are considering 
today ensures that colleges are recommending lenders to students based 
on the best interest of students, not the self-interest of financial 
aid officers. We protect students and parents from exploitation by 
lenders. Lenders are prohibited from providing inducements to colleges 
and financial aid administrators that create conflicts of interest. It 
also ensures that students

[[Page S9804]]

and their families have only the facts and can feel confident that they 
are receiving the best deal on their college loan.
  I am also pleased that this bill includes key provisions from 
legislation I introduced earlier this year, the Campus Law Enforcement 
Emergency Response Act. Shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings, I 
introduced legislation to ensure that all colleges and universities 
develop emergency response procedures and campus notification systems, 
and test them at least annually.
  The Higher Education Amendments Act before us today includes key 
elements of that bill. For example, the bill requires colleges and 
universities to develop procedures for responding to large-scale 
emergencies on campus and to test those procedures at least annually. 
This includes procedures for promptly notifying the campus community in 
case of such emergencies, a new competitive grant program to improve 
emergency response, and a new role for the Departments of Education, 
Justice, and Homeland Security to advise colleges and universities on 
model emergency response procedures and best practices. The language 
added to this bill will ensure that our colleges and universities are 
better prepared for emergency situations, and it will better protect 
those who live and work on college campuses from threats to their 
security.
  This bill also simplifies the financial aid process, creates a pilot 
program to allow students to receive a financial aid estimate in their 
junior year of high school so they can make more informed choices when 
selecting which college to apply to.
  The bill makes an important attempt to provide students and parents 
with more information on the cost of higher education. As I mentioned 
earlier, the cost of higher education has gone through the roof. Every 
time I meet with the presidents of colleges and universities from 
Illinois I ask them: What can we do to control the skyrocketing cost of 
higher education? This bill will create a Higher Education Price 
Increase Watch List, which will include a ranking of each institution 
of higher education whose tuition and fees are rising faster than the 
average. It directs the Secretary of Education to develop model price 
calculators to help students and families determine the net price of an 
institution of higher education. Universities will be required to 
publish this information in their application materials so it is easily 
accessible to prospective students. If we want to take a serious look 
at the rising cost of higher education, we have to make more 
information available to students and families about the real cost of 
attending college.
  The Higher Education Amendments Act we are considering on the floor 
today strengthens many of the successful provisions of the Higher 
Education Act. It also addresses some of the new problems and issues 
that have emerged in the area of higher education, including unethical 
practices in the student loan system, threats to the safety of our 
students on campuses, and the rising cost of college.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, we have 20 minutes, and 
I want to give notice to our colleagues there will be two votes. There 
will be the vote on this perfecting amendment, which has been 
introduced by myself and Senator Coburn and others, and then the final 
passage. That will be in approximately, I don't know, 15 or 17 minutes.
  How much time remains?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts has 
7 minutes remaining and the Senator from Wyoming has 10.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will make some concluding comments, and 
I ask the Chair to let me know when there is 1 minute left, if the 
Chair would be so kind.
  The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that we are all created 
equal. Our Constitution demands that we promote the general welfare. 
The words carved above the entrance to the Supreme Court are ``Equal 
Justice Under Law.'' There is nothing more basic to who we are as 
Americans than those immortal words that lie at the foundation of our 
democracy, in that everyone counts, everyone matters, and everyone has 
a role to play in our society.
  From our earliest days as a nation, education has been the mainstay 
of our society and the engine of the American dream. Our Nation's 
Founders knew that an educated citizenry would strengthen our land and 
build up the values and character that make us Americans. They invested 
in education because they looked to the future and saw an even greater 
America over the growing horizon.
  We looked forward when we passed the GI bill, and it allowed service 
men and women coming back from the Second World War to get a college 
education. They became the greatest generation. The GI bill produced 
67,000 doctors, 91,000 scientists, 238,000 teachers, and 450,000 
engineers. It funded the education of three Presidents, three Supreme 
Court Justices, and about a dozen Senators who served in this Chamber.
  That is the kind of vision we have had in America when it comes to 
education, and it is our vision today as we reclaim our destiny and 
invest once again in the next generation.
  In these past few days, we have made a new promise to American 
students and families--a promise to invest more as a nation, to ensure 
that all of our young people--and we mean all--regardless of 
background, get the education they deserve and the training they need 
to succeed in today's global economy.
  We have pledged here in the Senate that it doesn't matter where you 
are from; what matters is where you are going. No American should be 
denied the right to go to college because of money.
  Last week, we showed this commitment again when we made another new 
promise to students, providing them with the largest new investment in 
student aid since the GI bill. We increased the Pell grants. We 
provided relief for student loans by saying your monthly payments will 
never exceed 15 percent of your monthly income. We said: If you become 
a teacher, a firefighter, or enter other public service jobs, your 
loans will be forgiven after 10 years.
  The bill before us brings about other key reforms that will make 
college more affordable to young Americans. Our legislation will take 
steps to ensure that the student loan system is working in the best 
interest of students by pursuing needed ethic reforms in the student 
loan industry. It will simplify the Federal financial aid application 
and delivery process to ensure that a complex system does not work as a 
barrier to access for low-income students. It demands that colleges do 
their part to keep college costs down. If we do our part to provide 
needed student aid, they must do their part to keep their tuition and 
fees reasonable.

  It will reform and improve our teacher preparation system. Teachers 
are the backbone of our K-12 education system and this bill will 
promote high-quality teacher preparation programs and help recruit and 
retain high-quality teachers in high-need schools.
  I thank all my colleagues, and in particular all the colleagues on 
the committee for the work they put in on this legislation. I 
especially thank Mike Enzi, our ranking member, for all his leadership 
on this bipartisan legislation. This has been in the works for over 2 
years--close to 2 years. I thank all the staff who have worked so hard 
over the past months to make this happen.
  I want to personally mention those who have worked so hard on my 
staff. I would like to thank Michael Myers, who does a great job on all 
of the undertakings of our committee, and I am enormously grateful for 
his leadership and his friendship. I would like to thank Carmel Martin 
and J.D. LaRock, Missy Rohrbach, Nick Bath, Erin Renner, Emma Vadehra, 
David Johns, Raquel Alvarenga, Liz Maher, Jennifer Fay, Ches Garrison, 
Dave Ryan, Jay McCarthy, Lily Clark, Patrick Flaherty, and Brendan 
Gants.
  As we mentioned, this has been a bipartisan effort, and I would also 
like to thank Senator Enzi's wonderful staff. Senator Enzi pointed out 
that they have worked very well and closely together, as we have seen 
over the course of the year. This is a major undertaking, and to be 
able to get this kind of joint effort on it has been a great tribute to 
all of those who have worked so hard. These staff members make such a 
difference to Senator Enzi, and

[[Page S9805]]

they have to me: Katherine McGuire, Ilyse Schuman, Greg Dean, Beth 
Buehlmann, Ann Clough, Adam Briddell, Lindsay Hunsicker, and Kelly 
Hastings.
  I would also like to thank MaryEllen McGuire, Sean Maher and Roger 
Hollingsworth of Senator Dodd's staff; Rob Barron of Senator Harkin's 
staff; Robin Juliano of Senator Mikulski's staff; Michael Yudin of 
Senator Bingaman's staff; Kathryn Young of Senator Murray's staff; Seth 
Gerson of Senator Reed's staff; Mildred Otero of Senator Clinton's 
staff; Steve Robinson of Senator Obama's staff; Huck Gutman of Senator 
Sanders' staff; Will Jawando of Senator Brown's staff.
  I would like to thank especially Senator Conrad and his terrific 
staff who have worked with us on these bills: Mary Naylor, Joan Huffer, 
Robin Hiestand, and Lisa Konwinski.
  I would also like to thank David Cleary of Senator Alexander's staff; 
Allison Dembeck of Senator Gregg's staff; Celia Sims of Senator Burr's 
staff; Glee Smith of Senator Isakson's staff; Karen McCarthy of Senator 
Murkowski's staff; Juliann Andreen of Senator Hatch's staff; Suzanne 
Singleterry of Senator Allard's staff; Alison Anway of Senator Roberts' 
staff; and Matt Blackburn of Senator Coburn's staff, all of whom put in 
many hours making both of these bills a reality.
  I would also like to thank the Parliamentarian, Alan Frumin, and 
Assistant Parliamentarians Elizabeth MacDonough, Peter Robinson, and 
Leigh Hildebrand for their assistance throughout the process. I would 
like to thank Paul Cullinan at the Congressional Budget Office, and his 
extremely knowledgeable and capable team--Deborah Kalcevic and Justin 
Humphrey--for working late nights and through the weekends to model and 
estimate the budgetary effects of the complex provisions in this bill. 
I thank them for their tireless dedication and commitment to 
understanding the intricacies of the law. I would also like to thank 
Mark Koster, Kristin Romero, and Amy Gaynor in the Senate Legislative 
Counsel's office, who also worked many long hours to assist the 
committee in drafting the language and working out the technical issues 
in the bill. Finally I would like to thank the members of the education 
team at the Congressional Research Service--Adam Stoll, Charmaine 
Mercer, Jeff Kuenzi, and Dave Smole whose expertise was invaluable 
throughout this process.
  This legislation received unanimous bipartisan support in the 
committee, and I hope it will see the same broad support today. We know 
education is the real key to opportunity. This legislation reflects 
that knowledge. It is a commitment I believe we must make to ensure 
educational opportunity to each and every young person in this country.
  I urge the Senate to approve this important legislation. Our students 
deserve nothing less.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The senior Senator from Wyoming is 
recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, it is always exciting when we get down to 
the end of a bill, particularly a bill where there has been good 
bipartisan participation and achievement, and this is one of those. 
This reauthorization bill we have been considering was reported out of 
the HELP Committee by a vote of 20 to nothing. It is the result of 3 
years of bipartisan negotiations, and we can point to ideas in the bill 
in which both the Republican and Democratic members of the committee 
and people outside the committee have participated, proposed, and have 
wound up in the bill. In the end, it is a product with strong 
bipartisan support.
  I would mention it is not going to be a perfect bill. I would be 
willing to say that about any bill we pass out of here, it is always a 
work in progress until it finally gets signed by the President. Quite 
often when they get signed by the President, they are not perfect bills 
either, but they are a perfect compromise when they get signed. That 
means both sides give a little bit, and we concentrate on those areas 
where there can be agreement. There are a lot of things both sides 
would like to have in this bill, but they are divisive rather than 
inclusive, and we have left out those divisive things, for the most 
part.
  In conference committee, we will take care of some of the other 
things that are slightly divisive to make them more inclusive so the 
final bill will help as many students as possible. When I say 
``students,'' I am not just talking about college students. One of the 
things I hear back in Wyoming is: What about the kids who want to go to 
tech school? We include that sort of thing in here too. That is a 
program where they can get a certification that is recognized 
throughout the United States.
  My wife was at the National Apprenticeship conference. It was the 
75th anniversary of certification for apprenticeships and the theme 
song there was done by a friend of mine from Alaska who is the 
balladeer of Alaska. I am sure many of you have heard this song. It is: 
``I am an Educated Man.'' It talks about a person who has a little bit 
of trouble with the book-learning stuff, but if you give him a problem 
he can solve with his hands, he is an educated man. There are still a 
lot of jobs out there--and there always will be a lot of jobs out 
there--for which you have to have hands-on work. We cannot exclude 
those people from the education system. They are absolutely essential 
to our lives. This bill does some things for the ones who want to go to 
tech school too.
  Senator Warner, in a speech the other day mentioned, when he first 
went into the military, about a third of the people whom he went 
through basic training with couldn't read or write. When they were 
assigned to a ship, there were jobs on those ships those people could 
do without being able to read or write. Today, the battleships are 
bigger and they are much more technical. It is a whole different level 
of education that has to be done for the people who run those 
battleships and do the jobs that are needed on the battleships.
  That is what has happened with jobs throughout this country. Jobs 
change. It is very important that people who are in high school now 
realize that when they enter the job market, they are probably going to 
have 14 different careers--not 14 different jobs, not 14 different 
employers--14 different careers. Of those 14, 10 have not even been 
invented yet.
  It is very important to get a good education so people throughout 
their lives can transition to the new jobs that are happening--because 
that will be happening. Those who do not get the knowledge and the 
capability to make the transfer to new careers will be left behind. We 
do not want that to happen.
  This committee is in charge of education from birth to death. We have 
Head Start--we have already passed that through the Senate and it is in 
conference now. That takes care of preschool. Of course, we have 64 
other programs besides that that deal with preschool, and we probably 
need to do something about the proliferation of programs that have a 
lot of overlap in that area, but we have the Head Start one already 
going through the process.
  The next bill we have been told we will work on in the committee is 
No Child Left Behind. That takes care of kindergarten through 12th 
grade. There has been a commission that has been formed that has 
presented us with a lot of ideas about what needs to be done. It is a 
bipartisan commission. I am sure a lot of that will be incorporated in 
the bill. There has been good bipartisan work in the committee on the 
ideas that have to be incorporated, some of the tweaks that have to be 
in No Child Left Behind to make it work even better. There is quite a 
bit of agreement. It has worked, but it can work better. We will be 
working on that next.
  Of course, this is the Higher Education Act. We did it in two pieces. 
I will have some more comments about that in a moment.
  But there is another piece missing, and I am hoping our committee 
will work on that soon, and that is the Workforce Investment Act. We 
passed that through the Senate twice, unanimously, in each of the 
previous two Congresses, but it has never been conferenced. We need to 
get that done; we could train 900,000 people a year to do higher 
skilled jobs. We don't need to keep exporting those jobs because we 
lack people with the skills. We need to train people with the skills. 
That is a bill that will do it. I think we have a good basis to work 
from on that and, again, a way to find bipartisan agreement. Some of 
the fear in the past is

[[Page S9806]]

what might happen in conference. The ones who had the fear of what 
might happen in conference will now be in charge of the conference, so 
that is not an excuse. We have to get that one done.
  Education in America is both a right and privilege, and we have to 
get people to recognize the value of that privilege as we make sure all 
of them can have the education we promised--and we have made some very 
significant promises in those areas and have fulfilled many of them. 
This bill we are working on today is one of those. I am pleased we have 
been able to have both the reconciliation bill and the reauthorization 
bill considered within 5 days of one another.
  By considering the entirety of the Higher Education Act, we are 
ensuring continued quality in the Federal student loan programs, while 
providing disclosure of information that students and their families 
need to make informed financial decisions. Those informed financial 
decisions--or uninformed ones--will have a significant impact on their 
future.
  This is the second time in as many Congresses we have been on the 
brink of systemic reform of the Federal higher education programs. 
However, this time we will cross the brink and make these programs more 
efficient, as well as more effective. We will be allowed to meet the 
challenge of making higher education more accessible, more affordable, 
and particularly more accountable.
  The American system of higher education is renowned throughout the 
world. American students will now be provided with the tools and 
assistance contained in both of these bills to complete their higher 
education and training and to acquire the necessary knowledge and 
skills to be successful in the 21st century economy.
  I supported reporting both bills out of committee. I did so with the 
expectation that they would be considered together as a whole by the 
Senate. I am very pleased that the Senate Democratic leadership worked 
with me and my colleagues to provide this opportunity to have an open 
and full debate on all aspects of the Higher Education Act. I look 
forward to moving both these bills together and ensuring a 
comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. There is no 
reason they cannot be combined at this point in time.
  As debate on this legislation comes to a close, it is necessary to 
thank those who have worked long and hard on this bill. First and 
foremost, I would like to thank Chairman Kennedy. I would like to thank 
him for his commitment to keeping this process bipartisan and working 
with me and my Republican colleagues on the HELP Committee throughout 
this entire process, for maintaining an open position on ideas, and 
following through with those with focus so we could actually wind up 
with a bill.
  And I thank him for his approach to the committee process so we use 
the markup to see what the intensity is and the number of improvements 
that are being suggested and not make it a straight up-or-down approach 
so we can modify them so they fit and we get the kind of bipartisanship 
that we have at this point in time. That is a tremendous task. I think 
our committee must handle about 40 percent of the things that come 
before the Senate, so it is a wide-ranging task and he does a marvelous 
job with it and he has been very inclusive and I thank him and 
congratulate him for that.
  I thank those on my staff who have worked tirelessly--when I say 
``tirelessly,'' I mean both sides have worked through evenings, 
weekends, and reached compromises--and later I will mention more 
specifically some of those people.
  I think I have used my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time of the Senator has 
expired. The Senator from Massachusetts has 1 minute 10 seconds 
remaining.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I see the Senator from Tennessee--if he would like to 
make use of my last minute to talk about education. He is a former 
Secretary of Education. He has been very much involved in education 
policy. If he would like to say a word to conclude our discussion?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The senior Senator from Tennessee 
is recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.
  The American people should be grateful to Senator Kennedy and the 
committee and I believe this Senate, for increasing the opportunity for 
Americans of all ages to continue their education and, second, for 
continuing what arguably is our strongest asset in competition 
worldwide, our system of higher education.
  I can recall the former President of Brazil saying to a number of us 
before he went back to Brazil: What we remember about the United 
States, he said, is the American University. There is nothing like it 
anywhere in the world and we have a responsibility to continue to keep 
it excellent and provide access to it.
  I thank the chairman for offering me this time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. All time has expired. The Senator 
from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am going to ask for the yeas and nays 
on my amendment.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator withhold?
  Mr. KENNEDY. I withhold.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, George Mitchell told me this. Of course, I 
didn't believe him, but I do now. One of my most difficult jobs is 
trying to determine when votes take place and what the schedule is.
  I have not had a chance to speak to my friend, the comanager of this 
bill. But I believe it would be in the best interests of the body--I 
have conferred with the staff of Senator McConnell--that we have these 
votes--we have two votes is my understanding. All debate has been 
completed; is that right?
  Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is correct. We have one procedural matter we 
have to address, but then we will have the two votes.
  Mr. REID. The procedural matter would not take any time?
  Mr. KENNEDY. No time.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent--and I am doing this 
because I want everyone to be happy, and we don't need unanimous 
consent, but I am going to ask unanimous consent that the first vote 
occur at 12:25; then the second one occur--the second vote will be a 
10-minute vote--and that there be no speeches in between the votes, we 
just vote on both of them, one right after the other.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, doesn't that 
run us into the policy meetings? We have some really important things 
to cover.
  Mr. REID. I have spoken to Mr. Schiappa. He understands that. He was 
going to speak to either Senator Hutchison or Senator McConnell. We 
have not heard anything back from them. We will try it at 12:20 with 
the same unanimous consent request I previously mentioned, except 5 
minutes earlier.
  I ask unanimous consent that the first vote will be at 12:20 and the 
second vote on final passage be immediately after the first vote, with 
no speeches in between.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: In lieu of 
voting now, there will be no votes until 12:20?
  Mr. REID. What would happen, I have asked Senator Cochran and Senator 
Byrd to give their opening statements on homeland security.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I would like about 2 minutes to finish up 
the thank-yous on this bill.
  Mr. REID. I say to my friend, we have lots of time for thank-yous 
now. Senator Cochran and Senator Byrd need to work their way up here.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: I ask for the yeas 
and nays both on my amendment and on final passage. I ask that it be in 
order now. I ask also unanimous consent that the yeas and nays on the 
Coburn amendment be vitiated.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered. The yeas and nays are vitiated on the Coburn amendment.
  Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient 
second.
  Mr. KENNEDY. So the first amendment vote will be at 12:20. It will be 
on the Kennedy amendment. Is that correct?

[[Page S9807]]

  And following that, the vote will be on final passage.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The first amendment will be the 
Kennedy amendment at 12:20, followed immediately by final passage.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ran out of time before I could thank 
members of my staff and others' staff who have participated in this 
bipartisan effort to get the Higher Education Act reauthorized. I would 
like to do that at this time because this bill is proof that a 
bipartisan effort can get a bill done.
  In particular, I would like to thank Katherine McGuire, who is my 
committee staff director. She does an excellent job of keeping the 
trains running on time on a multitude of issues all at once. Her first 
higher education reauthorization was back in the early 1990s. She also 
provides an attitude and a focus that says: Let's get things done. And 
she is able to work with the other side, and has proven that she is 
trustworthy and knowledgeable on the issues. That goes a long way in 
making sure there can be a bipartisan effort, that willingness to work 
within common parameters and principles which helps us to get all of 
those things done.
  I especially wish to thank Beth Buehlmann, who is my education policy 
director. Beth has devoted her career to improving educational 
opportunities for all Americans. From her work as a math teacher to her 
devotion to workforce training, Beth really knows what she is doing and 
brings extraordinary energy to the issue every day. Her knowledge and 
leadership have shaped education policy in our country over the last 30 
years. She provides the same kind of focus and direction on education 
issues that Katherine does for the entire committee.
  I also wish to thank the rest of the education team who greatly 
contributed to the bill: Ann Clough, Adam Briddell, Lindsay Hunsicker, 
and Kelly Hastings. They have worked diligently and, as I have 
mentioned, through weekends and evenings.
  I also wish to thank Ilyse Schuman and her fantastic knowledge of 
working a bill through the Senate floor. She is one of the few lawyers 
I have on my staff. She gives that group of people a good name with 
her, again, work ethic, knowledge of the law, and wordsmithing.
  I wish to thank Amy Shank, who is my budget expert, and has been 
doing that for several years. She knows the rules and the requirements 
and the capabilities of the budget process and keeps us all on our toes 
and ensures our work meets the budget requirements.
  Finally, Greg Dean, who did a great job of organizing the amendment 
process. He is so attentive and he scurried to make sure that every 
little detail is plugged and that we are all up to speed on every one 
of those little details.
  I would also like to thank members of Senator Kennedy's staff for 
their hard work: Michael Myers does a great job of coordinating with us 
and providing leadership on the issues, since they are in the 
leadership now. Senator Kennedy's staff director does that kind of work 
and is very cooperative with our side and sensitive to the priorities 
we bring up.
  I thank Carmel Martin, J.D. LaRock, Missy Rohrbach, Emma Vadehra, and 
Erin Renner for their expertise on the issues. You should see the 
talent of these people and their knowledge of education, which you do 
not get to see, but you get to see the result of their work as we 
present it. Sometimes we do not do justice to all of the effort that 
they have put in.
  Finally, I would like to thank all of the members of the HELP 
Committee and their staffs for their hard work throughout the process. 
This is one of the most demanding committees. We cover, as I mentioned, 
40 percent of the issues that come before the Senate. That requires a 
lot of time, a lot of knowledge, and such a wide variety of issues that 
I think the members get a college education about every month, a 
college course of education about every month as we cover these 
different issues. I appreciate their help especially working on this 
college education bill.
  It has been an interesting road and about 3 years' worth of work and 
all of it on a bipartisan basis. I thank all of those who have 
participated.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the Senator from Wyoming is typically 
thoughtful and gracious about his staff and mine as well.
  As I said, I will include in the Record the wonderful work of all of 
the other staff.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the second 
vote, the Senate then recess for the party conferences.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be a cosponsor on 
the Kennedy-Coburn amendment.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand there will not be final 
action on any of this legislation except for the final two votes. Am I 
correct on that?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah is 
recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                     BRIGHAM YOUNG AND THE PIONEERS

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, today is July 24, which probably means 
not very much to most of the people in this Chamber, but in my home 
State, July 24 is close to the biggest day of the year. July 24 is the 
day that Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers came down 
the canyon outside of Salt Lake Valley and decided that was the place 
where they would stop. They had been coming across the Plains for 
months looking for a place to settle, and as Brigham Young rose up out 
of his wagon at the mouth of the canyon and looked down over the 
valley, he stared for a few moments and then turned to his associates 
and said: It is enough. This is the right place. They decided that was 
where they would settle. This date, therefore, became enshrined as the 
founding date of the State of Utah, and it has been celebrated with a 
parade ever since.
  I remember as a young child being taken by my parents to sit in the 
upper window of a department store overlooking Main Street in Salt Lake 
City and watching as the floats and the cars went down the street.
  I remember, as a little boy, that there was always one float that had 
a big banner on it that said ``Pioneers;'' that is, these are people 
who had actually come across the Plains before the railroad, either 
walking or in covered wagons--or primarily a combination of both--and 
had arrived in the valley. They were still alive when I was a little 
boy to watch them. One of them was my grandfather, who had been born in 
Birmingham, England, and been carried as a 2- and 3-year-old across the 
Plains by his father and mother and landed in Salt Lake City in the 
1860s prior to the coming of the railroad.
  I watched every parade, and that group of pioneers kept getting 
smaller and smaller each year. Finally, there was a parade where there 
were no pioneers. There was no one who had been part of that trek. But 
the parade lives on.
  Senator Hatch and I were both scheduled to be in it today, as I have 
been in virtually every July 24 parade since I have been elected. But 
votes here on the floor of the Senate have made it impossible for us to 
do that and at the same time discharge our duties. So I simply wish to 
take note here on July 24 of the importance of that event and make this 
comment about it that I think may have some relevance to what we are 
doing today.
  Those people came to Utah because they had no other choice. They came 
to Utah because they were--the first group of them--finally driven out 
of every other place in the United States where they had tried to 
settle. They had created a settlement in Ohio, and they were driven 
out. They had created a settlement in Missouri, and they were driven 
out. They had created a settlement in Illinois, and they were driven 
out. And there were many in their group who decided: We have had 
enough.

[[Page S9808]]

  They decided to stay in the Midwest, give up their religion, give up 
their commitment to the cause that had held them together, and settle 
down in the hopes they would have peace with their neighbors. But that 
hardy group that decided they were not going to give up, that they were 
going to move someplace where everyone would leave them alone, 
deliberately chose Salt Lake Valley because nothing had ever been 
raised there before. It was part of the great American desert. John C. 
Freemont, the great frontiersman, offered $1,000 for the first bushel 
of corn that could be raised in Salt Lake Valley. They faced enormous 
adversity to do what they did, to demonstrate their commitment to their 
religion and their convictions.
  After 9/11, President Bush spoke to us in the National Cathedral, and 
he talked about adversity. Quoting an unknown source, he said: 
Adversity introduces us to ourselves. As the descendant of some of 
those pioneers, that is a lesson worth reminding ourselves of at least 
once a year. Adversity introduces us to ourselves. Those people, as 
they went through that adversity, discovered who they were and 
determined that they would not linger on the past and their adversity 
but they would be confident about their future. They built there in 
that forsaken valley not only trees and crops and houses but the 
foundation of a movement that now moves around the world.
  I am grateful to them for what they did. I am grateful to them for 
the legacy of reminding us that the future is more important than the 
past, that our opportunities are more important than our grievances, 
and that when adversity has told us who we are, we should, in the words 
of a hymn they sang as they moved across the plains: Gird up our loins, 
fresh courage take, and move forward in the conviction that our God 
will never us forsake.
  Today, on July 24, I share that with my fellow Senators in the belief 
that it is still good advice for our future.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho is 
recognized.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I join the Senator from Utah in his 
comments. Many of the citizens of my State are members of the LDS 
Church and obviously strong leaders who have done exactly in Idaho what 
he said his forebears did in Utah. They made the deserts bloom, and 
they built a culture and a religious base that serves my State so very 
well today.


                           Western Wildfires

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about 
something that is going on in the West as we speak, that is a tragedy 
in reality and something that certainly we all ought to be aware of. As 
I got on the plane Friday morning in Minneapolis in my commute to 
Idaho, a group of young men and women got on my plane: firefighters of 
the State of Missouri. They were flying to Idaho to help Idahoans 
extinguish the wildfires burning there. I thank them and all of the 
brave firefighters who have been battling these immense wildfires in a 
season that is dramatic as we speak.
  I got on the plane yesterday morning in Boise to return to 
Washington. Another group of young men and women, bedraggled, tired, 
and smelling of smoke, got on the plane to fly back to Minneapolis. 
That was another group of firefighters who were flown in from the 
Eastern United States to help out in Idaho and the Great Basin West. 
They were simply tired and returning home.
  We are, in Idaho and in the West, at this moment experiencing one of 
the most dramatic wildfire seasons in our history. I say that because 
the season in reality has just started. From a historic perspective, it 
is late July, August, and September that the fire season we think of on 
our public lands, both forested and grasslands, usually begins.
  Last year, we went through the worst fire season in history based on 
total acreage burned. As I speak, we are now ahead of last year and 
burning even greater. Headlines in the local largest daily in Idaho 
yesterday said: more fires burning in Idaho than any other State in the 
Nation, well over 600,000 acres burned and many burning.
  Yesterday morning, five counties in the State of Idaho were declared 
a state of emergency due to those wildfires burning. Currently, the 
largest fire burning in the United States is the Murphy complex, 
estimated to be 570,000 acres; 7,500 people were evacuated from the 
area. Evacuations were being ordered across the State due to the number 
of fires and the extreme of the fire behavior: 100-degree temperatures 
in an area where that extraordinary heat has reduced the dew point to 
such a situation that anything that grows becomes kindling for a 
wildfire.
  Of the 72 large fires in the United States, half of those burning 
today are in the State of Nevada and in my State of Idaho. The weather 
outlook has gone from bad to horrible, as these temperatures continue 
and as the Great Basin of the United States progressively dries out. 
More hot and dry weather is expected along with dry lightning, fires, 
and wind storms. As these lightning storms sweep through, literally 
thousands of strikes occur, and hundreds of fires can be set in one 
evening across the public lands of the West.
  As I mentioned, the 2006 fire season broke several records, including 
acreage. By the end of this week, we will have surpassed that increase 
as it relates to time and place of the fire season. We have obviously 
not yet burned the 10 million acres of last year, but by measurement 
this fire season is now worse.
  Almost 100 years ago, the Forest Service started something. They 
started with a commitment and a philosophy to full fire suppression. 
Now I take you to a little bit of history as to what may be producing 
the very dramatic fire season we experienced last year and the year 
before, and we are now experiencing today. During that time, the Forest 
Service's aim was to extinguish every fire, man-made or lightning 
caused. With the exception of the last 15 years, the timber industry, 
on our public lands, enjoyed booming success during the same period. So 
while Mother Nature was not allowed to burn the forest, man was allowed 
to come in over the last 100 years and thin and clean. We called it 
logging. That produced the timber for the home and building industries. 
As a result, it is arguable that wildfires were kept somewhat under 
control. Not only did we put the fires out, but we were taking the 
fuels off the land.

  In the 1990s, during the Clinton years, as a result of the impact of 
a variety of public policies, from the Endangered Species Act to the 
New Forest Management Act to the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, 
and a lot of other combinations, we began to progressively reduce the 
overall cut of timber on public lands. In the 8 years of Bill Clinton, 
we reduced the allowable cut.
  Here are the figures on this chart. It is patterned by revenue flow. 
We reduced the allowable cut of timber on our public lands by 80 
percent--not 8 percent, by well over 80 percent. So if you follow the 
green line on this chart, you follow the revenue flow that was coming 
from our public lands through the U.S. Forest Service. Of course, it 
was during that time that the Forest Service had money. As a result, 
they had the money to fight the fires. Then you see the decline on the 
chart.
  As we discontinued timber harvests on our public lands, the revenue 
no longer was produced. But something else was happening. We were 
leaving on our public lands dramatic increases in timber and brush and, 
in today's situation, fuel for the fires.
  So in part, the West is burning today because of public policy, 
because of attitude, not because of Mother Nature. Mother Nature has 
ebbed and flowed over time. But when Mother Nature is taken out of 
balance by man's practices and policies, dramatic results can occur. As 
the revenues declined and they paralleled human activity on the public 
lands, dramatic increases in fire resulted.
  What do we do about it? For the last several years I have stood on 
the Senate floor and participated in the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee and chaired the Forestry Subcommittee for many of these years 
and have said openly and publicly: We, by our public policy, have 
destroyed the U.S. Forest Service. We bankrupted it. It no longer has 
any money. In so doing, we keep putting greater burden on it, and we 
won't fund it.
  We are not in the habit of funding it because timber sales 
historically funded the U.S. Forest Service. It not only funded all of 
their practices, both logging and trail clearing and wildlife

[[Page S9809]]

management and habitat control, it did something else: It put money 
into the U.S. Treasury. We created a unique balance over the last 100 
years because you can't predict a fire season. You have the revenue 
flow coming in. So we simply borrowed the money to fight fires from the 
different accounts of the U.S. Forest Service and at the end of the 
year, when the fire season was over and all the bills were paid, we 
simply replenished all of the accounts of the U.S. Forest Service that 
it used to manage the different components of the Forest Service 
itself.
  It no longer happens today. We are still borrowing money from 
accounts to fight fires, but there is no money in the accounts. At the 
end of the year, because of tight budgets, we don't replenish the money 
from the general fund of the U.S. Government. There is no money there. 
Timber receipts used to fund the money, used to create the balance, 
used to do a lot of things. They no longer exist, in large part because 
of public policy.
  What is happening in Idaho and across the West at this moment, when 
you see the valleys full of smoke and the mountains full of smoke and 
the skies with dark bands of carbon-filled air across the West, our 
natural resources are literally going up in smoke. What is burning out 
there are trees. It is also watersheds and water quality and wildlife 
habitat. All of that is disappearing in a ball of fire, and it should 
not be that way.
  What are the solutions? Throwing more money at fire suppression? 
Well, we have been doing that by ever increasing amounts every year for 
the last 5 or 6 years, to the tune of billions of dollars annually.
  I am the ranking member of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. 
I put in another half billion dollars to fight fires, and it will 
quickly go up in smoke at the rate the fires are burning in the West.
  What is the solution? More active management? Yes. More active 
management on our public lands will help the fire situation because 
active management--if you look at the Healthy Forests Act we passed 
several years ago--means you are in there thinning, you are in there 
cleaning the underbrush, you are doing the kind of things that fire 
would have done naturally 100 years ago. But we changed the 
circumstance, and we changed the environment.
  Fire is unique in that it can be beneficial if it is handled 
appropriately. If you have 100 trees per acre, and fire is allowed to 
amble through and burn out all of the underbrush, it does not kill the 
tree, in many instances. But if you have 400 trees per acre of the kind 
we have allowed to happen over the last good number of decades, then it 
burns everything because the fire is so intense by the volume of fuel 
on the forest floor. That is a circumstance the West is experiencing, 
as we speak.
  Fire is a unique natural disaster because humankind has found a way 
to fight it. It can change the situation that breeds fire. How do you 
fight a tornado? Well, you cannot. Yet it is called a natural disaster. 
How do you fight a hurricane? Well, you cannot. You can predict them, 
and you get out of their way, because it is a natural disaster. How do 
you fight a wildfire? Give me a shovel, give me the tools, give me a 
better environment--a managed environment, if you will--and I can fight 
a wildfire. Do not allow Federal judges to be land managers. Allow 
foresters to be land managers in the right context of public policy and 
you can fight a wildfire. Give me the tools necessary in the local 
communities to do so, and you can fight a wildfire. Allow me to use a 
chain saw selectively in the forest to thin them and clean them, and 
you can fight a wildfire. But, all in the name of the environment, we 
have decided to do none of these. We have decided to simply preserve 
and allow it to be natural.
  Let me conclude with these thoughts. The fires that are burning in 
the West today are not natural. They are hotter, they are more intense, 
they are more destructive than any forest fires we have seen in our 
forests literally within a century. The reason is quite simple. The 100 
trees per acre I talked about that Lewis and Clark might have ambled 
through 200 years ago are the same acres in which there are now 400 
trees. Because of the heat and the drought, they are dead or dying, and 
they have created a fuel load on our forest floor that is 
unprecedented. Yet, we, by public policy, have tied the hands of our 
land managers. As a result, literally millions of acres are now burning 
annually. For what reason? I believe it is because we, as a manager of 
public and natural resources, have failed.
  There are reasonable ways to do so. There is an alternative besides 
simply locking it up and letting it burn. Yes, the skies of Idaho and 
the Great Basin West are full of smoke at this moment. That smoke is 
our natural resources going up in smoke, literally.
  If we are worried about climate change, and we are worried about the 
carbon we are putting into the atmosphere, the fires on the public 
lands of this Nation this year will put more carbon in the atmosphere 
than any 1 year of automobile driving. Yet somehow there are those who 
are willing to ignore it only in the reality that it is nature and 
uncontrollable. I would argue that is not true because 30 years ago we 
did not have these kinds of fires, and 20 years ago we did not have 
them, even though we had peaks of drought and dryness and heat.
  Our professionals told us some time ago if we did not become, once 
again, active managers of our public land resource it would go up in 
smoke--and it is.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bayh). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    Homeland Security Appropriations

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this afternoon, the Senate will proceed to 
the Homeland Security bill. I speak in advance of that happening.
  In every State of the Union Address since the terrorist attacks on 9/
11, the President has raised the specter of another attack. This past 
January, the President said--hear me, the President said:

       Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the 
     shoreless ambitions of this enemy . . . I wish I could report 
     to you that the dangers had ended. They have not. It remains 
     the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper 
     tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement and military 
     action to do our duty . . . to protect the American people.

  Let me say that again. The President said:

       Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the 
     shoreless ambitions of this enemy . . . I wish I could report 
     to you that the dangers had ended. They have not. It remains 
     the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper 
     tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement and military 
     action to do our duty--

  To do our duty--

     to protect the American people.

  And yet despite the President's warnings and the President's 
promises, the President's budget failed to commit significant resources 
to address these dangers. Too often the Department of Homeland Security 
settles for security that looks good on paper but leaves serious gaps 
in the defense of our homeland. There is too much rhetoric on homeland 
security and too little action; too much wind--too much wind--and not 
enough wisdom.
  Despite the August 2006 arrests in Britain of terrorists determined 
to blow passenger aircraft out of the sky over the Atlantic, we still 
don't have proven technology to detect liquid explosives.
  I wish to say that again. Hear me now; hear me. Despite the August 
2006 arrests in Britain of terrorists determined to blow passenger 
aircraft out of the sky over the Atlantic, we still don't have proven 
technology to detect liquid explosives.
  On an average day, 7,500 tons of cargo is placed in the holds of 
passenger aircraft at our Nation's airports, little of which is 
screened for explosives and virtually none is screened for radiation. 
Our seaports remain vulnerable. Our police, firefighters, emergency 
medical teams, and emergency managers remain understaffed and 
underprepared to handle the challenges of the times.
  The White House--hear me down there--the White House talks a good

[[Page S9810]]

game, but talk is cheap, cheap, cheap. But security is not cheap. The 
White House asserted that its budget proposes an 8-percent increase for 
the Department of Homeland Security. However, after sifting through the 
gimmicks, we found that it is a 1.7-percent increase above current 
funding. That is barely enough to cover inflation for existing 
programs. More paper security; more paper security. More failed 
promises; more failed promises. We have a responsibility. We have a 
responsibility; yes, we have a responsibility to the people of this 
country to do better, and this legislation meets that responsibility.
  For border security, the bill provides the funds to hire 3,000 new 
Border Patrol agents. The bill also includes $1 billion for border 
fencing, infrastructure, and technology. Our bill adds funds for 4,000 
new detention beds, 3,050 more detention beds than are requested by the 
President. Get that? We commit the funds that are essential for a 
coordinated, comprehensive border security effort.
  Real security cannot be done on the cheap. Hear me. Real security 
cannot be done on the cheap.
  For aviation security, the bill invests funds that will help save 
lives, and it may be your life, it may be your life, it may be your 
life, maybe someone's life whom you know, it may be some child's life, 
but it cannot be done on the cheap.
  Despite a documented need for $3.6 billion to purchase and install 
explosives detection systems, the President--get this--the President, 
the President of the United States, proposes to cut, the explosives 
detection program by 17 percent. The bill provides $89.4 million above 
the President's request to purchase and install explosives detection 
equipment at airports. That is for you, the people of this country, to 
install this equipment at airports for your security.
  We take on the challenge of screening cargo before it is loaded onto 
aircraft, which you, the people of this country--the passengers--will 
board.
  The bill includes $66 million, $10 million above the request--$10 
million above the President's request--to deploy 70 additional canine 
teams--God bless them, those good, great dogs--to deploy 70 additional 
canine teams, and more screening technology at airports nationwide, at 
airports where the people of this country will board nationwide.
  Funds are also provided to establish 20 radiation screening teams at 
key U.S. international airports to inspect aircraft and cargo. You, the 
people out there, will be boarding these aircraft. Let me say it again. 
Funds are also provided to establish 20 radiation screening teams at 
key U.S. international airports to inspect aircraft, which you will 
board, and cargo, which will be boarded by you, the people. All of this 
money is well spent. It will protect human lives and cargo and 
aircraft.
  In this legislation, we also speed up the work on disaster 
preparation. Two years ago--how soon we forget--just 2 years ago, 
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated our dismal failure in dealing with a 
major disaster. Hurricane Rita showed that we do not know how to 
organize an effective mass evacuation. I want to say that again. 
Hurricane Rita showed that we do not know how to organize an effective 
mass evacuation. Now, we better get on it. We better get with it. I am 
going to say it once again: Hurricane Rita showed that we--that is you 
and that is me--do not know how to organize an effective mass 
evacuation. That is hard to believe.
  Maybe it isn't so hard.
  The White House After Action Report on the hurricanes concluded, and 
I quote from that report. I am quoting from the White House After 
Action Report, not my report.

       We are not as prepared as we need to be at all levels 
     within this country.

  We are not as prepared as we need to be at all levels within the 
country. What an understatement. What an understatement. Yet the 
President's budget proposes a $1.2 billion cut--a cut--in vital 
homeland security grant programs, including funds for disaster 
preparations and first responder training. Where, oh where, is the 
sense in that?
  According to the Department of Homeland Security's own estimates, 
two-thirds of the States and urban areas do not have adequate plans to 
respond to a catastrophic event. This legislation rejects the proposed 
budget cuts and puts us on the right track--planning and training for a 
catastrophic event.
  The bill that is before the Senate increases first responder funding 
by $644 million. The President signed the SAFE Port Act last year with 
great fanfare. Yet 9 months later, his budget--the President's budget--
includes no additional funds for the new security requirements 
contained in the law that the President signed. This bill makes good on 
the promises of the SAFE Port Act, hiring specialists to help inspect 
the 11 million containers that come into the United States every year. 
The bill commits funds directly to our ports to tighten security.
  Let me say that again: The bill commits funds directly to our ports 
to tighten security--security for you, the people out there--at the 
ports. Port security grants are increased by $190 million to the fully 
authorized level of $400 million. We double the frequency of 
unannounced Coast Guard inspections at our port facilities.
  Get that? You better wake up out there. I am going to say it again: 
We double the frequency of unannounced Coast Guard inspections at our 
port facilities, and we fund the installation of radiation detection 
equipment at our ports to guard against nuclear weapons and dirty 
bombs. I will say that again: We fund the installation of radiation 
detection equipment at our ports to guard against nuclear weapons and 
dirty bombs.
  The threat at our ports needs to be addressed now. It is foolish to 
delay any longer. In order to restore the ill-considered cuts proposed 
by the President for equipping and training our first responders, and 
to fund the increases that I have described for border, port, and 
aviation security, the bill exceeds the President's request by $2.25 
billion.
  Incredibly, President Bush has threatened to veto the homeland 
security funding bill. Why? Because of what he, the President, labels 
as excessive spending. Excessive spending. That is what President Bush 
said. Let me read that again: President Bush has threatened to veto the 
homeland security funding bill--that is for you, the people out there 
in the hills and valleys of this great land. Why? He has threatened to 
veto the homeland security funding bill because of what he labels as 
excessive spending.
  The $2.25 billion increase in this bill is about what we spend in 1 
week--1 week--in Iraq. Let me say that again. Now listen to me. Hear me 
now. Incredibly, President Bush has threatened to veto the homeland 
security funding bill because of what he labels as excessive spending. 
Yet the $2.25 billion increase in this bill is about what we spend in 1 
week in Iraq.
  Just 2 weeks ago, the Secretary of Homeland Security was quoted as 
saying that it was his gut feeling that the United States faces an 
increased threat of attack this summer. Now, that is not Robert Byrd 
making that assertion. Let me say it again. Just 2 weeks ago, the 
Secretary of Homeland Security was quoted as saying--did you hear 
that--he was quoted as saying that it was his gut feeling--that is 
pretty deep--that our country faces an increased threat of attack this 
summer. That is now, isn't it? This is July. This summer.
  On the heels of the Secretary's warnings, the administration, our 
administration, the Bush administration, has released its latest 
National Intelligence Estimate concerning the terrorist threat to the 
U.S. homeland. Where is that? Here, the U.S. homeland. I will quote 
from the report. This is not Robert Byrd talking, this is the report, 
the National Intelligence Estimate, concerning the terrorist threat to 
the U.S. homeland.

       We judge the U.S. Homeland will face a persistent and 
     evolving terrorist threat over the next three years. The main 
     threat comes from Islamic terrorist groups and cells, 
     especially al-Qaida, driven by their undiminished intent to 
     attack the Homeland--

  That is my homeland. That is your homeland.

      and a continued effort by these terrorist groups to adapt 
     and improve their capabilities. . . .[W]e judge that al-Qaida 
     will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

  Where? Not out there, here. Here is everywhere in our homeland.

       As a result, we judge that the United States currently is 
     in a heightened threat

[[Page S9811]]

     environment. . . .We assess that al-Qaida's Homeland plotting 
     is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, 
     economic and infrastructure targets with the goal of 
     producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, 
     significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the U.S. 
     population.

  These are the words written by the best intelligence analysts in our 
Government. Those are the words that should force our Government, both 
in the executive and in the legislative branches, to reevaluate the 
priority that we are giving to funding to stop terrorist attacks 
against this country, our country--my country, your country, our 
country.
  I call on the President--yes, I call on the President of the United 
States--to reconsider his veto threat in light of the concerns raised 
by his own administration.
  The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is critical to the 
safety of our citizens. The potential threats are enormous. The 
Congress must strike a balance that preserves our cherished freedoms 
and provides for enhanced security.
  We need to stop squabbling and pass the Homeland Security bill for 
the President's speedy signature. This is no time to jockey for 
political points or to argue over minor differences. The Appropriations 
Committee, by a vote of 29 to 0, has produced a balanced and 
responsible bill which needs action now.
  I thank Senator Cochran and his able staff for their support in 
producing this legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for just one 
moment?
  Mr. BYRD. I yield.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I am pleased this afternoon to join 
Senator Byrd in presenting the appropriations bill for the Department 
of Homeland Security for the next fiscal year. I might say, having sat 
here and listened to all the comments of the distinguished chairman, 
there is another side to the story on some of the issues that he 
raised, and I assure the Senate that they will have an opportunity to 
hear the other side.
  Mr. BYRD. Yes, Mr. President, I thank my dear friend and colleague. 
The Senate needs to hear the other side; all sides, all sides. I thank 
my colleague, and I yield the floor.


                       Vote on Amendment No. 2381

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question occurs 
on amendment No. 2381, as modified, offered by the Senator from 
Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The 
clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant journal clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Biden), 
the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Dodd), the Senator from South Dakota 
( Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are 
necessarily absent.
  Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. 
Graham), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 93, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 274 Leg.]

                                YEAS--93

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Brown
     Bunning
     Burr
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Tester
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--7

     Biden
     Brownback
     Dodd
     Graham
     Johnson
     McCain
     Obama
  The amendment (No. 2381) as modified, was agreed to.


                             Change of Vote

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, on rollcall vote 273, I voted ``yea.'' 
It was my intention to vote ``nay.'' I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome of the 
vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the question is on agreeing to amendment 
No. 2369, as amended, offered by the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Coburn).
  The amendment (No. 2369), as amended, was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the committee 
amendment in the nature of a substitute, as amended.
  The committee amendment in the nature of a substitute, as amended, 
was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the engrossment and third 
reading of the bill.
  The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read 
the third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill having been read the third time, the 
question is, Shall it pass?
  The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. 
Johnson) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily 
absent.
  Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. 
Graham), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  The result was announced--yeas 95, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 275 Leg.]

                                YEAS--95

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Brown
     Bunning
     Burr
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Tester
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Brownback
     Graham
     Johnson
     McCain
     Obama
  The bill (S. 1642), as amended, was passed, as follows:
  (The bill will be printed in a future edition of the Record.)

                          ____________________