[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 49 (Monday, March 23, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3592-S3603]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL SERVICE REAUTHORIZATION ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 1388, which the 
clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to consideration of the bill (H.R. 1388) 
     to reauthorize and reform the national service laws.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
previously scheduled 6 p.m. cloture vote now occur at 5:45 p.m., and 
that 10 minutes immediately prior to 5:45 p.m. be divided as previously 
ordered, and that all other provisions of the previous order remain in 
effect.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, for the information of Members, a number 
of Senators wanted us to start the vote earlier tonight, and we are 
happy to do that. For those who aren't going to arrive until 6 o'clock, 
we will drag the vote out so they will not miss it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I am proud today to bring the 
legislation to the floor entitled Serve America Act. This bill is the 
result of extensive bipartisan work by Senators Kennedy and Hatch who 
have worked more than a year on this legislation but who have devoted 
their lives to this bill. I know in a short time I will be joined by 
the distinguished Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, who was one of the 
prime sponsors of the bill. Senator Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking member 
of the Health, Education Committee, was also going to be here. He is in 
a snowstorm in Wyoming. Senator Enzi will bring his remarks to the 
floor tomorrow.
  Let me just say that I want to, first of all, salute Senators Kennedy 
and Hatch for designing this legislation because it expands the 
opportunity to serve this country. At the same time, Senator Enzi and 
Senator Dodd worked assiduously to strengthen the bill.
  Senator Enzi brought very key legislative analysis to the bill, and 
his background as an accountant gave us

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very much needed reforms in the area of greater accountability and 
stewardship. I want to, on behalf of our side of the aisle, thank him 
for his insight and know-how. We have adopted every single one of the 
Enzi stewardship recommendations.
  Our colleague, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, himself a former Peace 
Corps volunteer, has also brought additional thinking to the bill to 
make sure that volunteers are rewarded by making sure we could expand 
the summer of service and the semester of service.
  Madam President, I have been no stranger to this bill, and one of the 
things I have done was be the appropriator for appropriations from the 
time of its inception, from 1993 to 2004, when the VA-HUD and 
Independent Agencies Committee was dissolved by Mr. Delay of Texas in 
the House, and the Senate followed suit. That is a chatty way of saying 
that Senator Kit Bond, who chaired that subcommittee as my ranking 
member, was able to keep national service functioning and also very 
much needed reforms.
  In 2004, Senators Harkin and Specter got the appropriations portfolio 
for national service, and they have done an outstanding job. I say all 
this to say that when we bring up this bill, it is not a Democratic 
bill; it is a bipartisan bill and an American bill. Ever since the 
framework for the underlying legislation was created more than a decade 
ago, we have worked on both sides of the aisle, with Presidents of both 
parties, to give our young people an opportunity to serve.
  This has been an outstanding effort. Today, the legislation I bring 
to the Senate floor on their behalf is the result of considerable 
experience, lots of lessons learned, and also the recognition and 
knowledge that there is a new invigorated spirit in the United States 
of America. Some are calling it the ``Obama effect'' because there are 
so many people who want to give back to the United States of America, 
to use their own sweat equity to be involved in our communities to make 
them a better place to be, for our schools to be able to be more 
effective, for there to be structured afterschool activities for 
children, and volunteer efforts to add to more housing for Habitat for 
Humanity--item after item, we could go on. There is this fantastic 
spirit, and we want to be able to make use of that energy, that 
passion, those good intentions, and be able to help them truly to serve 
America.
  Senator Kennedy and I have worked on this legislation for some time. 
Way back in 1990, Senator Kennedy and I introduced the National 
Community Service Act with then-Senator Nunn, and also with the help of 
Senator McCain, to establish a corporation for national and community 
service, and also to create a demonstration project that would then 
become the AmeriCorps.
  When President Bill Clinton came in, we worked to create the National 
Community Service Act. In 1993, we passed the AmeriCorps legislation. 
Since then, it has been a profound success. We took that landmark 
legislation and, working with President Clinton, created a framework 
for today's national service programs.
  Let me be clear, Madam President. We were not in the business of 
creating another new social program. What we were in the business of 
was creating a new social invention. What do I mean by that? In our 
country, we are known for our technological prowess, the great 
technological inventions. From the rocket ship to the microchip, 
America has been in the forefront of technology and science.
  But also often overlooked, and sometimes undervalued, is our social 
inventions--those things that the genius of America invents to create 
an opportunity ladder for our country, to create empowerment 
opportunities for our constituents.
  Let me give a couple of examples, and you can see the American 
philosophy at work in AmeriCorps. In terms of our social inventions, 
what are some? Well, you know we are the country that invented night 
school. At the turn of the old century, with so many immigrants coming 
from Europe, with Lady Liberty raising her hand saying: Give me your 
tired, your poor, your yearning to be free--and they also wanted to 
learn to read English, write English, and learn citizenship. But they 
were working night and day to be able to do that.
  Out of the great settlement houses--primarily the great settlement 
houses out of New York and Chicago--they said: If you work during the 
day, we are going to give you an opportunity to learn at night. Out of 
that settlement house movement came a new social invention called night 
school. It was never done anywhere else in the world. Look how night 
school changed the face of America.
  Then, while our GIs went overseas and then came back home, we had 
another social invention that said: We want to thank you not only with 
words but with deeds. So another empowerment legislation was called the 
GI bill, which created one great, gigantic opportunity ladder for 
generations of men who would have never had the opportunity for either 
education or home ownership to be able to move ahead.
  Along the way, they knew they could not go off to 4 years of college. 
They were adults. They had seen war and they had liberated death camps. 
They could not come back and go ``bula bula''; they had to go to work. 
So we invented something else, too, called the junior college, or the 
community college, which in and of itself was a social invention.
  So you see, every generation comes up with a new idea to build and 
add to that important opportunity ladder where you can do something for 
yourself and your country. But government is on your side.
  What is it we wanted to do? A social invention for the nineties? What 
did we face? We saw two things: No. 1, students had incredible debt--
and they still do. Their first ``mortgage'' was not a home but what 
they owed in terms of their college debt. Also, we saw a new trend 
coming to America called the ``me'' generation. Articles and books were 
being written about it. There were those on both sides of the aisle who 
wanted to change the ``me'' generation to the ``we'' generation. We 
also wanted to say: How can we help with student debt? That is when we 
thought about national community service, where you could give back to 
your country, learn the habits of the heart that de Tocqueville talked 
about--neighbor helping neighbor, the signature of America, from barn 
raising to Habitat for Humanity, and habits of the heart and Habitat 
for Humanity.

  We created national service as a form. We didn't want it to be 
service only for idealistic, affluent kids who could afford to take 2 
years off to find themselves. We wanted them to find opportunity to be 
of service and also to make an important contribution.
  That is how we created the original national service legislation. We 
wanted to strike a balance between precollege and postcollege to help 
pay for college, get ready for college or to learn a trade. We also 
wanted to provide the opportunity for retired people to be of service 
and also, while being of service, to earn a modest voucher to pay down 
student debt.
  We wanted to make sure we could do this in a way that was sensible, 
affordable, and also would involve the flexibility and creativity of 
the local community.
  We allow not only full-time volunteers but the opportunity for part-
time volunteers. Actually, the part-time volunteer was my idea. Putting 
on my social work hat again, what I saw in our communities was not 
everybody can go away and not everybody wants to go away. It could be 
someone disabled, where their whole support system is in that 
community. And although they have a physical challenge, they can still 
give. How about that single mother who graduated from a community 
college and wants to reduce her debt as she is moving on with her 
career? This would give her a chance to do that.
  There were important lessons learned, and for more than a decade we 
worked on it. But not all was rosy, not all was smooth. What we then 
saw in 2003, when I was the ranking member on the appropriations 
subcommittee funding national service, is they created a debacle. God, 
did they get sloppy. One of their most colossal errors was that they 
enrolled over 20,000 volunteers and could not afford to pay for it. 
That is how sloppy they were in their accounting.
  I took to the floor and called them the ``Enron of nonprofits.'' I 
called for

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a new board, a new CEO, and new rules of engagement. President Bush 
responded, and he gave us the right people to right the ship of 
national service.
  I must say, in those 6 years since then, they have worked to do so. 
They have righted the ship, they have good financial accounting, and 
people continue to volunteer.
  But all that is history. What about the 21st century now? Wow, people 
want to volunteer like never before. Do you know that last year 35,000 
college seniors applied for Teach America? There were only 4,000 slots. 
There were 35,000 young people who wanted to do it. The Peace Corps got 
13,000 applicants last year for 4,000 slots. People want to serve.
  While we saw this new flourishment of desire and passion to serve, 
Senators Kennedy and Hatch put their abilities and key minds and 
passion for this issue together and have come up with the Kennedy-Hatch 
Serve America Act. It is a great bill. Let me tell you about it.
  First of all, it improves the number of national volunteers. Over a 
7-year period, it would take the volunteers from 75,000 slots to 
250,000 slots. But this bill is more about creating opportunities and 
for people to serve. It is about meeting compelling human needs.
  We are going to also expand this bill with lessons learned on 
focusing some of our AmeriCorps activity into specialized corps. These 
are what we found: One, an education corps; another, a health futures 
corps; another, a veterans corps; and another called opportunity corps. 
These are not outside of AmeriCorps. They will be subsets because we 
find this is where compelling human need is and at the same time offers 
great opportunity for volunteers to do it.
  What does the education corps do? It improves student engagement. It 
works with young people in schools in supplemental services, such as 
tutoring, field trips, and particularly in these structured school 
activities. We have found that where they have focused on education, 
they have improved student academic achievement and graduation rates.
  Also, we have something called the clean energy service corps. This 
is going to work to weatherize more low-income households to be more 
energy efficient.
  We have a health futures corps that will work to increase access to 
health care among low-income and underserved populations but at the 
same time work on health promotion and wellness, primarily in schools, 
to teach our young people the kind of cool, new, edgy ways of doing 
those healthy habits that will change their lives for a lifetime.
  We also are working on a veterans corps to help create housing units 
for deployed soldiers and to help also with voluntarism to assist 
military families when a military family is deployed.
  I heard of a very innovative approach in Hawaii called Grannies for 
the Troops. That is grandmothers in the area who want to volunteer to 
help women whose husbands are deployed with some time off for 
themselves to go shopping, get other family business done, whatever. 
You need a volunteer coordinator to make that happen. That is the kind 
of innovation we are going to have.
  We also have in this program help for retirees. We keep all our 
senior programs and we provide something called an encore fellowship 
for an older generation to serve. We also provide the opportunity for 
professionals called volunteers for prosperity to serve overseas. Those 
two ideas from Senator Hatch were very helpful.
  This bill takes AmeriCorps and focuses it in a way that we think 
offers greater efficiency and provides some other new opportunities to 
serve, such as the summer of service and the semester of service. It 
also concentrates on improving the capacity of our nonprofit 
organizations in some other very innovative ways.
  This is just a brief summary of the history that brought us to today 
and the framework that will take us to tomorrow.
  In the last Congress, there was a lot of talk about bridges to 
nowhere. National Service is a bridge to somewhere. I wish to note in 
the health corps programs, we already have one that will continue to 
function under this health umbrella in AmeriCorps. Not only do we help 
people get connected to the services for which they are eligible, but 
85 percent of the young people who work in the National Community 
Health Corps Program go on themselves to health care jobs. Some decide 
on a career in medicine. Some think: Wow, although I already have my 
degree, I think I will go into an accelerated program and go into 
nursing, where they have the accelerated program for people with 
degrees. Others are looking at careers in public health or in x-ray 
technology. They get turned on.
  For people who go into education, they say: You know, I was going to 
do this for a stint. I want it to be my life's work. They then will go 
into the field of education as teachers and getting extra degrees and 
doing a good job. They are the reformers of the next generation. What 
we do in national service serves the community immediately today, but 
the impact on the volunteers continues for the rest of their lives.
  I think this is a great social investment, and it is a public 
investment in our young people to help our communities that I think 
will pay dividends long beyond anything we can imagine.
  I hope this bill is adopted by late tomorrow. I hope we can keep 
amendments to a minimum. I do believe we have had excellent help on 
both sides of the aisle. We talk about changing direction in this 
country. I think people do want a new direction. They want to rekindle 
the habits of the heart. There are a lot of people out there, as we 
talked about bonuses, who might be talking about ``me,'' but there are 
a lot of young people who want to be part of the ``we'' generation.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
during the quorum call be charged equally, and I suggest the absence of 
a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, last May, then-Senator Barack Obama gave 
a commencement address at Wesleyan University. Senator Ted Kennedy of 
Massachusetts had been originally scheduled to speak to the graduates, 
but Senator Kennedy had taken ill and Senator Obama spoke in his place.
  In a tribute to Ted Kennedy's lifetime of service to America, Senator 
Obama spoke to the graduates about the importance of national service. 
It was a remarkable speech. In fact, what he told the graduates was his 
life story, about how Barack Obama, after graduating from an Ivy League 
college, could have gone to law school or Wall Street with many of his 
classmates. But, instead, he took a job as a community organizer on the 
south side of Chicago.
  Many people know this story because they have heard Barack tell it. 
They may have read about it when the President published his 
autobiography, ``Dreams From My Father,'' of how he ended up with a 
broken down little car, taking a job that didn't pay very much as a 
community organizer in a section of Chicago that had been wracked by 
the closing of steel mills and all the unemployment and hardship that 
followed. It wasn't easy work for him. He went church to church trying 
to organize people in the neighborhoods. The pay wasn't very good, but 
he knew he was making a difference. He made friends and connections. He 
learned a lot about life, and he learned a lot about himself. He found 
direction in his life from those moments that he spent volunteering and 
giving back to his community.
  President Obama--then Senator Obama--called on the graduates at

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Wesleyan to find their own direction through service to the country. 
Here is what he said:

       There's no community service requirement in the real world; 
     no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk 
     off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the 
     nice suits and all the other things that our money culture 
     says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns 
     and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story 
     separate from America's. But I hope you don't. Because 
     thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants 
     and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only 
     when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself 
     that you realize your true potential and discover the role 
     you will play in writing the next great chapter in America's 
     story.

  President Obama repeated this call to service throughout his campaign 
and now into his Presidency. He has called on all Americans to find a 
way to serve their neighbors and their community to make this Nation a 
better place.
  Over the last few months, we have heard too many stories about the 
so-called successful people who have followed their ambitions, and 
sometimes their greed, and the economy and country have suffered. But 
there are so many other stories to be told--community organizations 
across this Nation that are reporting record numbers of volunteers 
coming through their doors as we face this troubling economy. Many of 
these new volunteers have recently lost their jobs, but they still want 
to answer the President's call and give back to their communities.
  That is the spirit that truly makes America great. Even in the most 
troubling times, Americans think of those who are suffering, those who 
have lost their homes or can't put food on the table, and they want to 
help. There isn't a community in America where you can't find that 
spirit, and you can find it on the street corners, in church basements, 
in afternoon and weekend efforts of people just wanting to give a 
little bit back and to help those less fortunate.
  In my State of Illinois, each year 2.7 million volunteers dedicate 
over 300 million hours of service. The estimated economic contribution 
of those hours is $5.9 billion annually. More than 66,000 of these 
volunteers participate in national service programs through 144 
different projects. In Chicago, the City Year program is one of my 
favorites. It places young volunteers to work full time in some of 
Chicago's neediest schools. There they serve as tutors, mentors, and 
role models for Chicago's students.

  They usually call me in once a year to meet the new class--and I love 
them. They are just so bristling with energy and determination and 
commitment. Many of them are doing something in a communal sense that 
they have never done in their lives. Some of them are in Chicago for 
the first time, dazzled by the city but dazzled as well by the people 
they are working with.
  We know we need them. A student drops out of school every 26 seconds 
in this country. City Year volunteers are helping to keep Chicago 
students in school and on the road to success.
  When asked to share the impact of the City Year corps members on 
their classroom, teachers recently said:

       All of my students who are being tutored are more 
     interested in reading. They are more confident in themselves 
     as striving learners.

  It works and it works in both directions. The students are better 
off; so are the volunteers.
  This week we are considering a bill that will dramatically expand 
national service programs, giving more Americans the chance to serve 
their country. I thank Senator Mikulski for leading us in this effort, 
bringing this to the floor. The original cosponsors of the bill, of 
course, were Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch. I joined a 
long list of Democrats and Republicans as cosponsors as well. Both 
Senators Kennedy and Hatch have a long personal commitment to service, 
and this bill is a testament to their public legacy. Senator Mikulski 
is bringing this to the floor in Senator Kennedy's absence. I know she 
will handle this bill well. She always does.
  The Serve America Act will triple the number of national service 
participants to 250,000 participants within 8 years. Along with this 
dramatic expansion, the bill will also create new corps within 
AmeriCorps, focused on areas of national need that include education, 
the environment, health care, economic opportunity, and helping our 
veterans.
  We are expanding opportunities to serve for Americans in every stage 
in life. Middle and high school students will be encouraged to 
participate in service projects during the summer and after school. By 
serving their communities early in life, these students will be put on 
a path to a lifetime habit of service.
  For working Americans who cannot commit to full-time service, the 
bill provides funding to community organizations for recruiting and 
managing part-time volunteers; retirees will be given new opportunities 
to serve through the Senior Corps, as it exists, and through new 
initiatives. The bill also increases the education award for the first 
time since its creation. A lot of the people in the AmeriCorps 
projects, for example, at the end of their service, earn credits they 
can use to go on to pursue higher education.
  The education award in this bill will be raised to the Pell grant 
level, which will make it easier for college students with significant 
student loan debt to consider national service--and the award will be 
transferable, so that older volunteers can actually transfer the 
education award to their children or grandchildren. What a great gift 
to give to your family.
  There is a story Senator Kennedy often tells about national service. 
On the fifth anniversary of the Peace Corps so many years ago, Ted 
Kennedy asked a young volunteer why he decided to sign up, and the 
answer was simple. He said: ``It was the first time someone asked me to 
do something for my country.''
  With the Serve America Act we are asking again. We are asking 
Americans of all ages to give back to their communities and to America. 
Each American has the power to make a small difference in the success 
of a child or the health of the environment or the lives of hungry 
neighbors. All those small differences, repeated over and over, can add 
up to something truly powerful.
  Passage of this bill is a priority of our new President and should be 
a priority for every Member of the Senate. I encourage my colleagues to 
support this bill and I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask consent the time remaining under the quorum call be 
equally divided between both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I suggest absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, today the Senate begins consideration of 
the Serve America Act, which is the title of what will be the Senate 
substitute for H.R. 1388. It is my hope this legislation will help 
strengthen a culture of service, citizenship, and responsibility in 
America, and I am proud to join a bipartisan group of Senators in 
support of this bill as it comes to the Senate floor.
  I am sure it goes without saying that Senator Ted Kennedy's absence 
is deeply felt by all of us as we work on this particular piece of 
legislation. I, personally, continue to pray for his full and speedy 
recovery.
  To begin, I would like to discuss the context in which this 
legislation has moved forward to give us some perspective as to what is 
about to happen. After months of discussion, negotiation, debate, and 
flatout argument, Senator Kennedy and I introduced the original version 
of the Serve America Act last September in the middle of what was often 
a hotly contested campaign season. Despite the overly partisan 
atmosphere at the time, a bipartisan group of Senators offered their

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support for this bill. Even though the differences between the two 
Presidential candidates were played out on news shows every night, both 
of them were willing to put their debates aside and become original 
cosponsors. That pleased me.
  I would like, once again, to thank Senator McCain for his continued 
support, not only for this particular piece of legislation but for 
volunteer service in general. He has truly been a leader on this issue 
throughout his life and has rightly won the admiration of those on both 
sides of the aisle.
  In addition to the Kennedy-Hatch legislation, the Serve America Act, 
the Senate bill also includes legislation that will reauthorize the 
Corporation of National and Community Service. The reauthorization 
effort has been led on the Republican side by the distinguished ranking 
member of the HELP Committee, Senator Enzi, who has worked tirelessly 
with both Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski to reach a bipartisan 
accord on these much-needed provisions.
  In addition to Senators Kennedy and McCain, I have to extend my 
thanks, my deep-felt thanks to Senators Enzi and Mikulski for their 
outstanding work on the legislation before us today. Both of them are 
outstanding legislators. They are both beloved people in this body. I, 
personally, feel that way toward each of them.
  At the same time all this work has been going on in the Senate, we 
have been working with both Democrats and Republicans in the House of 
Representatives to ensure that both Chambers reach similar conclusions 
with their national service legislation. This has all been accomplished 
during a time when, for the most part, partisan hostilities have done 
anything but subside. Since the beginning of the new Congress, we have 
seen debates on legislation such as the SCHIP bill, the stimulus 
package and the Omnibus appropriations bill that, in many ways, have 
deepened the divisions between the two parties. Here in a few weeks, as 
we begin debate on the budget, we are sure to see even greater clashes 
between the principled beliefs and ideologies between those on both 
sides of the aisle.
  However, the bill we have before us today is the result of a 
bipartisan and bicameral effort. In our opinion, this is nothing short 
of remarkable, given the current political climate.
  Once again, the Senate effort has been spearheaded by myself, Senator 
Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and Senator Mikulski. I doubt any other piece of 
legislation we consider this year will be the product of such a 
diversity of views. Senator Mikulski has carried this matter on behalf 
of Senator Kennedy. I have nothing but tremendous respect for her.
  I will not be foolish enough to claim the credit for all this good 
will, but I am certainly grateful to be a beneficiary.
  Service has been one of the golden threads of our Democracy, and the 
roots of our tradition run deep. Ronald Reagan put this powerful 
tradition of volunteer service in its appropriate context when he said, 
speaking of the Mayflower Compact:

       The single act--the voluntary binding together of free 
     people to live under the law--set the pattern for what was to 
     come.
       A century and a half later, the descendants of those people 
     pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to 
     found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their 
     lives; none sacrificed honor. Four score and seven years 
     later, Abraham Lincoln called upon the people of all America 
     to renew their dedication and their commitment to a 
     government of, for and by the people. Isn't it once again 
     time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other 
     all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to 
     them--for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?
       Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a 
     commitment to care for the needy; to teach our children the 
     values and the virtues handed down to us by our families; to 
     have the courage to defend those values and the willingness 
     to sacrifice for them.
       Let us pledge to restore, in our time, the American spirit 
     of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and 
     community initiative; a spirit that flows like a deep and 
     mighty river through the history of our nation.

  President Reagan had a very good way of putting things.
  President Reagan was not alone in his call for service. Presidents 
down the generations, Republicans and Democrats alike--Teddy and 
Franklin Roosevelt; Eisenhower and Kennedy; Johnson and Nixon; Carter 
and George Herbert Walker Bush; and Clinton and George W. Bush--have 
all worked to awaken the national consciousness to their duties and 
responsibilities as citizens, to light in every individual that spark 
of voluntary service, the seed of compassion that makes us serve causes 
larger than ourselves.
  They have done so particularly in times of crisis: during the Great 
Depression, during our world wars, and after 9/11. Times of trial have 
always summoned the greatness of our people, and we are right now in a 
time of challenge today.
  Service can take many forms in a free country, and we all have 
choices, not only as to whether we will serve but how we will serve. 
There is no greater example of service than those who put on the 
military uniform and go into battle for our country. Many men and women 
who choose military service make the ultimate sacrifice. They put their 
lives on the line for our country. Millions have lost their lives so we 
might be free.
  There are more than 26 million Americans alive today who have served 
in our armed services. They epitomize American values, the values of 
duty, honor, and country. They also inspire new generations to ask what 
they can do for their country.
  Other Americans may decide to go into public or Government service. 
This is a choice that is made by State and municipal workers, by 
teachers and police officers, and, yes, even by Senators and their 
staffs--to serve the public interest through their public institutions. 
I have to admit, I left my own law practice, where we had just started 
it a few years before. I had left Pittsburgh, moved to Utah, formed a 
law firm. We were going like gangbusters. My partner is worth a lot of 
money today. I am not. But I made this choice to come and work for our 
country. It is made by all these good people, to serve the public 
interests through our public institutions.
  Service to country can take other forms. Many Americans want to serve 
for a full year or part of a year of national service. Others may want 
to volunteer to serve in countries abroad for short-term or long-term 
assignments. We had two people come back last night from a mission over 
in Africa. He served his whole working life as a chaplain in the 
military. She is a beautiful woman who has been married to him for all 
these years. They, at their own expense, volunteered and went to Africa 
to work in Kenya and Nairobi with unfortunate people and to build 
esteem in the hearts of people over there.
  They came back last night and spoke in our church. I was so proud of 
both of them--terrific people.
  Others may want to volunteer to serve in countries abroad for short-
term or long-term assignments. Still others, in fact the vast majority 
of Americans, will perform services as traditional episodic volunteers 
working in schools, houses of worship, workplaces, nonprofit 
institutions, and neighborhoods.
  America is a generous nation and Americans are compassionate people, 
and our volunteer spirit knows no bounds. In all these cases, 
everything is a choice. Service in our military is voluntary as is 
service in our soup kitchens. Public service is not only a voluntary 
activity, but for many of us subject to regular elections where the 
citizens get to exercise their own choice of whether a particular 
candidate for office will exercise the privilege of serving them.
  Consistent with our All-Volunteer Army and volunteer opportunities 
and individuals' choice in communities, nothing in this legislation is 
mandatory. This bill simply provides more Americans more choices and 
opportunities to give back to their neighborhoods and their country all 
through the means which they freely choose.
  With a backdrop of this rich history of citizen service in America, 
Senator Kennedy and I began discussions more than a year ago about what 
we might do together to build on the tradition of service in America. I 
know part of this is because both of us love his sister, Eunice Kennedy 
Shriver. We have watched this woman year after year after year give 
service to this country and to children all over the world; not just 
through the Special Olympics--but especially through the Special 
Olympics--but in so many other ways. I admire her about as much as any 
woman

[[Page S3597]]

in our society today for what she has been able to do with her life. 
She is a 90-pound dynamo who just keeps going. I think--well, I will 
not say it because I know it can be embarrassing to her. But the fact 
is, she is a terrific human being.
  I have chatted with all kinds of other people who are giving 
tremendous service to their fellow human beings, men and women, 
children, throughout our society. You know, Senator Kennedy and I and 
others drew on ideas from Republicans such as my friend Senator John 
McCain, who introduced his own bill almost a decade ago and, as I 
mentioned, endorsed the Serve America Act in the midst of his 
Presidential campaign.
  We drew on ideas from Democrats, such as the godmother of national 
and community service, that is Senator Barbara Mikulski. We hear of 
godfathers; she is the godmother, a great woman who has a great heart, 
and who worked as a social worker for many years, and for whom I have 
deep affection, no question about it.
  From the outset, Senator Kennedy and I talked about marrying two 
formerly competing visions of service: first, by supporting traditional 
volunteering, in the tradition of President Reagan's Private Sector 
Initiative; George H. W. Bush's Points of Light; and George W. Bush's 
USA Freedom Corps; and, second, by supporting full-time national and 
international service in the tradition of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, 
for senior service, Clinton and again George W. Bush for both domestic 
and international service.
  We have the attention of our new President. He has talked to me about 
this. I know he has talked to Senator Kennedy about this. He completely 
supports this. He knows how important it is. I have respect for him for 
jumping right in and helping us with this.
  We decided we wanted to create more opportunities for Americans to 
serve over their lifetimes, so schoolchildren can learn the importance 
of giving back at a young age, for tapping into the talents of the 
longest living, healthiest, best educated, and most highly skilled 
generations of older Americans in our history.
  We wanted to tap the ingenuity of our people working through schools, 
faith-based institutions, workplaces, and communities in America and 
across the world to tackle challenges large and small.
  So today I am very pleased to be here as this legislation makes it 
over what I hope will be the final few obstacles before becoming law. 
With this bill, our efforts to expand service will begin early in our 
schools all across America, and where we can marry learning in 
classrooms with service in our communities, for those who choose such 
service learning.
  We have a high school dropout epidemic in America, with almost one-
third of all students, and nearly 50 percent of African Americans, 
Hispanic, and Native Americans, failing to graduate with their class. 
For each of these kids a decision to drop out is a million dollar 
mistake, since they will earn that much less over a lifetime than their 
college graduate friends.
  For our country, this is a multibillion dollar mistake in increased 
welfare, prison, and health care costs, and lost revenues from the lack 
of productive workers. Service learning has been shown to keep students 
engaged in school, and to boost student academic achievement. So we 
will offer competitive grants to local and State partnerships to carry 
out these efforts in our schools.
  Again, all of this will be voluntary activity, and it holds the 
promise of keeping so many of our young people engaged in school. In 
addition to elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities 
can play a critical role in the culture of service, so we will 
authorize the Corporation for National Community Service to recognize 
and provide additional funding to ``campuses of service'' that do an 
outstanding job in engaging their students in important community work.
  The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that nearly 61 million Americans 
volunteered through or for an organization last year. Most Americans 
did so through religious organizations, followed by nonprofits, related 
to education and youth. While many charities believe volunteers are 
essential to meeting their missions, only a small percentage of them 
actually invest in recruiting, training, and utilizing volunteers to 
meet those missions.
  There are always waiting lists of volunteers who want to use their 
time and talents, but too often they are turned away or they do not 
come back after a bad experience. So we will invest in a new volunteer 
generation fund, which will include matching funds by the private 
sector to increase the capacity of organizations to use volunteers to 
meet local needs, especially among the poor and disadvantaged.
  America is known for its innovation in business and the power of its 
markets. This bill will fuel the spirit of entrepreneurship in 
America's nonprofit sector by creating a social innovations fund to 
foster and support the next generation of great ideas in the social 
marketplace, such as Teach for America, City Year, Habitat for 
Humanity, and the U.S. Dream Academy, which are some of the many 
innovative ideas of our day.
  Having mentioned the U.S. Dream Academy, that was started by a 
wonderful African-American man named Wintley Phipps. Wintley is a 
Seventh Day Adventist minister. But he decided there were too many of 
our young African-American kids and others who were children of 
prisoners, children of people who had been sent to prison, and that a 
high percentage of them would wind up in prison themselves unless we 
did something about it. So he has brought computers into the inner 
cities. He has brought wonderful teachers and others who could be 
making themselves wealthy outside of this program, who are teaching 
these kids how to live in a modern world. He has had an amazing 
transformational change in so many children.

  These are the types of things we have to encourage. The idea behind 
service clearly has always been about transforming the person who 
serves. I saw how it changed my own life when I served a 2-year mission 
for my church in the Great Lakes mission. That was Ohio, Indiana, and 
Michigan. A lot of our young missionaries serve all over the world, 
such as the young couple I mentioned last night. They came back from 
Kenya and Nairobi, where they served I think about a year and a half. 
Their main job was humanitarian, to help people to be able to know 
there is a better way; to find water for people, to help them with 
food, to help them with so many of their problems, to help them to know 
there is a future. They did that voluntarily, at their own expense. 
Think about it, at their own expense.
  I did my voluntary 2-year service at my own expense. I actually 
presided over congregations, and I helped out thousands and thousands 
of people who had problems, and in the process, the one who was helped 
the most was myself. It was a great blessing in my life. I would not 
change it for being a Senator, as a matter of fact. It was 2 years out 
of my life, but the most important 2 years, outside of marriage to 
Elaine and raising a family with 6 kids, now 23 grandchildren, and 3 
great-grandchildren. That was an important time in my life. My folks 
were poor. They were not wealthy. They helped me and assisted me on my 
mission. We paid for it all ourselves, and I gave 2 solid years every 
day, 18 hours a day. I was very dedicated.
  But service is also about solving problems in our Nation, and 
bringing real hope and impact on the ground in our communities with 
real accountability for results. Some people have written off this bill 
as promoting ``paid volunteerism.'' This mistaken view is as a result 
of a fundamental misunderstanding about these programs. National 
service programs give Americans opportunities for us to serve for a 
full year or more to tackle tough problems, and that they, in turn, can 
leverage Federal investment in them to mobilize more traditional 
volunteers to help.
  When you look at the numbers, you can see it is a very smart return 
on investment. Let me illustrate how this works. Today about 75,000 
people participate in national Federal service programs every year. I 
am not counting the State programs at this point, although I know some 
of these work in the States as well. But on AmericaCorps and programs 
such as this, Peace Corps, et cetera, the currently existing programs, 
there are about 75,000 volunteers who participate

[[Page S3598]]

in national service programs every year.
  Now, as a result of their efforts, 2.2 million traditional persons 
every year come out to work on the same projects without pay. That is 
nearly 30 volunteers who get nothing from Government, for every 1 
participant in a national service program, who receive a below-poverty 
stipend and a small education award to defray the cost of higher 
education.
  Let's do the math. If we assume that as we expand national service, 
as this bill does, the same ratio of participants to leveraged 
volunteers holds, we will eventually be seeing roughly 7.5 million new 
unpaid volunteers every year serving throughout our great Nation.
  My gosh, that is something worthwhile doing. Personally, I think it 
would be more than that. Because with the bill we are also improving 
the efficiency and the accountability of these programs. Far from 
promoting paid volunteerism, this bill is all about encouraging 
traditional volunteerism. We find that people, once they get into this, 
will love it and want to continue.
  We will be targeting national service opportunities to build upon 
this multiplying effect in order to tap the power of our Nation's 
greatest asset, our people, to take on some of these large challenges.
  Now, some have argued that the priorities outlined in this bill are 
specifically designed to advance the President's domestic agenda or his 
priorities with the recent stimulus bill. Well, quite honestly, these 
people must ascribe to Senator Kennedy and me abilities that neither of 
us would claim to have, including psychic powers and precognition. It 
was more than 2 years ago that I began a dialogue with former officials 
from the George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush administrations 
and other leaders of the national and community service field regarding 
this proposal.
  At that time, we agreed we wanted to harness the power of our 
citizens to solve urgent national problems. It was then, 2 years ago, 
that we identified five specific areas in which citizens could make a 
significant difference in addressing needs. We looked at education, and 
particularly the high school dropout crisis, in the aftermath of the 
2006 report, ``The Silent Epidemic.''
  We identified clean energy, opportunity, health and disaster response 
as key areas in which citizens could make a significant difference and 
we discussed specific indicators of progress that would bring new 
accountability for results.
  These five areas were identified long before there was even 
discussion of an economic stimulus and well before the Presidential 
campaign got in full swing. Since that time, we have added veterans 
assistance as a key area of national need for the bill. But that is 
hardly an issue on which President Obama has cornered the market. I 
hope this clarifies the record on this point.
  Having said all that, I am pleased that President Obama sees the 
value of this bill and wants to support it and will support it and has 
supported it. It has been a matter of great uplift to me.
  So it is with these particular challenges in mind that we drafted the 
Serve America Act. Gone are the days when national service participants 
will be able to go about their work without direction or 
accountability. Under our bill, their efforts will be directed at these 
specific areas of national need. In all of these efforts, State and 
local organizations will lead the way. Volunteers will be leveraged and 
urgent needs will be met not by distant Government bureaucracies or 
Government programs but by people working on the front lines of our 
communities and neighborhoods.
  Americans can also spread American compassion around the world. There 
have been good efforts over the last 7 years and good bills in the 
Congress to fulfill the promise of President Kennedy's Peace Corps and 
expand its numbers. It has been a bipartisan effort. Two former 
Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, grew the Peace 
Corps during their 8 years in office. As a complement to the growth in 
the Peace Corps, the Serve America Act will authorize and fund 
Volunteers for Prosperity, which last year alone mobilized 43,000 
doctors, nurses, engineers, and other skilled Americans to meet urgent 
needs abroad, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, such as medical procedures 
to help children who have cleft palates or helping kids to see again.
  I could go on and on about what is being done by volunteers all over 
the world. This cost-effective program puts skilled Americans in the 
field for flexible term assignments often ranging from a few months to 
more than 1 year and at extremely low cost to the Federal Government.
  President Kennedy said that his Peace Corps would be truly serious 
when 100,000 Americans were working abroad every year. Well, Volunteers 
for Prosperity, working together with the Peace Corps, could help 
fulfill that dream and would show the world the compassion of our 
people and lead to a more informed foreign policy.
  Having mentioned the Peace Corps, why don't I mention Eunice 
Shriver's great husband. Sargent Shriver, when he fought for the Peace 
Corps, it wasn't an easy job. By gosh, he had to take on his own 
administration and everybody else. But he did. What a wonderful, 
decent, honorable leader and human being that man really is. If you 
want to read a great biography, read his, how ebullient he always was 
and how he kept being positive about life and what he was trying to do. 
I feel fortunate that I have become very good friends of the Shrivers 
and their children who now are giving volunteer service, and so many 
others.
  I don't mean to center on this one family because there are so many. 
In our church alone, we have some 55,000 serving all over the world. 
That is just missionaries. If we go beyond that to humanitarian 
service, there are a lot of people serving in those areas. Almost every 
major national disaster in the world, the first two churches in there 
with food, clothing, pharmaceuticals, et cetera, happen to be the 
Mormon Church and the Catholic Church. They work together. We have 
worked together all these years to do this type of work.
  Volunteers for Prosperity, working together with the Peace Corps, 
could help fulfill the dreams of so many and would show the world the 
compassion of our people, leading to a more informed foreign policy. In 
all cases, we must promote accountability for results and be mindful--
very mindful--of cost.
  As investments are made in service efforts, programs that are 
achieving real results should continue, and those that are not working 
should be defunded.
  We also need to do a better job collecting data on the results of 
these programs and our civic health as a nation. The Nation collects 
good data about its economy, but it can do a better job collecting 
information about our country's civic health. This bill will address 
those needs by establishing a civic health index, building on the good 
work of the NationalConference on Citizenship and the Corporation for 
National and Community Service, to collect regular data on 
volunteering, charitable giving, and other indicators of our civic 
life, so Americans can work to strengthen these platoons of civil 
society that have always been the backbone of our democracy. I truly 
think that this data collected for this index will inform our 
decisionmaking throughout the policy spectrum.
  Those of us supporting this bill--Republicans and Democrats alike--
believe an investment in the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of 
our people is one of the best investments our country can make. At a 
time wroth with economic uncertainty, we should be all too willing to 
tap the greatest resource at our nation's disposal--the American 
people. Our citizens are the most generous, energetic, and innovative 
people in the world. I believe this bill will inspire them to do much 
of the heavy lifting in their own communities. At a time when many 
people would argue that what we need is more Federal Government 
bureaucrats going into neighborhoods to fix things up, this bill will 
help private groups and individuals to continue their good work and to 
inspire other people to join in their efforts.
  The Serve America Act has strong bipartisan support because it 
advances a good American idea that has echoed down the ages. You see, 
when Americans want to solve problems, they don't first look to 
government or the State--they look to themselves and their communities. 
The innovation and

[[Page S3599]]

enterprise of the American people will always have a comparative 
advantage over big government solutions. I know this from my own 
personal experience, serving as a Mormon missionary when I was only 20 
years old, 20 to 22. I am proud to be associated with this effort to 
remind Americans of their duties to their country, to provide them more 
opportunities to serve it, and to fulfill the promise of the American 
experiment, which is truly based on their participation in making it 
all work. I have faith in the American people that they will make this 
work, and we will all be very happy when they do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, let me begin by thanking the Senator from 
Utah, whose leadership on this effort has been absolutely spectacular 
and who obviously, from the words he just spoke, has a deeply personal 
and historical understanding of the importance of this kind of service. 
We are all very grateful to him for his partnership with my colleague, 
Senator Kennedy, and for the leadership he has offered along the way. I 
would concur with every word he has spoken about it, all of the good 
things he said it would do. I couldn't agree more. It will do all those 
things and more. This is one of the better moments and better bills for 
which we get an opportunity as Senators to vote.
  May I also thank Senator Mikulski. She has been tenacious and 
unbelievably engaged and enthusiastic and wonderful in her commitment 
to help bring us to this moment. I know how much Senator Kennedy and 
Senator Hatch both value the contribution she has made. We all value 
it. We are grateful to her for stepping in. She has been a tiger. 
Perish the thought for anybody who has wanted to run counter to her 
intent to get this done.
  I want to speak for a couple moments. I yield myself perhaps 5 
minutes. I think we have about 7\1/2\ remaining.
  This effort we will vote on is going to generate the largest 
expansion in national service since President Kennedy inspired the 
creation of VISTA and the Peace Corps. For many of us in public life 
today, that was the formative moment. That was the demarcation point 
that excited many of us about public service and brought a lot of us 
into this arena.
  It is particularly fitting that this legislation comes at a time when 
a new President is inspiring a whole new era of volunteerism, much as 
President Kennedy did nearly half a century ago. It is equally fitting 
and appropriate that this legislation bears the name of our friend and 
beloved colleague, my senior Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy. 
As President Obama observed in his first address to Congress, Senator 
Kennedy is ``an American who has never stopped asking what he can do 
for his country.'' It was under Senator Kennedy's leadership as 
chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee 
that this bill was crafted.
  This is nothing new for Senator Kennedy. In 1990, Senator Kennedy 
worked with the first President Bush to pass the original National 
Community Service Act, the Thousand Points of Light Foundation. 
President Bush called that particular effort, helped by Senator 
Kennedy, the hallmark of his Presidency. When President Clinton needed 
a champion for the proposed Corporation for National Community Service, 
he didn't have to look any further than Ted Kennedy.
  As Senator Kennedy notes, ``Service is a bipartisan goal.'' Indeed, 
Members of Congress from across the political spectrum have pledged 
their support for this measure, which is a clear indication that the 
ethic of service is spawned not by faithfulness to party but by 
devotion to country and community.
  The Serve America Act is also the work of our colleague from Utah, 
Senator Orrin Hatch. Senator Hatch has on many occasions been Ted 
Kennedy's partner in these kinds of bipartisan efforts. Senator Hatch 
points out that volunteer service is the lifeblood of our Nation and 
that it benefits the volunteer as much, if not more, than the country 
the volunteer is serving. We just heard those words a moment ago from 
Senator Hatch when he talked about his own experience as a young 
person, about the mission for faith that he called the greatest of his 
life. Service is what has always made America, America.
  Many times in 2004, when I was running for President, I talked about 
de Tocqueville's visit to our country and how he found something 
special here. He wrote about it. He wrote that ``America is great 
because Americans are good.'' What he meant by that was he had observed 
this extraordinary spirit of voluntarism, a kind of patriotism that was 
defined by Americans who would voluntarily give back to their community 
or help other people or do something openly on behalf of their country 
and that community. He clearly had not seen or witnessed that kind of 
giving in his experience in Europe.
  Just as it was in de Tocqueville's day, Americans in many ways, big 
and small, are looking for opportunities to do more for their country. 
Last year, 62 million Americans gave 8 billion hours of service to the 
country. Last month, AmeriCorps had tripled the number of applications 
over the same month as a year ago. I note that my own kids who 
graduated recently from college commented to me how so many of their 
classmates in college were all engaged in some kind of local activity, 
not necessarily fighting on the national stage, but they were involved 
mentoring kids or helping in a homeless shelter. Indeed, many of our 
colleges and universities across the country boast unbelievably high 
percentages of voluntarism.
  They are sending us a signal, telling us why this is a good moment to 
create a new corps of 175,000 volunteers who are going to be organized 
and assist in their efforts to do the things we need to do in America. 
That means that in addition to the other volunteer programs, we will 
have as many as a quarter of a million Americans serving full time or 
part time working to meet some of our most pressing challenges: 
modernizing schools, building homes, serving as mentors or tutors in 
schools, helping with the sick in hospitals and clinics. And with the 
Serve America Act, it is going to be a lot easier for professionals and 
retirees, the baby boomers, the people who were first challenged by 
President Kennedy's call to service in 1961, it is going to be much 
easier for them to get involved once again.
  So we face great challenges. We should have no illusion about the 
magnitude of those challenges. But we also have extraordinary 
opportunities staring us in the face. With the Serve America Act, with 
more Americans involved, with Americans pulling together, I am 
confident that is going to be the definition of America's future, and 
it will be a definition we will all be proud of.

  So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this 
important piece of legislation. I pay tribute, again, to my colleague, 
Ted Kennedy, and his partners in this effort, Senator Mikulski and 
Senator Hatch, who have brought us to this time. Thank you.
  I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, we are only minutes away from voting 
on the cloture motion to proceed to the bill. I really urge all of my 
colleagues to vote yes on this motion so we can proceed to this 
excellent, dynamic, bipartisan bill called the Serve America Act.
  Madam President, in November, people voted for us to change the tone 
in this country and change the direction and to work on a bipartisan 
basis to find that sensible center that Colin Powell has so often 
talked about, to meet America's compelling needs and challenges.
  Now, we are not going to turn the economy around quickly, and we are 
not going to solve some of our great foreign policy challenges 
immediately. But we can embark upon a major initiative to be able to 
meet compelling human needs in our society.
  We have a bipartisan effort, crafted by Senators Kennedy and Hatch, 
to do

[[Page S3600]]

exactly that. It is a bipartisan measure to strengthen service and 
volunteer opportunities. It expands opportunities for individuals of 
all ages to serve. Its passage is important now, when so many 
communities are struggling with so many pressing problems and so many 
people want to serve.
  This act invites many more Americans to give a year of service to 
solve specific challenges in the areas of education, healthy futures, 
clean energy, even helping our veterans. When they come back from 
overseas, they are going to have somebody to be with them to get 
connected to the services and to help those military families while 
they are serving abroad.
  We can do this by passing this legislation. It expands the number of 
national service corps participants to 250,000 a year. But we do that 
over a 7-year period. We will be able, through prudent pacing of both 
recruitment and funding, to do it over a 7-year period.
  It also increased the Eli Segal Education Award from $4,725 to 
$5,350, pegging it to Pell grants, helping those who want to serve be 
able to reduce their student debt or to get a voucher to be able to 
pursue higher education.
  It supports increased service opportunities for students, 
particularly very young people in the Learn and Serve Program, and 
middle and high school students through a summer of service and a 
semester of service.
  It also recruits retirees. Many retirees are ready, able, and willing 
to be involved through Senior Corps programs--RSVP, Senior Companions, 
and Foster Grandparents.
  We have a program called Encore Fellowships to help retirees 
participate in longer term public service. It also supports 
international service opportunities. Senator Hatch is too modest to 
talk about his own fine hand in this bill, but he has offered an 
excellent suggestion that has been incorporated. It strengthens the 
current Volunteers for Prosperity Program, which enables people who are 
retired, who have skills in business, public works, engineering, et 
cetera, to provide short-term international service opportunities in 
developing nations.
  This is what America is all about. De Tocqueville, when he studied 
our Nation, said: What is unique about this new country called America? 
Well, he called it the ``habits of the heart,'' where neighbor helps 
neighbor, whether it was the barn raising of another era, to also 
building Habitat for Humanity here.
  We need to harvest all of that goodwill and good intention to help 
turn our country around. I believe the Serve America Act does this. We 
will be debating this legislation further tomorrow. I encourage people 
to vote yes on the cloture motion to proceed. I encourage all who have 
amendments to come forward tonight and tomorrow morning so we can move 
it and get the job done. That is what the people want us to do.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator from 
Maryland. She has played such a pivotal role on this bill, she and 
Senator Enzi in particular. And, of course, Senator Kennedy and I both 
feel very deeply toward her and Senator Enzi.
  I also want to thank Pastor Rick Warren. A little over a year ago, he 
came to see me in my office. He heard I was interested in doing a 
service in America bill, and he came and went over it with me and was 
very interested and has done a great deal to inspire a number of us on 
both sides of the floor to be able to do some things in this area.
  I also want to thank John McCain. I have mentioned President Obama 
and Senator McCain, both of whom are supporters of this bill. And you 
talk about bipartisanship--I think it shows the great character of 
Senator McCain that he would come and support this type of legislation 
and, as he is want to do, in so many ways. I have such respect for him 
and for the President himself. He has been nothing but a great help to 
us in this matter.
  Like I say, this is an opportunity for all of us to vote for a 
program that will get people involved from teenage years through senior 
citizen years, the vast majority of whom will not be paid a dime, the 
vast majority of whom will be leveraged into working because they want 
to serve the communities. They want to serve these organizations. They 
want to be part of doing good.
  Like I say, with 75,000 for AmeriCorps, and some of the others we 
have mentioned, we estimate there are 2.2 million people, extrapolated 
out, who basically are leveraged out, to where they want to get 
involved, and not one of them is paid for doing it.
  If we figure it out mathematically, in just real terms, with this 
bill, calling for 175,000 new workers, at low pay, stipends for school, 
we believe we will have upwards of 7 million-plus people who will be 
giving voluntary service to their fellow human beings, fellow women and 
men, in their communities and children in their communities. It will do 
so much good for our society.
  Madam President, I have worked on a lot of legislation in my 33 years 
here, a number of which happen to be landmark pieces of legislation. We 
should pass this, and I hope we can with a large majority. Should we 
pass this? I don't know anything that will do more good in a general 
way for our society than this particular bill.

  I hope everybody will vote for cloture tonight. I also hope we can 
pass this bill in a relatively short period of time, and I hope we can 
make it truly bipartisan in every way. We have endeavored to do that. I 
think we have done a good job on it.
  I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 35, H.R. 1388, a bill to reauthorize 
     and reform the national service laws.
         Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Barbara Boxer, Tom 
           Harkin, Daniel K. Akaka, Tom Udall, Patty Murray, 
           Patrick J. Leahy, Bernard Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, 
           Christopher J. Dodd, Jon Tester, Mark R. Warner, Robert 
           P. Casey, Jr., Benjamin L. Cardin, Blanche L. Lincoln, 
           Kent Conrad.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call is waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to H.R. 1388, a bill to reauthorize and reform the 
national service laws, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich), the 
Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), the Senator from Iowa (Mr. 
Harkin), the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), the Senator from 
Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Nelson), the 
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Pryor) are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Iowa 
(Mr. Harkin) would vote ``yea.''
   Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi), the 
Senator from Florida (Mr. Martinez), and the Senator from Louisiana 
(Mr. Vitter).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) 
would have voted ``nay.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 74, nays 14, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 108 Leg.]

                                YEAS--74

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennet
     Bennett
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Brown
     Burr
     Burris
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corker
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagan
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson
     Kaufman
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lugar
     McCain
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)

[[Page S3601]]


     Voinovich
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--14

     Brownback
     Bunning
     Coburn
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Ensign
     Inhofe
     Kyl
     McConnell
     Risch
     Roberts
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Thune

                             NOT VOTING--11

     Begich
     Boxer
     Cornyn
     Enzi
     Harkin
     Inouye
     Landrieu
     Martinez
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Vitter
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warner). On this vote, the yeas are 74, 
the nays are 14. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn 
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  Mr. REED. I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that 
motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Green Jobs

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in recent weeks and months, a new phrase 
has been born that has gained in popularity and support. The new phrase 
that is so in vogue in the Halls of Congress and at the other end of 
Pennsylvania Avenue is ``green jobs.''
  I have no fault with the term. Everyone wants to create green-collar 
jobs. Green jobs are believed to be a critical component of getting us 
out of the economic doldrums in which we find ourselves. A new White 
House middle-class task force recently focused on the creation of green 
jobs as a means of fueling our economy and creating jobs for the middle 
class. Vice President Biden has defined a green job as one that 
provides products and services that use renewable energy resources, 
reduces pollution, and conserves energy and natural resources.
  I don't disagree that the creation of these types of jobs is a very 
worthy ambition. This newfound desire for so-called green jobs has led 
me to remind my colleagues of an existing industry that is making great 
strides to reduce pollution, conserve natural resources, and contribute 
significantly to our economy.
  The U.S. renewable fuels industry has been creating good paying jobs 
in rural America for years. It has been 30 years since a tax incentive 
for ethanol was passed and 17 years since I fathered the wind energy 
tax credit. These alternative energies have been producing a renewable 
resource right here at home that is reducing our dependence on foreign 
oil and fossil fuels, and it has contributed to a cleaner environment.
  U.S. domestic renewable fuels have been doing all these things long 
before it was cool or in vogue. So don't be surprised that this is the 
nature of America's farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs. They do 
things because of the intrinsic value to our country and to our 
economy, whether it is a fad on the east coast or not.
  I happen to think it is great that there is a newfound zeal for 
creating renewable resources here at home. I have been supporting our 
domestic renewable fuels industry for nearly 30 years as a means to 
reduce our dependence on volatile nations for our energy, mostly for 
petroleum. I have been promoting clean wind energy since I fathered the 
wind energy tax credit back in 1992. I am pleased to see the success 
and the support wind energy now receives because of my tax incentive.
  I hope my colleagues who tout the benefits today of the so-called 
green jobs fully realize the contribution the domestic ethanol and 
biodiesel industries have been making for years in this area. Farmers 
across this country produced more than 9 billion gallons of homegrown 
renewable fuels last year. Ethanol production displaced 321 million 
barrels of oil last year. That is the equivalent of our imports from 
Venezuela for 10 months. The use of 9 billion gallons of ethanol saved 
American consumers $32 billion last year.
  Yet even with this success, our farmers and the biofuel industry have 
been under constant attack--at least constant attack over the last 2 
years. In a high-priced public relations smear campaign, the food 
manufacturers and the Grocery Manufacturers Association have tried 
tirelessly to denigrate the efforts of our farmers. In a baseless 
campaign, they tried to blame the ethanol industry for raising food 
prices, even though corn makes up about a nickel of the cost of a box 
of Corn Flakes. The grocery manufacturers thought they found a weak 
link in the food chain that they could target and scapegoat as a 
culprit behind the rising cost of food. It was clearly proven that the 
cost of energy had a significantly greater impact on food prices than 
did other commodity costs.

  The fact is, the ones responsible for the high cost of food are the 
companies whose names stare back at us as we go through the grocery 
stores and supermarkets, and they have never hidden their motive during 
this smear campaign. It was stated clearly at the time the smear 
campaign was started that it was about ``protecting our bottom line.''
  Consumers are still seeing the impact of that pocket lining by big 
food companies while commodity prices have dropped by half since their 
highs last summer. But food prices are still at record highs. Even the 
price of oil has dropped more than $100 a barrel. Yet food companies 
continue to keep prices high.
  You don't need to take my word for it because we have the grocery 
store chains themselves fighting back now. SuperValu, Safeway, and 
Wegmans are just a few chains that are speaking publicly against the 
price increases pushed on them by Kellogg's, General Mills, Kraft, 
Nestle, and others. An article in the Los Angeles Times as recently as 
March 2 stated:

       Our large grocery companies operating in Southern 
     California have seen the wholesale price for a carton of 
     Kellogg's Corn Pops rise about 17 percent since June, despite 
     a 52 percent plunge in corn prices from their peak this 
     month.

  The chief executive for Safeway was quoted as saying:

       It is disingenuous to consumers that all commodity costs 
     are coming down, interest rates coming down, everything is 
     coming down, and the national brands are taking their prices 
     up.

  The chief executive of SuperValu described the situation as a 
``battleground'' with manufacturers right now over prices.
  I am pleased to see others in the food chain call on these food 
producers to lower prices in light of the large drop in commodity 
prices, but this isn't the reason I came to speak today. I would like 
to take just a few more minutes to share with my colleagues another 
assault that is taking place on biofuels.
  In the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, Congress enacted 
and expanded a renewable fuels standard to greatly increase the 
production and use of biofuels. A component of that renewable fuels 
standard was a requirement that various biofuels meet specified life 
cycle greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The law specified that 
life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are to include direct emissions and 
significantly indirect emissions from indirect land use changes. This 
means that the emissions from planting, growing, and harvesting the 
feedstock to the production of biofuels must be included in the 
calculation. It also means that the Environmental Protection Agency 
must determine and must measure the greenhouse gas impacts if there is 
a significant conversion of forest or prairie-to-tillable land because 
of our biofuel policies.
  For the past few months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been 
working on what we call a rulemaking--notice of proposed rulemaking--to 
implement the updated renewable fuels standard. While it hasn't been 
finalized or made public, there are great concerns about this rule 
within the biofuels industry surrounding the science behind indirect 
land use changes. And, of course, when you think of the Environmental 
Protection Agency, isn't science what EPA is all about?
  President Obama, during his Presidential campaign and as President

[[Page S3602]]

now, has stated that his administration will return to decisions and 
actions based on ``sound science.'' In January, he said:

       Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special 
     interests have overshadowed common sense.

  Well, I would encourage President Obama and his staff to take a close 
look at what the EPA is doing in this rulemaking process called a 
notice of proposed rulemaking on renewable fuels standards. There are a 
couple of people in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation who firmly 
believe--do you believe this?--they can quantify the indirect land use 
changes that result from our biofuels policies. I am afraid that the 
bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency are going down a 
path of blaming our biofuel producers for land use changes around the 
globe, and specifically even outside of the United States.
  The fact is, measuring indirect emissions of greenhouse gas reduction 
is far from a perfect science, and dozens of credible scientists agree. 
There is a great deal of complexity and uncertainty surrounding this 
issue. One study last year claimed that biofuels, as a result of these 
indirect impacts, actually led to greater emissions and greenhouse gas 
emissions than did gasoline. This conclusion defies common sense. Under 
careful scrutiny, credible scientists on the other side disproved these 
conclusions, and I want to quote some.
  Dr. Wang of the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory 
replied to these assertions by stating:

       There has also been no indication that the United States 
     corn ethanol production has so far caused indirect land use 
     changes in other countries, because U.S. corn exports have 
     been maintained at about 2 billion bushels a year, and 
     because U.S. distillers' grain exports have steadily 
     increased in the past 10 years.

  May I add that really what EPA--through indirect land use--is talking 
about here, in the most common denominator, is they figure that because 
Iowa or Missouri or Minnesota or Illinois corn producers are growing 
corn, and some of it is going into ethanol, that someplace down in 
Brazil, farmers are just sitting around trying to calculate and are 
going to plow up acre for acre the amount of land that is maybe being 
used for production of ethanol at this point. Well, I think the 
practical matter is that just isn't happening, and that is exactly what 
Dr. Wang is saying here. And if that were the case, what can the 
farmers of our country do about it? Are we going to be at the point 
where something that happens in some other country is going to affect 
our policy here in the United States as to what we can grow and what we 
can use that crop for? I don't think that is a credible position to 
take.
  Now, I quoted one study, but there are a number of credible studies 
that have demonstrated that our biofuel policies will have little, if 
any, impact on international land use. A recent study by Air 
Improvement Resource found that the production of 15 billion gallons of 
corn ethanol by the year 2015 should not result in new forests or 
grassland conversion in the United States or abroad. Let's look at the 
University of Nebraska. A peer-review study conducted there and 
published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology found similar 
conclusions. They concluded that corn ethanol emits 51 percent less 
greenhouse gases than gasoline. A third study, conducted by Global 
Insight, found that it is virtually impossible to accurately ascribe 
greenhouse gas impacts on indirect land use changes to biofuels.
  There are a number of assumptions that can affect the conclusion 
about indirect land use changes. With any model, if you put garbage in, 
you will get garbage out, and I want to make sure the EPA isn't putting 
garbage in. I want to make sure they know yields per acre for corn have 
doubled between 1970 and today. I want EPA to know that nitrogen 
fertilizer used per acre has been declining since 1985. The 
Environmental Protection Agency also needs to know that the ethanol 
industry today is vastly more efficient than it was just a few years 
ago. Ethanol producers use one-fifth less energy today than they did 
just 8 years ago. More fuel is being produced from the same amount or 
even less land.
  The California Air Resource Board is also trying to grasp this issue. 
They are developing a low carbon fuel standard which is penalizing 
biofuels with an indirect land use change. On March 2, 2009, to 
counteract this, 111 scientists sent a letter to California Governor 
Schwarzenegger on this very matter. The scientists are from leading 
research labs such as Sandia, Lawrence Berkeley, and the National 
Academy of Sciences, as well as leading educational institutions, 
including MIT, UCLA, Michigan State, and Iowa State. Scientists 
criticized the California Air Resource Board for proposing a regulation 
that alleges an indirect price-induced land conversion effect around 
the globe caused by a demand for agricultural production and biofuels.
  In other words, they said in this official report what I just said: 
There isn't some Brazilian farmer just sitting around nervously 
awaiting whether he can plow up another acre of grassland in Brazil 
just because some more ethanol is being used out of products we grow 
here.
  The letter of these 111 scientists sent to Governor Schwarzenegger 
stated:

       The ability to predict this alleged effect depends on using 
     an economic model to predict worldwide carbon effects, and 
     the outcomes are unusually sensitive to the assumptions made 
     by the researchers conducting the model run. In addition, 
     this field of science is in its nascent stage, is 
     controversial in much of the scientific community, and is 
     only being enforced against biofuels.

  The two primary conclusions of these scientists are that science 
surrounding indirect land use changes is far too limited and uncertain 
for regulatory enforcement. Second, indirect effects are often 
misunderstood and should not be enforced selectively.

  Several of us in the Senate are trying to get the Environmental 
Protection Agency to wake up and reconsider some of their thoughts. 
Last week I had the opportunity to join my Iowa colleague, Senator 
Harkin, as well as 10 other Senators, in appealing to EPA Administrator 
Lisa Jackson to be cautious on this issue and as doctors would say 
about medicine: First do no harm.
  Because of the incomplete and limited science, we urge in our letter 
against any premature and, of course, inaccurate conclusions on 
indirect land use changes. Instead, the EPA should move forward by 
allowing for public review and refinement of the methodology that they 
have developed. I am afraid the climate folks at EPA are heading in the 
wrong direction on this issue. I do not think they are bad people, but 
I am afraid they do not understand much about American agriculture. I 
do not think they are aware of the significant crop yield improvements 
we have seen in recent years or the great potential for the next 20 
years.
  I will just give my own farming operation as an example. In 1959, 
when I started farming, we were raising, on average, about 60 bushels 
of corn per acre. It happened that the first year I farmed I produced 
considerably less than that amount, but eventually, within 15 years, 
this farmer, as well as the Iowa average, had gone to about 90 bushels 
of corn per acre.
  Last year, in my county, we raised 175 bushels of corn per acre. 
During that period of time, we went from tilling the field probably six 
or seven times over to produce a crop to now a point where we are only 
tilling the field once or twice before harvest. In each of these 
processes, we are producing more corn, we are producing it more 
efficiently, and at the same time we have an abundance.
  When I started farming, farmers were producing about enough food for 
44 other people. A family farmer today produces enough food for 140 
other people.
  I think we have made great progress, but I am not sure EPA 
understands the efficiency of the American farmer today and for sure 
they do not understand that people in Brazil are not just sitting 
around, seeing how they can take advantage of the fact that American 
farmers might be producing some of their crop for sustainable energy 
production in this country as opposed to importing more oil.
  I also do not think these people fully understand the benefits of 
valuable ethanol byproducts, which further reduce the effective land 
used for fuel production.
  Along this line, do they understand that when you take a bushel of 
corn to make 3 gallons of ethanol that corn is

[[Page S3603]]

not gone forever, that 18 pounds of the 56 pounds that is in a bushel 
of corn is left over for animal feed? So it is not all going to 
production of energy.
  To me, it defies common sense that the EPA would publish a proposed 
rulemaking with harmful conclusions about biofuels based on incomplete 
science and inaccurate assumptions and especially in light of President 
Obama's commitment to use sound science in decisionmaking by the 
bureaucracy carrying out the laws we pass. The Environmental Protection 
Agency's action, if based on erroneous land-use assumptions, could 
hinder biofuel development and extend America's dependence upon dirtier 
fossil fuels from parts of the world that are not very stable.
  Agricultural practices and land-use decisions in other countries are 
not driven by U.S. biofuel policies. In other words, there is no 
Brazilian farmer sitting around in Brazil, waiting to see what Iowa 
farmers are going to do with their corn--for food or export or for 
fuel. Even if they were, we have no accurate way to measure it 
scientifically and we need to ensure that in that measurement, biofuels 
get credit for these increased efficiencies of production--of the basic 
commodity as well as the increase in efficiency producing the ethanol.
  President Obama was, and as far as I know is still, a strong 
proponent of our domestic biofuels industry and he especially was 
during his time in the Senate. I know he recognizes the benefit of 
producing homegrown renewable fuels, and I doubt he would agree with 
the conclusion that biofuels emit the same or more lifecycle greenhouse 
gas emissions as does gasoline.
  I hope the EPA will reconsider its conclusions on this or not hastily 
draw conclusions.

                          ____________________