[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21061-21071]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2660, which the clerk will report by 
title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2660) making appropriations for the 
     Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
     Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Specter amendment No. 1542, in the nature of a substitute.
       Byrd amendment No. 1543 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide 
     additional funding for education for the disadvantaged.
       Akaka amendment No. 1544 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     provide funding for the Excellence in Economic Education Act 
     of 2001.
       Mikulski amendment No. 1552 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     increase funding for programs under the Nurse Reinvestment 
     Act and other nursing workforce development programs.

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Florida is recognized.


                Amendment No. 1557 To Amendment No. 1542

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I send to the desk an 
amendment.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there an objection to setting aside the 
pending amendments? If not, without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Florida [Mr. Nelson] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1557.

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To provide for a study and report on the propagation of 
                            concierge care)

       On page 61, between lines 14 and 15, insert the following:

     SEC. __. GAO STUDY AND REPORT ON THE PROPAGATION OF CONCIERGE 
                   CARE.

       (a) Study.--
       (1) In general.--The Comptroller General of the United 
     States shall conduct a study on concierge care (as defined in 
     paragraph (2)) to determine the extent to which such care--
       (A) is used by medicare beneficiaries (as defined in 
     section 1802(b)(5)(A) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 
     1395a(b)(5)(A))); and
       (B) has impacted upon the access of medicare beneficiaries 
     (as so defined) to items and services for which reimbursement 
     is provided under the medicare program under title XVIII of 
     the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.).
       (2) Concierge care.--In this section, the term ``concierge 
     care'' means an arrangement under which, as a prerequisite 
     for the provision of a health care item or service to an 
     individual, a physician, practitioner (as described in 
     section 1842(b)(18)(C) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 
     1395u(b)(18)(C))), or other individual--
       (A) charges a membership fee or another incidental fee to 
     an individual desiring to receive the health care item or 
     service from such physician, practitioner, or other 
     individual; or
       (B) requires the individual desiring to receive the health 
     care item or service from such physician, practitioner, or 
     other individual to purchase an item or service.
       (b) Report.--Not later than the date that is 18 months 
     after the date of enactment of this Act, the Comptroller 
     General of the United States shall submit to Congress a 
     report on the study conducted under subsection (a)(1) 
     together with such recommendations for legislative or 
     administrative action as the Comptroller General determines 
     to be appropriate.

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, this is an amendment that I 
think is noncontroversial, that I am led to believe will be accepted by 
both sides. It calls for a study by the GAO of a practice that is going 
on in health care today that I have considerable concerns with, which 
could cause the beginning of the demise of a major part of Medicare, 
which is our health insurance system provided by the Federal Government 
for senior citizens.
  The practice, interestingly, started in my State of Florida. It has 
spread to other States. We do not know the extent of this practice. 
That is one of the reasons for the GAO study that would take place over 
the next year and a half.
  But here is what happens: Let's say a doctor has a patient list of 
some 3,000 patients, and the doctor wants to constrict his or her 
practice. So the doctor writes all of the patients--and what I am 
recounting right now is in fact what has happened in Florida--the 
doctor writes all of the patients and says: Henceforth, I am going to 
limit my practice. If you want to continue with me, you must pay an 
entrance fee of $1,800 per year. In some cases it has been noted in 
articles that have appeared in periodicals such as the Los Angeles 
Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times that that entrance 
fee is as high as $20,000 per patient.
  So what happens is, patients who have enjoyed the services of that 
physician in the physician-patient relationship, and who cannot afford 
the entrance fee, suddenly have to go elsewhere to seek their health 
care services.
  You may say: Well, that sounds reasonable because we ought to have 
the opportunity for individuals to charge what they want for the 
services they provide as a physician. And, of course, that is our free 
market system way of doing things. But when part of the equation is a 
health insurance system funded by the Federal Government for senior 
citizens, and the doctor wants to continue to receive reimbursement by 
that health insurance system called Medicare, and the doctor is 
limiting the access of patients with an entrance fee which that patient 
must pay, then what we start to create under Medicare is a two-tier 
system of those who can afford it and those who cannot. It was never 
contemplated that is what Medicare would be.
  Let me give you an example in the private sector. If Blue Cross/Blue 
Shield has a panel of doctors, and those doctors on that panel are 
entitled to receive reimbursement from the health insurance company--in 
this case in the private sector my example is Blue Cross/Blue Shield--
if those doctors say, ``Well, I will be glad to see you, enrollee of 
Blue Cross/Blue Shield, insured by Blue Cross/Blue Shield, but you have 
to pay me $1,800 a year before I will see you,'' do you think Blue 
Cross/Blue Shield is going to keep that doctor on its panel of 
physicians who are going to handle those insureds of that insurance 
company? The answer to that is, of course not.
  If that will not occur in the private sector, then why, in the public 
sector, in a health insurance system funded by the Federal Government 
for senior citizens, should the Federal Government close its eyes and 
look the other way while the physicians limit their practice with that 
entrance fee?
  We have already addressed this. The Senate took its first step in 
opposing the use of these access fees by doctors who treat Medicare 
patients by including a provision in last year's budget resolution that 
expressed the Senate's preference that Federal funds should not 
reimburse doctors who charge their Medicare patients any unnecessary 
fees.
  What has happened in the meantime is the doctors who practice this, 
of

[[Page 21062]]

course, want these entrance fees because they can now limit their 
practice. But, oh, by the way, they still want to continue to receive 
the insurance benefits from Medicare, so naturally they are going to 
fight this. And they have engaged all kinds of lobbyists to fight it.
  So what I am asking for is a study. It is my understanding that both 
sides of the aisle have agreed to have this provision. This is a study 
by the GAO over the next year and a half that will look at how 
extensive this is and whether there is any diminution in the service 
through Medicare to the Medicare recipients we are trying to help. I 
maintain there is.
  What the doctors will tell you is: No, no, no; what we are doing is 
we are adding all kinds of different services. We are adding an annual 
health checkup, a physical exam. We are going to give them hot towels. 
There won't be any waits in a waiting room. They will have a special 
private waiting room.
  I do not have any problem with that if that is what the patient wants 
to pay. But to say no patient can come to that doctor who is receiving 
Medicare reimbursement unless that patient is, at the same time, paying 
them that entrance fee--which ranges across America from $1,800 per 
patient in Florida to $20,000 per patient that was noted by the New 
York Times and the Los Angeles Times in a case out in California--then 
I think it is beginning to establish a dangerous precedent that in 
effect could impose a means test to access Medicare providers. That 
would further increase the gap between those who can afford health care 
and those who cannot. That is not the purpose of Medicare.
  The purpose of Medicare is to assist all seniors, not just some 
seniors. The purpose of Medicare is a health insurance system funded by 
the Federal Government for all senior citizens, not just some. I think 
the logical extension of this practice is, as you go down the line, 
with access limited, we are going to create a two-tier system, and that 
is not what Congress had in mind.
  So what I am offering is an amendment that would get at the heart of 
this. Let's be fair. If the doctors can make their case to GAO, then so 
be it. I personally believe strongly that it is the beginning of the 
disintegration of the main principle of Medicare, which is to have 
access to health care for all senior citizens.
  Mr. President, that is the essence of the amendment. I will abide by 
the leaders of the bill as to how they want to dispose of it. If the 
leader of the committee, the chairman, would like me to call for a 
vote, I would be happy to do so. It is whatever is the pleasure of the 
distinguished chairman of the committee, the Senator from Pennsylvania.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Pennsylvania is 
recognized.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Florida for 
offering this amendment. I think he has articulated good reasons for a 
study by the General Accounting Office. These are important issues 
which could have a significant impact on health care delivery in our 
country. We are prepared to accept the amendment.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am grateful to the Senator 
from Pennsylvania.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there further debate on the amendment?
  Mr. SPECTER. Trying to be brief in acceptance to give plenty of time 
for other amendments to be offered, but as the Chair can observe, there 
are no Senators in the Chamber seeking to offer amendments. If we are 
to proceed, as I said earlier, to get this bill considered and acted 
upon, we will have to have people coming to the floor with amendments.
  I urge the adoption of the amendment.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there any further debate?
  The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 1557.
  The amendment (No. 1557) was agreed to.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. REID. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are having a little down time. We expect 
a significant number of Senators to have their schedules arranged so 
they will be here, but it is not right now; it probably won't be until 
45 minutes or so. We will see what we can do to try to get someone to 
come. We have people who have indicated they will offer their 
amendments today, a dozen Senators. But we have had difficulty getting 
people to come during the 10 o'clock hour.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator from Florida.


                           Amendment No. 1543

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, with the permission of the 
two leaders, I would like to speak to another amendment that is 
pending. That is Senator Byrd's amendment. Since we have no one else in 
the Chamber ready to offer an amendment, I would like to do so at this 
time.
  Senator Byrd's amendment, on which we will be voting probably later 
today, will allow us to fulfill the promises we made when we passed 2 
years ago the No Child Left Behind Act which was the additional 
educational assistance from the Federal Government to the States and 
local governments in order to help children by increasing title I for 
disadvantaged children. Let me go back and cite a little of the 
history.
  The Federal Government has had a very limited role in education. 
Today, of all the expenditures for education--be it at the university 
level all the way down to the beginning of school, pre-K and K--the 
Federal Government only engages in 7 percent of those expenses. Ninety-
three percent is borne by the governments you would expect to carry the 
load in education--the State and the local governments, mainly through 
the school boards.
  Along about 20 years ago or so, when we set up the Department of 
Education--and I don't remember the exact time title I was set up--it 
was believed that there was a particular role for the Federal 
Government to play in assisting State and local government on 
educational expenses by helping the children who had disadvantaged 
backgrounds, and thus was born title I which sends money to help 
children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Indeed, an example is 
the School Lunch Program. It is clearly an acknowledgment that a child 
cannot learn if the child is hungry--and a whole host of other kinds of 
moneys that flow from the Federal Government to try to reach that 
principle that every child should have an equal opportunity to an 
education.
  In the Senate 2 years ago--fortunately, then, we were looking at a 
surplus in our Federal budget--we crafted, in a give and take, not only 
with the other body, the House of Representatives, but also with the 
White House--especially with the White House--this act that is referred 
to as No Child Left Behind. It had additional provisions of 
accountability, testing so that you could measure the progress of 
children in those school districts in those States. It was authorized 
at a specific level. It was authorized at approximately $18 billion, 
whereas at the time the funding was about $11 billion. That was the 
clear intent when we passed it.
  But when we got around to appropriating the moneys, for whatever 
reason, the White House decided it was not going to support the 
increased funding to the level authorized in the bill, the No Child 
Left Behind Act, of $18 billion, but instead was only going to support 
an increase of roughly $1 billion, to the tune of somewhere around $12 
billion, from $11 billion.
  As a result, I had about 25 townhall meetings when I was home in 
August. When those school board members came, when that superintendent 
of the schools came to that townhall meeting or when I met, in one 
case, in Volusia County, with the entire school board, they were crying 
the blues that they have all kinds of requirements under this new law 
we enacted but the money did not flow with it.
  Senator Byrd has offered an amendment to take that level of funding 
up

[[Page 21063]]

to what was worked out with the President and the Senate in our 
negotiations in a bipartisan way in the Senate as well as between the 
leadership of the Senate--at that time it was under the leadership of 
Senator Daschle, as majority leader--and the White House. That is what 
Senator Byrd's amendment does. It increases it roughly about $6 billion 
to the level authorized.
  Folks back home--and I believe it is this way all over America, not 
just in Florida--are crying the blues about how the No Child Left 
Behind Act was not funded as promised. Title I schools provide 
education to the most disadvantaged children in our country. These are 
the very children we pledged not to leave behind. Typically they use 
those funds to buy educational material, to provide afterschool 
programs, to provide professional development to teachers, all of these 
things aimed at that special category of children, the disadvantaged 
children. This is separate and apart from the disabled children.
  We had an amendment yesterday, which unfortunately did not pass, to 
bring up the level of funding on the program known as IDEA which is 
special funding from the Federal Government for disabled children. 
Think of all the problems that a school board, that a school, that a 
classroom teacher has to confront these days--disabilities, as well as 
children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. We were not able to 
pass that amendment yesterday on disabled kids. I hope we will be able 
to pass this one for disadvantaged children.
  Why we would deny the most needy schools, providing education in the 
most difficult circumstances, the resources they need to make a 
difference in the lives of those disadvantaged kids is, to use a 
southern expression, beyond me. Why would we pass a law that claims to 
leave no child behind and then underfund the very reforms that were 
included in the bill to reach all of those students? In order to ensure 
that every child, no matter where that child comes from, has the 
opportunity to achieve, we simply have to stop paying lipservice to 
educational reform and we have to start funding it. That is what I 
promised my people back home in Florida that I was going to come back 
up here and try to articulate to this Senate.
  It doesn't make any sense, given all the budgets we have, that our 
education budget is any lesser priority, especially given that this is 
the future of America. So with Senator Byrd's amendment, we have the 
opportunity to reach a little over 2 million more disadvantaged 
students. I simply don't want us to pass up this opportunity.


                               Head Start

  Madam President, as long as I don't see any other Senators seeking 
recognition, I want to bring something else to the attention of the 
Senate. It came home to me loudly and clearly when I was home. The last 
week before the August recess, the House of Representatives passed a 
bill by a one-vote margin that is starting the demise of another one of 
the most successful and tremendously popular programs, the Head Start 
Program.
  What the House of Representatives passed in late July before they 
left--and most people around the country don't know this. There was a 
simple one-line mention in the newspapers that the House of 
Representatives had passed, by a vote of 217 to 216, a bill to take the 
funding formula for Head Start and change it in eight States, to be 
determined, instead of in those eight States sending the funding 
directly to those Head Start centers--instead, to package it in a block 
and send it to the Governor and the legislatures of eight States, yet 
to be determined.
  Now, let me tell you why I think this is the beginning of the demise 
of Head Start. Head Start is a wildly popular program because it has 
been so successful over three decades of doing what? Of bringing 3-
year-olds, 4-year-olds, and 5-year-olds who come from disadvantaged and 
poor backgrounds up to the level that, by the time they enter school at 
prekindergarten and the first grade, they are not so far left behind 
that they have a chance to compete and they don't become discarded in 
the system and then, of course, so much more expensive in the long run 
because of the cost to society of the dropout, and so forth.
  I visited a Head Start center and you should have seen it. It was 
down in Boynton Beach in Florida. It has this happy little classroom 
environment where these 3, 4, and 5-year-olds are beginning to learn 
their numbers, beginning to learn the alphabet, beginning to interact 
in a classroom setting, beginning to learn self-discipline, respect for 
property, respect for others, and respect for themselves--a wildly 
successful and, therefore, enormously popular program. There are 19,000 
Head Start centers all over America, and the funding formula--since 
this was a program that was set up by the Federal Government over three 
decades ago, again, with that principle that we are trying to achieve 
that of giving each child an equal opportunity for an education--the 
funding was set up by the Federal Government to try to assist the 
States.
  Now, let me tell you--well, I don't have to; just go talk to your 
school board members, talk to the principals and the teachers in those 
elementary schools. Ask them whether they think it is of extremely high 
value--the Head Start Program--when those kids are in pre-K and the 
first grade and they see their progress throughout the elementary 
school system. They will give you an earful of just how important it is 
to keep it.
  But that is not what the House of Representatives did. The House of 
Representatives, by that one-vote margin, decided they were going to 
fund it in a different way. Instead of the money, as it has for over 30 
years, going straight to the Head Start center based on a formula of 
how many children and what kind of background, instead, they are going 
to ball up all that money for all of the Head Start centers in eight 
States, yet to be chosen--by the way, you can pick eight States that 
have well over half of the population of the entire country--and they 
are going to give that in a block grant to the Governor and legislature 
of those States. Well, have we missed reading all of the chronicling on 
the front pages of the newspapers of how 48 of the 50 States are in 
fiscal cardiac arrest, how they are hurting so much they don't have 
enough funds? Can you imagine the temptation, even though we might try 
to put requirements on it, to find ways around it to siphon off some of 
those funds from Head Start into other educational programs? I am 
telling you, if we did that, in this Senator's judgment, that would be 
the beginning of the demise of one of the most successful and popular 
programs in America, the Head Start Program.
  I have enough confidence in the common sense of this Senate and in 
the sensitivity of the Members of this body in listening to their 
people back home--even though what the House did didn't get a lot of 
press attention--that this Senate would not even consider the change of 
that funding formula. But we have to speak out on it because it hasn't 
gotten a lot of attention.
  It is appropriate that while we are debating the question of funding 
on education, particularly with Senator Byrd's amendment that goes to 
title I, which is getting at those disadvantaged kids, we also ought to 
talk about Head Start, which is getting at the very beginning of the 
educational process of those disadvantaged kids before they ever get to 
the elementary level of education.
  So I wanted to share with the Senate--to again use a southern 
expression--that I had received an earful back home. I am glad I did 
and I am glad I could share this with the Senate. When that bill comes 
over from the House they passed in the last week of their session, I 
hope we will tell them nothing doing, we are not messing with an 
extremely popular program. Instead, what we are going to do with that 
popular and successful program is expand it because today it only, as 
successful as it is, reaches 60 percent of the eligible children. Even 
of the earlier ones that we can start working on below age 3, we are 
only reaching about 3 percent of that eligible population. We have a 
lot of room to help these little folks as they get ready to compete so 
they don't get so far behind once they enter school.

[[Page 21064]]

  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, since the issue of education has been 
brought up not only this morning but over the last couple of days, and 
I have listened to some wailing and comments, I feel compelled to talk 
a little bit about education myself.
  This week, many of my colleagues have come to the floor to criticize 
the President and criticize his administration and even to criticize 
the Senate leadership for their commitment to education. This is a 
discussion we need to have every time the Senate debates spending, but 
every time we seem to plow the same old ground. There are a lot of 
platitudes and myths out there that keep being regenerated. It takes a 
lot of time, and it keeps us from completing the spending bills. I hope 
I can say a few words that will put this debate in perspective.
  My colleagues have argued that the current appropriations bill cuts 
education spending and it underfunds the No Child Left Behind Act. They 
have suggested, and I suppose will continue to insist, that the bill 
contains harsh and unacceptable cuts to education and that it will 
somehow leave students and teachers on their own. That is simply not 
the case.
  The bill contains over $12 billion for title I programs, the third 
straight year it has had an increase. That is a total increase of 45 
percent in title I funding since 2001.
  It also contains $1 billion for Reading First, close to $700 million 
for State education technology grants, and over $1.1 billion for impact 
aid programs. All told, this bill contains about $56 billion for 
education programs, over $12 billion more--$12 billion more--than 
fiscal year 2001. Yet my colleagues insist that this bill cuts too much 
from education. They argue it does not go far enough and that we must 
increase our Federal deficit by several billion dollars more to assure 
we have adequately funded education. Where are these disastrous cuts? 
How is a $12 billion increase in education funding over 4 years a harsh 
and unacceptable cut?
  Before I came to the Senate, I worked as an accountant. I learned how 
to balance accounts and read ledgers, and I am astounded to see my 
colleagues insisting that a $12 billion increase in education funding 
for over 4 years somehow constitutes a cut. I guess that kind of gives 
you an idea why we have some problems. It does not take special 
training in accounting to understand that a $3.9 billion increase in 
title I spending since 2002 is not a cut. Even without my training as 
an accountant, I am confident I would understand, as do families across 
America, that a $12 billion increase is not a cut, no matter how you 
frame it.
  It is interesting to see how many of my colleagues are now 
criticizing the President and this administration for recommending less 
than the authorized amounts--authorized amounts--under No Child Left 
Behind. Let me explain authorized amounts.
  We go through a three-step process around here. We have a budget 
process. A budget is something the President has to present to us by 
February so that we can approve a massive outline of how we are going 
to do spending by April 15. It is a Federal statute. It has been 
complied with twice in the history of the country. Once was this year. 
The other one was many decades ago. We did a budget.
  Then there is a second part to the process. It does not necessarily 
have to come after the first part. It can be contiguous or it can be 
before the first part. It is called authorization. Authorization is 
when a bill is drafted by the committee of jurisdiction, the ones that 
have the knowledge and the concentration and focus on the problem. They 
do an authorization bill. It is usually a 6-year authorization, and it 
is an authorization for the maximum amount that will be spent, not 
minimums.
  I hope everybody catches that. The authorization bill does not give 
minimums of spending, it gives the authorization for the maximums of 
spending, and that is the maximums of spending over a 6-year period.
  Taking into account inflation, new programs, and issues such as 
those, nobody ever starts at the maximum and hopes they can sustain and 
increase that through the period of the authorization bill. That is not 
how it works. We always start at less than the authorized amount, and 
we build up to it over the 6-year period.
  Let's take a look at some history because I seem to recall that this 
body did the exact same thing last year when they were doing No Child 
Left Behind in this particular bill.
  My colleagues, of course--now they are in the minority--held all of 
the leadership positions at that time. They were in charge of doing 
this appropriations bill. They were the ones in charge of figuring out 
how much of that authorization could logically be tucked into this 
appropriations bill.
  If we look at the appropriations bill reported out of committee last 
year, we find that it contained $3.5 billion less than the authorized 
level in title I funding. Somehow the administration is now being taken 
to task for recommending more than the colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle who were in charge last year recommended, even though they 
both recommended less than the fully authorized amounts. That is not 
unusual, and it shows that both sides of the aisle understand how this 
works.
  Remember, we will find that the appropriations bill reported out of 
committee last year contained $3.5 billion less than the authorized 
level in title I funding, and the administration is now being taken to 
task for recommending more than the other side of the aisle did. I 
guess that should cut both ways. You cannot accuse the President of 
cutting education spending because he asked for less than the fully 
authorized amount when the other side of the aisle has done the same 
thing.
  Even though my colleagues approved a bill last year that left a gap 
between appropriations and the fully authorized amounts, it has now 
become unacceptable in their eyes to fund No Child Left Behind at less 
than the fully authorized levels. In Wyoming, we have a lot of 
expressions we use to describe that kind of behavior, but the only one 
I can probably use on the floor of the Senate is doubletalk.
  I also want to point out that we never made it to an Education 
appropriations bill last year. We never passed a budget last year. That 
was when the other side of the aisle was in the leadership. And it took 
us until this spring, under our current leadership, to pass any 
increase in title I and the No Child Left Behind Act. I think that 
bears a little bit of extra description.
  Yes, I have held town meetings in Wyoming, and I have had to answer 
to education, and I have had to explain to them that a year ago we 
could not even pass a budget. A year ago, we did not even take up 
Education appropriations. Yes, we had this new authorization bill for 
No Child Left Behind, but, Madam President, do you know what. You 
cannot appropriate any additional dollars if you do not do an 
appropriations bill, and that appropriations bill never got done under 
the leadership last year. There was not a dime of increase passed last 
year.
  When Senator Frist became the majority leader this year, we went to 
work on getting the appropriations done, and with the cooperation 
across the aisle, we were able to get nine bills approved in 8 days. I 
think that is about how it was.
  That was the first funding for education under No Child Left Behind. 
When did that happen? The President signed it into law on February 26, 
and the bureaucratic machine moved faster than it ever has. By March 
26, the checks went out to the States. Miraculous. But school in this 
country ends at the end of May or the middle of June at the latest. So 
on March 26, the mail went out. Eventually the States got those checks. 
Then the States had to do the allocation out to the school districts.
  I do not imagine they got that done in one day. I do not imagine they 
got that done in a month. So now we are talking about the end of April, 
and school is going to end the next month. What kind of education 
funding is that?

[[Page 21065]]

  So nobody got an increase for last year. They had to operate on the 
budget that they had from the year before. We never passed a budget. It 
took us until this spring, under our current leadership, to pass any 
increases in title I and the No Child Left Behind Act.
  The current Senate leadership can point to two separate increases in 
funding for education compared to last year when this body did not 
approve any increases in education funding. If this issue is such a 
priority for my colleagues, why did we adjourn last fall without 
passing an additional dollar for education? As I am sure my colleagues 
will recall, we left Washington last year without a single dime more 
for education than was available the year before. Incidentally, because 
of this delay, when the President made his budget recommendation to 
Congress--that is that first step of the process I mentioned--we were 
still working on fiscal year 2003 appropriations; we had not finished 
them.
  Those appropriations should have been the base for the President's 
recommendation, but we require him to have that in by February, and he 
did. That is the only way we can get our work done by April. He 
complied. So what figures could the President use?
  The present administration is being blamed for this body's failure to 
pass an appropriations bill last fall, and that seems preposterous to 
me. Of course, he had to base his budget on what we had done for 2002, 
and he did, and he made substantial increases.
  I want to mention just a little bit about the budget process we went 
through, too. During the budget process, we had an interminable number 
of votes attempting to do unprecedented earmarking. Well, that is not 
really what it was designed to do. What it was designed to do was to 
make it look as if a majority of the Senators who were doing 
responsible budgeting were actually voting against key programs that 
are normally not outlined specifically with earmarking. So the 
responsible Senators did the right thing and voted against what looked 
like voting against kids, and that is exactly politically how it was 
designed to be. But they did it so that we could have a responsible 
budget.
  Now here we go again with the interminable number of votes I am sure 
we will be expected to take that will earmark an increase and change, 
and all of them are outside of the budget process that has already been 
approved.
  Fortunately, I am sure the people across America are educated 
enough--I am sure our system has done that--to see through what is 
happening. We all know the Senate's budget process and we know the 
President is required to make that recommendation in February. When 
this body does not pass the appropriations bill that normally serves as 
the basis for the President's recommendation, it is unconscionable to 
then criticize the President for his recommendations.
  The bottom line is that this body passed last year's appropriations 
bill 6 months late, and only then under the current Senate leadership. 
A better comparison would be the President's recommendations on the 
fiscal year 2002 appropriations, which were the only figures available 
at the time the President submitted his recommendation to Congress.
  Clearly, this discussion is not about funding levels, it is about 
politics. This body has too much important business before it to waste 
time playing politics, particularly playing politics on education. 
There are students and teachers depending on this body to give them 
additional funding, and that is what my colleagues on the 
Appropriations Committee have done. Let us get the business of the 
Senate completed so these students and teachers can get what they need 
this year, rather than another day, another week, or another month of 
debate that could once again push the dollars into the following year.
  Let us get our work done timely. Let us give some consideration to 
what kind of amendments are being offered. Let us put the politics 
behind for our kids and let us get this bill done.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.


                Amendment No. 1558 to Amendment No. 1542

  Mr. KOHL. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to setting aside the 
pending amendments?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Kohl] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1558 to amendment No. 1542.

  Mr. KOHL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To provide additional funding for the ombudsman program for 
             the protection of vulnerable older Americans)

       At the appropriate place insert the following:
       Sec. __. In addition to any amounts otherwise appropriated 
     under this Act under the heading of Administration on Aging, 
     there are appropriated an additional $1,000,000: Provided, 
     That in addition to the amounts already made available to 
     carry out the ombudsman program under chapter 2 of title VII 
     of the Older Americans Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. 3058 et seq.), 
     there are made available an additional $1,000,000.

  Mr. KOHL. Madam President, this is a noncontroversial amendment I 
hope will be accepted later today. It addresses the tragedy of abuse 
and neglect in our Nation's nursing homes and other long-term care 
settings.
  Our seniors made our country what it is today, and they have earned 
the right to live out their days with dignity and the best possible 
care.
  For most seniors in long-term care, they have that opportunity. The 
vast majority of nursing homes, home health agencies and other long-
term care providers do a good job taking care of their patients under 
difficult circumstances. But too often across this country, there have 
been and continues to be cases in which our elderly and disabled are 
abused, beaten, starved, or neglected.
  Last year, a House Government Reform Committee report found that 
nearly one-third of nursing homes had been cited for an abuse violation 
in the past 2 years. Ten percent of nursing homes had violations that 
caused actual harm or placed residents in immediate jeopardy of injury 
or death. The Senate Aging Committee, on which I serve, has repeatedly 
heard from the GAO that abuse and neglect are a major problem in our 
Nation's nursing homes.
  Tucked away in this appropriations bill is a little program that has 
a big impact on these problems. The State Long-Term Care Ombudsmen 
Program places caring people throughout each State to assist elderly 
and disabled patients who have been abused or neglected. The ombudsmen 
have the responsibility to make sure that patients' complaints are 
investigated and addressed. They help these vulnerable people and their 
families navigate the complicated system and get the help they need.
  In addition, the ombudsmen work with nursing homes to improve care. 
They also serve a large number of patients in home health care and 
assisted living. In cases where a nursing home must be closed because 
it cannot or will not improve, the ombudsmen help patients relocate to 
the best possible setting.
  Unfortunately, a lack of funding and staff make it difficult for the 
ombudsmen to serve the large number of people who need their services--
leaving patients vulnerable to substandard care.
  A recent Administration on Aging report found that complaints to 
ombudsmen increased 48 percent from 1996 to 2001. Yet funding still 
lags far behind what is needed. Ombudsmen are being asked to do more 
and more, and Congress should make sure they have the resources to do 
their jobs.
  I greatly appreciate the chairman and ranking member's willingness to 
work with me over the past several years to increase funding for the 
ombudsman program. Through our efforts, we have increased funding by $6 
million since fiscal year 2000.

[[Page 21066]]

  This is a great start. But I have been advised by the National 
Association of Ombudsman Programs that it would take a $36 million 
increase to adequately fund the program. I realize that such a large 
increase is not possible in a single year--especially a year that has 
such tight fiscal constraints as this one. But I am concerned that the 
bill before us includes no increase at all.
  This amendment would take another small but real step forward by 
increasing the program by $1 million this year. This increase will help 
ombudsmen keep up with the growing demand for their services. And it 
will help make sure that patients are better protected from abuse at 
the hands of those who are supposed to care for them.
  I thank the chairman and ranking member for working with me. I know 
we all have the same goal of making sure our seniors are adequately 
protected in law term care.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator from Wisconsin for offering this 
amendment. I share his concern about adequate care for seniors in 
nursing homes. That account is currently funded at $13.361 million. I 
note that the Senator from Wisconsin wants to add $1 million. We would 
like to be accommodating. However, as Everett Dirksen once said, a 
million here and a million there add up.
  I would be interested to know if the Senator from Wisconsin would 
care to respond why he picks $1 million instead of $2 million or 
$750,000? Where does the Senator from Wisconsin see the need for an 
additional $1 million when there already is $13.361 million? I am 
searching for some rationality as to why this million should be added.
  Mr. KOHL. I do appreciate that. As I say, it will take $36 million, 
in our judgment, to adequately fund the entire program. I know very 
well that is not possible. That is not going to happen. I could pick 
out a figure larger or smaller than a million, and it was Senator 
Dirksen who did say a million or a billion added up to quite a bit of 
money. I do recognize $1 million is a lot of money, but considered in 
the context of what we are talking about and the importance of the 
program, which I know the Senator from Pennsylvania agrees, $1 million 
is a reasonable number.
  I would not impose on the Senator the burden of having to make a 
difficult decision if that number were considerably larger. So I am 
asking for the support of the Senator with respect to a rather nominal 
number when we are considering the people we are talking about and the 
need for our service to them.
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, the difficulty which I have as manager, 
we are now up to our 302(b) allocation. To find another $1 million, we 
have to take it from somewhere. It is a matter of evaluating whether $1 
million means anything significant on top of $13 million which we 
already have.
  However, I understand the interests of the Senator, the thrust of the 
argument by the Senator from Wisconsin. It is a worthwhile program. I 
will sharpen my pencil and pull down my green eyeshade and see if we 
can find some money to accommodate what the Senator from Wisconsin 
would like to have done. No commitments, but we will take a close look.
  Mr. KOHL. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, the Senator from Georgia is on the 
floor and has requested an opportunity to speak for a few moments on 
another subject. From the manager's point of view, this would be a good 
time to do that. There is no other Senator on the floor now. I see 
Senator Murray is on the floor, but I think we can accommodate the 
Senator from Georgia for 7 minutes. I ask unanimous consent the Senator 
from Georgia be permitted to speak as if in morning business for 7 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  (The remarks of Mr. Miller are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask the pending amendment be laid 
aside so I may offer an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 1559 to Amendment No. 1542

  Mrs. MURRAY. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its 
immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Washington [Mrs. Murray] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1559.

  Mrs. MURRAY. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To restore funding for certain programs under the Workforce 
                        Investment Act of 1998)

       In the matter under the heading ``Training and Employment 
     Services'' under the heading ``Employment and Training 
     Administration'' in title I, add at the end the following:
       Subject to the following sentence, for necessary expenses 
     of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, including the 
     purchase and hire of passenger motor vehicles, the 
     construction, alteration, and repair of buildings and other 
     facilities, and the purchase of real property for training 
     centers as authorized by the Workforce Investment Act of 
     1998, $801,000,000, of which--
       (1) $100,000,000 is available to carry out activities 
     described in section 132(a)(1) of that Act (relating to adult 
     employment and training activities);
       (2) $159,000,000 is available to carry out activities 
     described in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of section 132(a)(2) 
     of that Act (relating to dislocated worker employment and 
     training activities and other activities for dislocated 
     workers);
       (3) $99,000,000 is available to carry out chapter 4 of 
     subtitle B of title I of that Act (relating to youth 
     activities);
       (4) $250,000,000 is available to carry out section 169 of 
     that Act (relating to youth opportunity grants);
       (5) $23,000,000 is available to carry out section 167 of 
     that Act (relating to migrant and seasonal farmworker 
     programs);
       (6) $20,000,000 is available to carry out section 166 of 
     that Act (relating to Native American programs); and
       (7) $150,000,000 is available for the acquisition and 
     improvement of one-stop center infrastructure, including 
     acquisition of real estate, payment of rent or utilities, 
     improvement of technology, and staff development.
       The amount $6,895,199,000 in section 305(a)(1) of this Act 
     shall be deemed to be $7,696,199,000 and the amount 
     $6,783,301,000 in section 305(a)(2) of this Act shall be 
     deemed to be $5,982,301,000: Provided, That of the funds 
     appropriated in this Act for the National Institutes of 
     Health, $370,000,000 shall not be available for obligation 
     until September 30, 2004.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I come to the floor this morning to 
offer an amendment to help some of the millions of Americans who are 
looking for work in this very tough economy. The amendment I am 
offering right now provides an additional $801 million for critically 
needed worker training and retraining programs under the Workforce 
Investment Act. I am proud that Senators Kennedy, Dodd, Leahy, 
Jeffords, and Bingaman are cosponsors of this important amendment.
  Today our Nation faces both a jobs crisis and a skills crisis. There 
are 9.1 million Americans searching for jobs and another 5 million more 
Americans are working part time because they cannot find full-time work 
in this stagnant economy. Those millions of workers need training and 
skills to get good jobs that are going to last, and that is what this 
amendment before us provides.
  I am proud that a wide range of organizations have endorsed my worker 
training amendment, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the 
National Association of Counties, the National Workforce Association, 
the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the National Association of 
Workforce Boards.
  My office has also received hundreds of letters of support from local 
workforce boards, mayors, county executives, employers, and just 
ordinary Americans. They all want this Senate to provide additional 
training opportunities for our workers.
  The amendment before us would provide training opportunities for an 
additional 200,000 adults, young people, dislocated workers, Native 
Americans, and migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

[[Page 21067]]

Most of these workforce and training programs have not had any--none--
increases in funding for the entire last decade.
  Think about that. We are in the middle of a jobs and skills crisis 
but most of our training programs have not had any funding increases in 
a decade.
  My amendment will increase funding for adults by $100 million; for 
dislocated workers by $159 million; for youth by $99 million; for youth 
opportunity grants by $250 million; for migrant and seasonal 
farmworkers by $23 million; for Native Americans by $20 million; and 
for one-stop infrastructure by $150 million. That funding is going to 
make a huge difference.
  I think any Senators who spent time with their constituents during 
the August recess from which we have just returned will recognize the 
urgent need for jobs and job training.
  Last month when I was home I visited two of our one-stop employment 
centers in my State and I met with staff members who are working to 
train residents. I met with local employers who want to hire people in 
the community if they have the right skills. I met with workers, from 
young people who are just starting their careers to established workers 
who have been displaced by much larger economic forces. All of them 
want the skills they need to find a good job. But for many of them it 
is very tough going.
  In King County, where Seattle is located, there is currently a 10,000 
person waiting list for training. That is appalling. These are people 
who want to work. They desperately want training. But in King County 
alone they are stuck on a waiting list with 10,000 other people. They 
have been waiting a long time. In King County, the freeze on training 
services began last January. It has been a very long and very difficult 
year for everyone on that waiting list. They need our help and the 
Murray amendment will provide it.
  Residents of the State of Washington continue to suffer with the 
third highest unemployment in the country, 7.5 percent. Since January 
of 2001, my State alone has lost 73,000 good-paying jobs in areas such 
as technology, aerospace, and manufacturing. Workers who were 
accustomed to earning $30 to $40 an hour as engineers in my State are 
now forced to accept warehouse jobs that pay $8 to $12 an hour.
  Today, one-stop employment centers across the country are being asked 
to serve more people than ever before, yet their funding remains below 
what it was in fiscal year 2001 when our country was still experiencing 
relative economic prosperity. As a result, workers who are searching 
for jobs are taking longer than in previous recessions to find work. In 
2000, it took an average of 12 weeks to find a new job. Currently, it 
takes approximately 20 weeks, and that is only if there are jobs to be 
found.
  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, some 1.1 
million workers have exhausted their extended unemployment benefits 
with no employment prospects on the horizon. These workers have worked 
hard and they have played by the rules, yet they are losing their homes 
in record numbers and even foregoing medical treatment for their 
children. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee these jobs are going to 
return, making it even more crucial that this Senate provide the 
retraining dollars to help those workers find jobs in the industries 
and sectors of the economy that have the greatest potential for growth.
  Unfortunately, young people seem to be the hardest hit by the current 
job crisis. The youth unemployment rate has hit a 10-year high of 19.3 
percent. The minority youth unemployment rate continues to hover around 
30 percent.
  Recent studies have shown that nearly 50 percent of the job losses in 
this recession have occurred to young people who are 16 to 24 years 
old. Young people desperately need help but our Federal workforce 
dollars currently serve only about 7 percent of our eligible youth 
nationally.
  My amendment would increase the youth formula grant money to States 
and localities, and would fully fund the Youth Opportunity Grant 
Program, which has a real track record of success in many communities 
and on Indian reservations around the country. My amendment also 
provides desperately needed modest increases for some of our most 
vulnerable populations--migrant and seasonal farmworkers and Native 
Americans. These two groups often have unemployment rates above 50 
percent with few prospects for jobs that will provide a sustainable 
income to support themselves and their families.
  As a nation, we have to place a higher priority on helping these 
chronically underserved populations. My amendment does just that.
  Finally, my amendment provides critical infrastructure funding for 
our national network of 1,900 one-stop employment centers. These one-
stop employment centers integrate nearly 20 Federal workforce and 
social service programs at the local level.
  In the HELP Committee, we have been working very hard to reauthorize 
the Workforce Investment Act, and to include more related programs such 
as TANF, small business, and transportation into the one-stops with an 
additional emphasis on program integration and seamless service 
delivery for all eligible Americans.
  In summary, the Murray amendment that is before this body will 
provide additional hope and opportunity for citizens who need jobs 
today. Given the employment trends we will face over the next decade, 
we cannot afford to waste the talents of any worker as we continue to 
compete in the global economy.
  I hope all Senators will agree with me that taking care of the 
training needs of our workers at home should be a top priority for our 
Government. The rest of the world is monitoring how we train our 
workforce because these foreign governments are looking for every 
advantage to capture additional market share for goods and services 
that are currently produced in the United States.
  Let us not give our competitors a leg up. Let us support the Murray 
amendment so we can continue to have the most highly skilled and 
productive workforce in the world and so we can put our Americans back 
to work in good jobs that will last.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Murray amendment.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. MURRAY. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator from Washington has just made an excellent 
presentation on an issue which is the heart and soul of our economic 
challenge; that is, to ensure that we are going to have continued 
upgrading of skills for workers to be able to compete in the world 
economy.
  On Labor Day, I heard the President of the United States talk about 
the importance of job training and the importance of continuing 
education in the employment field. Yet it is my understanding, in terms 
of the administration's request, that there was actually a reduction in 
funding for this program--not that money in and of itself is the sole 
answer. But the Senator is very aware that the job training program 
that has been worked out and is in place at the present time is really 
the result of a very strong, bipartisan effort by Senator Kassebaum, 
Senator Murray, myself, and others involved in trying to work out one-
stop shopping working with labor, work, and business. We finally got a 
program that is effective, and now the resources are really needed. We 
find that workers getting the training are able to find employment. It 
is really a key issue in terms of our economy today and in terms of the 
future.
  Is the Senator not somewhat perplexed, given the statements by the 
President that we would have a reduction in funding of the program, 
which program reflects strong bipartisan effort, passed overwhelmingly 
in the House and Senate, and supported by the President, and which is 
so necessary in terms of having people getting the skills necessary for 
them to get back to work?
  Mrs. MURRAY. The Senator from Massachusetts is correct. I heard the

[[Page 21068]]

President on Labor Day. I was delighted to hear that he was facing up 
to the fact that our economy is struggling, with thousands of people 
out of work. I am very perplexed that he is not willing to add 
additional money to train our workers.
  As the Senator from Massachusetts knows, when a young man or woman is 
laid off, they don't have the money to provide for their family. It 
impacts not just themselves but their entire family and their entire 
community as they struggle. They are not going to find the same jobs. 
Our economy is changing. The only way they are going to get back into 
the workforce is if we give them the skills and training to get into 
the economic sectors that have job openings. These programs are 
critical in getting our economy back on track. They are fundamental to 
getting our economy back on track.
  It is very perplexing to me that the President has not asked for nor 
supports the amendment before us that will help those workers.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator also understands that we are talking about a 
different aspect in terms of the need for training. We have the youth, 
we have the adult workers, and we have those who are laid off because 
of skills. There are a variety of different challenges out there, are 
there not? What we want to try to do is make sure we are going to take 
scarce resources and use those resources in ways which will result in 
giving skills to individuals--whether they are young, whether they are 
dislocated, whether they are the adult workers--and get them back into 
gainful employment, paying taxes and really returning resources to the 
economy in a very constructive and productive way.
  I understand the Senator's amendment attempts to do that. Am I 
correct?
  Mrs. MURRAY. The Senator from Massachusetts is absolutely correct. As 
I traveled around in August to talk to people in my State, where we 
have been severely impacted--we have the third highest unemployment in 
the Nation--I talked to students just out of high school who cannot 
afford to go college because of tuition increases and who do not have 
the skills to simply enter the workforce. It is very different than 
talking to a young father who is 35 years old with three young kids, 
who was an engineer at Boeing, who will not get that job back and 
doesn't have the computer training skills to get into another job that 
will provide him with the income to sustain a family with three 
children.
  There are different programs funded in my State which we have worked 
on and which were supported in the HELP Committee. They are different 
for dislocated workers or for adults or for youth.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Beyond that, as I understand it, some of the resources 
could be used to retain individuals actually in school rather than 
retraining young workers who drop out of school.
  This has an important relationship to what we have been trying to do 
in terms of focus, attention, and support for strengthening our 
education process to reach out to those individuals who may be tempted 
to drop out but can be retained in school and perhaps acquire some 
skills.
  This effort is reflective of a long experience--not that there 
shouldn't be some changes and alterations in a program.
  I see our good friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, on the other side 
of the aisle who is an expert in terms of training programs, OSHA, and 
otherwise.
  We have tried to work this out in a bipartisan way. This is really a 
key to our economic recovery.
  I thank the Senator from Washington for bringing this to the 
attention of the Senate. I hope we will have strong bipartisan support. 
We have had bipartisan support in the past. This certainly is an 
amendment that deserves it. I thank her for offering it on the 
appropriations bill.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his support, 
his words of wisdom, for his longstanding commitment to people in this 
country who do not have the opportunities, and for making sure that 
every American, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what 
circumstances have hit them in their lives, gets the opportunities for 
the American dream that all of us want. Certainly this amendment is 
part of that effort.
  Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, as chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Employment, Safety, and Training of the Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee, I have enjoyed working with the Senator from 
Washington, the ranking member. I appreciate all of her efforts on the 
Workforce Investment Act, and, of course, the ranking member of the 
full committee, Senator Kennedy, who has been working with us, and his 
staff who have been working in great detail to be sure we have a 
Workforce Investment Act we can pass this year so that we can make sure 
the money is funneled through the proper channels and the most people 
are taken care of for the money. It is up for reauthorization this 
year. It is particularly critical that we do it. It is landmark 
legislation that is a priority for both myself and my colleague from 
Washington. I am pleased that they worked so closely on getting this 
bipartisan bill to this point. I think we will be able to finish it and 
get it marked up sometime this month.
  During the reauthorization process, we have considered how resources 
are most effectively used for the people who need it most. There is no 
problem for anybody to see that there is a problem.
  Having said that, I need to explain that I will be opposing this 
amendment. I want to carefully explain that. I am not questioning the 
importance of job training in these difficult economic times, nor am I 
questioning the importance of the Workforce Investment Act as our 
Federal workforce development system. But I am opposing the amendment 
that increases funding for job training without appropriately 
offsetting such increased amount. At the appropriate time, I will be 
taking that action.
  The way this appears to be offset but really isn't is through what we 
use rather liberally in some of the amendments, even a couple pending 
before us now, which is advance funding. That means that we steal a 
little bit out of another year's appropriations so we can spend it in 
this year's appropriations, and, oddly enough, spend it in that year's 
appropriations, too. You can see if we get into a process of spending 
money twice, we are going to be in some real trouble.
  This amendment increases funding that is not targeted to individuals 
who are in most need of job training and assistance. Of the $801 
million increase in funds, only $159 million will go to the dislocated 
workers program--those individuals most in need of assistance to get 
back to work.
  So we are going to throw $801 million at the dislocated worker 
problem. Granted, there are uses for that money in those other areas, 
but we are going to do that to take care of $159 million that will go 
to dislocated worker programs. I don't think that is the right way for 
us to go about the process.
  The committee bill provides $5.1 billion for job training and 
employment services, and that is $164 million above the budget request. 
Of this total amount, the committee bill provides $1.43 billion for 
dislocated worker activities.
  We went through this during the process of the budget. We approved a 
budget. A change in the budget is what results in budget points of 
order. So the Labor-HHS bill must seek to address a lot of important 
needs, not the least of which is job training funding to ensure 
American workers are equipped to contribute and succeed in a changing 
economy. Of course, we always want that to happen faster than it is 
ever possible for it to happen.
  The committee bill does reduce job training funding from fiscal year 
2003 by $85 million, but I explained in a speech just a little while 
ago how that comes about. The President had to submit his budget before 
he knew what we were going to do in 2003, because we did not do a 
budget for the previous year; and then we did not pass the 
appropriation. So what we were going to be

[[Page 21069]]

doing was not known until after he had to submit a budget to us. So he 
had to base his budget on what had been done for 2002, and there was a 
significant increase from 2002. Again, we raised it a little bit, and 
did so again in the appropriation.
  So unless that can be offset, I am going to have to reluctantly 
oppose the amendment. Again, I don't think we ought to spend $801 
million trying to solve a $159-million problem. I ask my colleagues to 
oppose this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming, and I 
understand he is opposing the amendment. I just say we are in a crisis 
in this country. We are in a crisis when there are 10,000 people on a 
waiting list in King County alone to try to get into a training program 
in order to get the skills they need to get back to work. We are in a 
crisis when our economy continues to struggle and people are unable to 
put food on the table, send their kids to college, and to be able to 
feel secure when it comes to their jobs.
  We all know we are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq in order to 
reconstruct that country. It seems to me totally reasonable to ask for 
$801 million for next year to help train our workers, to get our 
economy back on track, and to give American families the security they 
need in their homes to know they can take care of their own.
  Mr. President, I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment at 
the appropriate time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the amendment offered by the Senator from 
Washington addresses a very important issue on job training, beyond any 
question. In structuring this appropriations bill, it has been very 
difficult, given the budget resolution and the allocation which we had.
  We have at the present time in the Senate bill $3,564,436,000 on this 
line. With respect to the dislocated workers assistance, this committee 
increased the recommendation of the President, which had been at 
$1,383,040,000, and we put it back up to the funding of 2003 at 
$1,431,340,000.
  The youth opportunity grants is a program which had a 5-year sunset. 
The President did not ask for funding for migrant farm workers, but we 
reinstated more than $77 million there.
  We maintained the funding for Native Americans, and maintained the 
funding for one-stop centers.
  Now, in an ideal world, with more funds, the amendment offered by the 
Senator from Washington might well be the thing to do. But the 
subcommittee is faced with the constraints, and we structured the very 
best we could in allocating, as I say, in excess of $3.5 billion for 
job training.
  Unless we can find some offset--and we are constantly taking a look 
at the long list of items which we have where the appropriations are 
recommended for the total of $137 billion--it is very difficult to see 
how the amendment can be accepted, without some offset, without 
exceeding the limits which we have under our allocation from the Budget 
Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I take the floor for a few minutes to 
discuss an amendment Senator Kennedy and I and others plan to offer to 
address a very important issue, one that affects the livelihood of 
millions of American workers and their families. It is an issue that 
bubbled up earlier this year when the Department of Labor--and I choose 
this word carefully--sort of surreptitiously issued proposed 
regulations, changes in regulations that would affect the 40-hour 
workweek and take away overtime protection for millions of American 
workers.
  They did not have one hearing on that. They published it, put this 
out as a proposed change in the rules and regulations. Not too many 
people knew about it. However, I am now aware that over 78,000 comments 
have come in on this issue from around the country. So now the 
Department of Labor is hearing back, and more and more Americans are 
beginning to find out about this proposal.
  Senator Kennedy and I, and a number of our colleagues, will offer an 
amendment to protect the 40-hour workweek and to make sure overtime 
protections are there for American workers.
  What the administration has proposed is a change in our regulations 
that would eliminate the 40-hour workweek by allowing employers to deny 
millions of workers overtime pay, workers who are currently covered and 
guaranteed overtime pay protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act 
of 1938.
  This proposal by the administration is antiworker, it is antifamily, 
and it is bad economic policy. It is an attack on America's middle 
class. It won't create one job in our struggling economy. In fact, it 
will do just the opposite. It will cost us jobs. It is part of what I 
call the ``economic malpractice'' of this administration. And it is 
working Americans who are the victims.
  Unemployment continues to climb. It is now at 6.2 percent, the 
highest level since 1994. That means 9.4 million people looking for 
work can't find any.
  Since President Bush was sworn in, we have lost 3.1 million private 
sector jobs. We are losing jobs every month. The economy is limping 
along. Our deficit continues to bloom. It is now over $450 billion, I 
am told, by the end of this year and may be $500 billion by the end of 
next year. So the administration passed two record tax cuts for the 
wealthy to explode the deficit. And instead of trying to put money in 
the pockets of working Americans, the administration now wants to take 
it away, taking money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans, 
hard-working Americans who may be working overtime to help pay some 
extra bills.
  Late last month, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that 
analyzed the reach of this administration's proposal. It found that up 
to 8 million workers who currently are eligible for overtime pay will 
lose that eligibility. And as they noted, overtime pay for many of 
these workers can make up to 25 percent of the family's income. We are 
talking about people such as nurses, police officers, firefighters, 
retail managers, journalists, medical technicians, surveyors, among a 
whole host of others. For most of these men and women, that overtime 
pay is not spare change or for frivolous spending; it is essential. It 
helps pay the mortgage, feed the kids, and maybe put a little bit away 
for college for their kids or save a little bit for retirement.
  I have a recent letter from the National Association of Police 
Organizations that represents thousands of law enforcement officers 
from across the country. They oppose the administration's proposal 
because, as they said:

       [U]nder such regulations, America's State and local law 
     enforcement officers, already strained by countless overtime 
     hours ensuring community safety from terrorist threats, could 
     lose their basic benefit accorded for their efforts.

  A recent national survey shows that working Americans are now 
becoming more aware of this proposal and have great concerns about it. 
A survey released this past week by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 
pollsters, found that Americans overwhelmingly disagree with the Bush 
administration proposal. By 17 to 1, the public believes that Federal 
laws governing overtime should be changed to cover more employees 
rather than fewer. Fifty-one percent said it should cover more 
employees. Only 3 percent said it should cover fewer employees. 
Seventy-four percent of Americans in this poll oppose the Bush 
administration's proposal to eliminate several million employees' legal 
right to overtime pay.
  I would like to take a few minutes to explain briefly how the rules 
work right now under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Hourly 
workers are generally guaranteed overtime pay when they work more than 
40 hours a week. That has been accepted since 1938. Many salaried 
workers are also eligible for overtime pay under current law.
  So what the administration's proposal would do would be to make it 
much easier for employers to deny salaried workers overtime pay 
protection.

[[Page 21070]]

The result is that millions of salaried workers, earning more than 
$22,100 a year, currently eligible for overtime will be denied overtime 
under these proposed changes. This proposal will keep workers from 
spending time with their families, working longer hours without 
compensation. Employers will be able to force workers to work longer 
hours without pay.
  In case someone says that isn't happening, I suggest they might want 
to go back and read the story in the Sunday Post of August 31 by 
Kirstin Downey, who documented some of the things that are happening in 
the country today.
  For example, Wal-Mart Stores, Incorporated, the Nation's largest 
retailer, is facing 37 lawsuits in 29 States from employees who allege 
they were illegally forced to work extra hours free to meet corporate 
productivity demands. In December, a Federal jury in Portland, OR, 
found Wal-Mart guilty of asking workers to clock out and then return to 
work unpaid. About 400 current and former Wal-Mart employees 
participated in the lawsuit, with some workers testifying that they 
falsified their time records to keep their jobs because they live in 
small towns with few other jobs.
  About 270 insurance claims adjusters have filed suit in U.S. District 
Court in Washington, DC, alleging that their employer, GEICO, broke the 
law by improperly classifying them as workers exempt from overtime pay.
  Stan Fortune, quoted in this article, age 47, a former Wal-Mart 
manager in Weatherford, TX, said he felt driven to climb into store 
management ranks during the 17 years he worked there. On one temporary 
assignment in Las Vegas, he said he worked 13 to 14 hours a day from 
September 1 through December 26 with only 1 day off. Said Fortune:

       It builds up to where that's the norm. You get three or 
     four hours' sleep. It becomes what you are used to. Now that 
     I look back it is pretty sad.

  That is happening around the country today. More and more workers are 
being asked to work longer hours. What the administration wants to do 
is say: We will make that legal. We are just going to exempt them.
  American workers already work longer hours than any other 
industrialized country. Right now, according to this article in the 
Washington Post, according to the International Labor Organization, 
American workers work more than other people in developed economies. 
They found that American workers put in an average of 1,825 hours per 
year. French workers, by comparison, average 1,545 hours per year; 
German workers, about 1,444 hours per year. According to Lawrence 
Johnson, chief of the ILO's employment trends team:

       The European Union and the United States have two different 
     systems and react to economic conditions differently. . . . A 
     lot of what Europeans have--longer vacations, shorter hours--
     are legislated, and in the United States, it is handled 
     through collective bargaining.

  The problem is now only 13 percent of American workers are covered 
under collective bargaining. So most workers are not in the collective 
bargaining agreements that cover overtime.
  Major women's organizations, including the National Partnership for 
Women and Families and the American Association of University Women, 
oppose this proposal because they fear that an increase in mandatory 
overtime would take time away from families and disrupt the schedules 
of working parents as well as impose additional childcare and other 
expenses.
  Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute has shown that this 
proposal, probably more than anything else, affects women in this 
country. It is women who are working in these jobs that are about at 
that level, but it is also the women who have to take their children to 
childcare. So get this: What the administration is saying is that you 
will have to leave your child in childcare longer hours during the day. 
You will be forced to work overtime, longer hours, but you won't get 
one more nickel for it. Talk about fairness. Talk about compassion.
  This proposal will not create one new job. It will do just the 
opposite. What it will do is give employers a disincentive to hire 
people because it will allow them to work their current workers longer 
hours, force them to work longer hours without any extra pay.
  When President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law 
in 1938, he made that exact point, that if a worker is working 50 hours 
a week and not getting paid for that, it does two things--takes him 
away from his family and, secondly, it is a disincentive to hire anyone 
else to work. So that is what this proposal will do. It will add to the 
unemployment figures in America, not put people to work.
  As columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote in the New York Times:

       You would think that an administration that has presided 
     over the loss of millions of jobs might want to strengthen 
     the protections of workers fortunate enough to still be 
     employed. But that's not what the administration is about.

  Again, as I said in my opening, the administration does not want the 
American worker to find out what they are doing. They didn't hold one 
hearing on its proposed rule. Maybe they thought they would slip it 
through and people would not know about it.
  I don't think we should in the shadows set policy that would affect 
millions of workers and their families. We need to do it in the open. 
That is why I plan to offer this amendment.
  My amendment is very simple. It would prohibit any money, any 
taxpayer dollars, from being spent to in any way implement any 
administration proposal that would exempt more workers from overtime 
pay protections, who are now currently eligible. Very simple and 
straightforward. It would allow the administration today, tomorrow, or 
at any time, to increase the number of workers who are eligible for 
overtime pay.
  Again, I wish to take a couple of minutes to clarify some of the 
claims that some of the opponents of our amendment have made about the 
administration's proposal.
  The first claim is that the proposed regulation will only result in 
denying overtime pay protection to 644,000 workers, not 8 million. 
Well, that is because the administration is only counting people right 
now who are getting overtime pay. There are millions more eligible for 
overtime pay but they are not getting it because the employers don't 
want to pay the overtime. However, if you now exempt them, the employer 
has no disincentive whatsoever. They can work those people longer than 
40 hours per week and not have to pay them one additional nickel. So 
the administration's estimate completely ignores the incentive that 
will be built in for employers to work these eligible people longer 
hours per week.
  Claim No. 2: The administration's proposal will actually guarantee an 
additional 1.3 million low-income workers overtime pay.
  This is an overstatement. They are saying it because they are raising 
the current income threshold from $8,060 a year to $22,100 a year--no 
one is opposed to that--and it is long overdue. Of course, it has been 
raised several times since 1938.
  According to the National Employment Law Project--a coalition 
representing the interests of low-wage workers--most, if not all, of 
those 1.3 million workers were already covered by overtime protections 
because they were working in low-paying nonexecutive jobs. They add 
that the DOL's proposed threshold increase ``does not help nearly 
enough workers, because 80 percent of the workforce still makes over 
the proposed threshold [of $22,100], and workers earning more than the 
threshold are barely making ends meet in today's economy.'' Again, I 
point out that my amendment does not affect the increase in the 
threshold limit.
  The third claim they make is that first responders--police and 
firemen--will not lose their overtime protection with this proposal. 
They have been making this claim all along. Unfortunately, the proposed 
regulation as written would, in fact, put many first responders--police 
and firefighters and others--at risk of losing overtime eligibility. 
There is no specific carve-out for first responders. This proposed 
regulation is so vague that it would apply to many first responders who 
may have minimal supervisory duties.

[[Page 21071]]

  The National Association of Police Officers and the International 
Union of Police Associations both oppose the regulations as written.
  The fourth claim: This proposal simplifies current regulations, and 
it will make it easier for employers to determine who qualifies for 
overtime and who doesn't. It will also reduce litigation.
  Well, perhaps that is so. It would reduce litigation because it is 
going to exempt all these people from overtime protection. But it is 
not going to make it easier. In fact, it would make the rules more 
confusing by replacing well-established standards with vague and 
ambiguous language and would spawn litigation over the meaning of these 
new rules.
  According to the Chicago Tribune:

       The Labor Department's [Wage and Hour Administrator] Tammy 
     McCutchen predicts a deluge of lawsuits as employees and 
     employers press for clarifications once the new rules go into 
     effect.

  Also, a recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service found 
that the proposal is vague--it will be largely up to the interpretation 
of employers and the Labor Department to determine who qualifies and 
who doesn't qualify for overtime pay protection.
  So what that says to me is that employers will have wide discretion--
compared to what they have now--to reclassify and disqualify all kinds 
of workers from overtime pay protection in order to make them work 
longer hours without compensation. I don't really expect the Labor 
Department to proactively go around and check on these employers. They 
don't do it now. What if a worker complains? How many workers are going 
to risk losing their jobs by complaining? As a person who worked for 
Wal-Mart said, ``In a small town there are no other jobs. Therefore, 
when they want you to work overtime without any extra pay, that is what 
you do.''
  I close by saying that I also believe this proposed regulation is 
designed to give cover to employers that are already abusing standing 
overtime laws. Lawsuits by the hundreds--cases pending before the Labor 
Department that are now months and years backlogged--will be wiped off 
the books because now the employers that are denying overtime pay will 
be legal in doing so.
  So why do we want to make it easier to deny American workers overtime 
pay? How does it help the economy to take money away from millions of 
low- and middle-income men and women?
  Again, the administration's proposal will do nothing to put money in 
the pockets of working Americans. It will not create new jobs. It will 
keep people away from their families longer hours. It is a slap in the 
face to millions of hard-working Americans--men and women who are 
starting to make ends meet and yet spend some time with their families. 
It is bad policy. We have an opportunity to stop it with my amendment. 
I plan to offer that shortly. I urge my colleagues to support it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

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