[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5439-5462]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT FOR EVERYONE ACT--
                               Continued

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will continue 
consideration of H.R. 4.
  The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today we begin debate on what the public 
at large would refer to as a welfare reform bill, a bill that would 
build upon very major changes that were made after 60 years of the 
previous welfare legislation that did not accomplish its goals to one 
now where we have had an opportunity since 1996 to move people from 
welfare to work.
  The public at large and sometimes even I refer to this legislation as 
welfare reform, but our legislation is entitled ``The Personal 
Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone Act.'' If you 
hear us use the acronym P-R-I-D-E, PRIDE, this is the legislation that 
is before the Senate. I am very happy that we are finally able to 
consider this legislation.
  Going back to 1996, after years of debate and even after two vetoes 
by President Clinton, we finally had a Republican Congress pass, and a 
Democratic President sign, the Personal Responsibility and Work 
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. I emphasize that because the 
issue of welfare is highly charged politically. When you are going to 
make major changes, as

[[Page 5440]]

we did in 1996, it takes bipartisanship to accomplish those changes. 
That bipartisanship was between Democratic President Clinton and a 
Republican-controlled Congress.
  The enactment of welfare reform ended the entitlement aspect of 
welfare, the cash assistance part of it. The impetus for welfare reform 
was generated by a number of factors, including public sentiment that 
the welfare system needed overhauling. When campaigning for President, 
President Clinton promised, in his words, ``to end welfare as we know 
it.'' For the Republicans, during the campaign for Congress in 1994 
when the Contract With America was the watch word of Republicans, 
welfare reform was a key part of that. So we had a President promising 
to end welfare as we know it, we had Republicans putting it in their 
Contract With America, and, finally, after 2 years, the legislation was 
passed at that time.
  I would categorize the PRIDE legislation as moving on and fine-tuning 
that basic underlying legislation which has sunset. The sunset was in 
the 1996 legislation. When legislation sunsets, it must be reenacted by 
the Congress of the United States or that part of the code goes off the 
books.
  Quite honestly, there are Americans who have needs. There is still 
need for assistance, but the goal of that assistance is still as it has 
always been: to move people from welfare to work.
  In the years leading up to the enactment of welfare reform in 1996, 
the AFDC roles soared and costs increased. From 1988 through 1992, 
welfare spending increased by billions of dollars. The welfare system 
was attributed by many to contributing to a culture of isolation and 
dependence, persisting from one generation to another. Despite dire 
predictions to the contrary, the reforms in the 1996 act have produced 
very positive results.
  The welfare caseload has dropped dramatically. Between fiscal year 
1997 and fiscal year 2002, the average monthly number of welfare 
recipients fell by 5.8 million or 53 percent of the previous high. 
Child poverty has also been reduced. Between 1996 and 2001, the 
national child poverty rate fell by 20 percent. This decline is even 
more marked for certain groups. We see the African-American children 
poverty rate dropping from nearly 40 percent to 30 percent, the lowest 
rate on record.
  The Hispanic child poverty rate dropped from just slightly over 40 
percent to 28 percent, the largest 5-year drop on record.
  Employment rates of adult recipients has increased. In fiscal year 
2001, 27 percent of the adult recipients were employed, rising to about 
2.4 times the 1996 employment rate of 11 percent.
  These reforms all stemmed from a work-first approach that emphasized 
an adult's attachment to the workforce. I believe we should continue 
and this legislation does build upon a work-first approach, and yet the 
need for reform continues.
  There are key provisions in the 1996 act which have not yielded the 
desired results. Additionally, there are further reforms which should 
be enacted, things that we have learned from the 1996 act, and we are 
fine-tuning the present legislation through this legislation before us. 
As an example, the 1996 bill envisions a contingency fund which would 
provide additional matching grants to needy States during economic 
downturns.
  However, during the recent recession, the first real test of the 
contingency fund, no State was able to access the contingency fund. 
This is because States must raise their own spending considerably 
during a recession to meet the contingency fund State spending 
requirements.
  I am sure it was not the intent of the authors of the 1996 bill to 
make the contingency fund inaccessible. The PRIDE bill before the 
Senate includes provisions which would liberalize the contingency fund 
to make it more accessible to needy States and to help more citizens of 
their States who have the need.
  Another example would be the work participation rate. The 1996 
welfare reform bill envisioned a participation rate of 50 percent by 
2002. However, because of the way the caseload reduction credit has 
worked, many States have a marginal or even nonexistent work 
participation requirement, meaning they are meeting the requirements of 
existing Federal law without putting one more person from the welfare 
rolls into the payrolls. The fact that the caseload reduction credit 
has effectively neutralized the work participation rate requirement is 
then a fundamental flaw in this 1996 law that PRIDE corrects.
  The PRIDE bill does, in fact, correct this by replacing the caseload 
reduction credit with an employment credit. To ensure that the credit 
does not undermine the work participation rate, the credit would have a 
phased-in cap. Many have advocated that there needs to be a stronger 
message sent to States on the value of education as a means of getting 
out of poverty. Some have also indicated the need for increased child 
care funding, as well as needed improvements to child support and 
enforcement policies.
  The PRIDE legislation before the Senate increases opportunities for 
education, opportunities for training, as well as support for the 
families by increased funding for child care. Additionally, the PRIDE 
bill provides child support enhancements with more child support going 
to families. These reforms are a critical means that help families get 
off and stay off of welfare.
  Two of the four purposes of the 1996 welfare act dealt with 
strengthening two-parent families. So far, very few States have taken 
the opportunity to develop and to implement innovative programs and 
policies to address the issues of healthy two-parent marriages, even 
though the 1996 law is very flexible on how that is to be done--
obviously too flexible from the standpoint of it being a requirement 
that the State ought to meet.
  I strongly support marriage promotion activities as a means of 
improving child well-being. Let nobody in this body or outside this 
body say there is anything in this language that has anything to do 
with forcing people into the institution of marriage. Well short of 
that, this legislation does and should do things to emphasize the 
importance of people who are in a married relationship, that they are 
less apt to be on welfare than families who are single parent.
  This legislation provides funding for healthy marriage promotion 
activities, as well as research, demonstrations and technical 
assistance to States in developing effective programs. Thus, while the 
1996 act made significant reforms, there remains more that should be 
done to strengthen the current welfare delivery system. Those reforms 
are included in the PRIDE bill now before the Senate.
  Recognizing the improvements that the 1996 reforms made, our Senate 
Finance Committee began deliberations by working off of current law and 
improving it with priorities identified by Senators on and off the 
Finance Committee, as well as ideas that are coming from President 
Bush's administration.
  The Senate Finance Committee deliberations in many ways continued the 
work done in the 107th Congress on the issues of welfare reform. As 
Members know, the bill that then-Chairman Baucus produced in the second 
half of the 107th Congress, which went by the acronym WORK bill, was 
based on the so-called tripartisan agreement at that time. This 
tripartisan agreement was a series of policy agreements reached by 
Senators Breaux, Rockefeller, Lincoln, and Jeffords from the Democratic 
caucus, and Senators Hatch and Snowe from the Republican caucus. These 
Members, along with then-Chairman Baucus, continued to play strong and 
important leadership roles on the Finance Committee relative to welfare 
reform.
  I had a chance to review the work of the last Congress, which was the 
tripartisan agreement, and I noted similarities between what the 
tripartisan group proposed, what the PRIDE Act before us has in it, and 
also the House-passed bill that passed early last year. That House-
passed bill is largely based upon President Bush's proposal for welfare 
reform. I refer my colleagues to the various charts that I am going to 
put before them now, which highlight

[[Page 5441]]

the many areas of common ground between last year's WORK bill and the 
House bill, and the PRIDE bill by which the present title is before the 
Senate. Admittedly, not all the details are exactly the same, but as my 
colleagues will see from these charts, there is a great deal of common 
ground between these three bills. I think it is important to emphasize 
the similarities because too often on the Senate floor we have emphasis 
upon disagreements.
  This common ground is building upon the bipartisanship that took 
place in 1996 to move us to the present program.
  There is common ground regarding keeping what works from the 1996 
reform bill. Going down the chart from top to bottom, all three bills 
maintain the basic block grant, continue the policy of no individual 
entitlement to assistance, and retain the lifetime 5-year time limit.
  Both the bill of Senator Baucus, of last session, and the legislation 
now before the Senate would maintain current sanction policy. The PRIDE 
bill continues to allow for 12 months of education and training, while 
the House bill scales that back to 4 months and the bill of Senator 
Baucus would have increased that to 24 months.
  Additionally, both the WORK bill and the PRIDE bill would maintain 
the current list of core work and work readiness activities, although 
the WORK bill would allow 8 weeks to be spent in job research.
  Now we have a chart that deals with improving State flexibility. 
Before I describe what is on this chart, we have had a great deal of 
emphasis upon letting States use this Federal legislation with some 
degree of flexibility. Frankly, it is very difficult for us to pour a 
mold in Washington called welfare reform and have it fit all 50 States 
exactly the same way. What it might take for the State of Iowa to meet 
the needs of a welfare family in Waterloo, IA, might be entirely 
different than in New York City. If you try to solve it in exactly the 
same way, you are probably going to waste money in New York or Waterloo 
or you might not accomplish as much in one city for that money as 
opposed to another. So let Albany, as the capital of New York, or let 
Des Moines, IA, as the capital of my State--let the legislators there 
and administrators there fit this to meet their various needs.
  I want to point, though, to the common ground in terms of improving 
State flexibility. Again, I am referring to the three proposals: The 
Senate bill from the last Congress, the Senate bill from this Congress, 
and the House-passed bill that is now in the Senate for our 
consideration. All three proposals would allow for adults on 
assistance, with barriers to work, to engage in activities designed to 
address those barriers and allow those barrier removal activities to 
count toward a State work requirement for 3 months, provide for 
increased access to emergency or contingency funds during an economic 
downturn, and allow States to use their unobligated balances or 
carryover funds for any welfare-related purpose. That would include 
child care, whereas currently States can only use these funds for cash 
assistance. We give States much more flexibility to meet their needs 
because they know their needs better than we do.
  Both the Senate bill of the 107th Congress as well as the Senate bill 
of the 108th Congress would allow for an additional 3 months of barrier 
removal activities if combined with work. Both the WORK bill and the 
PRIDE bill include a provision allowing States to count longer duration 
postsecondary education towards their work requirement. This is a 
provision patterned after the State of Maine's Parents as Scholars 
Program.
  We also have common ground between these three pieces of legislation 
on strengthening work requirements and leading people into the world of 
work. For 60 years we put welfare recipients out of sight, out of mind, 
out to the edges of society, guaranteeing a life of poverty. What we 
started doing in 1996, and we intend to continue to do through this 
legislation, is move people from the world of welfare to the world of 
work. The motivation behind that is you have to be in the world of work 
to have a chance to move up the economic ladder. You cannot move up the 
economic ladder in the world of welfare. But where there are 138 
million Americans in the world of work, that is where we need to have 
as many welfare recipients as we can so they can move out of poverty.
  No child should be sentenced to a life of poverty, and I think we are 
showing in the 1996 legislation, which we are now refining, that this 
helps people move up the economic ladder. At least there is opportunity 
to move up the economic ladder where there is no opportunity to do that 
if you are relying on a welfare check.
  I want to again emphasize there is common ground relative to 
strengthening the work requirement. All three bills would increase a 
State's required participation rate, raise the time spent in core or 
priority activities, as well as assign partial credit for hours below 
the standard. The PRIDE bill and the House bill would raise the 
standard hour. The PRIDE bill and the WORK bill would replace the 
caseload reduction credit with an employment credit based on 
legislation introduced by the Senator from Arkansas, Mrs. Lincoln.
  There is common ground on promoting healthy families. All three bills 
would provide for universal engagement of improved child support 
provisions, healthy marriage grants, as well as for responsible 
fatherhood grants. Both the WORK and the PRIDE bills would extend 
transitional medical assistance for 5 years, with program 
simplification that was authored by Senator Breaux of Louisiana.
  It would allow for caregiving for a disabled child to count as work, 
and would require States to develop presanction review policies.
  I have worked very hard to make sure that this is a bipartisan 
product. I have also been continually mindful of concerns raised by 
Democratic colleagues that they have about this provision. In areas 
where we differ, I am more than happy to let the Senate work its will, 
and there are outstanding issues. There are key differences between 
last year's Senate Finance Committee bill and this year's Senate 
Finance Committee bill. In my opinion, the most significant ones are 
the level of child care funding available for States, about which there 
is going to be an amendment that we are going to be dealing with 
shortly. Another one would be 24 months versus 12 months of allowable 
education and training. Another one would be eligibility for legal 
immigrants, for welfare, Medicaid, and the children's health insurance 
program. Another one would be continuation of the expired State aid to 
families of dependent children waiver; and, fifth, the standard hours 
for calculating a State's work participation rate.
  I am also aware there are Members who may wish to consider provisions 
increasing the work requirement by broadening the family's account 
toward the participation rate as well as increasing the standard hour.
  Additionally, I have had Members tell me they want to consider 
amendments requiring States to pose a full check sanction on adults who 
fail to comply with their self-sufficiency plans.
  These are all things to which the Senate is entitled, guaranteed, to 
have a healthy debate on. These are things that will be settled on the 
floor of the Senate, if people want to pursue these differences of 
opinion.
  However, at this point I want to spend some time discussing the 
issues surrounding the work requirement in PRIDE, specifically the 
issue of work hours for individuals receiving assistance. I want to 
clarify, first of all, something for the record. There is no Federal 
hour requirement on an adult receiving assistance.
  I want to say that another way.
  The Federal Government cannot make an individual welfare recipient 
work 40 hours or 30 hours or 1 hour. Just as there is no longer an 
individual entitlement to welfare, there is no individual requirement 
for work hours. As the great baseball leader Casey Stengel used to say, 
Look it up.
  There is a Federal requirement on the States to engage welfare 
clients in

[[Page 5442]]

a variety of meaningful activities in order to meet a Federal work 
participation rate, and there are severe penalties on States for 
failure to meet the Federal work participation rate.
  Currently, in order for a State to count an adult recipient toward 
the calculation of that State's work requirement, that adult must be 
engaged in priority work or work-related activities for at least 30 
hours.
  As you know, the majority of families receiving welfare don't want to 
be on welfare. A recent study by the Mathematica Policy Research 
Institute of low-income families in my State revealed that many of 
those who ask for assistance ``felt that it sacrifices their 
independence and pride to do so.''
  In hearings as well as in townhall meetings in my State of Iowa, 
adults receiving assistance told me they desire to work. I took at 
their word Iowans who spoke to me of their desire to work, and that is 
why I have worked so hard to bring a bill forward that would encourage 
States to redouble their efforts to engage adults receiving assistance 
in meaningful activities and better prepare them to enter the world of 
work.
  Consider the hypothetical case of Sara, a mom with two kids, who 
finds herself in a crisis. A victim of domestic abuse, Sara is trying 
to make a better life for herself and her children. To that end, she 
moves out of her abuser's home and attempts to find a way to support 
her family. Lacking a number of basic skills as well as needing some 
counseling to deal with her history of abuse, Sara presents with a 
number of challenges and needs welfare to help support her family.
  Under current law, States have a limited capacity to deal with Sara's 
issues and have those activities count toward a State work 
participation rate. Under current law, a State cannot count any 
domestic violence counseling that may be offered to Sara toward their 
work participation rate.
  Sara knows she must work to support her family, so she begins 
immediately looking for work. She spends 6 weeks looking for a job and 
finally finds a part-time job as a waitress working 6 hours a day for 4 
days a week. She continues to look for a better paying job for an hour 
a day as well as spending another hour a day in counseling provided to 
her by her own State.
  I think many of us would agree that Sara is doing everything she can 
to try to move toward self-sufficiency and that her State by engaging 
her in counseling is doing its part as well. However, under current 
law, because she is only part time and because a State cannot count her 
job search after 6 weeks, and under current law domestic violence 
counseling can never count, Sara does not count toward that State's 
participation rate, regardless of how hard she or the State make the 
effort for her to be in the work force. In other words, you either meet 
the 30-hour standard and count or you don't.
  Currently, the States report that the majority of adults--57 
percent--receiving assistance engage in 0 hours of activity. Clearly, 
it is more difficult for States to work with adults who are not doing 
anything than to work with an adult working 29 hours and get her 
engaged in meaningful activities for another 5 hours.
  It can be argued as well that it is more meaningful to help an adult 
move from 0 to 20 hours of activity than to move an adult from 29 hours 
to 34 hours of activity; but under current law, a State has no 
incentive to work with that particular individual. It doesn't give them 
credit, to the Federal Government, for doing the State's part under the 
welfare-to-work law requirements
  The administration's proposal for welfare reform reauthorization--
last year's Senate bill called the WORK bill and this year's PRIDE 
bill--allows States to get partial credit for hours below that standard 
hour requirement.
  As my colleagues know, the standard hour is when an eligible parent 
or parents count as ``one family'' for purposes of calculating a 
State's work participation rate. Partial credit for hours below the 
standard would give States a very strong incentive to work with adults 
who may not be ready for full-time employment. I think we can all agree 
it is better for these adults to be doing something rather than 
nothing, languishing on welfare rolls until the time limit kicks in and 
they have to go off assistance, having no skills to go get a job or 
skills to support their family.
  I have another chart I would like to bring to your attention.
  Our PRIDE bill is unique, however, insomuch as the legislation would 
establish a series of ``tiers'' where partial credit is assigned along 
with a band of hours.
  For work or work-readiness activities in the 20-23 hour range, a 
State may claim credit for an adult with a child age 6 or older 
counting as .675 of an entire family. For hours of 24-29 range, a State 
may claim credit for an adult counting as .75 of a family. And for 
hours in the 30-33 range, a State may claim credit for an adult 
counting as .875 of a family.
  The PRIDE bill, consistent with last year's tripartisan proposal, 
establishes a separate lower standard hour for parents with a child 
under the age of 6 because of the greater need for attention of that 
child. However, PRIDE sets a standard hour at 24, whereas the 
tripartisan proposal would have continued to set the standard hour for 
a parent with a child under age 6 at 20 hours. States can also capture 
a modest amount of extra credit for hours above this standard.
  As a result of these provisions in the PRIDE Act, the Congressional 
Research Service has calculated that overall, the nationwide work 
participation rate for States increases from a national average of 29 
percent--without waivers--to 41 percent under our PRIDE legislation.
  There are some States that have very low participation rates. I have 
included a number of provisions specifically intended to help those 
States. Additionally, I am willing to work with Members representing 
those States on measures we can take to assist those States in making 
improvements in the way services are delivered and clients being 
engaged in those States.
  When we talk about the work hours as they relate to the PRIDE bill, I 
think it is important to bear in mind that the significant hour is not 
whether it is 34 or 40 or 37, but the significant number of hours is 20 
because that is where the partial credit begins.
  Additionally, when we talk about the hours in the work requirement, 
the important hour again is not 30 or 40, but the important hour is 24 
because that is the threshold for core work activities.
  Once a client meets the 24-hour threshold for core work activities, 
States can count unlimited education, counseling, job search, or other 
barrier-removal activities toward the State's participation rate.
  So then, we go back to Sara, the young mother to whom I previously 
referred, who, under current law--even though she was working 24 hours, 
and in counseling, and even looking for another job--did not count at 
all toward a State's participation rate and, consequently, would not 
get much attention from that State--the attention that is needed to 
improve people's economic growth.
  Under the legislation before the Senate this year, as opposed to what 
current law has been since 1996, Sara would have up to 6 months allowed 
in barrier-removal activities, including domestic violence counseling 
and substance abuse counseling, that counts toward this State's 
participation rate, meeting the requirements of Federal law.
  Once the 6 months are up, she has an additional 12 months that she 
can spend in education and training.
  Once those 12 months are up, if she works for 24 hours a week, spends 
an hour a day, 5 days a week, in domestic-abuse counseling, and looks 
for a better job for an hour a day, 5 days a week, she then has reached 
the point where she counts as one family, where the State recognizes 
her as a very significant individual, where the State, by paying 
attention to her, is going to get some credit. In other words, under 
the legislation now before the Senate, Sara does count; whereas, under 
current law, Sara does not count.

[[Page 5443]]

  During the past 3 years of debate on the issue of welfare reform, I 
have heard a number of different perspectives on the best approach to 
take for the next phase of welfare reform.
  Some have argued the way to go is to increase the time that adults 
receiving assistance spend engaged in meaningful work activity. The 
correlation between full-time work and increased earnings is 
compelling.
  Some have suggested that increasing the amount of time allowed for 
education and training is more important than increasing the time spent 
working. The correlation between increased education and increased 
earnings, of course, is compelling as well.
  Others believe that encouraging marriage and reducing out-of-wedlock 
births would net the best result.
  Still others have suggested that increasing State flexibility should 
be an integral part of any reform effort.
  I firmly believe that when it comes to welfare reform, there is, in 
fact, no such thing as ``one size fits all.'' While education may be 
the best approach for some, it may not be for others. Encouraging 
healthy family formation may be just what one family needs, but perhaps 
that approach would not be in the best interest of another family under 
different circumstances.
  The PRIDE bill takes a blended approach to welfare reform and strives 
to find balance among all these perspectives.
  The legislation before the Senate increases the emphasis on work and 
work-readiness activities, as well as increasing the flexibility for 
States to engage adults in education and training activities. The PRIDE 
legislation also provides resources to encourage States to develop 
innovative family formation programs, while making it clear that 
participation in those programs must be voluntary, and the program must 
be developed with domestic violence professionals.
  I have a chart speaking to the factors that influence poverty rates. 
This approach is consistent with the latest research; in other words, 
the approach of flexibility--``one size fits all'' not working.
  We have a recent policy brief that was released by the Brookings 
Institution, and it was drafted by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. It 
is entitled ``Work and Marriage: The Way to End Poverty and Welfare.'' 
The authors, using Census data and simple modeling, simulate the 
effects of various factors on the poverty rate for families with 
children.
  The poverty rate for families with children, in 2001, was 13 percent. 
Now, surely, everyone agrees that a central purpose of welfare reform 
is the reduction of poverty. As this chart clearly shows, the least 
effective factor in reducing poverty was to double a family's welfare 
benefit. The most effective single way to reduce poverty was to work 
full time. Indeed, according to these authors of the Brookings 
Institute policy brief:

       [F]ull-time work eliminates almost half of the poverty 
     experienced by families with children.

  However, the most effective approach to reducing poverty was a 
combination of work, marriage, education, and family-size reduction.
  As colleagues can see from this chart, when the blended approach is 
adopted, poverty is reduced a staggering 9.3 percent, going from 13 
percent down to 3.7 percent.
  I find these numbers to be quite compelling. I am pleased that they 
reinforce the approach taken in this legislation before the Senate.
  I know there are colleagues who have many thoughts on these pieces of 
legislation, and we are going to have a very lively debate.


                           Amendment No. 2937

  Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk for the Senator from 
Maine, Ms. Snowe, and ask for its consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Grassley], for Ms. Snowe, for 
     herself, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Hatch, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Carper, Mr. 
     Bingaman, Mr. Rockefeller, Ms. Collins, Ms. Landrieu, Mrs. 
     Murray, Mr. Jeffords, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Chafee, Mrs. Lincoln, 
     Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Coleman, and Mr. Schumer, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 2937.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 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 child care)

       Beginning on page 255, strike line 18 and all that follows 
     through page 257, line 2, and insert the following:

     SEC. 116. FUNDING FOR CHILD CARE.

       (a) Increase in Mandatory Funding.--Section 418(a)(3) (42 
     U.S.C. 618(a)(3)), as amended by section 4 of the Welfare 
     Reform Extension Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-040, 117 Stat. 
     837), is amended--
       (1) by striking ``and'' at the end of subparagraph (E);
       (2) by striking the period at the end of subparagraph (F) 
     and inserting ``; and''; and
       (3) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(G) $2,917,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2005 through 
     2009.''.
       (b) Reservation of Child Care Funds.--
       (1) In general.--Section 418(a)(4) (42 U.S.C. 618(a)(4)) is 
     amended to read as follows:
       ``(4) Amounts reserved.--
       ``(A) Indian tribes.--
       ``(i) In general.--The Secretary shall reserve 2 percent of 
     the aggregate amount appropriated to carry out this section 
     for a fiscal year for payments to Indian tribes and tribal 
     organizations for such fiscal year for the purpose of 
     providing child care assistance.
       ``(ii) Application of ccdbg requirements.--Payments made 
     under this subparagraph shall be subject to the requirements 
     that apply to payments made to Indian tribes and tribal 
     organizations under the Child Care and Development Block 
     Grant Act of 1990.
       ``(B) Territories.--
       ``(i) Puerto rico.--The Secretary shall reserve 1.5 percent 
     of the amount appropriated under paragraph (5)(A)(i) for a 
     fiscal year for payments to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico 
     for such fiscal year for the purpose of providing child care 
     assistance.
       ``(ii) Other territories.--The Secretary shall reserve 0.5 
     percent of the amount appropriated under paragraph (5)(A)(i) 
     for a fiscal year for payments to Guam, American Samoa, the 
     Virgin Islands of the United States, and the Commonwealth of 
     the Northern Mariana Islands in amounts which bear the same 
     ratio to such amount as the amounts allotted to such 
     territories under section 658O of the Child Care and 
     Development Block Grant Act of 1990 for the fiscal year bear 
     to the total amount reserved under such section for that 
     fiscal year.
       ``(iii) Application of ccdbg requirements.--Payments made 
     under this subparagraph shall be subject to the requirements 
     that apply to payments made to territories under the Child 
     Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990.''.
       (2) Conforming amendment.--Section 1108(a)(2) (42 U.S.C. 
     1308(a)(2)), as amended by section 108(b)(3), is amended by 
     striking ``or 413(f)'' and inserting ``413(f), or 
     418(a)(4)(B)''.
       (c) Supplemental Grants.--Section 418(a) (42 U.S.C. 618(a)) 
     is amended--
       (1) by redesignating paragraph (5) as paragraph (7); and
       (2) by inserting after paragraph (4), the following:
       ``(5) Supplemental grants.--
       ``(A) Appropriation.--
       ``(i) In general.--For supplemental grants under this 
     section, there are appropriated--

       ``(I) $700,000,000 for fiscal year 2005;
       ``(II) $1,000,000,000 for fiscal year 2006;
       ``(III) $1,200,000,000 for fiscal year 2007;
       ``(IV) $1,400,000,000 for fiscal year 2008; and
       ``(V) $1,700,000,000 for fiscal year 2009.

       ``(ii) Availability.--Amounts appropriated under clause (i) 
     for a fiscal year shall be in addition to amounts 
     appropriated under paragraph (3) for such fiscal year and 
     shall remain available without fiscal year limitation.
       ``(B) Supplemental grant.--In addition to the grants paid 
     to a State under paragraphs (1) and (2) for each of fiscal 
     years 2005 through 2009, the Secretary, after reserving the 
     amounts described in subparagraphs (A) and (B) of paragraph 
     (4) and subject to the requirements described in paragraph 
     (6), shall pay each State an amount which bears the same 
     ratio to the amount specified in subparagraph (A)(i) for the 
     fiscal year (after such reservations), as the amount allotted 
     to the State under paragraph (2)(B) for fiscal year 2003 
     bears to the amount allotted to all States under that 
     paragraph for such fiscal year.
       ``(6) Requirements.--
       ``(A) Maintenance of effort.--A State may not be paid a 
     supplemental grant under paragraph (5) for a fiscal year 
     unless the State ensures that the level of State expenditures 
     for child care for such fiscal year is not less than the sum 
     of--
       ``(i) the level of State expenditures for child care that 
     were matched under a grant made to the State under paragraph 
     (2) for fiscal year 2003; and

[[Page 5444]]

       ``(ii) the level of State expenditures for child care that 
     the State reported as maintenance of effort expenditures for 
     purposes of paragraph (2) for fiscal year 2003.
       ``(B) Matching requirement for fiscal years 2008 and 
     2009.--With respect to the amount of the supplemental grant 
     made to a State under paragraph (5) for each of fiscal years 
     fiscal year 2008 and 2009 that is in excess of the amount of 
     the grant made to the State under paragraph (5) for fiscal 
     year 2007, subparagraph (C) of paragraph (2) shall apply to 
     such excess amount in the same manner as such subparagraph 
     applies to grants made under subparagraph (A) of paragraph 
     (2) for each of fiscal years 2008 and 2009, respectively.
       ``(C) Redistribution.--In the case of a State that fails to 
     satisfy the requirement of subparagraph (A) for a fiscal 
     year, the supplemental grant determined under paragraph (5) 
     for the State for that fiscal year shall be redistributed in 
     accordance with paragraph (2)(D).''.
       (d) Extension of Merchandise Processing Customs User 
     Fees.--Section 13031(j)(3) of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget 
     Reconciliation Act of 1985 (19 U.S.C. 58c(j)(3)), as amended 
     by section 201 of the Military Family Tax Relief Act of 2003 
     (Public Law 108-121; 117 Stat. 1343), is amended--
       (1) by striking ``Fees'' and inserting ``(A) Except as 
     provided in subparagraph (B), fees''; and
       (2) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(B) Fees may not be charged under paragraphs (9) and (10) 
     of subsection (a) after September 30, 2009.''.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I begin by thanking the chairman of our 
committee, Senator Grassley. He has worked very long and hard on this 
issue, and it has been very good to work with him. He has thought a lot 
about these issues. He has worked hard to try to find a middle ground. 
He wants to get things done, and I deeply appreciate that.
  We are here today to reauthorize the 1996 welfare reform law. The 
1996 law has actually worked pretty well. I think all commentators 
would agree with that statement. In fact, it has worked much better 
than people thought it would work. It is not broken. It is not broken 
at all. And I think we need to guard against ``fixing'' something that 
is not broken. You know the old saying: ``If it ain't broke, don't fix 
it.'' I think that applies to the 1996 welfare statute.
  As we go forward, we might ask ourselves whether we might do better 
simply extending the existing 1996 law. Yes, we could make some 
modifications. We would increase, for example, funding for child care 
to help parents get to work. But as the Senate considers proposed 
changes, we might ask whether it would be better to stick with the 1996 
act.
  I will spend a little time today talking about the House bill. The 
House bill does not stick with the 1996 bill. The House of 
Representatives has made, frankly, some pretty dramatic changes--
``fixes'' to a program that many of us believe is not broken.
  The Senate bill that Chairman Grassley has crafted tries to chart a 
middle course. Thus, the bill before us presents an opportunity to 
reflect on the lessons we have learned since 1996, and to incorporate 
those lessons in the new bill.
  We accomplished what we set out to do in 1996, and I am proud to have 
played a role in passing that law.
  The 1996 welfare reform law was a landmark. The old system had 
failed.
  We were spending billions, but we had little to show for it. So we 
tried something new. We tried, in the words of the introduction to the 
1996 act ``to end the dependence of needy parents on government 
benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage.''
  At the same time, the 1996 act was very controversial. In retrospect, 
it is clear that by and large we were headed in the right direction. I 
call attention to the chart next to me. This chart essentially tells 
the story. It is entitled ``Welfare Recipients as a Percentage of 
Population.'' Hundreds of thousands of people have left welfare and 
left welfare for work. The number of folks on welfare, as you can tell, 
as a percentage of the American population, beginning in 1988, rose up 
to its peak in about 1994 and 1995. Then we passed the 1996 statute, 
and it has plummeted dramatically.
  The next chart shows the changes in welfare recipient caseloads, from 
1996 to 2001. It shows that all States have shared in the success. The 
caseload reduction has been highest for those States in red, that is 
greater than a 70-percent reduction. In States represented by orange, 
the reduction in welfare caseload has been between 50 and 70 percent. 
And States represented in yellow have a caseload reduction of less than 
50 percent but very significant. My State of Montana is an orange 
State. Montana reduced its welfare caseload by 56 percent between 1996 
and 2001.
  The New York Times reported last week that even with the weak economy 
we have experienced lately, welfare rolls have declined in the past 3 
years in most States. That is, caseloads have decreased even as 
unemployment, poverty, and the number of food stamp recipients have 
increased.
  For example, in the State of Illinois, the number of families on 
welfare fell 45 percent since January 2001. In New York, the number of 
families on welfare declined about 40 percent since January of 2001. 
And in Texas, the number of families on welfare has declined 11 
percent, again, in the last 3 years.
  I would like now to show another chart. This is the child poverty 
rate. The child poverty rate has also declined since 1996, overall by 
about 23 percent. As you can see, the child poverty rate in 1988 was 
roughly 20 percent. It increased during the 1990s, through 1992, and 
peaked around 1993. It has declined very significantly since that peak 
in 1993. However, look at the end, 2000 to 2002. It looks as though it 
is starting to increase slightly.
  But despite our success, there is still more to be done. We are not 
out of the woods. Too many troubled families remain on the rolls. Too 
many families struggle to raise children in poverty. In 2002, there 
were 34.6 million Americans below the official poverty level. For a 
family of two, poverty is $12,490. 34.6 million Americans below that 
level. Thirty-seven percent of families in poverty are working.
  I have another chart. This is the poverty rate. As this chart shows, 
1 in 10 Americans still live in poverty. That share has gone up in the 
last couple years with the recession, and close to 17 percent of our 
children live in poverty. In Montana, 19 percent of all children live 
in poverty. Nationwide, 1 in 10 Americans.
  Those numbers are simply too high. We must provide better 
opportunities for poor families to move off welfare, into the 
workforce, and out of poverty for good. As successful as the 1996 bill 
has been, these figures show there is more we have to do.
  In my view, doing more means focusing more attention on the hardest 
cases; that is, on families who face complicated and difficult 
challenges. For example, children with disabilities, adults with little 
or no education or work skills, people with mental health issues or 
substance abuse problems. Those are the hardest cases. We also need to 
focus on the single mother with an autistic son who cannot care for 
himself after school when she is at work.
  We need to focus on families affected by mental health concerns that 
limit their ability to engage in continuous full-time employment, and 
families who have been hit by a health crisis and need help. Doing more 
means building on the partnership we established with the States back 
in 1996. It means letting States maintain the flexibility they have 
used to design their current successful welfare-to-work strategies. How 
does it best work for each State? All States are different, with 
different populations, different issues. It means giving States new 
options to address especially troubled families. And at the same time, 
it means maintaining and increasing help in building the work support 
system.
  We learned, with the major reform in 1996, that getting a job is not 
always a ticket out of poverty. We helped to get people off the welfare 
rolls by a dramatic amount, an average of about 50 percent, but still 
people who leave are having a very tough time finding jobs. They are in 
very dire straits. People find that the jobs pay too little. In

[[Page 5445]]

Montana, we have the highest number of people working more than one job 
just to make ends meet because we have low wages and a poor economy. 
Those families who are just off of welfare are struggling. They need 
access to education, to training. They need the opportunity to address 
many of the barriers that prevent them from getting a job and keeping a 
job, and they need access to benefits such as food stamps, health care, 
and child care.
  Child care is a huge concern. If you want to make a lasting 
difference, we need to provide further help with child care, further 
help with health care, transportation, and other things that will help 
parents stay off welfare and thrive in the job market.
  The success of the 1996 bill should have meant a quick and simple 
reauthorization, because we all, both sides, can agree that the law 
works. But some want to leave the successful 1996 law behind them and 
make dramatic changes. I call this a cut-and-run approach--leaving the 
States and, more importantly, low-income families behind. The House-
passed welfare reauthorization bill embodies this cut-and-run attitude. 
The House bill would force States to use expensive workfare--or ``make 
work''--models of welfare reform, where welfare recipients would 
participate in large-scale, unpaid, make-work programs such as cleaning 
up trash.
  The House bill work requirements would force States to put welfare 
recipients into make-work jobs. I mentioned trash pickup. There are 
many other examples. Cleaning the streets is good for the streets, but 
where does it leave the welfare recipient after the cleanup is over? At 
the end of a make-work job, welfare recipients have learned no new 
skills, and they are no closer to having a real job.
  The House bill would push recipients into make-work programs instead 
of real private sector jobs that provide the meaningful work experience 
necessary to survive in the job market. States mostly rejected this 
one-size-fits-all workfare model years ago. States don't like it. They 
know it doesn't work. State and local administrators have told us they 
need, more than anything else, a full menu of strategies for the 
different needs of individual parents, families, and communities.
  The House bill, however, makes it harder to design services and 
strategies that meet local needs. And it also fails to provide adequate 
funding. As welfare rolls have fallen, States have used freed-up TANF 
funds to support low-income working families--often those who have left 
welfare to work in recent years. This is common sense and a proven 
strategy for success. It works.
  For a single mother, providing child care assistance can be the 
single most important factor for workplace success. But the lack of 
funding in the House-passed bill means States would have little choice 
but to shift funds away from programs that help keep low-income parents 
working to much more expensive make-work programs for those still on 
welfare.
  This would be a mistake, as it would force working families to return 
to the welfare rolls. It would mean cutting and running on those 
working families whose success we have been celebrating.
  It doesn't make sense to abandon work supports to pay for make-work 
activities, but States report that the approach in the House bill would 
do just that: it would require States to cut funding for these 
successful work support services to pay for large, expensive, and 
unproven make-work programs for those remaining on the rolls.
  Education and training clearly are critical factors in getting people 
into jobs that pay more. In a rural State such as Montana, access to 
education and training represents a clear path out of poverty. We need 
to ensure that America's needy families have access to such paths. And 
States need flexibility so they can provide these programs.
  All States are different. In States such as mine, making welfare 
reform work means making it work for American Indians. More than a 
quarter of American Indians live in poverty--more than twice the 
national average. In Montana, American Indians make up a full one-half 
of our welfare caseload. We needed flexibility to address that.
  I appreciate that the chairman has included provisions to help Native 
Americans. But to make a real difference for welfare reform in Indian 
country will require real resources.
  Tribes need support to operate TANF for themselves and help with 
economic development. Our work is not done when there are still places 
in America where most adults don't have jobs. Flexibility must be 
maintained.
  Back in 1996, we asked the States to design a welfare program to 
address their specific needs. Some States applied for waivers to do 
just that. Those waivers have been a vital aspect to welfare reform's 
success. It is important to allow States to continue with their waivers 
and to ensure States continue to have flexibility to make welfare 
reform work. Dictating prescriptive requirements and unfunded mandates 
to States is unnecessary, particularly when so many parents are already 
participating in work-related activities.
  In sum, the House bill is sure to undermine the success of the 1996 
law. It would effectively eliminate the ability of States to employ 
proven welfare-to-work strategies, and it would virtually wipe out the 
progress made in the last 6 years to use TANF and child care funds to 
``make work pay.''
  The House approach would force States to divert dollars to make-work 
programs. It would thus divert funds from child care, where funds are 
needed. Future funding for child care and other work supports would be 
harder than ever to secure.
  It seems to me that the House program is designed to fail. The House 
approach is difficult for would-be recipients to access. And States 
will have a hard time making it work. In the prophetic words of one 
TANF administrator:

       [The House approach] is part of a larger effort . . . to 
     set unattainable goals for States, so that Washington can 
     generate budget savings and say that social programs don't 
     work.

  That would be irresponsible. That would be breaking something that is 
fixed. Whatever we do here, we need to ensure that TANF continues to 
work.
  I applaud Chairman Grassley for trying to do better. Compared with 
the House-passed bill, chairman's bill has fewer mandates and less need 
for States to adopt workfare programs, which I find so reprehensible in 
the House-passed bill.
  Yet I remain concerned that the bill before us doesn't provide States 
with enough new flexibility in areas such as training and education, or 
in determining welfare-to-work strategies, particularly in States with 
specific needs like rural States. I am also concerned that it doesn't 
provide enough child care funding.
  During this debate, Senators will offer amendments to address these 
shortcomings. An amendment will be offered to increase child care 
funding so that parents can go to work. Senators Snowe and Dodd will 
offer that amendment today. I believe the chairman already has offered 
that amendment on behalf of Senators Snowe and Dodd.
  An amendment will be offered on this bill that will allow recipients 
to continue their education to gain job skills. Senators Levin and 
Jeffords will offer that amendment.
  Amendments will be offered making TANF work for immigrants. Senators 
Graham and Clinton will focus their efforts on these initiatives. Also, 
an amendment will seek to preserve the flexibility that States had 
under the 1996 law. Senators Bingaman and Wyden will be offering that 
one.
  Of course, we should also protect the civil rights of workers and of 
children in this law. We should make sure to get the balance right 
between State incentives and accountability.
  Welfare reform is working. Let's build on that success and build on 
our partnership with States. By continuing to work together, we can 
achieve a successful bill.
  We can strengthen existing programs to address the needs of America's 
struggling families. We can give further support to those who have 
successfully moved from welfare to work.

[[Page 5446]]

  Let us not cut and run. Let us not ``fix'' what is not broken. 
Rather, let us build on the success of the 1996 law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). The Senator from Massachusetts is 
recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I see the prime sponsor of the amendment, 
the Senator from Maine. I ask unanimous consent to follow her when she 
completes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Maine is recognized.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about an amendment 
that I know has already been offered to the Senate on the pending 
legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for 
Everyone Act, known as the PRIDE Act.
  I am proud to have authored this amendment along with my friend and 
colleague, Senator Dodd. Without question, Senator Dodd has been a 
fearless and unyielding champion in increasing both the quality of and 
funding for child care in America. He has been a tremendous friend to 
families and children. I appreciate his dedication and advocacy to 
these causes.
  It is regrettable that Senator Dodd could not be here today in person 
to offer this amendment. As our colleagues know too well, disasters do 
occur from time to time in our States, and they understandably take 
precedent. He is in Connecticut today addressing issues related to a 
major highway accident that closed Interstate 95 last Thursday. This 
accident had an enormous impact on the people of Connecticut but also 
other States that rely on the interstate for travel or commerce. It is 
a loss of billions of dollars. Senator Dodd is working with State and 
Federal officials to restore travel in this vital transportation 
artery, and today he is where he should be--working on behalf of the 
people in his State. I look forward to hearing from him tomorrow on 
this amendment.
  I also want to recognize and thank Senators Hatch, Alexander, and 
Carper, who approached me sometime ago on this vital issue regarding 
child care in the welfare reauthorization and a strong desire to work 
together to ensure that this issue would be addressed and be given 
priority consideration in the Senate. I appreciate their efforts as 
well as the commitment and dedication of other cosponsors: Senators 
Bingaman, Rockefeller, Collins, Landrieu, Murray, Jeffords, Boxer, 
Chafee, Lincoln, Clinton, and Mikulski. I appreciate the fact that they 
have made it a broad bipartisan amendment.
  Before I explain the amendment before us and why it is such a 
critical component of this debate, I, too, want to recognize the work 
of the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, who has 
been tireless in his perseverance, patience, and commitment to ensuring 
that the reauthorization of this legislation would be completed in this 
Congress. The fact that we have been able to report this legislation 
out of the Finance Committee is in no small part due to his efforts to 
make sure it became a reality. I thank the majority leader, as well, 
for his commitment to this issue so that we were able to bring up this 
bill, finally, for consideration.
  Also, I want to recognize the Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, and 
the ranking member, Senator Baucus, for their work, along with the 
majority leader and Chairman Grassley, who scheduled this debate so 
that, hopefully, we can complete the work on this reauthorization.
  It goes without saying that this day is long overdue regarding our 
actions for this reauthorization. We have had six extensions in 18 
months after the original expiration of this law.
  As we well recall, in 2002, the Finance Committee did pass this 
legislation, but, regrettably, it was not brought up on the floor for 
Senate consideration. So we have had to repeatedly extend this 
legislation, and the States and the caseloads were left without any 
kind of specific blueprint for action in the future.
  Today, hopefully, we begin the last leg of this journey toward giving 
the States their plan of action for the next 5 years with respect to 
welfare reform and build upon the successes of the past, as well as 
addressing some of the remaining issues that certainly have manifest 
itself in the last 5 years with respect to what my amendment will be 
addressing.
  The bill before us today is predicated on the administration's 
proposal which not only strengthens work requirements, but also allows 
States to concentrate on removing barriers to employment, giving TANF 
recipients up to 6 months during which time they can focus, without 
interruption, on becoming more employable, to remove those barriers 
that prevent them from being able to seek employment. So that means 
they can have the opportunities for adult literacy, substance abuse 
treatment, or taking advantage of other educational opportunities, such 
as vocational education or technical training.
  Moreover, the bill rightly recognizes that some families have longer 
term barriers that they must also face and overcome. For example, this 
legislation includes provisions which ensure that under certain 
circumstances, caretakers for disabled dependents meet the requirements 
for obtaining support as well. I thank Senator Grassley for working 
with me to include these provisions.
  Another example of how this bill will improve the employability and 
likelihood of successful transition from welfare to work, the bill 
before us today includes provisions based on a widely praised program 
that happens to be located in my State of Maine, known as the Parents 
as Scholars Program.
  We should be able to agree that increased education is another 
critical factor in whether a person will transition off welfare, be 
able to not only maintain a job, but to secure one that provides a 
decent income. That is why I have championed these provisions 
repeatedly which will allow a number of qualified, motivated welfare 
parents to take part in longer duration and postsecondary education 
while on the caseload.
  Parents as Scholars has been extraordinarily successful in my State, 
with graduates averaging a 50-percent increase in salaries, and with 90 
percent of working graduates leaving welfare behind permanently. It is 
because of this record of success that I am very pleased that during 
the Finance Committee markup, my amendment giving all TANF parents 
across the Nation the benefit of accessing this education program was 
accepted.
  This program, as I said, has been not only successful, but I think it 
also ultimately will be widely available across the country because 
access to education should not be a question of geography.
  This legislation also reflects our desire to afford the States 
flexibility by providing partial credit toward a State's work 
participation rate when there is partial compliance with hourly 
requirements by recipients. I believe this is a commonsense addition to 
current law that will fuel this program's success for years to come, 
while laying the groundwork for States to help clients become employed 
and stay employed, which, after all, was the original goal of the 
landmark 1996 reform act.
  I thank Senator Lincoln for offering this provision because I do 
think it goes a long way to addressing some of the issues that were 
raised in the last welfare reform act.
  I am very pleased this legislation before us also builds upon the 
tripartisan legislation on which many of us on the Finance Committee 
worked in 2002. Senator Hatch, Senator Breaux, Senator Jeffords, 
Senator Lincoln, Senator Rockefeller, and I included provisions that 
now have also been incorporated in this legislation concerning child 
support distribution, the employment credit, education and training 
requirements, and much of our universal engagement provisions and 
adjustments to the contingency fund.
  At the same time, this bill also reflects a considerable good-faith 
effort to close some of the political and policy gaps that existed 
within the committee at the time of the markup. I know many of my 
Republican colleagues would have preferred additional workups similar 
to what the

[[Page 5447]]

President had proposed--40 hours instead of the 34--but we were willing 
to compromise in order to advance this benchmark legislation.
  It was in the spirit of that compromise that I supported the 
legislation in the Finance Committee, recognizing that, yes, I would 
have preferred a significantly greater funding for child care, but at 
the same time I know there has been some disagreement on this side of 
the aisle as to how much we can even afford or should do with respect 
to child care funding in the welfare reauthorization. I refrained from 
offering that amendment in the committee so that we could have the 
opportunity to bridge these gaps on the floor of the Senate and to move 
this legislation forward.
  The amendment I am offering today will provide $6 billion in new 
mandatory child care funding which I think represents an attempt to 
guarantee that there will be no structural weaknesses in the PRIDE Act 
that may undermine its ultimate effectiveness or success.
  I am very pleased that Chairman Grassley gave me the opportunity to 
have priority recognition to offer this amendment today that was part 
of the agreement we reached in the Finance Committee because I hope it 
will set a bipartisan tone for the debate to come.
  This reauthorization is critical to almost 5 million people who are 
on welfare today. I am convinced it is our duty and our obligation to 
do all that we can to clear the political barriers, the policy 
barriers, overcome all the obstacles that we ultimately engage in on 
the floor of the Senate, but, in the final analysis, we ought to be in 
a position to vote on the welfare reauthorization and extend this law.
  This $6 billion increase in new mandatory child care certainly should 
move us in that direction. I am adding this today because I think this 
amount is commensurate with the real and current needs. To understand 
how these needs developed and why this amount of funding is essential 
is important to understand because as we set out to reauthorize the 
1996 law, we have to reexamine some of the decisions and some of the 
choices that were made at the time that now has led us to this point 
that I think compels us to offer more money in terms of child care.
  One of the decisions that Congress made back in 1996 was to ensure 
that we would have the necessary support systems to allow welfare 
recipients, as they transition into the workplace and access full-time 
employment, to have all of the support that is going to be absolutely 
vital to make that employment a success, as well as accessible.
  These types of assistance to working parents who generally are 
employed at minimum-wage jobs allow them to make ends meet and to make 
a permanent transition from welfare to work. One of the most critical 
types of work support we can offer these families is quality child 
care. Without good child care, a parent is left with only two choices: 
to leave a child in an unsafe and often unsupervised situation, or not 
to work, both of which are lose-lose situations.
  If the aim of welfare reform is to move people off the welfare rolls 
and on to the payrolls, providing support in the form of quality 
affordable child care is a prerequisite to realizing that goal. Of 
course, as with anything else, child care comes with a price. In some 
States, it can cost as much as a year's tuition in a public college. 
Factor in additional costs of infant care or odd-hour care, such as 
nights or weekends or care for children with special needs, and the 
challenge increases significantly. So for a parent working toward 
financial independence, typically earning minimum wage, it is not hard 
to see how child care can be the budget buster that compels a family to 
retreat back into welfare.
  This battle was also fought by families who are employed in full-
time, lower wage jobs, families not receiving cash welfare assistance, 
but who only earn $15,000 to $20,000 per year.
  Almost 2 years ago, a constituent of mine came to Washington to 
testify before Senator Dodd's Subcommittee on Children and Families. 
Sheila Merkinson, a resident of Maine, testified her childcare costs 
absorbed almost 48 percent of her weekly income. Even though she is 
eligible for aid, she receives no childcare assistance because the need 
exceeds the income eligibility requirements in our State.
  At that time, Sheila stated she had been on the waiting list for 
childcare subsidies 6 months, four of them while she was working, and 
sleeping on a couch during that entire time period because she could 
not afford to pay the rent on her $18,000 yearly income.
  I also remember reading several years ago about a mother in Maine 
whose only choice for a steady job was working the night shift at the 
local mill. Because she lived in a rural area with no family nearby, 
she was forced to choose between losing her job or tucking her 
elementary schoolage children into bed at night, locking the doors 
behind her, and going to work. Affordable childcare was not a reality 
for her and so she did what she deemed was best, to go to work and earn 
the money she required to support her children. In the end, the courts 
made a third choice for this mother. They took her children away from 
her.
  We have no rhyme or reason to put people who care about their own 
children in untenable situations where they are compelled to make these 
unpalatable choices. This amendment will help ensure we can prevent 
these types of circumstances so many families face in the real world 
today.
  These are but two of the life stories that bring me to the point of 
offering this amendment and providing the mandatory childcare funds of 
more than $6 billion for the next 5 years. These are families who 
really are the essence of what this debate is all about.
  Back in 1996, as this chart would illustrate, Congress recognized 
when we created the TANF program, the Temporary Assistance for Needy 
Families, formed the childcare and development block grant, because we 
had a myriad of programs that provided various funding streams for 
childcare, we had a commitment to serve the families on welfare. That 
is why we consolidated more than four programs into the childcare and 
development block grant, so that we had a commitment to serve not only 
those who are on welfare, those who are transitioning off welfare, 
those who were not on welfare but were at the risk of falling onto 
welfare caseloads.
  Finally we decided we should coordinate and consolidate these 
programs to create this block grant with the intent of serving those 
low-income families that may be employed but still require some kind of 
assistance because of the high cost of childcare. We have this 
coordinated development block grant on childcare that is aimed at 
serving the needs of each of these populations.
  While the Federal law sets the ceiling, the States are able to 
determine their own eligibility requirements. Yet according to most 
estimates, only one in seven eligible children receives this kind of 
assistance. It is not surprising when one considers that in 2003 alone, 
nearly every State reduced childcare spending and 16 States reduced 
eligibility levels so fewer children would qualify.
  Even when our eligibility guidelines are high, most States are unable 
to attain them. In fact, according to the 2004-2005 State plans in at 
least five States, a family is not eligible for the childcare 
development block grant if the family earns more than $20,000 per year. 
So clearly there remains a pressing need.
  While the focus of this debate is the TANF population, as well it 
should be, it cannot be to the exclusion of all of those lower income 
families who are not on welfare. I am convinced that access to this 
critical work support makes all the difference in a successful 
transition from welfare to work, and to help ensure these families do 
not retreat back into welfare, and at the same time that we allow them 
to achieve self-sufficiency. That is the goal of any welfare reform act 
and that is what it should be. According to a 2002 study, single 
mothers with young children who receive childcare assistance are 40 
percent more likely to be employed after 2 years than mothers who did 
not receive such assistance.

[[Page 5448]]

  The study goes on to say former welfare recipients who receive 
childcare are 82 percent more likely to be employed after 2 years than 
those who do not receive such support. These findings make sense, as 
far too often, for many single parents, unaffordable, unavailable, or 
unreliable childcare is the chief barrier to steady employment.
  Over the past few years, States have been experiencing unprecedented 
fiscal crises which are resulting in cutbacks to crucial services for 
low-income families and children. Severely limited resources are 
driving States to make some difficult tradeoffs, when it comes to 
policies, among equally deserving groups of eligible families. It is 
not unreasonable for a State to conclude that TANF families subject to 
work requirements in a maximum 5-year time limit or families 
transitioning off TANF should get priority over families who have not 
received welfare.
  However, as a result of these decisions many vulnerable low-income 
working families who require childcare assistance will not be able to 
support their families and remain off welfare. That is a reality.
  The worst-case scenario would be one in which limits on childcare 
subsidies for lower income working families begin to act as a 
disincentive. Families transitioning off welfare or low-income families 
struggling to stay off welfare rolls could easily deduce the effort 
simply was not worth it.
  In May of 2003, GAO issued a report that suggests this possibility 
may exist. It states that a change in priority status can result in 
families losing benefits.
  For example, in two States, families who leave TANF lose all of their 
benefits. In seven States, when a family comes to the end of a State's 
transition period, this can result in their losing assistance 
altogether.
  Considering that childcare for a single child can easily cost between 
$4,000 and $10,000 yearly, it is not difficult to understand why a 
family affected in this way might have no other choice but to remain on 
welfare.
  Providing a firm foundation and the tools necessary to make a 
successful transition to independence was the promise we made and one 
we must honor. So the amendment we are offering to this pending 
legislation would fulfill our commitment to the States by increasing 
the amount of mandatory childcare funding that is authorized under this 
legislation. We can do that today by passing this bipartisan amendment.
  I know some would say there is an abundance of funding and that the 
estimates of unmet needs are baseless. My response to those critics is 
this: Ask the more than 605,000 eligible children on waiting lists in 
24 States and the District of Columbia if there is sufficient funding. 
Many have argued since there are waiting lists in only less than half 
the States, then the rest of the States do not have unmet needs. Well, 
this is patently untrue.
  The truth of the matter is not every State keeps a waiting list. 
Again, they feel it is a fruitless endeavor, because they are elevating 
expectations knowing that those expectations simply cannot be fulfilled 
because they do not have the funding for childcare. Many States cap the 
number of names allowed to appear on the waiting list, again because 
they know they will not be able to fulfill their requirements. They do 
not want to create the kind of hope among people that they will get the 
support ultimately when they know it simply will not be possible.
  Consider that if one is a mother residing in California and she went 
to the State's welfare office and they told her get in line, she is No. 
280,001. How likely is it she will bother to put her name on the 
waiting list? If a counselor in New York City told a mother her child 
would be No. 46,001, would she take the time to sign up? And even if 
she did, would she ultimately get the childcare support she needed? Not 
likely.
  Another question is: How many childcare slots would be generated by 
the $6 billion included in our amendment? We cannot say for certain, 
but if we do not provide this funding there will be hundreds of 
thousands of children without any support under this welfare 
reauthorization.
  We currently have 2 million children receiving child care subsidies. 
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated it would cost $4.5 
billion to ensure that all 2 million children currently--I emphasize 
currently--receiving subsidies will be able to continue receiving that 
level of support over the next 5 years, during the course of this 
reauthorization. The underlying legislation that is before the Senate 
includes $1 billion in mandatory childcare funding which, according to 
CBO, may well cover the estimated cost for the new work requirements 
and the State participation rates of somewhere between $1 billion to 
$1.5 billion of increased child care as they relate to these expanded 
requirements under this legislation.
  Just to maintain exactly what is in current law for the 2 million 
children costs $4.5 billion, and the increase, the new increase under 
this legislation, would require another $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
  What we are saying is, just given where we are today, we could have 
400,000 children removed from the caseload without this kind of money--
400,000 if we do not support the pending amendment.
  It is imperative that we pass this amendment to ensure the States 
will be in a position to provide the level of support they are 
currently providing to these families--just to maintain the status quo.
  The legislation of the chairman provides a strong start by adding the 
$1 billion to pay for these increased work requirements, but I believe, 
Senator Dodd believes, and all the cosponsors of this amendment believe 
we should and must do more. The PRIDE Act seeks to build upon our very 
successful effort in 1996. We transformed the welfare system as we know 
it. It is landmark legislation that was an unprecedented success. We 
were able to convert an old entitlement system into a temporary program 
that helps our most fragile population take those critical first steps 
toward economic self-sufficiency. I believe our amendment strengthens 
this effort by ensuring that mothers struggling to move themselves off 
the welfare rolls will have the kind of assistance they need in order 
to succeed.
  The good news is we will be able to do this with the kind of support 
that is essential. We have an offset in this amendment that includes 
the Customs user fees on merchandise that is processed through Customs. 
It is obviously important so we don't have a budget point of order. 
Some have said we have used this in the past and most specifically it 
is on the legislation that is also being currently considered by the 
Senate on the Foreign Sales Corporation Act for international tax 
relief for manufacturers. However, that legislation includes up to $130 
billion in revenue offsets. We are using $6 billion of the $17 billion 
that has been incorporated in that legislation regarding Customs fees.
  I believe there will be sufficient offsets to address both that 
legislation and this one as well. The amendment we are offering today 
builds on the work that has been incorporated in the underlying 
legislation that was reported out of the Finance Committee. Like many 
of my colleagues on that committee, Chairman Grassley, Senator Dodd, 
and all of those who support this effort here today, we are trying to 
build upon the major steps that were taken in the 1996 Act, which I 
think has made great strides toward helping lower-income families 
achieving the American dream and ultimately achieving self-
determination and self-sufficiency.
  There is an important difference between giving someone a handout and 
offering them a hand up. I believe this amendment to the PRIDE Act 
builds upon that distinction. That is why I am so pleased to have the 
kind of bipartisan support that has been given to this amendment. I do 
believe it is a strong step in the right direction. Granted, it is not 
going to address all the demands and needs across America, but 
certainly it will go a long way toward understanding and recognizing 
the reality that if we don't do this, we leave families and children in 
an untenable situation.

[[Page 5449]]

  I happen to believe this amendment will strengthen our ability to 
pass this welfare reauthorization, that the States need to give 
guidance and direction for the future. We cannot allow States to live 
in statutory limbo and we can't allow families to live in limbo as 
well.
  I hope this amendment will receive strong support here in the Senate, 
reflecting the strong bipartisan cosponsorship of this amendment. I 
urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, 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. KENNEDY. 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. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I know the pending amendment is the 
Snowe-Dodd amendment. I join with the Senator from Maine and the 
Senator from Connecticut in hoping that the Senate will welcome and 
support this amendment. I pay tribute to the Senator from Maine for her 
longstanding work in support of child care, and, of course, I commend 
my friend and colleague from Connecticut who unfortunately is not here 
today but wanted very much to be here today. He will be speaking in 
strong support of this amendment during its consideration tomorrow.
  As we know, Senator Dodd is the leader on children's issues. A number 
of those issues go through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions 
Committee, and all of us on that committee welcome his leadership on 
this issue as well many others.
  I commend our leaders, and I commend the floor managers.
  This will be the first amendment that we will consider. And, 
hopefully, it will have strong support. I will take the time at another 
time to outline the extraordinary needs of child care in my own State. 
But I rise for a different purpose at this time.
  I see my friend and colleague from Iowa on his feet. I intend to 
speak briefly about the minimum wage issue, and then to offer it not as 
a substitute but to get in the queue for consideration of amendments as 
we are considering this welfare reform program.
  The Senator from North Dakota was here a moment ago and desired the 
opportunity to be able to speak. I don't know whether there is any 
reason to object. He wanted to have an opportunity to speak for up to 
20 minutes, I believe, following my statement. Generally, I wanted to 
talk to the floor managers about that, but I didn't have the 
opportunity to do so. If there is a Republican who wants to speak after 
I speak, then he could be the one who might be recognized after that.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I don't think we have any objection to 
that. The only speaker I had on this side who wanted to speak was the 
Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander. He wanted to speak for a little 
while on the amendment of the Senator from Maine. Other than that, I 
don't have any requests on this side.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that he be able 
to follow for up to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened with interest to my friend and 
colleague from Iowa talking about this legislation. And one of the 
phrases he expressed was that no one who works in this country ought to 
live in poverty. I agree with that. I think one of the best ways of 
doing it is to ensure that work pays.
  One of the best ways to make sure work pays is to make sure that 
those who are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder--those who make 
the minimum wage--are going to have a livable wage.
  What we know is that we have not increased the minimum wage for some 
7 years. As a result of the failure of increasing the minimum wage in 7 
years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has decreased 
dramatically. If we are interested in making work pay, we have to make 
work pay, and that means an increase in the minimum wage.
  At the appropriate time during the course of this debate, we will 
have the opportunity to vote on an increase in the minimum wage to make 
the minimum wage go up from $5.15 to $7 an hour for those families 
working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year.
  Let me share with the Members what has happened to the purchasing 
power of the minimum wage. If we go back to 1968, the minimum wage 
today would be $8.50 an hour. It is now $5.15. If we look at the 
consistency, the purchasing value, it will be $4.98 in the next few 
years if we don't act now.
  Look at this chart. The minimum wage no longer lifts a family out of 
poverty. Look at this red line indicating what a family of three would 
need in order to be able to rise out of poverty. In 1968, we were able 
to--and, again, briefly around 1980--get the minimum wage up so 
families could live outside of poverty.
  If you look at the flat line, you will see that the lines are going 
down. The poverty line is here. People are working longer and harder 
and have difficulty making ends meet.
  Every day that we delay the minimum wage, workers fall farther and 
farther behind. All of the gains of 1996 in minimum wage increases have 
already been lost.
  This welfare bill is about workers. It is about moving people from 
welfare into work. It is very interesting. Of those single mothers who 
moved off welfare into work before the recession began, one-half of 
those jobs have now been lost due to the recession. I don't know what 
percentage of those people used up all their benefits, but a good chunk 
have. I don't know what those individuals are doing, but we do know 
that the amount of poverty, child poverty and hunger in the families 
across this country, is continuing to go up.
  We lose sight of the fact that over the history of the minimum wage, 
this has been a bipartisan effort. If you look back over the number of 
times this has been raised--10 or 11 times--go back to Franklin 
Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, President Kennedy, Lyndon 
Johnson, and President Ford, President Carter, and then it was 
President Bush, then it was President Clinton, this has been a 
bipartisan effort. Republicans and Democrats alike understand if people 
are going to work hard, we ought to be able to make sure they are 
treated fairly.
  The increase in the minimum wage that we are talking about in this 
amendment would mean $3,800 in additional income once it's fully phased 
in over the period of the 2\1/2\ years. That would be more than 2 years 
of child care; it would be 2 years of health care. It would be full 
tuition to a community college for a child who is the son or daughter 
of a minimum-wage worker. It would be a year and a half of heat or 
electricity for a family. It would be more than a year of groceries, 
and more than 9 months of rent. That may not sound like much to many 
around here, but those are the facts. It would make an enormous 
difference to people who are working.
  What we see is 3 million more Americans today are living in poverty. 
There were 31 million in the year 2000, and now it is 34.6 million, 
which means 3 million more people are living in poverty.
  We can do something about that by increasing the minimum wage.
  One of the saddest comments that I discovered as we looked through 
the various factual material in preparation for this debate is, 
according to the Families and Work Institute, three of the top four 
things children would like to change about their working parents is 
they wish their parents were less stressed out by work, less tired 
because of work, and could spend more time with them.
  This is a family issue. We hear a great deal in this body about 
family issues and family values. Increasing the minimum wage is a 
family issue.
  Who are these people? Who are these people who earn the minimum wage?
  Well, first of all, they are the men and women who work in buildings 
all

[[Page 5450]]

over this country at nighttime from which American commerce has their 
offices. In large buildings and small, they work in long, difficult, 
tough jobs, but they are men and women of pride. They are men and women 
of dignity. They take pride in doing a job well. They are not only 
cleaners, but they are also assistant teachers in many of the schools 
across this country.
  They also work in nursing homes helping to take care of parents--
parents who have served in the Armed Forces, fought in the Korean war, 
perhaps even in Vietnam, and maybe going back to even World War II--men 
and women who brought this country out of the Depression, men and women 
who have suffered and sacrificed to benefit their children. Many 
minimum-wage workers work in these nursing homes--men and women of 
dignity.
  Sixty-one percent of those who receive the minimum wage are women. 
This is a women's issue because the great majority of recipients of the 
minimum wage are women. It is a children's issue because many of those 
women have children. They are single heads of households, and many of 
them have children. So it is a women's issue, it is a children's issue, 
and it is a civil rights issue because so many of those who work at the 
minimum wage are men and women of color.
  And, most of all, it is a fairness issue. The issue that is going to 
be before the Senate is whether we believe someone who works 40 hours a 
week, 52 weeks of the year, ought to have a living wage. And if there 
is one issue Americans understand, it is the issue of fairness.
  This is about fairness. This issue is about fairness. That is why we 
welcome the opportunity to offer this amendment. It should not be a 
partisan issue. We should not be denied the opportunity to have the 
vote, and we are going to stay after it until we have the vote.
  So I wanted to take a few moments on this issue because it is a 
matter of such importance. I am going to go over the statistics in 
greater degree about what has been happening to women and to children 
in poverty in this country. I am going to do that at a time when I will 
have the chance to have the full debate for the consideration of this 
amendment.
  I have the amendment. I indicated to the floor managers that I 
intended to offer it. I ask unanimous consent that after the 
consideration of the Snowe-Dodd amendment, that the amendment which I 
send to the desk now, on behalf of myself and Senator Daschle, be 
considered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Well, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be 
considered within the first four amendments that we have on this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Well, Mr. President, we are beginning to see what we 
have seen at other times; that is, on the other side there is 
objection. We listened to them talk about how they wanted to have 
workers work in this country, and now, evidently, there is objection. 
And I do not consider this to be by my friend, the chairman of the 
Finance Committee, but there is clearly an objection by the Republican 
leadership to get a consideration.
  I ask unanimous consent that before we have final passage, we have a 
vote, up and down, on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President--and I 
will object--I want to take advantage of this opportunity to say that 
there are a lot of very important pieces of legislation that we have 
before this body that are bipartisan that need to be passed.
  Two weeks ago, we had a bill dealing with outsourcing and the efforts 
to create manufacturing jobs in America by giving a tax advantage to 
manufacturers that manufacture here. It is a bipartisan bill, voted out 
of the Senate Finance Committee with only two dissenting votes, and 
those were Republican votes. So, overwhelmingly, people on the other 
side of the aisle know that bill has to pass.
  But time after time we deal with nongermane amendments that distract 
from the efforts of this Senate to do things that create jobs in 
America and, in this particular instance, move people from welfare to 
work.
  So I do not think it is wrong for some of us to take exception to the 
efforts to stall important pieces of legislation getting through this 
body, and that is why I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, since the Senator from Iowa has talked 
about delaying the legislation, I ask unanimous consent that the debate 
on the minimum wage amendment be no more than 20 minutes, with 10 
minutes to each side, and that we have consent that we vote on this 
amendment up and down before final passage--that we have 20 minutes on 
the amendment, since there has been the thought that we are trying to 
delay this legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I remind my good friend--and he is my 
friend--about the report from the Finance Committee. If we go to page 
4: ``STRENGTHENS WORK''--``STRENGTHENS WORK.'' This bill is about work. 
And here we are asking for a minimum wage. To do what? To work.
  What is possibly the reason or the justification to object to us even 
considering increasing the minimum wage? What we have here is objection 
to even considering an increase in the minimum wage, which is at its 
lowest level in history, for 7 million Americans.
  They are talking about getting Americans out of welfare into work. We 
are trying to make work pay, and there is objection.
  Look what it says on page 21:

       The Committee bill recognizes that the success achieved by 
     TANF and Work First programs are a result of a sustained 
     emphasis on adult attachment to the workforce.

  What more could be relevant to the workforce and strengthening work 
than an increase in the minimum wage?
  I do not know what this objection is. Why does the majority even 
refuse us the opportunity to vote? That is what I am asking. Call the 
ace an ace. What is the objection to having accountability, to find out 
if you are for it or against it? We are giving a 20-minute time limit, 
10 minutes on each side. I will take 5 minutes. I will take 2 minutes. 
I will take 1 minute, then call the roll.
  What can possibly be the objection to calling the roll when we have 
increased it 11 times under Republican and Democratic administrations 
in the past?
  Where is the delay tactic? Where is the objection? Where is the fact 
that this is not relevant to the substance at hand? This, of course, is 
the substance at hand. Of course it is. It is about making sure that 
people who work hard--men and women of dignity--are going to be able to 
receive a livable wage. And we are denied--at least at the outset--the 
opportunity to even have this amendment considered.
  I say to the Senator, this amendment ought to be voice-voted this 
afternoon. That is what it should be: It should be voice-voted. 
Republicans, in the history of the minimum wage, have voted for 
increases in it, and now we have instructions--evidently, 
instructions--not to permit even a short time limit on increasing the 
minimum wage: No, you can't vote on that issue. We are not going to let 
you. We control the Senate.
  We heard from the Senator from Iowa: We want no one who works to have 
to live in poverty. I remember listening to the Senator from Iowa just 
about an hour and a half ago: No one who works ought to live in 
poverty. He gave that speech. Now he will not even let us do something 
about getting people out of poverty. He objects to us

[[Page 5451]]

having it within the next four amendments--to even consider it prior to 
the time of passage, with a 20-minute time limit--refuses.
  Talk about arbitrariness and the abuse of power. This is it. This 
body ought to be able to vote on questions affecting working families. 
We ought to be able to vote on the minimum wage. We ought to be able to 
vote on overtime. We ought to be able to vote on unemployment 
compensation. What in the world is wrong with the other side to try and 
prohibit this institution from taking positions on these issues and to 
vote up or down? What were we sent here for?
  I say to my friend--and he is my friend--this issue is just not going 
to go away. He has given his response that he is going to do everything 
that is parliamentarily possible to deny this institution considering 
an increase in the minimum wage. He just stated that. He made the point 
that it was not relevant, that it was somehow going to delay, that it 
was somehow not pertinent, even though we are talking about jobs and 
trying to get people to work. That is the thrust of the whole bill. And 
he would deny us the opportunity to consider this amendment for 15 
minutes, 16 minutes, what we offered.
  I think we are on notice now. Are we supposed to assume the majority 
is only going to permit amendments which they approve? Is that going to 
be the new rule of the U.S. Senate? After 230 years, we are only going 
to permit votes which we, the Republicans, approve? That is what we are 
saying. Is that the institution the American people thought they had in 
the U.S. Senate? Is that what they thought we were doing here? Come on. 
Come on. That is not the Senate I was elected to or that I believe in 
and that the American people do.
  We can either do this nicely and try to work out some kind of 
agreement and accommodation or we are going to use all of the other 
kinds of parliamentary rules that we know how to use and do it in ways 
which will insist on a vote. But if the Republican leadership thinks 
that we are going to go on and on and on without an increase in the 
minimum wage, I want to clear them of that thought because this is 
coming at you. People have waited too long, worked too hard, and 
children are being disadvantaged.
  I listen to the speeches about children. There are children out 
there, sons and daughters of minimum wage workers, whose lives would be 
significantly and dramatically advanced. Maybe that parent would be 
able to buy a birthday present, take the child to a movie.
  But no, no, no, we are the Republicans, and we are not going to let 
you vote. We are not going to let you vote in the Senate. That is what 
you are saying. Well, we are going to come back to it.
  I am going to speak to one other issue, and then I see others who 
want to address the Senate. I will then yield the floor.


           White House Responsiveness to the 9/11 Commission

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, in my lifetime, there have been national 
catastrophes of such magnitude that they are seared in the collective 
American memory forever. In each case, the Nation was able to draw on 
the strength of its institutions and its leaders to carry on with the 
strong support of our citizens. The attack on Pearl Harbor, for 
example, plunged us into war, but unified us as a people, and brought 
out the best in our elected leaders.
  In Watergate, on the other hand, the integrity of our most basic 
institutions was threatened by an executive run amok. But the 
legislative branch, acting on a bipartisan basis, and the judicial 
branch, led by a unanimous Supreme Court, vindicated the Framers' trust 
that a nation based on checks and balances and the separation of powers 
could survive one branch's abuse of power.
  Two and a half years ago we suffered another tragedy of historic 
dimensions. In one brief morning nearly 3,000 of our people were killed 
by an enemy who had openly declared war against us, had already struck 
at us in a variety of forms and places at home and abroad, and had put 
our government, if not our people, on notice that they would strike 
again.
  The families and friends of the dead and injured were not the only 
victims. We all suffered. Our peace of mind suffered; our trust in our 
surroundings suffered; our liberty to move freely around the Nation and 
the world suffered. And our confidence in the public institutions which 
protect and defend us suffered.
  The quality and integrity of our response as a Nation and as 
individuals will determine how history views us as defenders of 
America's ideals. Can we restore security without sacrificing liberty? 
Can we identify and fill the gaps in our defense against known and 
unknown enemies, without reducing the essential quality of life and 
freedom in our Nation?
  We in Congress have begun to answer those questions, and the 9/11 
Commission is a key element of our answer. Over the initial objections 
of the executive branch, and with the help and support of the victims' 
families, we have delegated to that distinguished group of Commission 
members the continuation of the essential fact-finding process begun by 
our own Intelligence Committees. We have also asked the Commission to 
suggest solutions for the problems they identify. We have invested 
extraordinary powers in that Commission to meet the extraordinary 
demands of their assignment.
  This Commission is as eminent and experienced a body as anyone could 
hope for. Some have complained that it is too ``establishment.''
  It includes two former Republican governors, a former Republican 
Senator, a former Republican Secretary of the Navy, a former Reagan 
White House Counsel, a Navy veteran who was both a governor and 
Senator, a former General Counsel of the Department of Defense and 
Deputy Attorney General who sits on a CIA advisory Committee, a former 
chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, a former member of 
the House Intelligence committee, and a former Watergate investigator 
now at a distinguished law firm. Its executive director served on the 
National Security Council under former President Bush and on the 
transition team for the current President Bush.
  The Commission is entitled to respect and cooperation from everyone 
it deals with in all parts of the Government, especially the White 
House.
  The Commission has properly chosen to operate in public to the 
fullest extent possible. Secrecy will only sow seeds of suspicion and 
dilute the Nation's confidence in its independence and its conclusions. 
It has done nothing to suggest to anyone that it will not be fair and 
just and sensitive to the needs of the individuals and institutions it 
deals with. On the other hand it is operating on an extremely tight, 
Congressionally mandated, time schedule.
  It does not have the time or the inclination, and should not have the 
need, to fight in the courts of law or in the court of public opinion 
to obtain the information it deserves and the public deserves.
  Thus the current controversy over the testimony of National Security 
Adviser Condoleezza Rice can and should be resolved quickly. The public 
and the Congress should not stand for anything less than full and 
prompt cooperation from the White House. For a national tragedy of 
these proportions, the buck stops at the White House. Three thousand 
people died on our shores and on their watch. There should not be the 
slightest question that any White House staff member asked by the 
Commission to testify under oath and in public must do so.
  As Colin Powell said yesterday, the presumption must be that 
everything be done in the open, so that sunshine can infuse the 
process.
  It is not a question of law; the law fully permits members of the 
White House staff to testify.
  It is not a question of precedent. As former Navy Secretary Lehman, a 
Commission member, said yesterday, many previous Presidents have 
permitted such testimony on important matters, and the importance of 
the issue here makes clear that this President should do the same. 
Surely, 9/11 is more important than Richard

[[Page 5452]]

Kleindienst's confirmation, Billy Carter's activities, or who said what 
to whom about an Arkansas bank.
  Yet in those cases, and many others, top White House officials 
testified in public and under oath.
  It is not a question of principle. That line was crossed in this case 
when the National Security Adviser went before the Commission in 
secret. If the White House genuinely believes that the Commission is a 
creation of the legislature, she has already subjected herself to the 
legislature's inquiries.
  As Secretary Lehman has said, it is ``self-defeating'' for the White 
House to refuse to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify fully in public. 
That course leads to suspicion that they have something to hide.
  Mr. Lehman says there is no smoking gun in what she has said in 
secret, so unless the White House is afraid she may say something 
different in public under oath, why are they holding her back?
  It is an insult to Ms. Rice to deny her the chance she says she 
wants, to testify in public. She has proven herself an articulate 
spokesperson for the President over the past 3 years. Unless the White 
House fears that she will disclose some dire secret, she should be free 
to respond in public to the Commission's questions, as she has 
responded on numerous occasions in press interviews in recent days. 
Television interviews are no substitute for answering the Commission's 
questions under oath.
  There need be no compromise of executive privilege if she testifies, 
If she is asked a question that she thinks the President, rather than 
she, should answer, she can and will say so, and leave it to him to do. 
But otherwise, as Colin Powell also said yesterday, the presumption 
ought to be for sunshine, openness, light.
  The Commission has also asked unanimously for an appearance by the 
President and Vice President in public under oath. They refused and 
offered in essence to meet in private for a brief conversation with the 
Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission. The public outcry at that 
minimal proposal led the White House to suggest some flexibility on the 
time, but not on anything else.
  The President faces a difficult decision about whether to testify in 
public and under oath. He was our leader when 9/11 occurred. That may 
well turn out to be a benefit to him in the months to come, but with 
that benefit goes a heavy burden. It is his responsibility to answer 
questions that only he can answer, admit failings if there were 
failings, apologize if apology is called for, and reassure us all that 
whatever was broken has been fixed. It will take courage and leadership 
for him to step forward, face the Commission, and risk the 
consequences.
  I urge President Bush, as the Nation focuses on the question of his 
own appearance, to remember the example of President Gerald Ford.
  One of the most difficult decisions he made as President was to 
pardon President Nixon. President Ford had the courage to defend that 
decision under oath and in public before a congressional committee. His 
pardon was not popular at the time, and it may well have cost him the 
presidency in the 1976 election. But he felt strongly that the public 
needed to hear from him personally about why he thought the pardon was 
essential to the national interest. So he made the truly unprecedented 
decision to come to the Hill to testify under oath himself. As he later 
said, ``The bigger the issue, the greater the need for political 
courage.''
  The current White House political staff has chosen a different 
approach. They have pressed the attack button on their quick-response 
machine in an attempt to destroy Richard Clarke and destroy his 
credibility about the events leading up to 9/11 under both the Clinton 
and Bush administrations, and the President's Republican allies in 
Congress are aiding and abetting this new and obscene example of the 
politics of personal destruction.
  It is sheer hypocrisy for the White House to encourage Condoleezza 
Rice to appear on television to dispute Mr. Clarke's testimony to the 
Commission, and then prevent her from presenting her views to the 
Commission itself.
  Many of us in the Senate will propose a resolution tomorrow urging 
that Dr. Rice be permitted to testify in public and under oath. There 
will be ample opportunity after that for the President to decide 
whether he himself is willing to testify in public and under oath as 
well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. The Senator from North Dakota wants to speak. First, I 
ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes before the Senator from 
North Dakota speaks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CONRAD. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I 
would like as part of that request that I be given an additional 10 
minutes. I think they reserved 20 minutes for me before. I may not take 
it all, but I would like to have that amount of time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to respond somewhat to the 
Senator from Massachusetts.
  First of all, I hope he understands this is a Monday--not that Monday 
is not just as important as any other day of the week. But it was 
announced last week there would be no votes today. His amendment 
doesn't have anything to do with votes today, but there are a lot of 
Members not here who ought to have some input when a nongermane 
amendment comes up. So I object for the reasons of myself as well as 
others.
  Also, you can see from the debate of the Senator from Massachusetts 
that he feels very strongly about the importance of that amendment 
which he offers on the minimum wage. There is nothing wrong with the 
issue of the minimum wage coming up. But for this Senator from Iowa, 
who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, with issues I am 
trying to respond to in a bipartisan way, and to issues that are raised 
as much from the other side of the aisle as they are from this side of 
the aisle--I mentioned the FSC/ETI bill of 2 weeks ago. I mentioned the 
welfare reform bill this week. There is a bipartisan consensus--maybe I 
should not say consensus--there is an agreement we ought to have the 
legislation before the Senate and passed. In the face of FSC/ETI, it 
was responding as much from the other side as this side that that 
legislation to encourage manufacturing in the United States, to create 
jobs in the United States ought to pass. When it comes to a vote, it 
will probably pass 90-10. But the legislation was held up 2 weeks ago 
by people on the other side of the aisle with nongermane amendments.
  Now we have welfare reform, sunset last October. We have extended it 
two or three times since then, so we have to continue the welfare 
reform programs. There is a consensus we ought to deal with this 
legislation and get some permanency to our welfare-to-work legislation. 
What happened? Right out of the box, people from the other side of the 
aisle--legitimate issues or not--are trying to stop legislation 
immediately in its tracks that will pass this body by a very wide 
margin. Have they ever thought maybe some of these pieces of 
legislation ought to stand on their own rather than hooking them onto 
bills unrelated to theirs?
  I don't object to the issue of increasing the minimum wage. What I 
object to is the constant harassment on the part of people on the other 
side of the aisle to keeping legislation from moving along very quickly 
that everybody knows needs to pass. This is just not Republican pieces 
of legislation dealing with welfare reform. It is just not Republican 
legislation dealing with encouraging manufacturing and creating jobs in 
manufacturing in America. These pieces of legislation are doing what 
the Senate ought to be doing to get things done, working in a 
bipartisan way.
  If you work in a bipartisan way to bring legislation to the floor of 
the Senate, why is the other side of the aisle always trying to slow 
down that legislation? It seems to me that is

[[Page 5453]]

what we are dealing with. There are times to deal with pieces of 
legislation, but not in this way, harassing all the time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Fitzgerald). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question on the 
Senator's time?
  Mr. CONRAD. Yes.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, is the Senator from North Dakota aware that 
on the 2 amendments that have been offered on the last 2 pieces of 
legislation--overtime and now the Kennedy minimum wage amendment--on 
our side we would be willing to take 10 minutes on each amendment, 10 
for us and 10 for the other side, 10 for us and 10 for the other side, 
for a total of 20 minutes on our side of the aisle for these 2 pieces 
of legislation. Would the Senator agree the slowdown is not coming from 
us, but from them? We are asking for an additional 20 minutes on 2 
amendments and we can move on to the rest of the legislation. Will the 
Senator acknowledge that?
  Mr. CONRAD. Yes. I will go further than that and say I served on the 
Finance Committee with our distinguished chairman. I strongly supported 
the FSC/ETI bill that was previously before the Senate. An amendment 
was offered on overtime. It is entirely reasonable to offer an 
amendment. Senators have a right to offer an amendment on any bill at 
any time, other than on those bills that are privileged. They offered 
to do it on a short time agreement. Now, today, on the welfare reform 
bill, the Senator from Massachusetts offered a very short time 
agreement on an amendment to increase the minimum wage. It is entirely 
reasonable and appropriate for Senators to offer amendments on pending 
legislation.
  I don't think the Senator from Iowa, who is my friend, and whom I 
respect and work with closely on many issues, should feel harassed. It 
is not a matter of harassment. These are important issues that deserve 
to be voted on. There is no reason not to vote on them, either in the 
context of the welfare reform bill in the case of minimum wage, or in 
the context of the FSC/ETI bill, which some have called a jobs bill, 
with respect to the issue of overtime. Those issues are entirely in 
order and reasonable to discuss.


                            The War In Iraq

  Mr. President, I asked for time today not to speak on this issue, but 
on the war against terror and the war in Iraq. These issues have come 
much more to the public attention as a result of the events of the last 
several weeks. As I have watched those events unfold, I have felt more 
strongly the need to come to this floor to speak up and to talk about 
where I believe we have taken a wrong path in the war on terror, where 
I believe we have gotten the priorities wrong.
  When we were attacked on September 11, 2001, we recognized we were at 
war with a terrorist organization that would stop at nothing, a 
terrorist organization that would turn civilian airliners into flying 
bombs that would kill nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. The President 
and the American people recognized al-Qaida posed an immediate threat 
to this country. We agreed that defeating al-Qaida was our top national 
security priority, and we vowed to bring Osama bin Laden and his al-
Qaida terrorist organization to justice. As President Bush said in 
convening his cabinet at Camp David after the 9/11 attacks: ``There is 
no question that this act will not stand. We will find those who did 
it. We will smoke them out of their holes, we will get them running, 
and we will bring them to justice.''
  We had an outpouring of sympathy, good will, and cooperation from all 
over the world, as we began the war on terrorism. Today, it has now 
been 930 days since the attacks of 9/11. And Osama bin Laden is still 
at large.
  We have not found him. We have not smoked him out of his holes, and 
we have not brought this mass murderer of innocent Americans to justice 
after 930 days. In fact, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization 
continue to mount attacks. Just 3 weeks ago, al-Qaida claimed 
responsibility for the bombings in Madrid, Spain. Spanish authorities 
have arrested Islamic terrorists in connection with that tragic attack, 
and al-Qaida continues to threaten further attacks against this 
country.
  When I saw the news footage of the bombings in Spain and when I heard 
al-Qaida threatening more attacks on America, it deeply angered me. I 
believe it raises several questions. Most fundamentally, why have we 
not, to use the President's words, smoked Osama bin Laden out, run him 
down and brought him to justice? Why is Osama bin Laden still able to 
threaten our country more than 2 years after we agreed that putting an 
end to his threats was our top priority? Why, if his organization has 
been disrupted and Osama bin Laden has been isolated, as some in the 
administration claim, are Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaida able to 
organize and coordinate significant synchronized attacks such as the 
ones in Madrid? How is he still able to produce and distribute these 
tapes and messages exhorting others to kill more Americans?
  As I asked these questions, it reminded that on April 30, 2001, less 
than 5 months before the 9/11 attacks, CNN reported that the Bush 
administration's release of the annual terrorism report contained a 
serious change from previous reports. Specifically, CNN reported that 
``there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama 
bin Laden,'' as there had been in previous years. When asked why the 
administration had reduced the focus, ``a senior Bush Department 
official told CNN the U.S. Government made a mistake in focusing so 
much energy on Bin Laden.'' In retrospect, that was a shocking 
misjudgment of the priorities in fighting terrorism. But I fear that 
even after 9/11, the administration has continued its failure to focus 
on al-Qaida.
  A Newsweek article from last fall reported:

       . . . bin Laden appears to be not only alive, but thriving. 
     And with America distracted in Iraq, and Pakistani President 
     Pervez Musharraf leery of stirring up an Islamist backlash, 
     there is no large-scale military force currently pursuing the 
     chief culprit in the 9/11 attacks.

  It is not just Newsweek. USA Today reported just this past weekend:

       In 2002, troops from the 5th special forces group who 
     specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for 
     Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next 
     assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with 
     expertise in Spanish cultures.

  Mr. President, I want to repeat that because this to me does not add 
up. It does not make common sense.

       In 2002, troops from the 5th special forces group who 
     specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for 
     Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next 
     assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with 
     expertise in Spanish cultures.
       The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to 
     collect, translate and analyze information coming from 
     Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it 
     took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure 
     Iraq was covered.

  I find these reports deeply disturbing. We know who attacked us on 9/
11. It was al-Qaida. It was not Iraq. Yet we have top Pentagon and 
intelligence officials saying that we shifted resources away from al-
Qaida to focus on Iraq. We have 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, but only 
11,000 in Afghanistan. What Earthly sense does this make? Al-Qaida 
attacked America, not Iraq.
  Those 11,000 troops are doing important work in Afghanistan--keeping 
the peace and recently renewing efforts to mop up Taliban strongholds 
that have been gathering strength. And the administration now has plans 
for a spring offensive to go after bin Laden. But according to our own 
officials, for most of the past 2 years, we had no large-scale military 
force dedicated to pursuing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
  So I have to ask, why not? Why was there no large-scale military 
force pursuing bin Laden for most of the past 2 years? Why did we allow 
our post-9/11 focus on bin Laden to be distracted? Why have we let new 
al-Qaida organizations grow up all around the world to attack us and 
our allies?
  It seems to me the administration's priorities were misplaced. We 
allowed our attention to be diverted by Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

[[Page 5454]]

  Many of us did not believe there was sufficient evidence to justify a 
preemptive attack on Iraq in the first place. We believed it was not in 
the national security interests of the United States to attack Iraq; 
that instead, we ought to keep our eye on the ball and keep the 
pressure on al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden because it was they--al-Qaida 
and Osama bin Laden--who attacked America on September 11, not Iraq.
  We feared attacking Iraq would leave us responsible for occupying and 
rebuilding a country in a profoundly dangerous and undemocratic region 
of the world, tying down resources we needed to meet other threats, 
including Iran, North Korea, and al-Qaida.
  We feared that attacking and occupying Iraq would deepen and energize 
anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, helping to fuel 
recruitment by al-Qaida and other radical Islamist terror 
organizations.
  And we feared that a war with Iraq would inevitably slow down our 
efforts to capture Osama bin Laden.
  In my statement on this Senate floor just minutes before the Senate 
voted to authorize the President to go to war in Iraq, I said:

       I believe defeating the terrorists who launched the attacks 
     on the United States on September 11 must be our first 
     priority before we launch a new war on a new front. Yet 
     today, the President asks us to take action against Iraq as a 
     first priority. Mr. President, I believe that has the 
     priority wrong.

  That is what I said moments before the vote authorizing the President 
to go to Iraq. I believe it was right then. I believe it is even more 
clearly right now.
  I also warned:

       The backlash in the Arab nations could further energize and 
     deepen anti-American sentiment. Al-Qaida and other terrorist 
     groups could gain more willing suicide bombers.

  I think we have seen, tragically, that this was true. Our troops in 
Iraq are constantly under attack. Our allies, including most recently 
the Spanish people, have been victimized by terrorists.
  I warned that the cost of invasion and occupation of Iraq could be 
extremely high, diverting resources from other national priorities. And 
that, too, has turned out to be accurate. CBO now estimates that the 
cost of the war and occupation in Iraq will total more than $300 
billion.
  In just the last couple of days, the American people have learned 
that all of these concerns were shared at the very highest level of the 
White House. But the President ignored those warnings.
  The top counter-terrorism adviser to President Bush, Richard Clarke, 
recently published a book detailing his experiences with the war on 
terrorism. In it, Clarke writes that President Bush and other top 
officials urged him to find a link between 9/11 and Iraq, even though 
he told them that there was no such link. He writes that the shift of 
focus from al-Qaida to Iraq ``launched an unnecessary and costly war in 
Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist 
movement worldwide.''
  As Clarke put it on ``60 Minutes'' the weekend before last:

       Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, ``America wants 
     to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab 
     country.'' He had been saying this as part of his propaganda.
       So what did we do after 9/11? We invaded an oil-rich and 
     occupy an oil-rich Arab country which was doing nothing to 
     threaten us. In other words, we stepped right into bin 
     Laden's propaganda. And the result of it is that al-Qaida and 
     organizations like it, offshoots of it, second generation al-
     Qaida have been greatly strengthened.

  These are the words of Mr. Clarke, the former Bush counter-terror 
official who has just published a book on the subject. I spent part of 
this weekend reading the book by Mr. Clarke. It is entitled ``Against 
all Enemies.'' I would urge my colleagues and those who might be 
listening or watching to get that book and read it. Whether one agrees 
with his conclusions or not, Mr. Clarke is warning and alerting us, 
based on a lifetime of experience in four different administrations 
over 30 years fighting terrorists, of where we may have gone wrong. 
These are lessons that are absolutely essential for us to learn.
  Mr. Clarke was not only an official in this Bush White House. He was 
also an official, an anti-terror chief, in the Clinton administration. 
Before that, he was in the previous Bush administration at a high level 
of responsibility. Before that, he served in the Reagan administration. 
This is a man of credibility. This is a man of qualifications. This is 
a man of deep experience who is attempting to warn us of mistakes that 
are being made.
  The charges he is making are serious charges. We know who attacked 
our country on 9/11. It was not Saddam Hussein or Iraq. It was Osama 
bin Laden and al-Qaida. But because the administration wanted to go to 
war in Iraq, Clarke suggests, we not only diverted resources from the 
hunt for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership, we strengthened 
al-Qaida and gave it time and space to develop offshoots that will 
continue to threaten this country even if we do eventually capture bin 
Laden, which I pray we do.
  It is not just Mr. Clarke who is making these assertions. Read the 
book by Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill. I have read that book, ``The 
Price of Loyalty,'' as well. He makes clear the Bush administration, in 
its earliest weeks, were focused on attacking Iraq.
  So I think we need to ask why we allowed ourselves to be distracted 
by Saddam Hussein. We need to ask why we took the focus off of finding 
Osama bin Laden and bringing him to justice? And we need to ask why the 
President decided that going after Iraq not al-Qaida and Osama bin 
Laden--was the priority, and see how that judgment has stood the test 
of time.
  The President and his top officials made two main arguments for going 
to war in Iraq: Iraq was allied with al-Qaida, and Iraq had weapons of 
mass destruction that it could use to attack this country. That is what 
he told the American people when he was persuading the Congress and the 
American people that we should launch a war against Iraq.
  In recent days and weeks, the evidence shows we have been pursuing 
the wrong priorities. Let us look at what we know now.
  On the question of a link to al-Qaida, the polling shows that 70 
percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind September 11. 
Over half believe that Iraqis were the hijackers of the planes. Let me 
repeat that. The polling shows 70 percent of Americans believe Saddam 
Hussein was behind September 11. Fifty percent believe it was Iraqis on 
the planes that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
  The fact is, of course, not a single Iraqi was among the hijackers of 
the airliners that were turned into flying bombs. The vast majority of 
the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, as, of course, is Osama bin 
Laden. Fifteen of the 19 were Saudis. Two were from the United Arab 
Emirates, one from Egypt and the other from Lebanon.
  Not a single Iraqi was involved in the attack. That is the fact.
  However, the American people believe there is a link because again 
and again the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, 
and other top administration officials have done everything they could 
to link Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida in the minds of the American 
people.
  They offered up two specific assertions to support this allegation: 
One, the Vice President and others in the administration said 
repeatedly that there was a link because one of the hijackers, Mohammed 
Atta, had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague. But what does the most 
recent evidence show?
  The fact is, the CIA and the FBI have concluded this report was 
simply not true. It was not true because Mohammed Atta was not in 
Prague; he was in the United States, in Virginia Beach, VA, preparing 
for the 9/11 attacks.
  As The Washington Post reported on September 29:

       In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President 
     Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence 
     agent met with a September 11, 2001, hijacker 5 months before 
     the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under 
     scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that 
     first made the allegation.


[[Page 5455]]


  Second, the President and other top officials said al-Qaida 
maintained a training camp in Iraq, but what they did not tell the 
American people was that the training camp was in a part of Iraq 
controlled by the Kurds, not by Saddam Hussein. The Kurds, by the way, 
are our allies. Once again, this is a disturbing bit of information 
used in a way that I believe fundamentally misled people.
  Yet Vice President Cheney, as recently as last fall, said that Iraq 
was ``the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under 
assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.''
  President Bush himself was forced to correct the record just a few 
days later, when a reporter asked him about the Vice President's 
statement. The President was very clear. He said there is no evidence 
that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks on this country. 
Here it is in the New York Times, September 18, 2003, ``Bush Reports No 
Evidence of Hussein Tie to 9/11.''
  But that did not stop the administration from making statements over 
and over again linking Iraq with al-Qaida, and with terrorists more 
generally, to create the impression the war in Iraq was part of our 
response to the 9/11 attacks and the war on terrorism. As Richard 
Clarke, the top counter-terrorism official in the White House during 
2001 and 2002, puts it:

       The White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never 
     quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did 
     it.
       They did know better. We told them. The CIA told them. The 
     FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is 
     that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they 
     were avenging September 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with 
     September 11. I think for a commander in chief and vice 
     president to allow that to happen is unconscionable.

  These, again, are the remarks of the top counter-terrorism official 
in the Bush administration.
  In fact, it is unlikely there would be any strong linkage between 
Iraq and al-Qaida because Saddam Hussein was secular, Osama bin Laden 
is a fundamentalist. In many ways, they are mortal enemies.
  I graduated from an American Air Force base high school in Tripoli, 
Libya--in North Africa--in 1966. Anybody who has lived in that culture 
understands very well the deep divisions between those who are secular 
and those who are fundamentalists. It is a deep division. But it is as 
though our administration in Washington is unaware of it because, 
repeatedly, they have suggested the two were tightly linked. In fact, 
they were sworn enemies. Who do you think it is we are digging up in 
those graves in Iraq? They are, by and large, fundamentalists whom 
Saddam Hussein found profoundly threatening to his secular regime.
  I think it is time for America to think very carefully about the path 
we are going down and to think very carefully about whether the 
strategy this administration has adopted is a strategy to secure our 
future, or whether there is a better strategy to be pursued.
  What we do know is Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida organized the attack 
on the United States. That is who is responsible. That is who we should 
be going after. Instead, what we are hearing is that military and 
intelligence resources were shifted to Iraq, taking resources away from 
the search for Osama bin Laden. I have to ask again, Why? Why are we 
spending time and energy trying to prove a link with Saddam instead of 
spending the same time and energy trying to find Osama bin Laden and 
defeating al-Qaida?
  The other thing that was asserted repeatedly in making the case that 
Iraq should be the priority, rather than al-Qaida, was that there were 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--nuclear weapons, chemical and 
biological weapons. The President and top officials repeatedly warned 
of Saddam's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear 
weapons in particular.
  We had rhetoric about nuclear holy wars and mushroom clouds, and the 
statements were assertions. The administration did not say that Iraq 
might--or might not--have weapons of mass destruction. It asserted 
affirmatively that, without a doubt, Iraq had these weapons and that 
they posed an immediate threat to this country.
  This chart lists a few of the many administration statements on 
Iraq's nuclear weapons. The first one is a quote of the Vice President 
in a speech to the VFW National Convention. He said:

       Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has 
     weapons of mass destruction.

  We have quote after quote from this administration. The President 
said:

       The Iraqi regime is seeking nuclear weapons. The evidence 
     indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons 
     program.

  Ari Fleischer, the President's press spokesman said:

       We know for a fact there are weapons there.

  It goes on and on. Secretary Powell said:

       He has so determined that he has made repeated covert 
     attempts to acquire high specification aluminum tubes from 11 
     different countries, even after inspections resumed.

  And, again, Vice President Cheney:

       We know he is out trying once again to produce nuclear 
     weapons. We believe Saddam has in fact reconstituted nuclear 
     weapons.

  These were the statements made over and over by this administration. 
On chemical and biological weapons, the story was the same. The 
administration repeatedly asserted that Saddam had revived his chemical 
and biological weapons program and had stockpiles of weapons that posed 
a grave, immediate danger to the United States.
  We all knew that Iraq had possessed and used chemical weapons in the 
1980s. And we all knew that intelligence had not conclusively 
demonstrated that all these weapons had been destroyed. But the 
administration went well beyond that consensus, suggesting that there 
was new evidence of renewed chemical and biological weapon production.
  This next chart I have lists a few of the many administration 
statements on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons. Again, the 
President's chief spokesman said:

       The President of the United States and the Secretary of 
     Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have 
     that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true 
     and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.

  That was Ari Fleischer.
  Again, later the next year:

       We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

  Secretary Powell:

       We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his 
     weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

  President Bush:

       The Iraqi regime has actively and secretly attempted to 
     obtain equipment needed to produce chemical, biological, and 
     nuclear weapons.

  Again, President Bush:

       Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves 
     no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and 
     conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

  The President's chief spokesman Ari Fleischer:

       Well, there is no question that we have evidence and 
     information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, 
     biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be 
     made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever 
     duration it takes.

  Mr. President, assertion after assertion. These statements, and 
dozens more like them, painted a frightening picture of the threat 
posed to this country by Iraq. They created a mood in this country that 
built support for attacking a country that had not first attacked us or 
our allies, and to do so for the first time in our history.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. CONRAD. I ask for an additional 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. Again, these statements did not suggest that ``maybe'' 
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They did not suggest that 
``probably'' Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They stated 
clearly and unequivocally that he had them. There was one only problem 
with these statements. All the evidence that has

[[Page 5456]]

emerged since the war suggests that they were wrong. All the evidence 
we have now shows the administration knew at the time the statements 
were made that its own intelligence undercut the statements it was 
making.
  What we know now is that we have occupied Iraq for 10 months. We have 
full, unrestricted access to the whole country, more than 1,000 
investigators searching for illegal weapons, and they have found none. 
Saddam did not have nuclear weapons or any serious effort to acquire 
them in the near term. I think this quote from the January 28 
Washington Post sums up the most recent finding:

       ``U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq found new evidence that 
     Saddam Hussein's regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of 
     biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s,'' former 
     chief inspector David Kay said yesterday.
       The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to 
     find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found 
     exculpatory information . . . demonstrating that Saddam 
     Hussein did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush 
     began making the case for war . . .
       ``If weapons programs existed on the scale we 
     anticipated,'' Kay said, ``we would have found something that 
     leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence 
     that points to something else.

  I think the attached graphic from the Washington Post sums up the gap 
between the statements and what we now know. On biological weapons, 
evidence since March of 2003? No. No weaponized agents found.
  On chemical weapons?
  No. No weapons found. Appears none were produced after 1991.
  On nuclear weapons?
  No. No evidence of any active program.
  I do not fault the administration for thinking that there might be 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I myself thought it probable that 
Saddam possessed these weapons. But for me the real question was 
whether these weapons posed such a serious, imminent threat that they 
justified a preemptive attack on Iraq. Did we have solid evidence of an 
immediate danger? For me, at the time, the answer was no. Today, with 
the benefit of hindsight, with the Bush administration's own top 
weapons inspector acknowledging that the pre-war statements were wrong 
and that Saddam, in fact, was disarming before the war, the answer is 
even clearer: No.
  I am not the only one who has reached that conclusion. For example, 
former President Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, James Webb, recently 
wrote:

       Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder 
     in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong 
     target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from 
     power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the 
     government of a country that was not directly threatening the 
     United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage 
     of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our 
     military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in 
     the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the 
     defensive in a single country that never will fully accept 
     its presence.
       There is no historical precedent for taking such action 
     when our country was not being directly threatened. The 
     reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will 
     affect the economic and military energy of our Nation for 
     decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military 
     that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh 
     judgment that he deserves.

  In my view, it was a clear alternative to a preemptive attack that 
had worked for us for more than half a century--aggressive containment 
and isolation. The Soviet Union had biological and chemical weapons. We 
never attacked them. China had biological and chemical weapons. We 
didn't attack them. Cuba had missiles. We didn't attack them. In every 
one of those cases we used containment, and it worked. But we did not 
use containment in Iraq. We broke with our history and launched a 
preemptive attack on a country that had not first attacked us or our 
allies.
  Now we have the responsibility for trying to occupy and rebuild Iraq. 
Now we have moved resources out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to deal 
with the dangers of the occupation of Iraq, and we have not yet 
succeeded in capturing bin Laden or shutting down al-Qaida.
  I again must ask why have we not brought Osama bin Laden to justice? 
Why do we allow ourselves to be distracted by a war with Iraq when we 
have other, better options that allow us to keep the focus on al-Qaida?
  It has been more than 30 months. It has been 930 days since the 9/11 
attacks on this country, but Osama bin Laden is still at large. We all 
hope he will soon be caught, but every day our attention is diverted is 
another day America is at risk. That makes me question our policy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's additional 5 minutes have 
expired.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 minutes to 
conclude my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their patience.
  That makes me question our policy. It makes me question why for most 
of the last two years we have had no large-scale force hunting for bin 
Laden. It makes me question why our military and intelligence assets 
that could be hunting down al-Qaida have instead been diverted to Iraq. 
It makes me concerned when intelligence experts tell us al-Qaida has 
used that breathing space to decentralize its operations so it will be 
harder to disrupt and destroy al-Qaida in the future, even if we do 
capture bin Laden.
  In the past few weeks, the administration has announced it has 
stepped up the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Sending a few thousand troops 
now is certainly a positive step. But I must ask with all due respect, 
could we have captured Osama bin Laden months ago had we kept the focus 
on al-Qaida? Could we have prevented the Madrid attack had we kept the 
focus on dismantling al-Qaida rather than going to war in Iraq?
  Where was the effort to find Osama bin Laden for the past two years? 
And why do we not have tens of thousands of troops rather than just a 
few thousand to hunt him down so he does not remain free to plot 
against this country and our allies?
  As Flynt Leverett, former CIA analyst and National Security Council 
staffer for President Bush, observed in a Washington Post article this 
past Sunday:

       We took the people out [of Afghanistan] who could have 
     caught them. But even if we got bin Laden or [his top aide 
     Ayman] Zawahiri now, it is two years too late. Al-Qaeda is a 
     very different organization now. It has had time to adapt. 
     The administration should have finished this job.

  I can only reach one conclusion. We have been distracted. We have 
been diverted. We have taken our eye off the ball. We have lost focus 
on the real war on terrorism--the war on al-Qaida and the terrorists 
who viciously attacked our country.
  To put it bluntly, we have lost time and momentum and initiative in 
the war on the terrorists who actually attacked us while we went after 
a dictator--vicious and nasty as he was--who posed little immediate 
threat to this country.
  If we look across the evidence, I believe in many ways the United 
States simply made a mistake of judgment on what was most important. 
The President and his advisers believed--and I believe they sincerely 
believed--the priority was to go after Iraq. But the evidence we now 
have suggests they were chasing red herrings rather than real evidence 
of a national security threat.
  Don't get me wrong. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in 
power in Iraq. But going to war with Iraq at the expense of our 
credibility and at the expense of our readiness to deal with other 
threats, at the expense of vigorously hunting down al-Qaida and bin 
Laden, has been the wrong priority.
  That is exactly what concerned this Senator, that a preemptive war 
against Iraq--a country that had a low-level threat against this 
country, according to our own intelligence agencies--has distracted us 
from going after the man and the organization that attacked this 
country. It was not Iraqis who attacked this country. It was al-Qaida 
that attacked this country. Saddam

[[Page 5457]]

Hussein was not the heart of that operation. Osama bin Laden was the 
leader of that operation.
  It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida that engineered the vicious 
attacks on America on September 11. It is unacceptable that Osama bin 
Laden is still at large and broadcasting threats against this country 
930 days after the attacks of September 11.
  So I ask a final time: Why? Why has bin Laden eluded capture for 930 
days? Why are we not focusing our efforts on bringing him to justice 
and defeating his network of terror?
  I think the American people deserve an answer to that question. I 
think Members of this Chamber deserve an answer to that question. 
Holding Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to account for this attack should 
be our top priority. It is time to refocus our priorities and to win 
the war against al-Qaida. Stopping bin Laden and al-Qaida before they 
can launch another attack that kills innocent Americans should be our 
highest national security priority.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it is my understanding there is a 
unanimous consent agreement in place as to who might speak. I ask 
unanimous consent that I be recognized for 5 minutes ahead of those in 
queue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no order. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I listened with interest to my friend Senator Conrad. 
And he is my friend. We use that term around here loosely, but he is in 
fact a good friend. I differ with him very fundamentally.
  I have learned in the superheated atmosphere of the Senate that I 
must make this disclaimer: I do not challenge his patriotism, but I 
challenge his accuracy and his conclusions.
  I think we should also understand that as we differ on this, we are 
not attacking someone's patriotism. That canard has been thrown across 
the aisle at those of us who stand to defend the President and differ 
with our colleagues.
  I will return to the floor at a later time for more extensive 
comments on Senator Conrad's speech. But I want to make these points 
which I think get neglected over and over and were neglected in his 
presentation.
  He quoted David Kay, the President's arms inspector, as saying they 
are admitting now there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 
What he failed to quote from David Kay was the statement that after 
concluding his inspection in Iraq, David Kay came to the conclusion 
that Saddam Hussein was in fact more dangerous than we thought he was 
when we launched the war. I think that is the point that keeps being 
ignored and must be emphasized again.
  Senator Conrad says we didn't invade Russia when they had weapons of 
mass destruction; that we didn't invade China when they had weapons of 
mass destruction; and, why, therefore, did we invade Iraq when it turns 
out they didn't have them? We did it because we thought he had the 
weapons of mass destruction, and we thought that made him dangerous. It 
is not the possession of the weapons that is the problem. It is the 
danger that is the problem.
  Great Britain has weapons of mass destruction, but they are in no 
sense dangerous. We thought Saddam Hussein was.
  It is unfair to quote David Kay as saying there were no weapons and 
then not finish the quotation with his statement that even without 
weapons Saddam Hussein was more dangerous than we thought when we 
entered the war.
  If you are going to use David Kay as your authority, you must use 
David Kay's entire conclusion. Saddam Hussein was, according to David 
Kay, more dangerous than we thought. Yet somehow he is being cited as 
to the source to say we should not have gone ahead.
  This next major thrust of his statement was: Well, because we got 
distracted with Iraq, we have not dealt with al-Qaida and terrorism. 
That is the subject which I will address at some length when the 
Senator from Tennessee is finished.
  The fact is, you cannot single out al-Qaida as a terrorist group as 
if it operates in a vacuum. I remember my high school history teacher 
saying, over and over to us: You cannot cut a seamless web of history. 
You cannot divide the threat of terror into neat little sections and 
say, we can deal with the one and the others do not really matter.
  I will be discussing and presenting on the floor here at a relatively 
close future time the statement that appeared this morning in the Wall 
Street Journal that is a summary of the Kissinger lecture, given at the 
Library of Congress, by George Shultz. I had the privilege and honor of 
hearing George Shultz present that lecture. In it he makes the clear 
point that the war on terror, the threat from terror, goes all the way 
back to his experience in the Reagan administration, when he was 
Secretary of State. And it manifests itself in a variety of places and 
in a variety of ways.
  There is no distraction in the war on terror by virtue of what we are 
doing in Iraq. Saddam Hussein financed terror. Saddam Hussein 
countenanced terror. Saddam Hussein provided sanctuary for terrorists. 
If we were going to launch a war on terror, and said we were going to 
rule out Iraq as part of that war, we would have been irresponsible.
  Yes, the first attack went against al-Qaida and al-Qaida's sanctuary 
in Afghanistan. But al-Qaida fled and sought sanctuary elsewhere. And 
one of the main places where terror found sanctuary and finance was in 
Iraq. And we thought Iraq was dangerous enough to invade, in 
fulfillment--as George Shultz points out--of the clear United Nations 
mandate that went back decades. We acted in accordance with that 
mandate. We enforced the United Nations resolutions in full compliance 
with United Nations procedure and the vote of both Chambers of this 
Congress.
  It was not a distraction. It was part of the overall recognition on 
the part of the Bush administration that this was not a law enforcement 
problem where we needed to identify the criminal, arrest him, and 
prosecute him. This was, indeed, a true war, across a wide spectrum of 
challenge, where we had to deal with dangerous problems, the most 
dangerous of which, again, according to David Kay--who has been quoted 
by those who are attacking the administration--was Saddam Hussein: more 
dangerous than we thought when we launched the war.
  I think we should keep that in mind as we go forward in this debate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.


                           Amendment No. 2937

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as a 
cosponsor to the amendment offered by Senators Dodd and Snowe on 
childcare.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, is there any limit on time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is not.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to speak on 
the welfare reform legislation that the Finance Committee has worked 
on. I compliment Chairman Grassley and the Senator from Montana for 
their hard work in bringing this important piece of legislation 
forward.
  I am going to comment on two aspects of the bill.


                                  Iraq

  Before I do that, Mr. President, I have been sitting here listening 
for a while. I think it is important to complete the story of what the 
Senator from North Dakota was saying.
  Let me be specific about this. As I heard his remarks, he was 
basically saying the President of the United States made a mistake when 
he decided the United States should use force to change the regime in 
Iraq.
  I suppose one could come to that conclusion. There were some in the 
Senate who did. But I think it is important, if we are going to begin 
to read quotations and comments from those

[[Page 5458]]

who have come to that conclusion today, that we finish the story, as 
Paul Harvey said.
  Here is the rest of the story. Here is what others were saying, 
others were thinking, at the time President Bush had to look at the 
whole world and look at this different world that we are in and make a 
decision.
  It is true that it has been against the traditions of the United 
States to make a preemptive strike. That was a major discussion during 
the Cuban missile crisis. Bobby Kennedy brought that up in the 
councils. He was right to do that. And I am sure in President Bush's 
councils that was discussed.
  But, suddenly, we were facing a different kind of enemy. We were 
facing terrorists. And we had just experienced an unexpected attack. 
There are some even today who say that someone should have imagined 
that a handful of men would hijack two airplanes and fly them into the 
World Trade Center. Maybe someone should have. But I can assure you 
that during the 1990s, there was no one running for President of the 
United States who expressed that thought or who had that thought in the 
remotest back of his mind that such a thing like that could happen. 
Terrorism, yes. But that kind of attack? No.
  So, suddenly, we are in this new environment. And the President of 
the United States is doing what I would hope any President would do of 
either party when confronted with radically different circumstances. He 
asked some questions and he took some action.
  Now, it is important for us to remember that at the same time the 
President was making decisions about whether we should invade Iraq to 
defend ourselves, to prevent a terrorist attack--because there was a 
threat there to American lives and American safety--there were others 
in our Government who also had a chance to consider that information, 
and to talk about it, and to vote on it.
  We voted on it here. I was not here yet, but I remember the 
overwhelming majority--bipartisan majority--in this Senate that 
authorized the use of military force against Iraq. And I can remember 
very well what was said.
  So if the issue is whether a prudent President--who is sworn to 
uphold the oath to defend the United States of America--made a wise 
judgment to challenge Saddam Hussein, whether he could have done that 
based upon the facts presented to him, let's take a look at what other 
people, other well-informed people were saying and thinking at the 
time.
  The distinguished Senator from North Dakota read some quotations. Let 
me read some more. Here is a member of the Senate's own Intelligence 
Committee, the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Rockefeller, one of our 
most distinguished and wisest Senators, a man who has been a Governor, 
with whom I have served, a man who is also on the Foreign Relations 
Committee. Here is what the Senator from West Virginia, speaking on the 
Senate floor, said on October 10 of the year 2002, about the time the 
President of the United States was looking at this information. Senator 
Rockefeller said:

       There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is 
     working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will 
     likely have nuclear weapons within the next 5 years. He could 
     have it earlier if he is able to obtain fissile missile 
     materials on the outside market, which is possible--difficult 
     but possible.
       We should also remember we have always underestimated the 
     progress that Saddam Hussein has been able to make in the 
     development of weapons of mass destruction.

  Now, that was not the Vice President of the United States. That was 
not Secretary Rumsfeld. That was not President Bush. That was the 
Senator from West Virginia, a member of our Intelligence Committee, a 
member of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was coming up with his 
own conclusions.
  Here is another quotation made on the Senate floor on October 9, 
2002, about the same time. This came from the distinguished junior 
Senator from Massachusetts, Senator John Kerry:

       I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless 
     breach of international values and standards of behavior, 
     which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no 
     reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to 
     hold him accountable by the use of force if necessary.
  That was Senator Kerry, at about the time that President Bush was 
having to make this terrible decision.
  I want to move on to other issues. But I don't think it serves our 
purpose as a country to dredge up comments that show some second-
guessing, some second thoughts on one side, but not look back at what 
other distinguished, fairminded reasonable men and women were saying.
  Here is what Senator Biden said at about the same time on the Senate 
floor, October 9, 2002:

       If the world decides it must use force for his failure to 
     abide by the terms of surrender, then it is not preempting, 
     it is enforcing. It is enforcing, it is finishing a war he 
     reignited, because the only reason the war stopped is he sued 
     for peace.

  And finally, here is what the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, 
said on October 10, 2002:

       In the 4 years since the inspectors left, intelligence 
     reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his 
     chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery 
     capability, and his nuclear program. It is clear, however, 
     that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to 
     increase his capability to wage biological and chemical 
     warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.

  Those are the conclusions of the distinguished Members of the other 
side who know a lot about this, the same conclusion President Bush had. 
We don't have to listen to what the administration tells us here. We 
have our committees. We travel the world. Some of us have been in other 
administrations. We read. We listen. We talk. We come to our own 
conclusions. The conclusions of most Senators was the same as the 
conclusion of the President, that as terrible as it was, this was a 
time we needed to act.
  There is one other quotation I would like to mention before I turn to 
the Welfare Reform Act. This is a comment of a former President of the 
United States who has, to his great credit, not backed away insofar as 
I have heard from this remark. President Bill Clinton said, on February 
17, 1998, in an address for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon 
staff:

       Now let us imagine the future. What if he fails to comply 
     and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route 
     which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this 
     program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press 
     for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the 
     solemn commitments that he made. Well, Saddam Hussein will 
     conclude that the international community has lost its will. 
     He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to 
     rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, 
     some way, I guarantee you, he will use the arsenal. And I 
     think every one of you who has really worked on this for any 
     length of time believes that, too.

  That was President Clinton in 1998 in an address to the Joint Chiefs 
of Staff and the Pentagon staff.
  The No. 1 issue on all of our minds is the war in Iraq. But I would 
hope we could look forward and not look backward in recrimination. That 
is not too much to hope in a Presidential election year. I believe the 
people of this country want President Bush and Senator Kerry to say 
where do we go from here, how do we win the peace, how do we secure 
freedom, how do we get the men and women home from Iraq and 
Afghanistan, what can we do to help their families. That is what the 
focus ought to be rather than reading long, incomplete lists of second-
guessing quotations to try to pin the blame on a decision that was 
broadly and widely shared based upon information that had been piled up 
over 10 or 12 years. That does not serve our process well.
  I came to the floor today on another matter. I am glad I had a chance 
to mention former President Clinton in terms of doing it. I remember 
well. In my second term as Governor in the mid-1980s, I was privileged 
to serve as chairman of the National Governors Association and created 
the first welfare reform task force. I asked then-Governors Pete DuPont 
and Bill Clinton, who was vice chairman of that association, to be the 
co-chairs, working with me to figure out something better. And we did, 
and they did most of that work and that leadership.
  The work that the Governors started that year continued. Ten years 
later,

[[Page 5459]]

when Bill Clinton was President in 1996 and there was a Republican 
Congress, Congress passed the landmark welfare reform legislation which 
today we call TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
  That 1996 welfare-to-work legislation was very controversial at the 
time. It was controversial because it got us out of the rut that we had 
been in for 30 or 40 years of creating a permanent class of welfare and 
caused us to rethink that. It is possible that it only could have been 
done with the President of one party who had immersed himself in the 
subject and who talked about it and believed in it and a Congress of 
another party. It was that big a change.
  It changed the way we think about welfare, from a program that 
fosters dependence to a program that serves as temporary assistance, a 
program that restores dignity and encourages people to stand on their 
own two feet. That welfare-to-work program that President Clinton and 
the Republican Congress created 10 years ago--many Members of the House 
who were there at the time are now in the Senate--has been a very 
successful program and one in which they can take pride.
  From a high of 5 million in 1994, welfare caseloads have dropped by 
over 50 percent. But since 2000, the national caseload has leveled off 
at slightly above 2 million. In more than half the States, including my 
own of Tennessee, caseloads are growing. And in every State, the 
remaining 50 percent on the welfare rolls present a bigger challenge.
  There are some other warning signs. The number of families is rising 
who have exhausted their 60-month or 5-year time limit for Federal aid 
under TANF. We have a 5-year limit. We don't want permanent welfare. 
And a number of families have exceeded that 5-year limit so they are 
off welfare.
  Another warning sign is the remaining caseload holds a rising 
proportion of Black and Hispanic families. Another is that unemployment 
among single mothers, which declined sharply in the early years of our 
welfare-to-work program, went back up in 2001 and 2002.
  Finally, another warning signal is in response to their own fiscal 
crises--we can remember we had to send a $20 billion welfare check of 
our own to the States last year--some States have recently had to 
restrict cash benefits and support services, spreading limited 
resources even thinner.
  The President and the Congress recognized from the beginning that 
helping people go from dependence to independence would be expensive in 
the short run. It would take some money. If you are saying to somebody 
who is down and out and in the third generation of welfare dependence, 
we want you to change your lifestyle and we are going to offer in 
exchange for that childcare, education opportunities, job training, 
counseling, removal of barriers to work, offering all that, that takes 
people, that takes work, and that takes money.
  We have provided money over a period of time. One of the most 
successful of those programs has been the childcare voucher. Not 
everyone likes to call it a voucher because some people don't like 
vouchers. The Pell grant is a voucher for college students, the 
Stafford student loans is a voucher for college students, and the 
childcare grant is a voucher. It is money that goes through the 
States--I think it is about $8 billion or so--to more than 2 million 
persons who are getting off welfare. As we say, largely to women who 
have children: We want you to go to work. They may say: What about our 
children? And we say: Here is a childcare grant that you may take to 
any accredited institution that you can. That is what we mean by 
voucher.
  That has been a big success as well. That is the reason why even 
though the Senate committee, in my judgment, has done an excellent job 
of bringing to the Senate the reauthorization or renewal of this 
welfare reform bill and has increased the amount of money available for 
childcare, I agree with Senator Snowe of Maine that we need to increase 
the money for childcare more.
  Senator Snowe spoke about that today at great length, so I don't feel 
the need to go into great length about it. Basically, the Snowe 
amendment, which I am glad to cosponsor, adds an additional $6 billion 
over 5 years for childcare. Both the House and the Senate versions of 
the welfare reform bills we are considering increase both the hours the 
parents are required to work each week and the number of welfare 
parents each week who are required to work.
  If we are going to require that the only parent who is at home go to 
work, and if that person is poor, and if that person is still on 
welfare after we have been working for 10 years to try to get as many 
people as possible off, we certainly are going to have to say as part 
of our deal we will help with childcare if you will go to work. That is 
the whole idea.
  Childcare is the linchpin between welfare and work. Studies show 
former welfare recipients who receive childcare assistance are 82 
percent more likely to be employed after 2 years than those who don't; 
65 percent of mothers with children under the age of 6 and 79 percent 
of mothers with children ages 6 to 13 are in the labor force in our 
country today. As I mentioned earlier, about 2.5 million children 
receive our Federal childcare vouchers through the State. Childcare is 
expensive. It costs as much as a 4-year college--between $4,000 and 
$10,000 per child annually sometimes.
  I got a personal dose of learning about this in 1996 when I was under 
the mistaken impression the people of the United States wanted me to 
run for President of the United States. I got the message earlier that 
year that they preferred Bob Dole, the former majority leader. I went 
home to Tennessee. I received a call from Major Werthy of the Salvation 
Army. He said, ``I have been hearing what you had to say.'' I had been 
saying a lot about personal responsibility. He said, ``I am calling to 
draft you and put your feet where your mouth has been for the last few 
years.'' So I went to work for the Salvation Army in Nashville and 
helped create something called the Red Shield Family Initiative. This 
basically became Nashville's way of implementing the Federal law.
  Congress and the President decided we are going to change things. If 
you will get off welfare, we will give you help, childcare, job 
training. We will knock barriers out of the way and counsel you about 
drugs and work with you. Then somebody has to actually do all that. In 
Nashville a whole group of people got together, led by the Salvation 
Army. It included the metropolitan government, the State of Tennessee, 
all sorts of social services, and it included childcare centers. Down 
in the area of town where we have the most difficult circumstances, we 
had almost a mall, such as a shopping mall that exists to create a one-
stop place for a mom on welfare who wanted to get off, so they could 
then be helped. There have been some wonderful stories that have come 
out of that Red Shield Family Initiative, but I can tell you they came 
out slowly, one by one.
  Tamika Payton was in the ninth grade. This is an example Major Werthy 
talked to me about. In the ninth grade, she was a ward of the State 
when she had her first child. She grew up with an abusive mother who 
was addicted to drugs. She was removed from the care of her mother and 
placed in the care of her aunt, who was also abusive, so she ran away. 
This is Tamika's story, but it is a story that occurs all over America. 
She had two more children before becoming connected to the Family First 
Program, which is what we call Tennessee's welfare-to-work program. 
Because of the childcare certificate, the vouchers she receives through 
the Tennessee Family First Program, the ones we pay for with Federal 
tax dollars, she now has a full-time job, she is working on her GED, 
her high school degree, and her children attend the McNealy Child Care 
Center, a nationally accredited childcare agency in the area where this 
Red Shield Family Initiative of the Salvation Army exists.
  In Tennessee, the State pays $105 a week for Tamika's 1-year-old, 
$105 a week for her 2-year-old child, and $90 a week for her 4-year old 
child. In Nashville, the average cost of a quality

[[Page 5460]]

childcare center ranges between $100 and $150 a week. These vouchers we 
are voting for come within that range. Tamika's dream is to get her 
high school degree and then to attend Tennessee State University.
  In other words, what is happening with Tamika Payton is exactly what 
the Republican Congress and President Clinton hoped would happen in 
1996 when this started. But as we consider the welfare reform 
legislation, I think it is very important that we remember in 
Washington, DC, while we may create large frameworks and set standards 
and provide money, it is people such as the Red Shield Family 
Initiative in Nashville, in Portland, in Austin, in New York City, who 
are doing the work--they have got to work one by one by one. So I will 
support and vote for Senator Snowe's amendment to add an additional $6 
billion over 5 years for child care, because if in this welfare reform 
authorization we are going to require the only parent in the house to 
work away from home--more work than we have required before--then we 
will have to pay more for more childcare. We cannot require more work 
without paying more for more childcare.
  There is one other concern I have. It will be the subject of an 
amendment I intend to introduce along with Senators Nelson, Carper, and 
Voinovich later this week. We are working with the chairman and his 
staff to try to make certain it is consistent with the objectives of 
the general legislation, which we believe it is. This amendment would 
create a 10-State demonstration project designed to test the premise 
that if States had greater flexibility, States could do a better job 
getting people off welfare and becoming truly self-sufficient. Senators 
Nelson, Carper, Voinovich, and I are all former Governors. We know the 
importance of reducing welfare rolls. We all served as Governors of 
States in the AFDC days, when we had Aid to Families with Dependent 
Children. We all strongly support the welfare-to-work concept. But 
especially with this last group of men and women--mostly women--who are 
moving from welfare to work, we have the tougher cases. It will be 
harder for us to decide from here exactly how each of those persons we 
are trying to help can get from where they are to where we want them to 
go. We should not presume to have all of the answers.
  Here is how our demonstration project would therefore work. The 
Secretary of Health and Human Services would approve plans for up to 10 
States. These plans would include what we call measurable outcome 
goals. In other words, in plain English, are we helping this person 
move toward self-sufficiency, toward independence, to get on their own 
two feet and off welfare? We would, in those 10 demonstration States, 
enforce the 60-month time limit for TANF benefits and require, as in 
the Senate bill, the self-sufficiency employment plan for each 
recipient. In other words, each individual would have a plan for that 
person's progress.
  We agree with the idea of no permanent welfare. While work continues 
to be at the heart of what we expect States to focus on, States will 
need to decide how best to meet each person's need, is taking into 
consideration individual circumstances. As wise as we may hope we are, 
each one of us is not going to be able to meet each Tamika Payton and 
make a judgment as to how Tamika can get on her two feet with her three 
children, succeed in life, and never receive a welfare check again. So 
in exchange for greater flexibility, we will ask the States to achieve 
better results and be measured against true outcome goals, a feature 
neither in the current law nor in the Senate and House bills.
  These are the kinds of goals that our legislation will include: One, 
work, employment, growth in the percent of recipients employed in that 
State; two, removal of barriers to stable employment. By that I mean 
drug treatment success. That is a barrier to stable employment. 
Education level, that is a barrier to stable employment. Attainable 
marketable skills, that is a barrier to stable employment.
  I remember visiting a welfare human services office in my State in 
2002. I asked them what worked best. What they told me was: Get them 
into school. If we get them into school, we never see them again. What 
the welfare office hopes for from its clients is they do not see them 
again, at least they do not see them again in terms of assistance and 
checks. They want them to be on their own.
  Job retention is a measurable outcome goal. Earnings is a measurable 
outcome goal. Child well-being--whether the children of that mom have 
prenatal care, and for the pregnant mother--immunization rates of the 
children, the percent of children in child care, overall improvement in 
the children's education, test results.
  Within those specific measurable outcomes--employment, removing 
barriers to employment, job retention, earnings, and child well-being--
a State's plan would say: We believe we know better how to get to the 
goal of sufficiency; give us a chance to do that. Each State would be 
required to enter into a performance agreement with the Department of 
Health and Human Services to meet certain targets to coordinate with 
other programs, to work with the Secretary to demonstrate that a 
reasonable workforce participation rate is being maintained, to have an 
evaluation plan that includes accountability for the benchmarks.
  This will test the best way to help those on welfare today get off 
welfare for good.
  It would help some of those we now see in Tennessee who we were able 
to help because our State has unusual flexibility, but without that 
flexibility, we believe we would not have been able to serve them as 
successfully.
  Mr. President, there are many examples in my own experience, and I am 
sure in every State's experience, of how local ingenuity, local caring, 
working with persons who are in trouble, one by one, has helped them 
succeed.
  I would like to see us take this next step with welfare reform. I 
believe since it had a bipartisan origin with a Democratic President of 
the United States who invested years in trying to understand it, and a 
new Republican Congress that made it a priority, that we owe this 
important legislation, this welfare reform bill, our full attention for 
a few days. We can surely put aside some of these other issues long 
enough to help men and women get on their own two feet in this great 
country of ours, particularly to continue a program that for 10 years 
has worked so well.
  My goal will be to do what I can as one Senator to make sure we focus 
on welfare reform; No. 2, to support the Snowe amendment that makes 
sure that if we require more work, we provide for more child care; and, 
No. 3, to work with the committee to try to see if we can find a way so 
that a limited number of States during this 5-year period can have 
somewhat more flexibility in working with these difficult cases so when 
this comes back around again in 4, 5, or 6 years, we can see what we 
have learned.
  Too often as programs go on, the restrictions from Washington pile 
up. I would like to see a countervailing effort, countervailing 
movement within this legislation that continues to increase flexibility 
because, after all, it is stated right at the beginning of the 1996 
law, giving States more flexibility is key to the success of welfare 
reform.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I will take a few moments at this time. 
Certainly the issue of welfare reform is critical. The Senator from 
Tennessee has outlined the phenomenal successes to date led by 
Republicans both in the House and the Senate and now, of course, the 
Finance Committee has come forward with a reauthorization that is 
critical to our country. But in talking about that issue, one of the 
things that all welfare reform runs subject to is the ability, as we 
ask people to leave welfare, to find a job.
  Something that frustrates me at this moment is what is occurring 
while the Congress of the United States refuses to act that will have a 
very real impact on the economy of our country and the ability to 
create jobs.

[[Page 5461]]

  Just this morning, as constituents across this country by all of the 
Senators pulled up in front of their gas pumps to fill their tanks, 
they paid the highest price for regular gas ever in the history of this 
country. Prices in California have skyrocketed out of sight, and it is 
true across the Nation.
  That is a fact. That happened this morning, and gas people are 
telling us that it will happen morning after morning as gas prices 
ratchet up across this country.
  There is another fact out there. Congress has searched for an 
agreement and debated what to do about this for well over 3 years. The 
House and the Senate passed energy bills in the past year and led the 
American people to believe that they could solve this problem. Those 
reports came back from the Senate and the House. The Senate passed 
theirs; the House passed theirs. The Senate could not get there for one 
reason or another and, as a result, a message was sent out to the 
American people that the Senate of the United States could not come to 
an agreement on an energy bill. That is a fact.
  Here is another fact. The reason energy prices continue to rise is 
that the Senate, not the House, failed to get the 60 votes necessary to 
solve what is becoming a major national crisis in this country. Let me 
repeat that. The Senate of the United States failed to get cloture, a 
vote that is critical to moving beyond the 60-vote margin to allow a 
national energy policy to go forward.
  So if you grew a little angry this morning when you paid the highest 
price you have ever paid for gas at the pump, call your Senator. No, 
not your State Senator, call your United States Senator and ask he or 
she how they voted on a national energy bill last year, and ask them if 
they supported developing a national energy policy for this country.
  I do believe Americans are finally getting it. They are finally 
beginning to understand the crunch of high gas prices not only at the 
pump but natural gas prices and electricity prices. Americans, like I 
said, are paying more for all levels of energy ever in this country.
  Does that have an impact on job creation and the viability of our 
economy? You bet it does. Does it have an impact on welfare, people 
losing their jobs instead of being able to get off welfare from a 
reform bill and get out into the economy and find jobs? You bet it 
does. Jobs, all kinds of opportunities in this country, recreational 
opportunities, all of these kinds of issues are impacted by the cost of 
energy in our country today.
  What about the cost of growing food in our country? I just had an 
Idaho banker in my office in the last week. He has called all of his 
bank branch managers together and said: Look at all your fine lines of 
credit to see whether we can afford to bump them up 25 or 30 percent 
because the average farmer is going to pay 25 or 30 percent more for 
input costs in production this year than they did last year, and it is 
all going to be as a result of the cost of energy, and it is all going 
to be because this Senate failed to act in a strong bipartisan way to 
solve this problem.
  America's working men and women ought to be growing angry because 
their home heating bills this winter were the highest they ever paid in 
a pretty cold and drawn-out winter. They paid more for the gas to heat 
their home. They paid more for oil than they ever paid.
  Why? Let me repeat that. Because the Senate of the United States 
failed to respond. Many on the other side are now saying we have a 
jobless recovery, that we are not creating all kinds of jobs we ought 
to create even though our economy is beginning to grow. Well, if the 
cost of production is forced to an alltime level and we have to compete 
with goods and services from all over the world that may be being 
produced in a climate where energy is half the cost than it is in this 
country as relates to natural gas, maybe there is a reason why the 
economy is sluggish and not moving as quickly as it should today.
  My State, an agricultural State, a high-tech State, is also a tourism 
and recreation State. What is going to happen this summer when mom and 
dad and the four, three, or two kids get in the motor home and fill it 
up and it is going to cost another $10, $15 or $20 every time they stop 
to fill up their motor home? Well, they may not be traveling to my 
State of Idaho this year or other places in the Nation and spending 
their money and feeding the economy of the States that appreciate a 
recreational economy.
  I mentioned a few moments ago, average working men and women paid 
historic gas prices to heat their homes this year. Here is a very 
fascinating and very frustrating figure: Residential, commercial, and 
industrial consumers have paid $130 billion more over the last 46 
months, compared with 4 years before, than ever in the history of our 
country. That is an 86-percent increase in approximately 4 years in the 
price of natural gas. Why? The Congress of the United States, the 
Senate, did not pass a bill that would have allowed greater 
exploration, that would allow the necessary kind of pipeline 
development.
  The bill we would like to bring to the floor today would allow a gas 
pipeline to be brought down out of Alaska where we are pumping billions 
of cubic feet of natural gas back into the ground that could be coming 
to the Lower 48. That would not have caused this figure.
  The increased price of natural gas has cost industrial consumers $66 
billion, residential consumers $39 billion, and commercial consumers 
$25 billion. Every penny of the $130 billion could have been prevented 
if the Congress of the United States had acted.
  We knew this perfect storm was coming. We have looked at it for the 
last 5 years. We knew that with the Clean Air Act we were going to push 
people toward natural gas, and yet we closed our public lands, we made 
it much more difficult to certificate, and we slowly but surely walked 
away from production at a time when Federal policy was increasing the 
use of natural gas to alltime highs.
  What is the impact on the farmer of my State? Let me give a few 
figures. Everything from diesel fuel to the cost of fertilizer has gone 
up. It is skyrocketing. Some fertilizer costs will go up nearly 100 
percent this year. It might mean less fertilizer is used. It may mean 
food production could flatten out or even go down in this country.
  What about the profitability of the farmer? If the farmer is not 
profitable, if he is not making money, my guess is he is going to turn 
to his Senator or his Congressman and say, I have had a bad year; can 
you help me a little bit? Maybe the reason he had a bad year is because 
the Senate of the United States has refused for 5 years to look at a 
comprehensive energy policy.
  Loss of manufacturing jobs, plant shutdowns, corporate bankruptcies--
some of these have been tied to the high cost of energy. Residential 
electric bills and certainly, as a result of that, higher food costs 
are all a part of it.
  We like to get people off welfare. We want them to have self-dignity 
and worth. We want them to have a job on their own and we are willing 
to help them get there. But we flatten out our economy through Federal 
rule and regulation in part because we will not develop a national 
energy policy.
  What is the solution? Well, some of my friends on the other side, an 
attorney general out in California, said it is time to investigate the 
big oil companies again; it is their fault. Now I would like to say: It 
ain't their fault anymore. We are not letting them explore. We are not 
letting them develop. We are saying, this land is off; this land is 
off; you cannot go offshore; you cannot do this; you cannot do that. 
Slowly but surely we have ratcheted up our dependence on foreign 
providers, now teetering at around 60 percent. The Middle East, oh, 
well, we can blame OPEC; Venezuela, we can blame the politics of 
Venezuela. We sure do not want to blame ourselves for having failed to 
come together in the development of a national energy policy.
  The Governor of Rhode Island said this recently: The high cost of 
natural gas is taking a toll on our economy across New England and 
across the Nation. In today's competitive world,

[[Page 5462]]

manufacturers cannot raise prices to compensate for higher energy 
costs. The only long-term solution is to increase supply.
  My guess is that when we talk about increasing supply, the land 
offshore Rhode Island is off limits to exploration and development.
  The vice president of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau put it this way: One 
of the industry's highest dependence on natural gas as a feedstock and 
critical to American agriculture is the fertilizer industry. Natural 
gas is the primary feedstock in the production of virtually all 
commercial nitrogen fertilizers in the United States, accounting for 
nearly 90 percent of the farmers' total cost of anhydrous ammonia. Our 
domestic fertilizer production capacity has already experienced a 
permanent loss of 25 percent over the last 4 years, and an additional 
increase in costs, recommending the potential of another 20 percent 
shutdown of that industry.
  Well, I could go on with quote after quote. I know I am not talking 
about reauthorization of the Welfare Reform Act at this time, but an 
economy that employs people is in direct relationship to getting people 
off welfare and getting them into a good-paying job. That is what an 
economy that grows is all about.
  When this Senate refuses to pass a national energy policy and by that 
failure drives up energy costs, we drive jobs offshore, we drive jobs 
underground, and most assuredly those who are out looking for a job for 
the first time in this economy are not going to find that job; they are 
going to want to come back to their Government and ask for help and 
assistance.
  I thought it was appropriate that we speak about a national energy 
policy, about a job-creating economy, when we are talking about welfare 
reform. I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee for the work he 
has done, the very bipartisan effort once again to do what is right and 
responsible in the area of welfare reform.
  Let me challenge this Senate, Democrat and Republican alike, to do 
what is right when it comes to a national energy policy. Get this 
country back into the business of producing oil instead of using 
excuses that it is somebody else's fault that the price of gas at the 
pump is now at a national alltime high. I will tell my colleagues whose 
fault it is: Call your U.S. Senator. It is his fault that gas is now 
high today. Do not let them duck and hide and blame big oil or blame 
OPEC or blame someone else. Blame your Senator. Call him today. It is 
his or her fault we do not have a national energy policy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I have two unanimous consent requests. The first one 
deals with tomorrow's business and a vote on the Snowe amendment. I ask 
unanimous consent that the vote in relation to Snowe amendment No. 2937 
regarding childcare occur at 12:15 on Tuesday March 30, provided 
further that no second degrees be in order to the amendment prior to 
the vote, with Senator Carper to be recognized for up to 10 minutes 
prior to the vote, and that the time be counted against any Democrat-
controlled time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

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