[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 5817-5859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT FOR EVERYONE ACT

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 4, which the clerk will 
report.
  The assistant journal clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 4) to reauthorize and improve the program of 
     block grants to the States for temporary assistance for needy 
     families, improve access to quality child care, and for other 
     purposes.

  Pending:

       Boxer/Kennedy amendment No. 2945, to amend the Fair Labor 
     Standards Act of 1938 to provide for an increase in the 
     Federal minimum wage.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I again thank my colleague from North 
Dakota for his cooperation and I look forward to the conference.
  I see my good friend from Massachusetts is here. I know he offered an 
amendment on minimum wage. I know he would be disappointed if I didn't 
respond to his proposal. While he is here, I want to make a couple of 
comments about the amendment which I believe is pending before the 
Senate. It may have been set aside, but I believe it is pending, 
Senator Kennedy's amendment, which increased the minimum wage from 
$5.15 to $7 an hour. Is that the pending amendment?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I have great respect for my colleague 
from Massachusetts. If the State of Massachusetts wants to increase the 
minimum wage to $7, or $8, let them do it. What may work in Boston 
probably does not work in my hometown of Ponca City, OK, or maybe in 
Sallisaw, OK.
  I used to work for minimum wage. I made minimum wage when it was 
$1.60 an hour in 1968. My wife and I made that.
  That was our first job when we married. And by having a job, we could 
start climbing the ladder.
  I am afraid Senator Kennedy's amendment which says let us increase 
the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 an hour is going to hurt some of the 
people he professes to help. I heard his comment yesterday that this is 
going to lift a lot of people out of poverty, or help them. If that is 
the case, let us not stop at $7. Let's make it $10 or $20. If you can 
lift people out of poverty by mandating a higher wage, why in the world 
would we stop at $7 an hour? I frankly want people to make more than $7 
an hour. Why in the world would we set this level? If you are actually 
going to be eliminating poverty or lifting people out of poverty, let 
us increase it dramatically more. Let us make it $20 an hour.
  I do not know if a second-degree amendment is in order. Maybe we 
should have an amendment to make it $10 an hour. I would like for 
everybody in America to make at least $10 an hour. My daughter who 
works close to minimum wage and is a college student would love to have 
$10 an hour. But I am not sure she would have a job.
  Maybe in Boston they could pay a student $10 an hour working part 
time in a clothing store on weekends. Maybe they could pay that much, 
and maybe they can't. But I know one thing: In some rural areas they 
cannot. That student who may be working not in Boston, maybe not going 
to an Ivy League school, but maybe going to a vo-tech school in rural 
South Dakota where they can't pay $7 an hour, would be out of luck. 
Maybe it is a minority student in New York City, or maybe in southern 
California who can't get a job at $7 an hour. Maybe that job is 
flipping hamburgers. People always make fun of working at one of those 
fast-food places, how terrible that is. It is a job. Maybe McDonalds 
can afford to pay for it, but a lot of places can't. Maybe it is 
pumping gas or sacking groceries.
  They may have a job now, let us say, making $5.15, or maybe $5.50, or 
$6. But if we pass this amendment, we are saying if you don't make $7, 
we would rather you be unemployed. It is against the Federal law. Even 
though it is to your mutual benefit and the benefit of whoever is 
hiring you to make $6.50 an hour, we are going to say no because of 
Senator Kennedy's amendment. If you do not make $7 an hour, you are 
unemployed.
  I find that to be a bad economic argument. I am afraid it would hurt 
a lot of people. I am afraid a lot of lower income people might not 
start climbing the ladder.
  My wife and I worked for minimum wage. We worked for a janitor 
service in Stillwater, OK for minimum wage. We did that for a couple of 
months. I asked for a raise. We got a very small raise. As a matter of 
fact, we quit and started our own janitor service. We learned enough to 
start our own janitor service.
  My point being not to lift this economic ladder so high that some 
people can't get on. By saying if you make less than $7 an hour, if the 
job can't pay $7 an hour, we don't want you to have that job, maybe as 
a result of that we don't have people pumping gas. Almost everything is 
self- serve. We don't have too many people sacking groceries today. 
There are a lot of jobs maybe that have been priced out of the 
marketplace. I don't know if that is good.
  I would rather have somebody get a job even if it doesn't pay very 
much because they start climbing the economic ladder. I would hate to 
pull that ladder up so high that maybe it would deny them the 
opportunity to start climbing, to start improving, to learn work 
habits.
  One of the good things about a job--and many people like myself and 
others started when they were very

[[Page 5818]]

young--is if they did not learn anything else they learned to be on 
time. You have to report to work. You have work habits. You have 
certain things to do that are expected. One of the things you learn 
many times is it is not enough money. They learned they can't get by. 
My daughter has already learned that working part time in a clothing 
store won't cut it. It is not enough. She demands more. So she knows 
she has to improve her skills and have a higher education so she can 
demand more in the workplace. But having that job is good.
  If we start telling everybody all across America no, if the job 
doesn't pay at least 36 percent more than the present minimum wage, at 
least $7 an hour, sorry, I am afraid there will be a lot of jobs lost, 
I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of jobs this amendment 
would cost, but it will cost many.
  I don't think we should try to legislate economics. As a matter of 
fact, I know a lot of businesses--I suspect there are a bunch in 
Montana and other places--particularly rural areas, that are struggling 
to survive. They might be small mom-and-pop stores, and Wal-Mart came 
in down the street. Maybe they are not making any money today. They 
might be struggling. Maybe it is a little hardware store in a town with 
a population of 12,000 and they have been there for 30 years. They have 
part-time help. They may pay somebody $5.15 or $6 an hour to work 
there. All of a sudden, a big Wal-Mart comes in. They are losing money 
and business. They are just trying to hang on.
  Then Congress passes a bill which says the minimum wage is going to 
go up by 36 percent. Now you will have to increase that from $5.15 to 
$7 an hour.
  We are not making any money now. We are losing money and can't 
compete. We are just hanging on. They realize they can't lose money 
forever. I am afraid they will have to close the doors.
  How many rural communities have you seen where in downtowns they are 
really struggling? I wonder what this amendment will do to those towns. 
Some of those towns are trying to hang on. Some of those towns are 
trying to revive.
  Again, maybe some Members in this body think it is a living wage, or 
it is getting people out of poverty. That is good. But it may be 
putting some people in poverty. It may be denying the opportunity for a 
young student who might be working part time to help pay for vo-tech, 
or maybe work part time so they can get through college, or to become a 
secretary, or you name it.
  We are just arbitrarily going to say no. If you can't make $7 an 
hour, we have decided it is against the law for you to have a job. That 
is what this amendment would do.
  If you ask the question in a poll if you support an increase in the 
minimum, a lot of people used to say yes. If you ask the question 
whether it should be against the law for anybody to work for less than 
$7 an hour, even though they might all agree it is not to their 
advantage to work for less than that, they would say no, it should not 
be against the law. That is what this says. But this amendment says it 
is against the Federal law.
  Again, if the State of Massachusetts wants to do it, and its economy 
is good, and maybe wage patterns and living costs are so high, that 
might be appropriate. But many States have minimum wage laws. There is 
a lot of difference between them. There is a lot of variance, as well 
there should be.
  But to come in and say we want to increase the federal minimum wage 
to $7--that may take away the chance for some people to start climbing 
that economic ladder.
  It is far more important to give people opportunity to work than 
almost anything we do. The work habits and skills they obtain from 
their first job are very important. The first job for some people is a 
minimum wage job. I would hate to price people out of the marketplace 
in so many cases. Clearly, I think this would do it. Clearly, it would 
do it in some parts of the country.
  One other comment: It was alluded to. We haven't raised this in 
several years. So now is the time. Why won't these Republicans let us 
do this?
  The Democrats ran the Senate from June 2001 throughout 2002. They 
could have offered minimum wage. I heard it hasn't been increased since 
1997. It has been 7 years and we want to increase it now. They ran the 
Senate most of 2001 and all of 2002, 4 and 5 years after the last 
increase. How many votes did we have in 2001 and 2002 when Tom Daschle 
was the majority leader? Senator Kennedy was chairman of the Labor 
Committee. How many votes did we have?
  We did not have any votes. They controlled the floor. They could have 
offered an amendment. They could have had a bill reported out of 
committee and sent it to the Senate floor, and we could have debated 
it. I would have debated it. But we did not have it. We did not have 
one during that timeframe.
  So, I will mention, this is kind of interesting: they had plenty of 
chances to debate this when they were in the majority. They had the 
majority leader. They had control of the Senate. They could have 
offered the bill at any time during that period of time.
  So I mention those issues. I do not want us to make a mistake. I do 
not want us to pass a bill that will probably cost hundreds of 
thousands of people jobs, and particularly hundreds of thousands of 
people who are at the low end of the economic scale. Let's give them a 
chance to climb that economic ladder. We do not do that by passing laws 
that say it is against the law for them to work for less than $7 an 
hour.
  I would urge our colleagues, if and when we vote on the Kennedy 
amendment, to vote no on the Kennedy amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, the great British Prime Minister William 
Gladstone called the U.S. Senate ``the most remarkable of all the 
inventions of modern politics.'' If you stop and think about that a 
little bit, in the political process there is probably no greater 
truth.
  The Senate is a remarkable institution. It is unique. There is no 
other body, no other political body, no other democratic legislature in 
the world quite like the U.S. Senate. We have our unique rules and our 
unique procedures, which I think make it special, and which have stood 
the test of time and made this body the institution it is. I think it 
has added significantly to our country's well-being and has helped make 
the United States the best country in the world.
  What are some of those distinctions? What are some of those 
qualities? One, clearly, is the right to debate. Once the Chair 
recognizes a Senator, that Senator can stand and talk as long as he or 
she wants, as long as he or she is physically able. That is a rule of 
the Senate. It means that if a Senator has something to say, that 
Senator cannot be denied the right to say whatever he or she wants to 
say, unless or until that Senator, for physical reasons, has to stop 
talking.
  I think the record for standing and addressing the Senate is held by 
the late Senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond. My recollection 
is it was 25 hours and some minutes. He had something to say, and, my 
gosh, he said it. That is a distinct right in the U.S. Senate.
  I do not know of any other body in the world where legislators are 
accorded that right, certainly not in the other body. As you know, in 
the other body, the standard rule is 5 minutes; that is, when any 
amendment or bill is up, even assuming under their rules a House Member 
has the opportunity to seek recognition, the basic rule is 5 minutes. 
In the Senate it is as long as you can possibly speak.
  What is another unique right of the U.S. Senate? One other right is 
the right to offer any amendment on any bill at any time without 
notice.
  Now, when you stop and think about that, on one level that sounds a 
little strange. That tends to make things a little disorderly, doesn't 
it? Yes, it does make things sometimes a little disorderly, but, 
nevertheless, that unique right to offer an amendment

[[Page 5819]]

protects the minority interest; it protects an interest of a Senator 
who is representing some part of the country to be able to present his 
or her point of view, and to bring it up and have Senators act on it, 
to debate it, vote on it, and take action. It is very unique. It is 
very important. Those are two extremely important qualities that 
distinguish the U.S. Senate from any other legislative body in the 
world.
  In a sense, it is that unique quality that is at the heart of this 
debate; that is, whether the Senate should vote on an amendment offered 
by the Senators from California and Massachusetts to raise the minimum 
wage. Senators have that right. They have the right to offer 
amendments. They have the right to stand up and be recognized and speak 
on their amendments. Senators who are opposed to the amendment have a 
right to stand up and oppose the amendment.
  I believe that one of the best attributes--and I hope I am not 
``misattributing,'' if that is a correct word, the source of this to 
John Locke--is the ``marketplace of ideas''--that is, the more people 
debate and, in good faith, talk about a subject, the more the sunshine 
is on that subject, the more likely it is the best result will be 
achieved; the more likely it is we will find the truth; we will find 
the right result.
  It is pretty hard to find the right result to a controversial issue. 
Certainly raising the minimum wage has some controversy with it, 
without debating it. If we cannot debate it, it is fairly difficult--it 
is kind of hard--to know what the right result should be.
  My guess is--and, frankly, I believe strongly--if we have a full and 
open debate on the underlying bill, the TANF bill, as well as on 
amendments that Senators want to legitimately offer, even if some of 
them may not be strictly germane, we are going to end up with a much 
better result, and we are going to be serving our country much better 
than we would if we just do not have debate on amendments or if the 
amendments are precluded from being brought up.
  I strongly urge Senators, therefore, to think about what we are 
doing. It is not only the narrow subject of whether there should be a 
vote on the minimum wage or whether we are going to allow Senator 
Kennedy to have a vote on his amendment. It is a broader question: What 
are we all about as an institution? What are we about as the U.S. 
Senate? Why do we seek these offices in the first place? Why are we 
here?
  I think I can speak for every Senator, saying that he or she ran for 
the Senate because we want to help make this a better place; that is, 
we want to help our States and help America. We profoundly believe in 
the democratic process. We sought election to the U.S. Senate because 
we knew, either directly or intuitively, it is a special place where 
one does have the ability to have a voice in reaching a result, and, 
clearly, a result that we think is better than the status quo. So I 
remind all my colleagues that the nature of this Senate is somewhat at 
stake. It is in question.
  My next point is a bit difficult, perhaps, but there are some 
Senators who have not been here very many years, and who only know the 
Senate as they have seen it and have experienced it. I have been here a 
few years. I am in my fifth term. I have seen the Senate operate in 
lots of different ways.
  I saw the Senate operate, a few years ago, where we had votes. We 
voted on subjects. We voted on amendments. I might say, the last time, 
in a real legitimate sense, we took up this underlying legislation, the 
TANF bill, I think we were on it for 12 or 13 days, and there were 43 
votes.
  Senators offered amendments, Senators debated amendments, and 
Senators voted on amendments according to what each thought was 
correct.
  And guess what happened. Most people hailed the 1996 bill as being a 
great step forward in welfare reform. Everyone talks about the great 
strides and advances this country took as a consequence of that bill 
that passed, in 1996, the Welfare Reform Act. We have had a 50-percent 
reduction in caseloads all across the country; and in some States more 
than that, up to a 70 percent reduction in welfare caseloads.
  We did get rid of welfare as we knew it. Both President Clinton and 
President Bush said we needed to get rid of the former welfare system 
as we knew it. I forget exactly what the quotes were, but it happened. 
And I suggest it happened in part because we so solidly and so 
comprehensively debated welfare and welfare reform. We had 43 separate 
rollcall votes on that bill when we first passed it.
  Contrast that with where we are today. We have had one vote. A 
cloture motion was filed yesterday. The point of that cloture motion 
clearly is to prevent a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator 
from Massachusetts--to prevent a vote. I do not see why we should 
prevent votes.
  The amendment raises the minimum wage. Clearly that is related. I 
can't think of anything that is more related to the underlying bill. We 
are talking about getting people off welfare into work. Clearly, it is 
much easier to work if the wage that a person is paid is a wage that 
can allow a person to stay off of welfare.
  I have met people personally who have told me they want to get off of 
welfare, but they can't because the minimum wage--this was several 
years ago--was so low. One single mother told me she couldn't because 
she realized childcare was taking up almost all of her income. It 
wouldn't work. So she had to go back on welfare, and it bothered her so 
much.
  Clearly, this amendment is related. Clearly, Senators have the 
intelligence to debate the amendment. Clearly, Senators have the 
intelligence to know if they favor or do not favor it. Clearly, it is 
directly related. Even more clearly, if we respect the nature of the 
Senate, Senators should have a right to vote on it.
  I urge all my colleagues to vote no on the cloture motion when we 
vote on cloture tomorrow because a ``yes'' vote would deprive Senators 
of the right to vote on a very significant amendment to this bill and 
deprive Senators the opportunity of debating and trying to find the 
best solution to a complex question; that is, what are the best changes 
we think should pass in welfare reform.
  If that is not bad enough--that is, a cloture motion which is 
successful prevents us from voting on the Kennedy amendment--there was 
a proposal by the majority yesterday. Yesterday, on behalf of the 
majority, the Senator from Pennsylvania propounded a unanimous consent 
request on this bill. I will take a moment to explain the consequences 
of that proposal and how that proposed unanimous consent request would 
further undermine the fundamental rights of Senators to debate and to 
amend.
  The proposed request had four parts: First, at a time determined by 
the majority leader, the Senate conduct back-to-back votes on the 
Republican minimum wage amendment and the Boxer amendment; that the 
bill then be limited to germane amendments; that at 9:30 a.m. on 
Thursday, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill; and that 
the Senate request a conference with the House and the Chair and be 
authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate.
  I welcome the prospect of having side-by-side votes on the Republican 
minimum wage amendment and the Boxer-Kennedy minimum wage amendment. We 
have done that in the Senate. That is a fair way to proceed. We want to 
get to amendments and we want to have votes.
  But the other three parts of the proposed unanimous consent request 
raise real problems. First, limiting amendments to only germane 
amendments is a very tight constraint. Senators often seek to offer 
amendments to a bill that are very relevant to the bill at hand but do 
not meet the strict standard of germaneness. Under previous majority 
leaders, the Senate often chose to limit amendments to relevant 
amendments but did not go further in limiting amendments to germane 
amendments. Limiting amendments to the more narrow standard of 
germaneness is unduly restrictive.
  The proposed request sought to set a definite time to vote on passage 
of the

[[Page 5820]]

bill. Setting a time for certain passage of a bill makes cloture pale 
by comparison. At least under cloture you get a right to vote on the 
amendments that are germane. But under this proposed agreement, a 
Senator could delay, could stand up and talk. He could use all the 
kinds of dilatory, delaying tactics one could use. That would prevent 
votes on amendments and more strict than cloture where you are entitled 
to a vote.
  It is even more strict than reconciliation. In reconciliation, 
Senators can always offer amendments. Often there is not time to debate 
them, but they can still offer them. We then have a vote-a-thon. It is 
not the most illuminating practice, I grant you, but nevertheless, 
Senators have the right to vote.
  Under this proposed consent request, Senators would not even get a 
right to vote on amendments that may have been brought up or to even 
bring up amendments.
  Finally, the proposed consent agreement would seek to have the Senate 
go to conference on the bill. This raises probably the most problematic 
concern of all. If we went to conference and if the consent agreement 
were adopted, which would require the appointment of conferees and 
seeking a conference with the House, we would have to ask ourselves, 
what is in the House-passed bill.
  Let me point out some of the provisions in the House-passed welfare 
reform bill. First, the House bill would impose unrealistically high 
work requirements on TANF recipients, much higher than under either the 
Senate bill or current law. Next, the House bill would provide minimum 
resources for childcare funding. We all know that the Senate passed an 
amendment which would increase childcare funding by an appropriate 
amount. The House has levels that are so low, according to CBO, 
childcare is underfunded by about $4.5 to $5 billion. We would have to 
work out that one, which would not be easy, particularly where the 
White House has issued a so-called statement of administrative practice 
which says not one thin dime for childcare. That would make it even 
more difficult for Senate conferees to work out a reasonable childcare 
amount, if we were to go to conference.
  The House would not allow TANF recipients to continue education; that 
is, education they need to get and keep a good job beyond 1 year. That 
restrictive provision is in the House bill. Moreover, the House would 
provide what is called a superwaiver which would give the States 
extremely unprecedented broad authority to combine food stamps, 
Medicaid, childcare, and other programs, and use that money however 
they see fit, undermining the minimal safety net and low-income 
standards that low-income families have to rely on in their time of 
need.
  It would also mandate full family sanctions, not just partial family. 
That means cutting families off of assistance if they do not comply 
with the rules, risking real harm to children in the absence of any 
fault of their own.
  Finally, the House bill does not provide for legal immigrants.
  The House-passed TANF bill raises serious concerns. Going to 
conference on such a measure would not be a simple thing. It is the 
position of the Democratic leader that we would have to have a number 
of assurances before Democrats would agree to going to conference on a 
matter that raised such serious concerns. That is extremely important. 
That is because a conference report is not subject to amendment. Let's 
not forget, we are in a unique situation where the same political party 
controls not only the White House but both bodies of Congress. Where 
the majority runs the conference process without substantial input from 
the minority, the conference process can substantially limit the rights 
of Senators in the minority.
  Thus, the unanimous consent agreement proposed by the majority 
yesterday undercuts the basic rights of Senators. It would severely 
limit Senators' rights to offer even relevant amendments. It would 
seriously limit Senators' rights to debate; that is, cutting off debate 
abruptly at a certain time no matter how many amendments we had by then 
considered.
  We on this side of the aisle do not wish to delay this bill. There is 
no way we want to delay it. We want votes. We will agree to time 
limits. Let's get this bill up and amendments up and let the Senate 
work its will. We are willing to do that. We are willing to work to get 
a finite list of amendments. We are willing to enter into time 
agreements on amendments. We are not asking for anything out of the 
ordinary.
  During the 13-day period over which the Senate considered the 1995 
welfare reform bill, September 7 to September 19, 1995, the Senate 
conducted 43 rollcall votes on amendments. So far this year we have 
conducted just one. So we are not asking for anything new. We ask 
merely that Senators be able to debate, to amend. We ask merely that 
Senators be able to do that which makes the Senate ``the remarkable 
invention'' about which Gladstone spoke.
  I urge my colleagues to uphold the rights of Senators. I urge 
Senators to allow a vote on lifting the minimum wage, and I urge 
Senators to oppose cloture.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator from Iowa is 
recognized.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we are hopefully at a position today 
where there is going to be some decision made by leadership--meaning 
the Democrat leader and Republican leader--on proceeding on this 
legislation. In the meantime, we will proceed with amendments and 
hopefully move along as best we can without having a certain finality.
  I had a chance to listen to my colleagues' statements. I will make 
this commentary. We have already said to the minority, the Democratic 
leadership, that we are prepared to vote on amendments that are before 
the Senate. So the issue is not voting on amendments before the Senate. 
There is some feeling that we are going to get this bill to finality. 
That doesn't mean not voting on a lot of amendments. That can be worked 
in as well. All we want is some certainty that we are going to get to 
finality. Finality means getting to conference.
  We have a couple pieces of legislation that have been sitting around 
this body, after the body has finished work on them, not being able to 
go to conference. One is the CARE Act, an acronym for legislation that 
encourages charitable giving. Another one is the Workforce Investment 
Act. These are two pieces of legislation that have been before the 
Senate, and the minority, the Democrats, will not let us go to 
conference on these pieces of legislation.
  So, in a sense, the Senate has worked its will, but the legislative 
process has been shut down. It seems to me if this legislation includes 
so much of what the Democrats want to accomplish in the way of reform 
of welfare--particularly the vote we had yesterday, very dramatically 
increasing by $6 billion the amount to be spent on childcare--that they 
would want this legislation to become law. So we need some assurance 
from the other side that if we agree to voting on some amendments that 
they want to vote on--that is no longer an issue--we want to move ahead 
with germane amendments.
  There is not an argument about the number at this point. We can get 
to a vote on this, but most important is not have it stalled in the 
Senate as those other two pieces of legislation. It seems to me the 
issue isn't a whole lot different now than it was 2 years ago. The only 
difference is the Republicans were in the minority, then and the 
Democrats were in the majority. At that particular time, we saw an 
Energy bill taken away from the Energy Committee and brought to the 
floor. That bill never became law. We saw a prescription drug bill 
taken over by the leadership on the floor of the Senate, with the 
committee effectively cut out. There were 2 weeks of debate on an 
Energy bill but nothing happened. There was not a budget adopted that 
year.
  We Republicans referred to the leadership at that time as having a 
graveyard in the Senate because they wanted issues for that election as 
opposed to products. We Republicans said to the

[[Page 5821]]

electorate at that time that we want products, not issues. So when we 
took over in the majority in 2003, the committee system was allowed to 
work, developing bipartisanship. Nothing gets done in the Senate 
without bipartisanship. We could bring the issues to the floor and work 
the will of the Senate and get things through the Senate. That is what 
we are elected to do--get things through the Senate and let the process 
work.
  So there is nothing that my colleague from Montana said that I 
disagree with, except we ought to see light at the end of the tunnel. 
Is there anything wrong with saying: Are you guys--meaning the 
Democrats--going to do what you did on the Workforce Investment Act and 
the CARE Act and let the Senate become a graveyard again just because 
something is happening that you don't like?
  It seems to me there would be a lesson learned from the last 
election. When the Senate became a graveyard, the people of this 
country sent a message that they don't want the Senate to be a 
graveyard. They gave the majority to the Republicans. We show that we 
can produce. Yet look what we are running into--the CARE Act, after a 
year of not going to conference. I don't know how long the Workforce 
Investment Act has been waiting to go to conference. We were stalled 
last week on a bill the Democrats agreed ought to become law, the FSC/
ETI bill. That stalled.
  I would not say the Welfare Act is stalled. But what do we know is 
down the road? What is wrong with a little bit of transparency. The 
transparency is that they present an amendment on minimum wage and they 
want a vote. So we present a plan to get to a vote on that very 
important issue, but we cannot get some assurance that we may not be in 
the same boat as with the CARE Act and the Workforce Investment Act.
  When it comes to the minimum wage being important for welfare, I 
suggest to the other leaders that, as chairman of the committee, in a 
letter I received from them last year, which is not dated--I received 
this letter, and it was signed by 41 Democrats--telling us the things 
they wanted in this legislation that the Finance Committee was going to 
be working on at that particular time. They were setting out priorities 
they believed we had not adequately dealt with. In this letter, there 
was never any mention of minimum wage being an important part of 
welfare reform legislation.
  I did take what they said in this letter very seriously, and they 
dealt with issues such as universal engagement, ending the caseload 
reduction credit, strengthening child support, extending TMA, providing 
additional State flexibility, issues dealing with postsecondary 
education, no superwaiver, no increase in work without State 
flexibility. Of all of those provisions they raised concern about, none 
dealt with minimum wage. I and the majority tried to accommodate the 
minority members who signed this letter and put these things in this 
legislation. These provisions are all in this bill.
  Other priorities, as stated by the Democrats, included some 
additional funding for childcare, and we passed that overwhelmingly 
yesterday. It wasn't something I could get done in committee. I, 
obviously, agreed with that approach because I voted for it yesterday.
  We also had a request from the Democrats in this letter to increase 
vocational education eligibility for legal immigrants. We have not 
dealt with that, but that is going to be an amendment before the 
Senate.
  What we have tried to do in this whole process of Republicans gaining 
control of the Senate and letting the committee system work, as opposed 
to 2002 when very major legislation, such as prescription drugs and the 
Energy bill, was taken away from the committees and brought to the 
floor--we do not develop bipartisanship on the floor, and they never 
became law--we have tried to make the committee system work. When 
specific requests are made, such as 41 Democrats sending us a letter 
raising concerns about their issues, we try to put them in the 
legislation and accommodate them so that we have a product instead of 
an issue.
  The other side ought to tell us if we are going down the same road we 
went down in 2002 to have the Senate become a graveyard for important 
legislation because they need issues instead of product. Did they learn 
a lesson from the last election? Do they want to lose more seats in the 
Senate? I don't think they do. But I think they have to get a better 
game plan than shutting down the Senate because we are in the majority 
to make this place work.
  I know there are a lot of Democrats who are intent upon making this 
place work, and I know Senator Baucus, my ranking Democrat, is 
committed to making this place work. There should not be any reason we 
have to have a cloture vote, particularly when we made overtures to the 
other side to vote on a lot of important issues on which they want to 
vote. All we want to know is that we are going to get an opportunity to 
develop a product. This Senate is not the only body that passes 
legislation that goes to the President; it also takes the House of 
Representatives. We do not get to finality until there is a conference 
committee if there is a difference between the House and the Senate, 
and in most major pieces of legislation, we have to have a conference 
committee.
  I do not understand why we can't get to conference on the CARE Act, a 
bill to encourage charitable giving by people who fill out the short 
form of the income tax by giving above-the-line deduction, or having 
the tax-free rollover IRAs for people who want to give some of their 
lifetime savings to charitable giving. There are a lot of other good 
provisions in that legislation as well.
  Do you know what is wrong with that, Madam President? What is 
probably wrong with that legislation is it is one of the No. 1 goals of 
the President of the United States, and maybe the other side can't let 
him have a victory. Yet in the scheme of what the President of the 
United States has to do, it may be a No. 1 goal of his, but it is a 
very small part of the total agenda that this President has of leading 
this Nation and being the Chief Executive Officer for our Government.
  What is wrong with the Workforce Investment Act? One would think that 
with the other side crying all the time about outsourcing--forgetting 
about insourcing; we have a $58 billion favorable balance of trade on 
insourcing versus outsourcing--but we all ought to be concerned about 
outsourcing. What does Senator Kerry, as a Democratic candidate for 
President, say we need to do about outsourcing? Educate our workforce. 
And we have opportunities to move legislation that does that, and we 
cannot get to conference. What is the game?
  We have offered to the other side votes on important legislation they 
want. Can they let us see light at the end of the tunnel so we know 
there are not games being played? I would hope there are people on the 
other side of the body who want this place to work, and there are. I 
would hope people who want product instead of issues will rise to the 
top, as cream does, and as cream of the crop remind their leadership of 
what happened in the last election, and do they want to be a less 
significant minority than we presently are because I think what is good 
about the Senate is that it keeps the extremes from governing in 
America--the extreme on the left and the extreme on the right.
  The Senate, when it cooperates and gets things done, governs from the 
center. Whether that is 60 votes or 70 votes or 80 votes, we govern 
from the center.
  This is a body that is going to make sure that Nazis do not take over 
America or Communists take over America, and there are none of them in 
the Congress. But when you do not have the center rule, as Germany 
learned or as Korinsky learned and tried to show the people of Russia 
in 1917, when the extremes take over, democratic values are lost.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, as the cosponsor of this amendment with 
my friend and colleague, Senator Boxer, I do want to clarify for the 
record where we are and the view those

[[Page 5822]]

who are sponsoring the amendment have with regard to proceeding on the 
TANF reauthorization legislation, which is before us.
  Because we have had characterizations made about our amendment, I 
wish to clarify for the benefit of the Senate and, more importantly, 
for the American people exactly what the current situation is before 
the Senate.
  Before the Senate, we have what we call the TANF legislation, to move 
people off welfare into employment. As has been mentioned on a number 
of occasions--I have a copy of the report--the point is made by the 
Republican floor manager that this amendment to increase the minimum 
wage is not pertinent to this legislation and, therefore, because of 
the fact we are offering it, we are delaying the whole process even 
though we indicated to the floor manager we were eager to enter into a 
very short time agreement, a 20-minute time agreement, time to be 
evenly divided, a time certain, and then move on to another amendment.
  We want to make very clear, speaking for the supporters of the 
amendment, we are interested in coming to a resolution. The answer on 
the other side is, well, since this is not relevant to the subject at 
hand, we are not going to let a vote occur. That is a rather unusual 
process and procedure. As to amendments on legislation, unlike 
appropriations, the Senate rules permit a vote on legislation, but the 
majority does not choose to do so. Therefore, they refuse to let us get 
a vote on this and then criticize us for delaying the process even 
though we are prepared to vote this afternoon. It is 12:30 now; we can 
vote at 1, or whatever time the floor manager would permit us to do so.
  I mention once again how ridiculous I think the argument is from the 
other side that this is not a relevant amendment. If one looks at the 
legislation itself dealing with TANF and looks through the report, as I 
have said previously, they can look under ``strengthens work,'' that is 
what this legislation is supposedly all about. If we take the statement 
of the Secretary of HHS, Tommy Thompson--listen to this--regarding the 
TANF reauthorization requirements:

       This administration recognizes that the only way to escape 
     poverty is through work, and that is why we have made work 
     and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the 
     centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary 
     Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

  Here it is, the administration spokesman talking about the 
centerpiece of the TANF will pay a minimum wage. That is exactly what 
we are trying to do. How is it possible that the floor manager can say 
this is not relevant when the Secretary of HHS specifically refers to a 
minimum wage? How can they possibly take that position? How can they 
say we are trying to delay it when we are prepared to go ahead with a 
short time limit?
  The American people must be greatly confused. Here it is, the 
Secretary of HHS, the President's representative on this issue, saying 
this administration recognizes the only way to escape poverty is 
through work and that is why we have made work and jobs that will pay 
at least the minimum wage the centerpiece of the reauthorization 
proposal for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That 
is the statement he had at that time on March 6, 2002.
  As the report goes on, the other references I have talked about, 
``reasons for change,'' to move welfare recipients into good jobs, good 
jobs obviously suggest they are going to be halfway decent.
  The committee refers to the reasons for the change, that the 
committee wants to build by increasing work and reducing the welfare 
and talking about good jobs. That is the reference all the way through. 
That is what the Secretary has said. We have indicated we are prepared 
to move ahead and move ahead immediately, but we are denied the 
opportunity to do so. And that is with regard to procedure.
  I listened earlier to my friend and colleague from Oklahoma saying we 
really do not need a minimum wage; we ought to let the market decide 
and make these judgments and decisions. Well, we have heard that. I 
have heard that since I arrived in the Senate, not only every time we 
have the chance to debate the minimum wage. Then he talks about the 
challenges we are facing in rural areas are not the same challenges as 
they face in urban areas, which we have understood. That is why we have 
an exclusion for agricultural workers. We have a different kind of a 
financial situation for mom-and-pop stores rather than the large stores 
in many urban areas. That is why we have a cap and say if you have 
approximately $600,000 or less gross earnings, you do not have to 
observe the minimum wage provisions. We responded to these rifleshot 
ideas that have been constantly brought up during the debates on the 
minimum wage.
  I would like to go back to the general kinds of themes that were 
brought out. As we understand, this is a minimum wage, not a maximum 
wage. We are talking about a minimum wage to meet minimum kinds of 
standards in this country. Hopefully we have gone beyond the debate 
about whether we were going to have the robber barons or the 
monopolists in this society have individuals who are in the workforce 
so thoroughly and completely exploited.
  Many in the Senate have been up to visit the old mill towns of 
Massachusetts, and one can still travel up to Lowell and visit many of 
those old textiles and they will see the letters from children who are 
7 and 8 years old who were writing and who were working in the mills 10 
or 12 hours a day, in many instances 7 days a week. Some of the most 
moving of those letters are by these children who write looking outside 
the windows and seeing other children playing outside and dreaming of 
the time that they might be able to do so.
  In the old days when we did not have any kind of protections for any 
workers, we had extraordinary exploitation of children in the 
workforce. Well, that goes back to the time where the Government was 
not involved. In 1938, after a great deal of struggle, sweat, and 
bloodshed, all that changed with the very important child labor laws. 
Some had been passed before. Basically, we established the minimum 
wage, the time and a half for overtime, and the Fair Labor Standards 
Act, even though the overtime issue in question is now threatened by 
this administration that wants to abolish overtime for some 8 million 
workers, mostly firefighters, policemen, and nurses who in many 
instances are our first responders. All one has to do is go to any 
hospital and talk to some of those nurses and find out how in many 
instances they are required to work overtime, and find out their views 
about quality of care.
  Now imagine if overtime is eliminated and there is that kind of 
requirement. We have a shortage of nurses today. One can imagine what 
is going to happen tomorrow if that particular recommendation by the 
administration is put into effect. So basically we are talking about a 
minimum wage.
  We can hear on the other side, as we heard earlier from the Senator 
from Oklahoma, well, it is important to get on the bottom rung of the 
ladder because if one gets on the bottom rung of the ladder, they 
develop certain kinds of skills and attitudes and will be able to move 
ahead and have a successful life.
  Well, there are certain truths to getting on a bottom rung of the 
ladder if the bottom rung of the ladder is not so low it actually 
submerges a person and they cannot survive on the bottom rung of the 
ladder because they are so overwhelmed by the challenges of life, of 
being able to survive. That is what we are talking about, having the 
bottom rung of the ladder so that at least one can make a living wage, 
they are going to at least be treated with some sense of dignity in 
this country of ours, which is the richest country in the world.
  There are people who are struggling. It does appear, by those who are 
opposed to the increase in the minimum wage, there is some 
dismissiveness about the individuals who are receiving it. I do not buy 
that. The minimum wage workers in the workforce I have

[[Page 5823]]

met are among some of the most courageous and dignified men and women 
one will ever want to meet.
  I am going to mention who we are really talking about. Who are these 
people who are earning the minimum wage? We have heard speeches on the 
floor. Let's put some human faces on these individuals. Shreveport, LA: 
It was early April, and 46-year-old Mrs. Williams was dressed in the 
dark blue uniform she wears at her first job caring for the aged and 
infirm at a nursing home. On top there was a gray apron she dons for 
her second job cleaning offices at night. The place where she works as 
a nursing assistant, Harmony House, was paying her $5.50 an hour, 
barely above the minimum wage, even though she had been there for 10 
years as a union member and completed college courses to become 
certified. The cleaning job which she took up because she could not 
make ends meet pays right at the Federally mandated $5.15 an hour.

       ``You think you are moving forwards,'' adds Ms. Williams, 
     ``but you're just moving backwards.''

  Mr. Valles earns his living serving hamburgers at a McDonald's 
restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. He's a family man. He and his wife, 
Lily, have two children.

       ``I make $5.75 an hour. That's about $240 a week. One 
     hundred ninety dollars after taxes. You can't really live on 
     that. Lily works in a fast-food place, too. She makes the 
     same as me. Two weeks of my pay and two weeks of her pay 
     every month goes for rent. Then you have to pay the fare to 
     go back and forth to work. You gotta pay for your food. You 
     have bills. We're still paying on the sofa. . . .''
       I asked if they ever went on vacation. He looked at me as 
     if I asked if his children could fly. ``No,'' said Mr. Valles 
     quietly. ``There is no money for vacation.''

  The list goes on. We have this situation:

       As she weighs bunches of purple grapes or rings up fat 
     chicken legs at the supermarket where she works, Fannie Payne 
     cannot keep from daydreaming.
       ``It's difficult to work at a grocery store all day, 
     looking at all the food I can't buy,'' Mrs. Payne said. ``So 
     I imagine filling up my cart with one of those big orders and 
     bringing home enough for all my kids.''
       Instead, she said that she and her husband, Michael, a 
     factory worker, routinely go without dinner to make sure 
     their four children have enough to eat. They visit a private 
     hunger center monthly for three days' worth of free 
     groceries, to help stretch the $60 a week they spend on food.
       ``We're behind on all our bills,'' Mrs. Payne said. ``We 
     don't pay electricity until they threaten a cut-off. To be 
     honest, I'm behind two months on the mortgage--that's $600 a 
     month. We owe $800 on the water bill and $500 for heat.''
       The Euclid Hunger Center helped her seek aid from her 
     parish, Saint William's Catholic Church, but it hurt that 
     three cars broke down in six months.
       ``They all died and we had to get Mike to work, so we 
     bought a good used car we can't afford.''
       The first thing to go was money for food herself and 
     husband. ``Some nights Mike and I eat our kids' leftovers, 
     and if we don't have enough money for milk, I feed the kids 
     soup for breakfast,'' she said.
       Living with housing hardship. Hector Cuatepotzo, a waiter 
     in the upscale Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, lives in a 
     tiny, one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Maria, 6-year-old 
     daughter, Ashley, and infant son, Bryan. All four sleep in 
     the same small room, with Bryan's crib nestled in one corner, 
     Ashley's bed in another.
       Cuatepotzo earns about $20,000 a year in salary and tips, 
     equal to about $10 an hour, almost twice the minimum wage. 
     But with $625 a month in rent and another $80 monthly gas and 
     electricity, the family spends more than 40 percent of their 
     income for housing. Cuatepotzo works from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. 
     and travels 40 miles round-trip to work each day because 
     rents in buildings closer to his job are even higher.
       Since Maria took time off from her job in the restaurant to 
     have the baby, they received several eviction notices for 
     late payment.
       Cuatepotzo is thinking about getting a second job, but that 
     would mean rarely seeing his children. Cuatepotzo, who has 
     worked at the Miramar since arriving from Mexico 10 years 
     ago, would like to own his own home someday. ``It's my 
     dream,'' he says. But he can't imagine how he'll ever get 
     there when his family lives paycheck to paycheck.

  This is what is happening all across this country. These are not 
people who are slackers; they are hard workers.
  Here is Deborah, 23, from Pennsylvania, a single mother and survivor 
of domestic violence. She has two daughters. She was evicted from her 
home in New Jersey. She now resides in Clairton, PA, where she works as 
a salesperson in a grocery store earning $5.35 for 30 to 35 hours a 
week. Deborah has no health coverage for herself or her girls. Her 
earnings are spread thin to cover childcare expenses, transportation, 
food, and $50 a month for her bedroom at her aunt's. An increase in the 
minimum wage would help Deborah catch up on lagging bills, come closer 
to making ends meet, get needed doctor appointments for her children at 
a pay-for-service clinic, and purchase clothing for her children, who 
lost everything in the eviction and the escape from domestic violence.
  Pat Rodriguez lives in Washington, has worked at a laundry and 
drycleaners in Washington for 8 years. She earns $6.15 an hour, the 
minimum wage for the District of Columbia. Currently she and her 
colleagues are on strike over low wages and other issues. The money she 
earns working full time is not enough to pay the rent, pay for the 
basic necessities for her family. She has a 2-year-old child and is 
expecting a second child. She has no pension, no access to affordable 
health care, and relies on Medicaid. She works full time and still does 
not make enough to be able to save for the children's education. Pat 
says, ``I support raising the minimum wage, but I also want workers to 
be treated with respect, and for their work be valued accordingly.''
  Elaine Murphy and her three children, 16, 11 and 6, recently moved to 
Newburgh, NY, from Oregon. Mrs. Murphy is a teacher's aide and special 
needs bus aide in the local elementary school. Every morning she is in 
the bus yard at 6:30, waiting to escort handicapped children on the 
bus. Then she works in the school offices and in classrooms until 
around 3, when she gets back on the bus and escorts the handicapped 
children to their homes. In Oregon, she made $10 an hour doing similar 
work, but in the new job, she is paid the minimum wage.
  The job suits her needs as a mother of three. She can be home in the 
afternoon to look after her 6-year-old, who is autistic and needs the 
kind of close supervision the school's afterschool program is not able 
to provide. There are daycare centers that could care for their son, 
but the cost is prohibitive. Her 16-year-old son is athletic, and after 
school she is able to drive him to practices and games.
  Despite the fact that Elaine works full time, she is paid so little 
that she qualifies for food stamps and her children receive health care 
through Medicaid. This bothers Elaine. She doesn't want Government 
assistance. She wants to work hard and provide for her family. In the 
school district where she works, janitors and others are paid enough to 
support their families while Elaine has little choice but to turn to 
the Government for assistance. She perceives the problem as this: The 
assumption is that women who work as teachers' aides or do similar work 
are not supporting their families but, rather, working to supplement 
the household income. In her case, this is not true. Elaine is the sole 
provider for her three children.
  For Elaine and her family, a higher minimum wage would mean a greater 
degree of self-sufficiency. Getting a second job is out of the question 
given her responsibilities at home. At the present rate of pay, making 
ends meet is impossible without Government subsidies. Elaine argues 
that working 40 hours a week for something as important as special 
needs education, she should not need Government handouts; that through 
hard work, she should be able to provide for her children.
  This is it. These are the real faces of people who are out there, 
trying to make ends meet. Our proposal was to increase the minimum wage 
just to $7. I will show the chart here, what more has happened with 
regard to the minimum wage over recent years.
  On the far side of the chart, this is purchasing power in the year 
2000, dollar purchasing capability; in 1968 the equivalent of $8.50 for 
minimum wage. The red line indicates how the minimum wage has gradually 
dropped, how we were able to get it raised in 1990, and how we were 
able to get it raised in 1997 and 1998. Now we see it dropping

[[Page 5824]]

without this increase to about its alltime low.
  This is a minimum wage, not a maximum wage. We hear those saying, if 
you are going to go for $7, why not go $10 or $15? That is missing the 
point. What we are trying to do is get this increased to $7. That will 
still put it below where it was for a period of 12 or 14 years, but at 
least it gets it much closer to a living wage.
  That is what this amendment is all about. We should understand it. 
This amendment affects real people. I gave some examples of real 
people. I have given examples of why the Secretary of HHS believes a 
minimum wage job is relevant to this bill. We have indicated we are 
prepared to vote on it. We daresay it is those on the other side, who 
do not want to vote on it, who are actually filibustering.
  I want to come to this issue and talk a little bit about the impact 
on families, and particularly the impact on children in terms of 
hunger, the problems of hunger.
  In 1938, we had the child labor law. We had minimum wage, and we put 
time and a half for overtime pay in there so workers would be 
considered. What we have looked at in more recent times, as hunger has 
been a defining aspect for people as well, we have tried to take a look 
at what the impact is on hunger, what the impact would be.
  First of all, this chart: Hunger is increasing for minimum wage 
families. The Agriculture Department reported more than 300,000 more 
families are hungry today than when President Bush first took office. 
More than 12 million American households are worried that they would 
not have enough to eat, and nearly 4 million households had someone go 
hungry. African-American households, Latino households, and households 
headed by single mothers were much more likely than the national 
average to experience food insecurity, and also more likely to 
experience hunger.
  I have the household food security for the United States. This study, 
put out by the Department of Agriculture, shows very clearly what is 
happening to families, and particularly families with minimum wage. 
What you find out is that in 1998, there were 14 million children who 
were living in families where there was a real problem in terms of food 
security, and then that went down in 1999 to 12 million.
  In the year 2000, it is 12 million. Then we see in 2001 that it began 
to turn around. In 2002, it is 14 million going right back up again. We 
were seeing the decline in terms of the impact of hunger on children in 
this country. Now we see as a result of the economic policies and 
failure to increase the minimum wage the fact that hunger is again 
taking off in these minimum wage households.
  This is an excellent report done by the State of Massachusetts. It is 
called ``Walk For Hunger, Project Bread.'' I will include in the Record 
the appropriate parts of the study.

       According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 425,000 
     people in Massachusetts lack access to adequate food. In low-
     income communities in Massachusetts, 20 percent of households 
     cannot afford to buy enough food to meet the basic 
     nutritional needs of household members. The prevalence of 
     hunger is highest among families with children. Today, in 
     low-income communities, one child in three lives in a 
     household struggling to put food on the table.

  Our State is one of the most prosperous, fortunately, in the country. 
This is what is happening in households in my State. If it is happening 
in Massachusetts, it is happening in States across this country.
  We have the broad figures. As we go along, I will have the 
opportunity to continue to give speeches and to point this out.
  Listen to this one more time.

       According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 425,000 
     people in Massachusetts lack access to adequate food. In low-
     income communities in Massachusetts, 20 percent of the 
     households cannot afford to buy enough food to meet the basic 
     nutritional needs of household members. The prevalence of 
     hunger is highest among families with children. Today, in 
     low-income communities, one child in three lives in a 
     household struggling to put food on the table.

  And we have opposition to an increase in the minimum wage.
  How much evidence do you need over there? How much child hunger do 
you need to increase the minimum wage? What more in the world do you 
need?
  That is happening not only in my State but in States all over this 
country. Children are facing real hunger because the parents are 
falling further and further and further behind.
  I have a book full of those examples, some of which I read. I have a 
book full of examples from all over the country. This is what is 
happening. The problem is getting worse.
  The Department of Agriculture indicates there are 35 million 
Americans hungry or living on the edge of hunger for economic reasons--
35 million of our fellow citizens. There are 290 million people in this 
country, and 35 million of them are facing serious challenges with 
hunger in the United States today.
  We will have a chance in half an hour, if you want to take a very 
modest step to increase the minimum wage. It is not going to solve the 
problem, but it will sure do more about it than the current legislation 
which is before us. That we know.
  There are 300,000 more families hungry today than when this 
administration first took office. Twenty-three million Americans sought 
emergency food assistance from the hunger relief organization Second 
Harvest.
  Isn't that a fine description of what our country is coming to.
  As I indicated, these are men and women of dignity and respect, 
people who are working hard. We find in a number of the hunger 
programs, the Food Stamp Program and others, they are vastly 
underutilized because men and women have a sense of pride. They don't 
want to take handouts from the Federal Government. Even some of the 
school lunch programs are underutilized in some areas because parents 
don't want to have their children appear to come from a poor community. 
They are used to a higher degree than food stamps, but, nonetheless, 
that happens.
  These are men and women of pride. It is a real problem. These 
families, as I mentioned--23 million, Second Harvest--cannot afford 
balanced adequate diets. Parents are skipping meals so their children 
can eat. Nationwide, soup kitchens and food pantries and homeless 
shelters are increasingly serving the working poor--not just the 
unemployed.
  Both the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Catholic Charities report 
witnessing sharp increases in the use of emergency services offered by 
the cities and the Catholic Charity agencies.
  In 2003, the survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that looks at 
hunger found 39 percent of adults requesting food assistance were 
employed.
  Effectively, 40 percent of people who are trying to get some 
additional food assistance are employed and work hard.
  This is the conclusion of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, as well as 
Catholic Charities--a leading cause of hunger is low-paying jobs.
  How much more evidence do you need? Do we think the U.S. Conference 
of Mayors is a tool of just the Democratic side of the Senate when 
Republican and Democrat mayors alike across this country are talking 
about the increasing problems they are facing and the challenges that 
families and their communities are facing when they say one of the 
principal reasons there is explosion in the hunger needs of children in 
this country is because of low-paying jobs?
  That is what this amendment is about--to do something about low-
paying jobs.
  We have a chance to do something about it. We have done it in the 
past. We are denied the chance to do something right now about it.
  If cloture is successful, we ought to say it as it is. It will defeat 
this amendment. Evidently, the Republican leadership fears voting on 
this amendment, for reasons I can't possibly fathom, so much they are 
delaying the Senate a whole day. Here we are on Wednesday at 1 o'clock, 
and we are not going to be permitted to vote. We could vote on this in 
half an hour. No, you can't vote on it. We are going to make sure the 
Senate doesn't do any work this afternoon because we feel so intensely 
about increasing the minimum

[[Page 5825]]

wage. We are against it going to $7 an hour over a 2-year period. We 
are going to insist on cloture--the unusual step of cloture in the 
Senate--in order to bring that amendment down so we will not even have 
to vote on it even though the Secretary of HHS has indicated minimum 
wage is essential to the success of this program.
  Is there anything more ludicrous? Is there anything that makes less 
sense?
  It is absolutely out of our imagination that Republicans feel so 
intensely in opposition they will refuse to let this institution vote 
on this measure which can make a difference in terms of children in 
poverty, families in poverty, proud men and women who are trying to 
provide for their children, a step that we have taken 11 different 
times since the minimum wage was passed with Republicans and Democrats 
alike. But what it is about is this Republican leadership that says: 
No, we are not even going to let you vote on it.
  We had difficulties other times trying to get a vote on it. I will 
certainly admit that. And the record will show that. But eventually we 
were able to do that, and eventually we were able to get it passed. But 
the ferocity of opposition this time is mind-boggling to this Senator.
  Listen to this, again from the U.S. Conference of Mayors: Emergency 
food assistance increased by 14 percent. This is just in 1 year. These 
are the 2003 figures. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency 
food assistance were members of families, children.
  And then: City officials recommend raising the Federal minimum wage 
as a way the Federal Government can help alleviate hunger.
  Here it is, the Conference of Mayors--Democrat, Republican, mayors 
from all over this country; North, South, East, West; Republican and 
Democrat--talking about hunger, talking about the particular hunger 
needs of children, talking about the problems of the growth of hunger 
for working families, and they make one single recommendation: increase 
the minimum wage. And we cannot even get a vote on it in the Senate.
  Can you imagine people watching the Senate and hearing: Well, no, we 
can't vote on that. We can't vote on that. We are just not going to 
vote. And they say: Why? It looks as if those who are proposing it are 
ready to vote on it.
  We are. When are you ready to vote on it? In 20 minutes, half an 
hour? We are prepared. We have offered time limitations.
  They say: You are?
  What is wrong with the other side? They say it is not relevant to the 
underlying bill. They say it is not relevant.
  Let's see. Is that the way the Senate works?
  Let me help you figure out why it is relevant because I have a 
statement from the President's representative on this bill. This is 
what the President says. The President says:

       This administration recognizes that the only way to escape 
     poverty--

  He is talking now about the underlying bill--

     is through work, and that is why we have made work and jobs 
     that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece of 
     the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance for 
     Needy Families (TANF) program.

  Well, then they say: Wait a minute, I thought the Republicans said 
your amendment is not relevant. And now you are saying the Secretary of 
HHS says you should have a good job that pays an adequate minimum wage? 
Yes.
  And they say: It would seem to me it would be relevant.
  It does to me, too. That should be understandable to any third grader 
or fourth grader, but it is not to the Republican leadership because 
they do not want to pass it because they have powerful interest groups 
that do not want to pass it. That is the reason: special interest 
groups that refuse to let this pass. That is it. That is what this is 
about. You cannot get around it.
  So we have taken a few examples of who the people are who are 
affected, what kind of lives they are living, and what has been 
happening in one State that is a pretty prosperous State, my own State 
of Massachusetts, that has done a very detailed study. I will include 
that, as I mentioned, as a fierce indictment in terms of the failure of 
both our State and the Federal Government to be able to provide the 
help and assistance.
  We have the one recommendation by Republicans and Democrats alike, 
the mayors all over this country, who are close to the people on it and 
say: We have one single recommendation. They did not recommend the 
extension of TANF. They recommended one thing: increasing the minimum 
wage. That was their single recommendation.
  We heard statements just yesterday. I, very briefly, will respond to 
the arguments that if we raise the minimum wage we are going to 
contribute to the problems of unemployment in our society. I am glad to 
go through this issue. We have extended charts. We have debated this 
frequently the other times we had the increase, with the Kruger studies 
from New Jersey, which are probably the most extensive studies. I have 
the whole working paper.
  It goes into great detail as to the impact, historically, on the job 
market.
  As I mentioned before, the yellow line on this chart is the rate of 
unemployment in the year we increased the minimum wage, showing the 
rate of unemployment in October, when we had the second increase in the 
minimum wage, and then several months later.
  So you have the cumulative two increases in the minimum wage. And 
what was its impact on the rate of unemployment? As you see, going back 
to the 1996 increase, 1997, and then several months later, the 
unemployment rate remained at 4.7 percent.
  If you break it out with regard to African Americans, Hispanics, and 
teens, it is very much the same. You had 10 percent unemployment for 
African Americans, and 9.5 percent. If you take both the increase in 
that year and this year, and then take the result for those two, look 
at the next year; it was at 9.3 percent. If you look among Hispanic 
Americans, it is the same pattern. And if you look among the teens, it 
is the same pattern.
  Strong opposition said it is going to increase unemployment, it is 
going to increase teen unemployment, and minority unemployment. It does 
not do so.
  Another factor is the issue about whether this is going to be an 
inflater. As I mentioned, if you look it over--for those who want to 
take the time, it is not very difficult to do--but if you take the 
increase, the total number of people who are going to be affected by 
the increase in the minimum wage, and take the total payroll, you will 
find out the impact.
  We know increasing the minimum wage by $1.85, as I have pointed out, 
is vital to workers but a drop in the bucket to the national payroll. 
All Americans combined earn $5.7 trillion. And a $1.85 minimum wage 
increase would be less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the total 
national payroll. So spare us--spare us--the arguments about the 
adverse impact of an increase in the minimum wage on unemployment and 
on minorities and on teenagers, and spare us the argument that this is 
going to add to the issues of inflation because it does not do that.
  What it will do is, it will help some extremely hard-working 
families. It will help many workers who work hard clearing out the 
buildings at nighttime, being assistants to our teachers in our high 
schools and elementary schools in our country, working in nursing homes 
as assistants. These are minimum wage workers, and they are men and 
women of dignity. They are not looking for Government handouts. They 
want to be able to work hard and raise their children and live with the 
respect of their children and spend time with their children.
  That is why this is a women's issue because the great majority of 
those who receive the minimum wage are women. It is a children's issue 
because so many of those women have children. It is a family issue 
because the relationship between, primarily, single mothers--not always 
but primarily single mothers--and their children is dictated by whether 
the mother has one or two or even sometimes three minimum wage jobs. 
The time, or lack of time,

[[Page 5826]]

they are able to spend with their children, obviously, is enormously 
important.
  This minimum wage is also a civil rights issue because so many of the 
men and women who receive the minimum wage are men and women of color.
  It is a civil rights issue, a children's issue, a family issue, a 
women's issue. Basically, it is a fairness issue because these men and 
women in this country believe if you work hard--you work hard--40 hours 
a week, 52 weeks of the year, you should not have to live in poverty.
  If you look, after all is said and done, at where the poverty level 
is for a family of three, it will be something under $15,000. And even 
with our increase in the minimum wage, they are going to be well below 
that.
  We are prepared to vote early this afternoon. We don't need more 
time. We can take more time, but we are prepared to vote at any 
particular time. This side has made its case. People in this body know 
what the issue is all about. It is not enormously complicated. They 
understand it. We are prepared to vote. It is a very simple vote. If it 
is finally enacted in the House--and I think with a strong vote here it 
will be--and if it is signed by the President--and if we have a strong 
vote in the House and the Senate, the President is going to sign it--it 
is going to make a big difference because 60 days after enactment, the 
first phase of it will begin to give some new hope to some of the 
hardest working men and women in the country.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we are involved in debate on a 
nongermane amendment the Democrats have offered on which we Republicans 
have said we are willing to vote, assuming we can have finality on this 
legislation and make sure we get to conference.
  In the meantime, while those procedural issues are being worked out, 
I wish to express some views on the subject of minimum wage.
  The proponents of this legislation claim they want to make sure that 
workers are able to earn a livable wage. Who doesn't know that is 
necessary for people to get along in this world? It is not very clear 
to me what the term ``livable wage'' means. But those who use the term 
seem to believe a person working at a minimum wage ought to earn more 
than the poverty level.
  So let us consider that goal for a moment. Although there is more 
than one way to define poverty, the Department of Health and Human 
Services publishes the poverty guidelines each year. These guidelines 
are used to determine eligibility for low-income programs like food 
stamps. For a single individual, the poverty guideline then would be 
$9,310 a year. Under current law, any job subject to the Federal 
minimum wage must pay at least $5.15 an hour. Assuming a person worked 
40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, at a minimum wage, they would earn 
over $10,000 a year. Even after deducting Federal income taxes owed on 
this amount, a minimum wage worker is left with more money than the 
poverty guidelines.
  I would like to repeat that a full-time minimum wage worker already 
earns more than the poverty level.
  Now, is that a livable wage? The answer is that it depends. Even in 
my State of Iowa not very many people would say that is very ideal; in 
fact, just the opposite. Most people would look for much higher than 
that. According to the Census Bureau, more than 2 million workers have 
hourly wages at or below the minimum wage. More than one-fourth of 
these workers are between the ages of 16 and 19.
  So is $5.15 an hour a livable wage? If one is a teenager living at 
home with their parents, they probably feel like they are making a lot 
of money. But what about other minimum wage workers? According to the 
Census Bureau, 85 percent of the people earning the minimum wage live 
with their parents, have a working spouse or live alone. Only 15 
percent of the minimum wage workers are trying to support a family.
  For those few who are trying to support a family, $5.15 an hour is 
obviously not enough income. Fortunately, these families do not have to 
get by on $5.15 an hour because under current law these families are 
eligible for Federal assistance through the earned income tax credit 
and through the food stamp program, two programs that are meant to 
encourage people into the workforce in a way that there is good return 
on it.
  A single mom with two children working full-time at minimum wage 
would qualify for more than $4,000 in refundable tax credits and more 
than $2,000 in food stamps. On an hourly basis, that works out to more 
than $8 an hour. Even after Federal taxes are withheld, a single mom 
with two children is left with more than $15,670, which is the poverty 
guideline for a family of three. Thus, the debate cannot really be 
about getting people out of poverty.
  Some people might say that these workers should not have to rely on 
Government programs to escape poverty, and those people working would 
look for a day in the future when they were making enough money that 
they would not qualify for the earned income tax credit or qualify for 
food stamps. But other people might say that employers should not be so 
cheap, that they ought to pay their employees more than the poverty 
level wages.
  As I have just explained, the poverty level varies by the size of the 
families. Employers cannot pay their workers based on the size of their 
families. I do not know that they ever have. When one stops at a local 
donut shop, they do not charge $5 on Tuesday when the cashier is a 
teenager living at home with his parents and then charge $7 on Thursday 
when the cashier is a single mom raising two children. That is not the 
way the real world of economics or the business place works. Any 
business that tried to do things that way would no longer be in 
business.
  The wages earned by workers are determined by the value that 
consumers place on the goods and services produced by the workers. 
Employers cannot pay their employees more than customers are willing to 
pay. In fact, in most cases, customers do have choices of where to buy 
their goods and services. They do not have to stop at the local donut 
shop. If they want to, they can eat at home, or some may just decide to 
do without.
  Those who support raising the minimum wage claim that they are 
helping workers earn a livable wage, but if Congress could wave a magic 
wand and if Congress would raise wages by legislative decree, why would 
they stop at $7 an hour? Why not $70? Why not $700? Then everybody 
could be a millionaire.
  The reason supporters of a minimum wage stop at $7 is because they 
know if the minimum wage is raised higher it means yet higher prices 
and fewer jobs. To deny these facts is to deny economic reality.
  Proof? There is plenty of proof. It is very evident by the fact that 
no one has proposed raising the minimum wage to $70 or $700 an hour. 
Raising the minimum wage by $7 or $70 or $700 all have ensuing ill 
effects. The only difference is the smaller the increase the smaller 
the effect. Those who support a smaller increase are hoping that by 
only raising the minimum wage to $7, the price increases and the job 
losses will be small enough that no one will complain too loudly.
  Minimizing the damage will not stop the damage. Raising the minimum 
wage to $7 an hour is going to cost employers $6 billion a year. That 
is a $6 billion tax increase on a small segment of our economy, 
particularly the small business sector of the economy. Ironically, out 
of those costs of $6 billion, roughly $5 billion will go to workers who 
are not supporting a family while $1 billion is going to go to workers 
who are supporting a family.
  In other words, raising the minimum wage for everyone means only $1 
out of

[[Page 5827]]

every $6 goes to those who are most in need and particularly those we 
are trying to help with this bill to move people from welfare to work. 
That is a very expensive way to help low-income families.
  One might try to justify this costly and inefficient policy if it 
were the only way to help those in need, but as I have already 
discussed raising the minimum wage is not about getting people out of 
poverty. A single mom working full-time at the minimum wage, with one 
or two children, is already out of poverty, thanks to the earned income 
tax credit and thanks to food stamps. If we want to help low income 
workers, we should support policies like the earned income tax credit 
and food stamps that provide help to those who need it the most.
  Congress does not have a magic wand. It cannot repeal the law of 
supply and demand.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened to my friend from Iowa, and he 
is my friend. It is amazing to hear the response to an increase in the 
minimum wage. They say we are going to let other Government programs 
look out after these proud, hard workers who are trying to provide for 
themselves and for their families. Effectively, if we follow the way 
that the Senator from Iowa suggests, we are going to have to tax more 
people a lot more so that those programs are going to be there because 
we refuse to have employers do what they should do, and that is to pay 
a fair wage.
  Sure, everybody could be put on welfare and not have any minimum 
wage. What is the possible logic? Those Senators on the other side have 
been trying to cut those programs back for years. The programs dealing 
with nutrition, home heating and programs for food, they have been 
trying to cut those back for years. This administration has been trying 
to make EITC much more difficult to get.
  In order to oppose the increase in minimum wage, they say, well, the 
EITC program is out there. We are talking about proud men and women who 
want to work hard and look after their children and have a sense of 
dignity and not depend on welfare programs. The answer for those who 
are opposed to us is, give them more welfare programs.
  That is an insult to these working men and women. We reject that as 
an argument. We reject it.
  We are standing for the dignity of those working men and women who 
ought, in the richest country in the world, in the strongest economy, 
to be able to work hard and bring up their children with respect and 
dignity and not a handout.
  The Senator makes the point why we need the increase in the minimum 
wage. Because those workers are not receiving it today on their own. 
They should be able to get it. We are committed to trying to get an 
increase on the minimum wage.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: We are under a 
cloture motion that has been filed on this amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. A cloture motion has been filed on this 
amendment.
  Mr. HARKIN. Since I have been recognized and I have the floor, is 
there a time limit on how long this Senator can speak?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no time limit at this point.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  Mr. President, first I ask unanimous consent I be added as a 
cosponsor on this amendment to raise the minimum wage. I strongly 
support the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from 
California, Mrs. Boxer, and Senator Kennedy.
  Let's be clear at the outset. The current level of $5.15 an hour as a 
minimum wage is a poverty wage--actually less than a poverty wage, 
which I will show in a minute. It is a wage that does not respect the 
dignity of work, including the most humble work in this country. That 
is wrong. I say the President of the United States ought to be ashamed 
of himself, this Senate ought to be ashamed of itself, the House of 
Representatives ought to be ashamed of itself, that we would let the 
minimum wage get as low as it has gotten, forcing more and more 
families into poverty and on food stamps.
  I just heard my colleague from Iowa saying, rather than raising the 
minimum wage, we ought to be putting more into food stamps. What kind 
of a solution is that? I thought we were going to give people the 
dignity of work. We ought to get them off welfare and get them into 
jobs. Now I hear some people say the best thing is giving them more 
food stamps. I am all for food stamps. It has been a real blessing to 
our society. But that is sort of a welfare answer. It sounds as if we 
turned the clock back and we go back on welfare again.
  The economic policies of this administration are simply not working 
as advertised. It is still sputtering. The recovery remains fragile. 
The President has assured us again and again that tax cuts 
overwhelmingly for the wealthy will stimulate the economy and create 
more jobs and get this country moving. Over the last 3 years we have 
had nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts, but we have lost more than 2 
million jobs. The President's economic policies, including tax cuts, 
outsourcing of jobs, not increasing the minimum wage, refusing to 
extend unemployment benefits, are not working. Trickle-down economics 
simply, again, is not working.
  You don't have to be from Iowa or Nebraska to know you don't 
fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots, and that 
is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus 
to the roots, not to the treetops.
  There are obvious ways to do this. No. 1, instead of the tax cuts for 
the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people who need the money 
and who will actually spend the extra money here in America.
  No. 2, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the 
pockets of people who will spend the money because they have to, out of 
necessity.
  No. 3, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed. Today, March 
31, a record 1.1 million Americans will lose their unemployment 
benefits--this quarter. This is unfair. It is indecent. It is foolish, 
because it will create more drag on the economy. Again, we ought to be 
ashamed of ourselves for not extending the unemployment benefits to all 
these people who have now lost them.
  I strongly support the Boxer amendment as one step we need to take in 
addressing the fact we have too many people out of work, and that 
people on the bottom of the economic ladder are falling further and 
further behind.
  No one in America who works for a living should live in poverty. Yet 
for the millions of hard-working Americans with minimum wage jobs, that 
is exactly what is happening. In fact, if you look at what has happened 
over the last few years, you can see if this is the poverty line right 
here for a family of three, going back here to 1971, 1974, 1977, the 
minimum wage was pretty darned close to the poverty line. Then during 
the Reagan years it started coming down. During the Clinton years it 
went up a little bit. Now we are back down again. Look at this gap 
compared to where we were before, or even before 1970 when the minimum 
wage was actually above the poverty line. When you look at that, it is 
no wonder our society has problems. No wonder we are being torn apart 
in this country. We have more people working, yet falling further below 
the poverty line because we don't increase the minimum wage.
  The other side filed a cloture motion, I understand. I asked the 
Presiding Officer. He said a cloture motion has been filed on this 
amendment. This bill we have before us is TANF, the Temporary 
Assistance to Needy Families. The other side has filed a cloture 
motion, saying an increase in the minimum wage is not germane, it is 
not pertinent to the TANF bill, to Temporary Assistance for Needy 
Families. They are saying it is not pertinent because if

[[Page 5828]]

the cloture motion is successful tomorrow, this amendment will fall. So 
they say it is not pertinent.
  Why don't they tell that to Secretary Thompson? Here is what he said 
regarding TANF reauthorization:

       This administration recognizes that the only way to escape 
     poverty is through work and that is why we have made work and 
     jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece 
     of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance 
     for Needy Families Program.

  It is the centerpiece. And they say it is not pertinent. Somebody 
better get hold of Mr. Thompson. You better start getting your story 
straight. He says it is the centerpiece.
  If minimum wage is the centerpiece for TANF reauthorization, then we 
ought to be about discussing how much of a minimum wage--not whether it 
is pertinent but how much.
  Bear in mind again, I heard some talk about teenagers. I keep hearing 
about teenagers making minimum wage. They are living at home, they have 
this and that. Teenagers, teenagers, teenagers, I hear that all the 
time. But you have to look at the facts. Facts are stubborn. Sometimes 
facts get in the way of stories. The fact is, 7 million workers would 
directly benefit from a minimum wage increase; 35 percent are the sole 
earners in their families--35 percent. Maybe some of them are 
teenagers. Maybe they are married and out of school, maybe they are 18, 
19 years old. Mr. President, 61 percent of those affected are women and 
one-third of them are raising children; 15 percent are African American 
and 19 percent are Hispanic Americans.
  What is this all about teenagers? This is not about teenagers. This 
is about Americans who go to work every day. As I said, they do some of 
the most humble work in America.
  I think I heard my colleague from Iowa saying something about if you 
raise the minimum wage, it is bad for business because people will shop 
elsewhere because they will raise the price of goods and people still 
have choices. We are not putting the minimum wage on one company and 
not another, one employer and not another. This is across the board. So 
if all of them go up, then there is still competition out there. Maybe 
through the competitive urges of the free marketplace they will find 
other places to cut costs, be more productive. But don't take it out of 
the hides of those who work for a minimum wage.
  That is what we are basically saying. That is what Congress is 
saying. That is what this President is saying, when we don't increase 
the minimum wage. They are saying to businesses all over America: If 
you want to cut costs, if you want to increase your profit margins, we 
will help you by keeping your minimum wage as low as possible.
  If we raise the minimum wage, maybe businesses will find some other 
ways of cutting costs and being more productive.
  I also heard that if you increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, it 
is a drain on business. It doesn't help the family that much. There 
would be more help with food stamps, for example. An increase to $7 an 
hour for full-time, year-round workers would add about $3,800 to their 
income.
  Maybe for Senators and Congressmen who make $150,000 a year--I assume 
most of us have stocks and different investments--when you look at the 
net worth of the Members of the House and the Senate, what is it? Is it 
500 times more than the average American? Maybe $3,800 doesn't seem 
like a lot to people here, but to a family on minimum wage, for a low-
income family, $3,800 would be more than a year of groceries. It would 
pay 9 months of rent, a year and a half of heat or electricity, or full 
tuition at a community college for one of the kids. That is nothing to 
scoff at.
  People say, Well, it will impact business. Again, facts are stubborn 
things. History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has never 
had an impact on jobs, employment, or inflation. In the 4 years after 
the last minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced the 
strongest growth in over three decades. Nearly 11 million new jobs were 
added at a pace of 218,000 per month. There were 6 million new service 
industry jobs, including more than 112 million retail jobs of which 
nearly 600,000 were restaurant jobs.
  This was after we raised the minimum wage last time. It sure made a 
bad impact on this country, didn't it?
  It is long overdue. We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it 
fall so low.
  Now we are being told we can't have a vote on the TANF bill because 
it is not germane. That is exactly what Secretary Thompson said.

       Work and jobs that will pay at least a minimum wage is the 
     centerpiece to the reauthorization proposal of TANF.

  Those are Secretary Thompson's words.
  We also have to keep in mind that a great majority--61 percent, as I 
have pointed out--who would be affected are single parents, mostly 
women with children. Unfortunately, the kind of jobs that women who 
leave welfare find are minimum wage jobs, which makes it difficult, if 
not impossible, to sustain families and meet the demands of raising 
children. For these people, survival is a daily goal. They work hard 
enough. Their hours are long enough to make ends meet, but only barely.
  What this means is they don't have time for their families. They 
cannot participate in activities with their children, especially 
school-related activities that most of us take for granted.
  I would like to do a survey in the Senate of everyone here. I wonder 
how many Senators know someone or a family living on the minimum wage. 
I wonder how many Senators would actually have some friends who are 
families on the minimum wage. I bet you would not find very many who 
would actually know anyone. They read about them, but I mean actually 
know them or maybe have them as neighbors or friends and meet with them 
and talk with them about how they are living on a minimum wage. That 
would be an interesting survey to take.
  For these people, as I said, survival is their daily goal.
  Bear in mind the real value of the minimum wage has fallen 
dramatically over the past 30 years. Here is the real value of the 
minimum wage shown earlier by Senators Kennedy and Boxer. We have to 
keep showing them because these facts are stubborn things. People are 
working the same.
  Back in 1968, in real 2003 dollars, the minimum wage was $8.50.
  In other words, if we had indexed to inflation the minimum wage in 
1968, it would be $8.50 an hour. That is just indexed for inflation. 
But if you look at where people were back in 1968, look where we are 
now. The people who were working back in 1968 at minimum wage jobs are 
the same people, the same kind of people, the same class of people who 
are working today. They are doing the same kind of jobs. Why was that 
job worth $8.50 in 1968, but that same job today is only worth $4.98 an 
hour?
  You might say the minimum wage is $5.15. But if we don't increase it 
by the end of this year, the real value of that will be $4.98 an hour.
  Why? It is the same job, the same work. Why was it worth $8.50 an 
hour then, and it is only worth $4.98 an hour now? It is because we 
haven't done our job about keeping up the minimum wage. We keep pushing 
people down.
  That is why there is unrest in America. That is why low-wage people 
are saying there is nothing in the system for them because it is so 
skewed against them. They work hard and never can get ahead because the 
minimum wage is stuck.
  The minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, 
earns $10,700 a year. That is $5,000 a year below the poverty line for 
a family of three.
  Again, here is the poverty line. The red line is for a family of 
three. Here is where we were in the past. Before 1970, the minimum wage 
was above the poverty line. Now look at the gap. Look how far down it 
is.
  Poll after poll after poll taken of low-income Americans show that 
they don't believe the system is fair. You can read the polls. Look at 
what happened to them. You add on to that they don't have health 
insurance. You add on to that they do not have any retirement benefits. 
You add on to that their pay goes for high heating bills this last

[[Page 5829]]

winter. You add on to that many of these people earning the minimum 
wage are paying one-third to one-half of their paychecks just for rent.
  How many of us pay one-half of our paycheck for rent?
  As I said earlier, the minimum wage--I stand corrected. It is not a 
poverty wage; it is less than a subsistence wage. And we can't ignore 
it any longer.
  Three million more Americans are in poverty today than when President 
Bush first took office.
  I am not saying that to blame it all on the President. I am not going 
to say that. Of course not. I am just saying it is a fact.
  Today, more than 34 million people live in poverty including 12 
million children.
  I am not blaming it on the President, or anybody else. I am just 
stating a fact.
  Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has doubled since the 
late 1970s--from about 1.3 million to 2.6 million in 2002. Poverty has 
doubled since the late 1970s.
  There is a lot of blame to go around. Rather than blaming anybody, 
let's fix it. The best way to fix it is to raise the minimum wage. That 
is at the heart of this problem.
  An increase to $7 an hour would affect nearly 7 million workers.
  I just saw the figures as to what it would mean in Iowa. I have the 
figures here as to an increase in the minimum wage in Iowa. If we were 
to increase this minimum wage, there would be 104,000 workers in my 
State of Iowa who would be making more money--104,000 workers. Do you 
know what? They will spend that money. They will spend that money 
because they have to spend it, because their rent is high, their 
heating bills are high; if they have any health insurance at all, that 
is skyrocketing. They are paying for food, paying for the kids. That 
money gets spun around in the economy. It would be a shock of stimulus 
for the economy.
  I am proud to cosponsor the amendment. To say it again, at the heart 
of this problem is the fact we are just not paying people for the work 
they do. Why is it people who do the dirtiest kind of work, the 
humblest kind of work--the kind of people you walk by, and you never 
notice them; you go into a restaurant, you go in to eat, and then walk 
out, and you do not notice them; a lot of times you go into stores, 
they are there, but you kind of walk by them--well, it is time we 
noticed them. They deserve to be noticed. They are Americans, and they 
are working hard. They are trying to raise their families and do the 
right thing, and what do we say to them? Forget it.
  I almost hear echoes from some of the comments I have heard on this 
floor. I have heard echoes there should not even be a minimum wage. 
Now, I did not hear anybody say that. I said I sort of heard echoes of 
that: Well, if we set the minimum wage at $7, why can't we set it at 
$70 an hour or $700 an hour or $7,000 an hour or something like that? 
Well, that is sort of scoffing at these poor people who are working 
because it is almost like saying maybe we should not have a minimum 
wage at all.
  There are a lot of countries that do not have the minimum wage. I 
suppose we could be like them. I always tell people: When it comes to 
things like having a minimum wage, just keep in mind, there is always 
someone poorer than you, more desperate than you, lower down on the 
ladder than you, who will work for less than you are going to work for 
because they need it. There is always someone poorer, more needy, more 
desperate.
  Is that what our society says: The law of the jungle? Turn the clock 
backward and just have a welfare system? As Senator Kennedy said, 
rather than taxing the American people to provide food stamps and 
welfare benefits and things like that, it is better to raise the 
minimum wage and give them a decent living wage rather than putting 
them on welfare. That is bad for the people on welfare.
  I supported welfare to work. I believe in it. But in order to move 
people from welfare to work, they need some health care benefits; they 
need some childcare. Fortunately, we passed the Snowe amendment. We 
need an increase in the minimum wage, and they need housing. But 
keeping them at this less-than-subsistence wage will not do it.
  I have almost heard some echoes, also, that this is some kind of a 
partisan issue. I went back to look at this issue. Senator Kennedy 
pointed this out, and I have a chart to point it out again. I think it 
is very instructive. Since Franklin Roosevelt, when we got our first 
minimum wage in 1938, almost every President has raised the minimum 
wage, including Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. 
Interestingly, Reagan and this President Bush are both missing. But it 
has been bipartisan in the past. We have had Republican Presidents who 
have raised the minimum wage, as well as Democratic Presidents. So I do 
not think it is a partisan issue at all. It is an economic issue. And 
it is how you view the value of work.
  Now if you believe people ought to go out there and work for whatever 
an employer wants to pay you, and if you don't like it, you can go 
somewhere else and try to get something better. We have tried that 
before in our country. We see that happening in other Third World 
countries because there is always some poor sucker worse off than you 
who will work for less than you will.
  I really do not think that is the kind of country we want to become. 
Work should have honor and dignity, and the minimum wage today is not 
giving dignity to the work these people do.
  I will close. I see the Senator from Idaho wants to speak. I will 
wrap up in a second.
  We are talking about Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The bill 
on the floor is food assistance.
  Listen to this. A 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors--these 
are not Democrats--looked at the hunger issue, and here is what they 
found: 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were 
employed. Thirty-nine percent seeking food assistance were employed. 
This is from the Conference of Mayors.
  They found a leading cause of hunger was low-paying jobs. The 
Conference of Mayors found emergency food assistance increased by an 
average of 14 percent. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency 
food assistance were members of families--children and their parents. 
Fifty-nine percent of those who sought emergency food assistance--which 
means they were at wits end; they had no money, and they had no other 
place to go, so they requested emergency food assistance--59 percent 
were members of families--children and their parents.
  What did the mayors recommend? What did the Conference of Mayors 
recommend? They recommended raising the Federal minimum wage as a way 
the Federal Government could help alleviate hunger. We are being told 
we cannot do that; we cannot add it to this bill; we cannot even vote 
on it.
  We saw the same thing on overtime: No, we can't vote on that. Put it 
someplace else. No, we can't vote on minimum wage either.
  What is the Senate coming to? Why don't we do as the House of 
Representatives did, where we used to serve--have a rule where you 
can't do anything, just pass it. That is why the Senate is different 
than the House. That is why we are supposed to have open and free-form 
debate and be able to vote on these issues. But these parliamentary 
tactics keeping us from voting on things such as overtime, extending 
unemployment benefits, and now the minimum wage are unworthy of the 
Senate, unworthy of this country, unworthy of our jobs.
  I close by saying again, this is an issue that cuts very deeply. I 
remember I was in my home State in the last year, and I found an 
interesting thing, that more people were relying upon the food banks in 
Iowa. I thought to myself: Why is that happening? Our unemployment is 
not that high. It went up a little bit, but why were more people going 
to food banks in increasing numbers than the unemployment rate was 
rising?
  I found out these are low-income workers. They are minimum-wage

[[Page 5830]]

workers. They get food stamps. But because we have cut back on food 
stamps, their food stamps run out about the 20th of the month, and they 
have to go to the food banks for the rest of the month. I have to 
believe if it is happening in Iowa, it is happening all over the 
country.
  It is time to give dignity to the people who do the humblest work in 
our country. Let's get them back up to what they had in the past. If 
their job in the past was worth what today would be $8.50 an hour, it 
is at least worth $7 an hour now.
  What if we took corporate CEO salaries from 1968 and said they have 
to now have the same percentage reduction this year as those on minimum 
wage? Boy, the hue and cry that would go up on that one.
  I have made my point. I hope we defeat the cloture petition. I hope 
we have a vote on increasing the minimum wage, and I hope it passes 
overwhelmingly. I hope the President will be on board and support it so 
we can give dignity to our workers.
  I thank the Senator from Idaho for his patience and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have listened most seriously to the 
Senator from Iowa on the issue of the minimum wage. My guess is, before 
the legislative year is out, we are going to vote on this issue. I 
believe it is important the Congress express its will. Certainly the 
minimum wage is a part of the total economic makeup of our country, and 
we need to be concerned about it. When we are talking about welfare 
reform, we know good-paying jobs are a part of getting people off 
welfare.
  We also know creating an economic climate in which jobs can grow is 
another way of making sure we have good-paying jobs, be they minimum 
wage or slightly or substantially above. It is the whole of the economy 
that makes our country what it is. It provides for the middle class and 
the upper class and all of those others who have been the tremendous 
energy and engine of this economy for so long.
  The day before yesterday and yesterday, I came to the Chamber to 
speak about the ever increasing price of energy. Today if the Senator 
from Iowa or the Senator from Idaho gassed their car up in this city or 
in Idaho or in Des Moines, we would have paid the highest price for gas 
ever paid in our history. Does that have impact on poor people or 
poorer people? You bet it does. They spend more of the total percentage 
of their income for energy than does someone who makes more money, who 
is in the upper class of society.
  When we talk about the minimum wage and welfare reform and the 
economy, should we not be concerned about the price of energy as it 
relates to that minimum wage employee who drives to work and drives 
home and spends a higher percentage of the amount of money they get 
from the minimum wage on energy than any other segment of the economy? 
We ought to.
  This Senate has denied us the right to speak to that. Now the other 
side is suggesting that again we have to go through multiples of 
amendments if we bring up an energy bill, even though we debated it a 
year ago and even though we debated it the year before that, and even 
though we passed it out of the Senate twice and we have had ample time. 
And tens of plus amendments later, we have to go through that again, 
when this country is hurting more on energy and energy costs than it 
ever has.
  I think the American people expect more of us than just an endless 
debating society that never produces anything. What have I heard in the 
Chamber, as I have been speaking about energy the last several days? It 
is big oil's fault or it is the President's fault. It is somebody other 
than the Congress.
  Let me suggest to my fellow Senators: No, it is not the President's 
fault and, no, it is not big oil's fault. It is the Senate's fault for 
denying the American people a modernized, contemporary energy policy.
  The House passed a policy. The House passed the conference. But not 
the Senate. No, the Senate couldn't get there because too many of us 
had too many different ideas. We are here now sitting as Senators while 
the American consumer is spending more today for gas at the pump or gas 
that goes to the home for heating than ever in our history.
  Shame on us. Shame on us for denying a contemporary, modern energy 
policy. We have not touched energy policy in our country for the last 
14 years. As a result of that, our policy is obsolete. It doesn't fit 
modern America.
  As I said yesterday and the day before: Consumption overall as a part 
of per capita has gone down, whether it be with the individual consumer 
or whether it be with corporate America or business and industry. But 
growth in our country has gone up. Yet we have largely denied our 
country a progressive supply-related energy policy. In other words, we 
have simply ignored the reality of the marketplace of supply and 
demand.
  We have had all these cute ideas over the last several years about 
how we can conserve our way out of this one or we can deny the consumer 
the right to have more energy in one form or another and that will 
solve the problem. It didn't solve the problem.
  During the decade of the 1990s, with unprecedented economic growth in 
our country, we used up all of the surpluses that had been built into 
the system. Whether it be gas supply for space heating, gas supply at 
the pump, whether it was commercial, we used it all up. At the end of 
the decade, we were beginning to experience blackouts in California. We 
were beginning to experience shortages. But most importantly, that 
supply/demand equation had begun to work and prices were edging up very 
rapidly.
  Here we are, with a 14-year-old policy, and we haven't recognized the 
rest of the world has also grown. One of the great growth giants today 
in the world is China. China's crude oil imports grew 30 percent last 
year, from the same supplier that is supplying 60 percent of our crude 
oil, the crude oil markets of the world.
  What is happening out there is this very rapid acceleration. We all 
want the economy to come back. We want our economy to come back. We 
want the world economy to come back so it can buy our goods and 
services. And as that economy comes back along with ours, they will 
demand more energy.
  We know the facts for high gas prices. The price of crude oil 
yesterday was $36.25 a barrel. That is why we have high gas prices. 
Inventory stocks are down. Fragmented gas markets are different today, 
and the introduction of new fuels is phenomenal. We know those are the 
realities of what we are doing and what we are dealing with. I don't 
know that you can deny it in any other way, unless you want to play raw 
politics.
  We also know what the situation is in our country today. We import 62 
percent of our crude. So the same people supplying that phenomenal 
growth in China are also supplying us with our crude. Our refineries 
are now operating at record high rates. Gas production is running at 
record levels all over the country. Throughout the year, demand 
continues to be strong, as we try to get the economy going again. It is 
going, and it is growing. That is part of the reason for these record 
prices.
  Let's talk a little bit about big oil. Let's talk about the collusion 
some suggest might be out there. The attorney general of the State of 
California did exactly what you would expect. We better go out and 
investigate big oil again because gas prices are over $2.30 in 
California. Investigate, if you will, but I offer the following for the 
record; that is, the reality of all of the investigations we have had. 
We have had 29 State and Federal investigations over the last several 
decades. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Energy looked at it and 
said: Demand exceeds supply. What happens when demand exceeds supply? 
The price goes up.
  California Energy Commission--I guess the attorney general out in 
California ought to listen to the energy commission. What drove 
increases were unusually high costs for crude in a world market. Is 
that collusion, or is that supply and demand?

[[Page 5831]]

  California, listen up. There is your problem. It is called not enough 
supply to meet demand of the drivers of California today.
  Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection--while numerous factors 
contributed to sharp increases in gasoline prices this summer, 
wholesalers and retailers were not hiking prices to pad their profits.
  Again, a marvelous thing is happening out there. The marketplace, 
supply and demand.
  I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a list, starting in 
May of 1973 and going through this past year of 2003, of literally 
almost 30 different investigations, State and Federal, as it relates to 
big oil. Every one of them found there was no collusion.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

            COMPLETED INVESTIGATIONS OF OIL INDUSTRY PRICING
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               Investigating
    Date of investigation           body          Description of probe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 1973....................  FTC............  ``. . . investigation of
                                                competition in the
                                                industry is incomplete
                                                and no decision about
                                                any antitrust action has
                                                made made''--New York
                                                Times.
August 1975.................  Pennsylvania...  Grand jury investigation
                                                underway--Newsweek.
1977-1983...................  DOJ............  ``The Justice Department
                                                yesterday ended a six-
                                                year investigation it
                                                said produced scant
                                                evidence that the major
                                                oil companies had
                                                conspired to run up the
                                                price of Persian Gulf
                                                oil in the late
                                                1970s.''--Washington
                                                Post.
May 1979....................  DOJ............  ``President Carter orders
                                                investigation of
                                                gasoline shortages in
                                                California. Report cites
                                                loss of Iranian crude
                                                supplies following
                                                overthrow of the Shah
                                                and finds insufficient
                                                evidence of
                                                collusion.''--Houston
                                                Chronicle, May 29, 1996.
1984........................  DOJ............  ``investigates increases
                                                in home heating oil
                                                prices in the winter of
                                                1983-84.''--Houston
                                                Chronicle, May 29, 1996.
1989........................  37 State         ``Over half the states .
                               Attorneys        . . have launched
                               General.         investigations of
                                                possible price-gouging .
                                                . . Thirty-seven state
                                                attorneys general wrote
                                                to the Justice
                                                department requesting an
                                                investigation of gas-
                                                price increases.''--St.
                                                Petersburg Times.
January 1990................  DOJ............  ``. . . again looks into
                                                home heating oil and
                                                propane prices after
                                                prices spiked during an
                                                especially bitter cold
                                                snap in December
                                                1990.''--Houston
                                                Chronicle, May 29, 1996.
August 1990.................  DOJ............  ``The antitrust division
                                                began the investigation
                                                on Aug. 6 in response to
                                                the nearly immediate
                                                increase in gasoline
                                                prices after the
                                                invasion [of Kuwait].''--
                                                New York Times.
                                               ``The investigation is
                                                called off two years
                                                later.''--Houston
                                                Chronicle, May 29, 1996.
September 1990..............  United Kingdom.  ``The five major UK oil
                                                companies, Shell, Esso,
                                                BP, Texaco and Mobil,
                                                were today cleared by
                                                the Office of Fair
                                                Trading of fixing petrol
                                                pump prices . . . There
                                                was no evidence of
                                                collusion . . .''--Press
                                                Association.
1993-1995...................  North Carolina.  ``Apparently, the
                                                monopoly question needs
                                                further study.''--
                                                Charleston Gazette
                                                (editorial).
AG Investigation Initiated    Minnesota.
 in 1994.
1994-1998...................  Arizona........  ``Gas prices in Arizona
                                                are high, but don't
                                                blame hush-hush price-
                                                fixing meetings in
                                                corporate boardrooms,
                                                the Attorney General's
                                                Office concluded in a
                                                report released Monday
                                                after a four-year
                                                investigation.''--Arizon
                                                a Republic.
May 1996-May 1997...........  DOJ............  ``Bingaman has set up a
                                                five-member panel of
                                                attorneys and economists
                                                within the division `to
                                                study recent increases
                                                of gasoline prices.' If
                                                this task force finds
                                                that market forces are
                                                not responsible . . . it
                                                will investigate to
                                                determine whether there
                                                is any evidence of
                                                collusion within the
                                                industry.''--BNA
                                                Antitrust & Trade
                                                Regulation Daily.
                                               ``No enforcement action
                                                was taken,'' a DOJ
                                                spokeswoman said.--
                                                Houston Chronicle, May
                                                20, 1997.
                                               ``The [DOJ] completed its
                                                investigation of rapidly
                                                rising gasoline prices
                                                that occurred last
                                                spring by declaring it
                                                found no evidence that
                                                refiners and marketers
                                                engaged in price fixing
                                                or any illegal
                                                activity.''--21st
                                                Century Fuels, June
                                                1997.
May 1996....................  Canada.........  ``The [Competition]
                                                Bureau first
                                                investigated allegations
                                                of collusion and price-
                                                fixing in 1973. Several
                                                subsequent inquiries
                                                have all produced the
                                                same result: no evidence
                                                was found to prove that
                                                the big oil companies
                                                act in concert to
                                                dictate retail gasoline
                                                prices.''--Maclean's,
                                                May 27, 1996.
                                               ``Officials from the
                                                departments of industry
                                                and natural resources
                                                say privately that the
                                                inquiry . . . is
                                                unlikely to uncover a
                                                sinister conspiracy by
                                                the oil companies to fix
                                                pump prices that often
                                                fluctuate in unison
                                                according to gas
                                                supplies and the time of
                                                year.''--Maclean's, June
                                                3, 1996.
October 1997................  Connecticut....  ``The U.S. Conference of
                                                Northeast Governors
                                                (CONEG) . . . called on
                                                major oil companies to
                                                explain recent gasoline
                                                price increases, and
                                                Connecticut Gov. John
                                                Rowland (R) is expecting
                                                a report this month that
                                                might be referred to the
                                                State Attorney General
                                                for an investigation
                                                into possible price-
                                                fixing.''--Octane Week,
                                                October 13, 1997.
May 1998....................  FTC............  ``After an almost three
                                                year investigation, the
                                                Commission found no
                                                evidence of conduct by
                                                the refiners [in the
                                                Western States] that
                                                violated federal
                                                antitrust laws.'' FTC
                                                press release, May 7,
                                                2001. Investigation
                                                closed.
May 1998....................  Iowa...........  ``The Iowa Attorney
                                                General's office
                                                launched an
                                                investigation into price
                                                fixing in Dubuque and
                                                Waterloo. The Attorney
                                                General's office said
                                                from the beginning that
                                                proving price-fixing
                                                without insider would be
                                                difficult and did not
                                                find evidence of it.''--
                                                Des Moines Register.
GAO Study of California       GAO............  GAO study of California
 Prices Initiated 1999.                         gasoline prices
                                                requested by Sen.
                                                Feinstein finds the
                                                state's high gasoline
                                                prices are due to the
                                                strict supply and demand
                                                nature of gasoline.
AG Investigation Initiated    California.....  Preliminary investigation
 Summer of 1999.                                reveals no evidence of
                                                wrongdoing; high gas
                                                prices may be the result
                                                of low competition in
                                                the market.
AG Investigation Initiated    Alaska.........  ``The investigation was
 Summer of 1999.                                initiated in 1999 in
                                                response to public
                                                complaints about the
                                                high price of gasoline
                                                in Alaska in comparison
                                                to other states,'' [AG]
                                                Botelho said, ``I am
                                                closing the
                                                investigation because
                                                there is insufficient
                                                evidence indicating a
                                                violation of the
                                                antitrust laws.''--
                                                Governor's Press Release
                                                (Nov. 21, 2002).
AG Investigation Initiated    Iowa...........  ``Iowa Attorney General
 Summer of 2000.                                Tom Miller said Thursday
                                                he uncovered no evidence
                                                of illegal price-fixing,
                                                collusion or antitrust
                                                violations while
                                                investigating spikes in
                                                gasoline prices last
                                                summer.''--The Gazette,
                                                April 20, 2001.
AG Investigation Initiated    Missouri.......  No evidence of
 Summer of 2000.                                wrongdoing.
                                                Investigation closed.
AG Investigation Initiated    Indiana........  No evidence of
 Summer of 2000.                                wrongdoing.
                                                Investigation closed.
Investigation of Midwest      FTC............  No evidence of industry
 Prices Initiated Summer of                     wrongdoing/collusion.
 2000.                                          Final FTC Report
                                                released March 30, 2001.
                                                Investigation closed.
AG Investigation Initiated    New York.......  ``Recent higher gasoline
 Summer of 2001.                                costs [in New York] are
                                                not the result of price
                                                gouging, price fixing or
                                                other collusion,
                                                conclude State Attorney
                                                General Eliot
                                                Spitzer.''--Times Union,
                                                May 13, 2001.
AG Investigation Initiated    Kentucky.......  Initial investigation of
 Summer of 2000.                                Kentucky gasoline prices
                                                last summer [2000] found
                                                no wrongdoing; specific
                                                investigation in
                                                Louisville's West End
                                                remains open.--Cairrier
                                                Journal, May 11, 2001
Impact of Mergers on Gas      GAO............  GAO findings due to
 prices; Initiated Summer of                    Senate Subcommittee on
 2002.                                          Investigations (Senate
                                                Government Reform
                                                Committee) by August
                                                2002.
AG Investigations Initiated   Minnesota......  No evidence of illegal
 Summer of 2001.                                pricing behavior by
                                                retailers or refiners
                                                following terrorist
                                                activity of September
                                                11.
DOE Investigation of          DOE............
 Gasoline Price Increases;
 Initiated September 2003.
Department of Consumer        Connecticut....  DCP press release of 11/
 Protection.                                    26/03 states, ``While
                                                numerous factors
                                                contributed to a sharp
                                                increase in gasoline
                                                prices this summer,
                                                wholesalers and
                                                retailers were not
                                                hiking prices to pad
                                                their profits . . .''
------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Well, if they are not polluting, out there conspiring to fix the 
market, they are profiteering. They have got to be making huge amounts 
of money today at $2.35 a gallon in California, or $1.80 in my State.
  Look at last year on this chart. This is from BusinessWeek magazine. 
Let's talk about the most profitable businesses in the economic sector 
of the United States. It is not profitable to own an oil company. You 
ought to own a bank. You ought to own diversified finances, real 
estate, semiconductor equipment, pharmaceuticals, and biotech. That is 
where the returns are, 19 percent, 17, 16, 14, and 12 percent. Let's go 
find big oil. Where is big oil? Well, let's see. Big oil is all the way 
down at the bottom in the utility area. I believe it is something like 
a return on investment of 1.4 percent. Oh, my goodness. Is that 
profiteering? I don't think it is profiteering. I think it is called 
return on investment versus competition versus price of input product. 
And the price of crude oil is $36. That is the reality of what we are 
dealing with.

[[Page 5832]]

  Here is a problem out in California. Let's go to the next chart 
because California worries me. I am glad I don't live there at the 
moment. I am glad I am not paying $2.35 or $2.40 a gallon. I am sorry 
that Californians are. This is a very interesting chart. It deals with 
what we call U.S. gasoline requirements under the Clean Air Act. We 
know we have air problems in heavily congested areas where air is 
stagnant, and it doesn't move as rapidly as in some other areas. That 
is certainly true in the State of California.
  Every one of these different colors on this map represents a 
requirement for the refining industry to produce a unique kind of 
product. We see in the State of California one, two, three--possibly 
four types of what we call boutique fuels, or certain blends of fuel. 
Every refinery has to shut down and readjust before they can produce 
that kind of fuel, and that kind of fuel costs more money than a 
standardized kind of fuel. As a result, it does drive prices up, and we 
know that to be a reality.
  That is part of the problem we face when we look at our clean air 
standards in the Clean Air Act. I am not arguing we should not have the 
Clean Air Act, but there are times when reasonable flexibility ought to 
be offered when consumers are paying unprecedented prices, or maybe we 
ought to be concerned about refinery capability and capacity. We have 
lost numerous oil refineries in the continental United States over the 
last good number of years. Many of our companies today are saying it is 
better that we--here is that bad old word--outsource if we want to keep 
prices low in this country because Federal regulations and certain 
State standards are costing us a great deal of money.
  In the area of gasoline, to understand the reason it is $1.80 in 
Idaho and $2.35 in California, look at the map. There is part of the 
reason. It is not all of the reason, but a substantial part of the 
reason that we are dealing with energy in a way that is very 
frustrating. Here is the most frustrating thing to do, along with not 
being able to pass an Energy bill. When we talk about the economy and 
jobs and job creation--this is the investor thinking at this moment--
the average investor who puts money in the business that creates jobs--
here is investor attitude this month. In fact, it comes from a headline 
in a Gallup poll survey. It says: ``Overall investors' optimism 
declines for the second month in a row in March.'' The No. 1 reason for 
the decline in investor attitude was the price of energy because an 
investor looking at a company knows that company is going to have to 
pay for energy as a part of the output of that company, and it is going 
up dramatically. Sixty-four percent said high energy costs are hurting 
the economy a lot.
  If you listen to the rhetoric on the floor of the Senate for the last 
several days, you would not have gained one inkling of that. Nobody has 
talked about passing an Energy bill and developing a national energy 
policy that gets us back into production. Yes, there is a Senator over 
there from Nebraska who agrees with me. We are talking about things 
that make for good political ads but darn bad economy, at this moment. 
I don't blame the American consumer, and now the American investor who 
drives the economy of our country, for saying high energy costs are 
going to hurt us and are hurting a lot.
  I mentioned on the floor of the Senate yesterday that I talked with a 
banker in Idaho who does a lot of operating lines for farmers--not big 
farmers but medium-size and small farmers. He called all of his branch 
bank managers and said: See if that farmer can afford a 20- to 30-
percent cost in doing business this year because that is where the 
energy costs are going to take them on the fertilizer and hydrous 
ammonia, a direct result of gas gone up almost 100 percent--how can we 
keep an abundant, safe, high-quality food supply if we are going to 
cause farmers to produce less because they cannot afford to produce 
more?
  Now, all of our chemical companies are headed offshore to cheaper 
gasoline because we are too busy locking up the public lands of the 
West and denying exploration, all in the name of the environment. We 
are now talking about raising the minimum wage, and we cannot even 
create jobs in other wage categories because we will not allow the 
investment. One of the great competitive characteristics of our country 
is the tremendous ingenuity and initiative of the American workforce 
and low energy costs. Historically, our great wealth was driven by low 
energy costs. Now, we are no longer in that category. We are competing 
in a much tighter world market because somehow in the decades of the 
1980s and 1990s, we forgot you had to produce it before you could use 
it. As a result, now we are 60-percent dependent upon foreign oil--60-
percent dependent upon someone other than an American for determining 
the price of gasoline at the pump. Well, shame on us. It is a very real 
world we live in, and that is the consequence we are dealing with.
  So why are we not debating an Energy bill on the floor of the Senate? 
Our President, when he came to office, while he was still President-
elect, said the No. 1 priority in this country was to develop a 
national energy policy. He acted quickly, put a team together under the 
Vice President. They recommended a variety of ideas to us in their 
policy. That was 3 years ago, or more, and we are still sitting around 
debating it and saying we cannot get there. Now the American consumer 
is paying at the highest price ever.
  Doesn't the Senate get it? I don't think so. I think the politics of 
energy is so sweet that somehow we deny the reality at hand. I think it 
is time to cease denying that reality. Here are the facts. The 
investment community is saying: Wait a minute, energy prices are high 
and getting higher, and they are hurting the economy. It is time that 
we do something about it.
  Here is the only thing I can do about it, and I am willing to help my 
fellow Senators. Go to my Web site, if you would, craig.senate.gov. 
There are all the facts and statistics on energy. Anybody listening can 
go there, too, and they can see who voted for it and against it and 
their phone numbers. I don't think Senators ought to call Senators. 
They ought to talk to them on the floor and say that is the thing to 
do. There are Senators in this body who deserve a phone call and 
deserve to be asked why they voted against the conference report on 
energy, why they are denying the American consumer--the minimum wage 
person, along with the millionaire--a reasonable energy policy for this 
country, which sustains our economy and creates jobs, and that allows 
us that competitive force we have always had in the world market. We 
were not allowing it. The Senate is not allowing it.
  There is a sole reason today why this country does not have a modern 
energy policy that involves production, that involves conservation, 
that involves new technologies, that involves new resources. The reason 
is the Senate is denying that. They have denied it now for 2 years, and 
it is time we ante up, we get honest with ourselves and have a vote.
  Go to my Web site if you want, I say to my fellow Senators. There it 
is: Craig.senate.gov. All the facts and figures are there. The voting 
records are there. It is time we get honest with ourselves. It is time 
we drop the price at the pump instead of breaking the piggy bank from 
which we all live.
  That is my priority, and I think as American consumers pay the bill, 
it will become their priority. I wish it was the Senate's priority.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. Mr. President, I agree with much of what my 
colleague from Idaho said with respect to passing the Energy bill. I 
think it is important we find ways to become far more energy 
independent, rather than dependent, on foreign sources of oil. In 
addition to looking for ways to become self-sustaining in our energy 
needs, we need to look to the Western Hemisphere for a Western 
Hemisphere energy policy to bring together the countries in this 
hemisphere to work jointly for our energy needs. I will have more on 
this in the future. I commend my colleague for his comments about the 
importance of getting an Energy bill. We need to look at renewable 
sources of energy.

[[Page 5833]]

  I know my colleague from Iowa will agree that soy diesel and ethanol 
would be just a few of the kinds of things we could do as an 
alternative energy policy, and they are all included in the Energy bill 
the Senate has passed on a couple of occasions and hopefully the White 
House will work with the House of Representatives to fashion their 
version of a bill that will mesh with ours so we can ultimately pass in 
the very near future an Energy bill for the United States so 60 percent 
reliance on foreign sources can be reduced as dramatically as we 
possibly can do it, as quickly as possible as well, so we can become 
self-sustaining with our energy needs.
  I wish to also talk today about the effort that has been undertaken 
since at least 1996 by Congress and the previous administration, and 
that is the fundamental reform of the welfare system. This system, 
while seeking to prevent hardship among those hurt by economic 
deprivation by providing a safety net, had unfortunately become a 
spider web. Too many families were caught in the cycle of poverty, and 
the system that was supposed to help them became instead complicit in 
maintaining the cycle.
  Chief among those reforms was providing more flexibility to States. 
As a Governor at the time, I saw firsthand the results of giving those 
closest to the unique challenges of the system, the States, the ability 
to implement changes to the welfare system.
  In Nebraska, we instituted a program called Employment First. This 
was a fundamental change to the way welfare worked. No longer would a 
person automatically be entitled to benefits if able-bodied. He or she 
had to sign a contract which laid out a plan for becoming self-
sufficient. The maximum period of being eligible for benefits was 2 
years barring extraordinary circumstances. Yet Employment First also 
recognized some persons, especially single women with children, needed 
additional help with family matters such as childcare and 
transportation.
  We provided transitional aid for these challenges, even after they 
found employment; if you will, a bridge from welfare to work, a bridge 
that was put in place to help people become self-sufficient in the 
process of finding employment and leaving welfare.
  Public officials were encouraged to consider a new view of the 
measurement of assistance. Instead of focusing on how many were added 
to the rolls, they looked at how many entered employment. That change 
in vision produced dramatic results. The total Nebraska caseload 
dropped 11 percent by 1998, the lowest number in 18 years. Average 
monthly caseloads fell 30 percent from 1993 levels. A family's time on 
assistance had been cut almost two-thirds to 11 months from the time 
under the old system, and Nebraska taxpayers saved $14 million moving 
families from dependence to independence, from welfare to work.
  This is important to note. Nebraska saved $14 million under the new 
system. It is important because States, including Nebraska, are now 
facing serious budget shortages. In fact, today's Lincoln Journal Star 
reports Nebraska leaders had to borrow from the State's cash reserve 
fund to make payroll and pay its bills this week. In fact, $58.2 
million, which is the exact amount Nebraska received in additional 
Federal funds this year, was borrowed from the reserve to fund schools 
and other programs throughout the State.
  The Federal funds stored in the State's reserve have helped States 
during this recession period. Those funds came from a State fiscal 
relief measure sponsored by my colleagues Senator Susan Collins of 
Maine, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Senator Gordon Smith 
of Oregon, and myself. This is exactly what that State fiscal relief 
effort intended: to provide fiscal assistance to help States, such as 
Nebraska, that are facing chronic budget shortfalls and help them meet 
their obligations.
  It is important to remember this welfare reform bill will also help 
States continue to meet those obligations. For example, the State of 
Nebraska sharply cut back eligibility for childcare assistance from 185 
percent of poverty to 120 percent of poverty. As a result, about 1,600 
Nebraska children lost childcare assistance from the State.
  Yesterday the Senate adopted an amendment to add $6 billion for 
childcare services to this bill. Under that amendment, Nebraska would 
receive $40.8 million of that money to help the State provide for 
Nebraska's children. I am proud to say I was one of those in the 
majority who voted for that amendment.
  With flexibility, the States can tailor their programs to meet their 
specific needs and save money in the process. A large part of our 
success in Nebraska in the 1990s was due to the new flexibility allowed 
under the 1996 law. We now want to expand that flexibility so more 
States can craft their own unique methods to succeed.
  Yet Employment First also recognized some persons, especially single 
women with children, needed additional help with family matters, such 
as childcare and transportation, and with the Federal funds that were 
provided were able to do that.
  Today I wish to talk briefly about the Alexander-Nelson-Carper-
Voinovich amendment or, if I am talking to Nebraskans, the Nelson-
Alexander-Carper-Voinovich amendment that would provide that 
flexibility to the States.
  Our amendment would create the accountability for a results 
demonstration project to provide greater flexibility to up to 10 years. 
But we wouldn't just provide flexibility, we would demand results and 
accountability. States participating in the project would be required 
to ensure all adult TANF recipients have a self-sufficiency plan, much 
like Nebraska.
  As I said, we have put this to work in Nebraska. It has made a 
tremendous difference in how recipients look at their own lives. It 
helps them map out their own paths to success and assures they will 
have the institutional assistance they need to follow it.
  Our amendment would also include targets for increasing the State's 
performance, not just increasing employment and job retention, but in 
tracking entry earnings and earnings gains and, most importantly, child 
well-being. This is vital because reducing the welfare rolls will mean 
little if it comes at the expense of children. The amendment would 
institute penalties for States that fail to meet their agreed-upon 
targets because it means little if it is not accompanied by results.
  This proposal will expand upon existing reform measures and will help 
strengthen States' abilities to assist those most in need while giving 
them the tools they need to succeed. It is worth pointing out this 
amendment is sponsored by four former Governors.
  We understand the role of the States in making welfare reform a 
success because we have all been there. States can do more. They want 
to do more. This amendment will help them meet the unique needs of 
their citizens by tailoring their programs to address the needs of 
recipients in their States.
  I recall the times when it was necessary to come to Washington to get 
the approval of Health and Human Services to take a unique approach. 
This was time consuming, expensive, and delayed the process. What we 
want to do is give the Governors the opportunity, through their 
legislatures, to address the needs of recipients in their own 
respective States, under the theory of the States as the laboratories 
of democracy as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. We want to give them 
the opportunity to make those changes and meet the needs of their 
respective citizens.
  I thank my colleagues, Senator Alexander, who has arrived on the 
floor, Senator Carper, and Senator Voinovich for their hard work on 
behalf of welfare recipients and their efforts on this amendment. I 
urge my colleagues to support this amendment and help the States help 
their residents.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I simply wanted to congratulate the 
Senator from Nebraska on his comments. He and I served as Governors, as 
he said. We may not have gotten over

[[Page 5834]]

that entirely as we look at legislation. We strongly support the 
revolutionary change in American life the welfare reform bill has 
brought since 1996. Half of those on the welfare rolls are off. The 
hardest cases remain.
  What we are attempting to do with this amendment is to suggest that 
we want to try, with up to 10 States, to give the Secretary some 
flexibility in finding the best way to help people get from dependence 
to independence. If State plans using a combination of work and removal 
of barriers to work and a variety of other factors can do that 
according to measurable results, then that will give us some successes 
now and information we can use when we consider this bill in the 
future.
  I congratulate the Senator from Nebraska on his leadership and look 
forward to working with him on the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.


                                 Energy

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to very briefly speak about some 
of the issues my colleague from Idaho raised related to the high price 
of gasoline at the pump. I am afraid the impression was created by my 
colleague that if the Senate were just to go ahead and pass the energy 
bill that is now on the Senate calendar, that would solve the problem 
of high gas prices for the American consumer. I think we need to dispel 
that notion if that was the impression that some people had.
  The truth is, there are three big issues I heard referred to. One is 
clearly production of oil is not what it needs to be relative to demand 
today to bring prices down, and the world market is indicating that. We 
received the very unfortunate news this morning that OPEC had decided 
to go ahead with the cut in production they had earlier talked about. 
That is unfortunate. Some of the media has speculated that would result 
in $40 per barrel of oil in the reasonably near future. If that is the 
case, then we will see very high prices for gasoline in this summer 
driving season.
  In a letter I sent to the President last week on March 24, I had 
urged the administration to do all it could to dissuade the OPEC 
nations from going ahead with that proposed cut in production. I do not 
know what actions the administration took. Clearly, if they did take 
actions they were not effective, and accordingly the amount of oil 
being produced by OPEC nations will decrease and that will add to the 
problem of high prices of gasoline at the pump.
  A second item mentioned by my colleague from Idaho was that there is 
inadequate refining capacity. That is clearly true. I recognize that. 
It is one of the items we deal with in this letter I sent to the 
President last week. In that letter, I have urged that the President 
take the necessary steps to bring the parties together and to identify 
what the barriers are to the construction of additional refining 
capacity in this country.
  That is not something we are proposing to legislate in an energy 
bill. There is nothing in the energy bill that deals with expanding 
refining capacity. I do not want anyone who has been watching this 
debate to think by passing an energy bill the problem of refining 
capacity will be solved.
  The Presiding Officer asked the Energy Information Administration to 
do a report as to the effect of the pending energy legislation on 
prices, production, and availability of fuel in the future, and 
essentially the conclusion was the effect of that legislation would be 
negligible. Let's not give people the impression the problem of high 
prices at the pump is going to be solved by the Senate going ahead and 
passing a particular energy bill at this stage.
  I would also point out what we all know, which is that we have passed 
an energy bill in this Senate in this Congress. We passed an energy 
bill in this Senate in the last Congress. So it is not that the Senate 
has been unwilling to act on responsible energy legislation.
  The third item I wanted to talk about is this whole issue of boutique 
fuels. My colleague from Idaho correctly pointed out that one of the 
problems we have and one of the reasons why prices stay higher than 
they should is there is not enough what is called product flexibility, 
that we do not allow refiners to produce product which can be shipped 
to enough parts of the country. We have too many different types of 
boutique fuels and too many formulations for these boutique fuels 
around the country. There are estimated now to be 110 formulations of 
these boutique fuels.
  What I recommended to the President is what the Cheney energy task 
force recommended nearly 3 years ago, and that is the Administrator of 
the EPA be directed by the President to work, with technical assistance 
from the Secretary of Energy, to require revisions of State 
implementation plans to reduce the overall number of fuel 
specifications by at least a factor of 5, and preferably closer to a 
factor of 10. This is not something that requires legislation. This did 
not require legislation when the Cheney task force recommended it; it 
does not require legislation now.
  In fact, when people go back and look at the Cheney task force 
recommendations, there were 105 recommendations listed. They are all 
detailed in the appendix to that report. By the administration's own 
calculation, 76 of the 105 do not require legislative action; they are 
recommendations for administrative action.
  This recommendation to the Director of the EPA to deal with this 
boutique fuels problem is one of those actions that can be taken by the 
administration without any action by this Congress. Again, it is one of 
the items I included in the letter we sent to the President last week 
urging that they move ahead with this. As far as I am informed, there 
has been no action taken on this since May of 2001, when the Cheney 
task force report was released.
  These are things that could be done. None of them, in and of itself, 
is going to dramatically affect the price of gasoline at the pump, but 
together they would help moderate the prices of gasoline as we move 
into the summer driving season. For that reason, I think there are 
actions that should be taken. These are 3 of the 13 different 
recommendations contained in the letter. None of those recommendations 
requires legislation to be passed.
  Clearly, there are provisions of law that I favor enacting and I 
think we should try to enact before the end of this Congress, and I 
hope we are able to do so. To leave the impression that inaction in 
dealing with the price of gasoline is purely a failure of the Congress 
is just misleading.
  For that reason, I urge everyone to review that letter I sent last 
week. I hope we will have more debate in the coming days about those 
steps that can be taken in the near term to deal with the very high 
price of gasoline and to deal with the very high price of natural gas, 
which, of course, we are seeing in the utility and heating bills we all 
have to pay.
  I know my colleagues are waiting to speak. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know we are here today to talk about 
TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. That program 
is a safety net for the American public. I want to talk about another 
safety net program--the safety net for American workers--that will 
provide its last benefit today, March 31. Today is the last day any 
American worker will receive benefits from the Temporary Emergency 
Unemployment Compensation program, which has been providing the last of 
the Federal unemployment benefits to those who came onto the program 
before it expired on December 21. As of today, there are 1.1 million 
people who have exhausted their State benefit without any Federal 
program to pick them up.
  This is more than a dozen times that I have been to the floor to talk 
about this program and the need to reinstate the Federal unemployment 
benefits program. I think my colleagues clearly understand why I am 
here. In fact, we have had a majority of my colleagues in the Senate 
and a majority of my colleagues in the House support a reinstatement of 
this Federal program for

[[Page 5835]]

unemployment benefits. The reason they have supported this program is 
that our economy has not recovered from the recession and has not 
created enough jobs to get America back to work. That means Americans 
who have been unemployed through no fault of their own, who are going 
out, hitting the pavement, trying to find jobs, can't find work.
  The Federal program for unemployment benefits was created to take 
care of Americans during times like this. That is why we have, in the 
past 2 years, supported a Federal program that provides 13 weeks of 
Federal unemployment benefits to all states and 13 additional weeks for 
other States that have unemployment rates significantly higher than the 
national average.
  I have come to the floor today because today we are leaving that last 
person in America, who today is receiving his or her last bit of 
federal help, out in the cold. And we are going to continue to see 
thousands more Americans left out in the cold every week.
  I met with many of my constituents who have had to cash in their 
pensions, or who have had to withdraw from long-term savings meant for 
college tuition, or who have had to take all sorts of extraordinary 
measures to make sure they can continue to pay their bills. They have 
had to take these measures because we have not owned up to our 
obligation, which is to help individuals and the economy in a time of 
recession.
  Let's recap this issue and how we got to this point. Many people look 
at this debate and see what amounts to fairly minor job growth and 
conclude that the economy is going to get better. I am all for the 
economy getting better. I actually believe in the potential of many 
sectors in the American economy to lead us back to a stronger place. I 
believe in aviation and biotech and nanotechnology and software. 
Someday jobs are going to grow in America.
  Right now, however, we are still feeling the aftershocks of a 
recession. Back in 2002, the Bush administration projected that the 
economy would lose about 100,000. What happened in 2002, however, was 
that we actually lost 1.5 million jobs in America. The Administration 
did not have a handle on what was going on with the economy, which 
resulted in job projection that were way off.
  In 2003, the Bush administration tried again. They projected that the 
economy was actually going to pick up. A lot of us, while we might not 
have agreed with the President's economic policies, wanted to hope for 
the best and wanted to see economic growth. We wanted those Americans 
who were without jobs to actually find employment. But, the economy in 
2003 certainly didn't perform the way we thought it was going to 
perform. Even though the White House projected 1.7 million new jobs, 
the economy actually lost 406,000 jobs.
  That leads us to 2004. The President and his economic advisers have 
projected that the economy will grow by 2.6 million jobs this year. And 
by God, this Member of the Senate would sit down and not say another 
word about unemployment benefits if this administration would say that 
they actually believe in their projection. I would sit down and not say 
another word on unemployment benefits, even though they were wrong in 
2002 and 2003. But, in fact, three Cabinet Secretaries of the 
administration came to my State, and when asked about the projection of 
2.6 million number jobs--their own projection--they basically said: 
Well, we don't really believe those numbers. It is kind of a rounding 
error.
  I can tell you that the constituents of my State and across America 
are not a rounding error. They are people who are counting on a Federal 
program to help them. Their employers paid into this program for this 
very circumstance, when the economy is suffering from the aftershocks 
of a recession and there are no jobs to be had. That is why we want to 
help these individuals with a bill to reinstate the unemployment 
benefits program.
  Let's look at the rest of the country because some of my colleagues 
seem to think that apart from a few states with high unemployment, 
things aren't so bad. I know Washington State has been hit hard. In 
fact, the Northwest as a region has topped the unemployment rate 
spectrum for some time. So, there are those who say this is a 
Washington state problem, or a Northwest problem. Yes, we were deeply 
affected by 9/11. Washington is heavily dependent on aviation. Yes, 
there was a huge downturn in the aviation industry. There is no 
surprise that people don't want to fly when you have an international 
recession going on. No wonder people don't want to travel. That has 
started to recover now, after almost 2 years. But this is not only a 
problem for the Northwest.
  Look at these numbers throughout the country: In Ohio, 168,000 
manufacturing jobs lost since 2001; in Texas, 175,000; my State, 66,000 
jobs; California, 350,000; Pennsylvania, 154,000.
  Practically all across America, save Nevada--maybe the Senators from 
Nevada could tell me why--and Alaska, every state has lost 
manufacturing jobs since Bush took office. This is only manufacturing 
jobs. In the Northwest we have lost jobs in software and in a variety 
of other industries. But this chart proves it is a nationwide problem. 
Everywhere in America, everywhere, we have lost manufacturing jobs. 
That has been a challenge to the American workers.
  Let's talk about this as an economic issue because, having been in 
business, I want my colleagues to understand that this is a complex 
problem. We ought to celebrate the high productivity growth. This high 
growth means the economic pie is getting bigger but all that extra 
money in Gross Domestic Product has actually gone to corporate profits.
  Now, it is not a bad thing for companies to be profitable. They need 
to be. They want to give a return to investors. There is nothing wrong 
with that, in and of itself. But what is wrong is when we fail to 
recognize that investors are winning, but laid-off workers are not. Our 
economy is not behaving the same way it did in the past. We are seeing 
a growth in productivity growth, but that has not actually helped us 
produce jobs.
  In the 1990s we had some job loss, but we also had tremendous job 
growth. People don't think about that. They think in the 1990s it was 
probably just go-go-go and everything was very nice for America.
  We actually had a lot of job loss in the 1990s.
  The point is we had more job growth than we had job loss. So, unlike 
today, the people who lost their jobs in the 1990s were actually able 
to go somewhere else and get a new job. Today, people don't have that 
same opportunity once they have lost a job to find other employment.
  A Business Week article came out just a few weeks ago entitled 
``Where Are The Jobs?'' I recommend it to all my colleagues. It goes 
through each of these issues and greatly amplifies the problems we are 
facing and why it is imperative for us to do something about jobs and 
unemployment benefits. We see executive salaries have gone up and 
corporate profits have gone up, but then number of jobs has actually 
gone down.
  Again, I am not saying it is horrible that we have had productivity 
increases--not at all. I'm just saying that if we only look at Gross 
Domestic Product, we miss a key part of the story. Everything isn't 
fine if you are not creating jobs.
  Let's take a look at a cartoon from one of my favorite cartoonists 
from the Seattle paper. I thought this cartoon depicted the problem 
best. While the CEO compensation is going up, middle-class wages and 
the number of workers with health insurance is going down. These 
workers are the people who are barely holding on in this difficult 
economy.
  That is what we have to recognize--millions of Americans are barely 
holding on. I am not saying our colleagues are totally heartless about 
this. But when you know that there are 1.1 million people without a 
paycheck or an unemployment check, and you know that you have the power 
to do something about that and you don't, I start to wonder whether 
either there is some

[[Page 5836]]

heartlessness, or whether it is just a fundamental misunderstanding 
about what is going on with the economy. You can't just simplistically 
say everything is great because gross domestic product and productivity 
are up. It doesn't work that way. We have to get serious about this.
  As the Business Week article pointed out, because of technology, cost 
pressures, the price of health care and political and economic problems 
the link between strong growth and job creation appears to be broken. 
We don't know what is wrong.
  That is a quote from Business Week. That is a business publication 
that talks to businesses, reports on businesses, reports on 
profitability. So when Business Week asked where the jobs are, they 
answered that the link between strong growth and job creation appears 
to be broken.
  This article chronicles these pressures, which are quite obvious if 
you think about it, how technology is increasing productivity, how we 
have increased global competition, how we have skyrocketing health care 
costs, and numerous other things. So, employers aren't hiring, but then 
why hasn't the unemployment rate increased?
  Some of my colleagues have pointed out that the unemployment rate is 
holding at 5.6 percent. They say that we don't have to do anything 
about the unemployment insurance at the Federal level. Well, we cannot 
hang our hat on the 5.6 number because that number hides what is really 
going on with jobs in America; chiefly, that people are dropping out of 
the labor force.
  If we count the 392,000 people who gave up looking for jobs, we find 
the unemployment rate would be more like 7.4 percent.
  But, my colleagues want to say all is fine at 5.6 percent. That is a 
great number. We should be happy with it. Don't worry. Let us all go 
home. We have jobs. We can pay our mortgage payments, but not everybody 
in America can. We have 1.8 percent of the labor force totally out of 
the picture. If we look at the unemployment rate, it would be more like 
7.4 percent.
  The question is whether we are going to keep hiding behind these 
economic indicators and claim the economy is rosy for American workers. 
It may be rosy for corporate America and for shareholders, but it is 
not so rosy for the American worker. We have to come to terms with 
whether we are going to do our job are reinstate the Federal program or 
not.
  Is that such a bad idea? I don't think it is such a bad idea. I think 
it is pretty simple.
  I am kind of amazed it isn't more clear to my colleagues how 
unemployment insurance fits in with a constructive economic plan. My 
support for this program is not because it as a social program. As a 
former businessperson I view it as economic stimulus. With these 
benefits, laid-off workers continue to put money into the local economy 
and pay the mortgage and everything else. That is helpful.
  When Alan Greenspan testified before a committee this month, he said, 
``Extending unemployment insurance is not a bad idea.'' In fact, he 
said, ``At times like this, I support extension of unemployment 
insurance.''
  I wasn't surprised when later I heard that Treasury Secretary Snow 
last week at a hearing said, ``If Congress acts, the President will 
sign the legislation.''
  Well, there is one hat in the hat trick gone of those who oppose this 
legislation. At least we know now the President is saying he is going 
to support it. I wish he would call on a few Members on the other side 
of the aisle. We could certainly use his help.
  I am also bolstered by the fact that even the White House Press 
Secretary Scott McClellan, at a press conference after Snow's comments 
said, ``We have always said we would work with Congress on the issue of 
unemployment benefits.''
  If that isn't an invitation to pass this legislation today, I don't 
know what is.
  American workers who have been left out in the cold and who, with 
their employers, have paid into the unemployment trust fund ought to 
get the support they deserve.
  I remind my colleagues that a majority of Members in both the House 
and the Senate--58 Members over here and 227 Members in the House of 
Representatives--have voted in support of reinstating this program.
  The fundamental question for an unemployed person sitting at home--
whether you are in Detroit or Pittsburgh or in Washington State--is if 
both the House and Senate have a majority of Members voting for this, 
if we have the Secretary of Treasury supporting it, if we have the 
President's spokespeople saying they will work with the Congress on it, 
why can't we get unemployment benefits for the American worker?
  I am not going to continue to belabor this point on the floor.
  I go back to my business experience. I trust the fact that people who 
understand business and how to stimulate the economy know something 
needs to happen.
  This Business Week article didn't give a knee-jerk reaction to our 
problem. There are probably 40 pages in this publication about this 
issue--why we have the unemployment rate, what our economy's illnesses 
are, and what we can do to recover. It is a very thoughtful piece. They 
conclude that Government action will act as a bridge and will help the 
economy cross over the extended valley of almost nonexistent hiring.
  I think they have said it best. It is time for us to act. It is time 
for us to do something on this issue.


                       Unanimous Consent Request

  I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to calendar No. 
470, S. 2250, a bill to extend the Temporary Extended Unemployment 
Compensation Act of 2002 for displaced workers, that the bill be read 
three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the 
table without intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. In my capacity as a Senator from New 
Hampshire, I object.
  Objection is heard.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, will my colleague yield before she yields 
the floor?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Yes.
  Mr. DODD. I commend my colleague from Washington. She has talked 
about this on numerous occasions. Again, she has very eloquently laid 
out a very thoughtful argument about exactly the problems which exist 
across the country when it comes to job creation. As someone who has 
spent an earlier part of her life in the private sector--very 
successfully, I might add--she brings a very special knowledge and 
awareness to these issues and this debate and discussion.
  I wonder if my colleague has seen the most recent statistics. In 
fact, they were released today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I 
do not believe my colleague referenced them, but they illustrate the 
point she is making.
  According to them:

       As of February 2004, 35 states have failed to get back to 
     their pre-recession employment levels. Furthermore, 49 states 
     have not created enough jobs to keep up with the natural 
     growth in the number of potential workers, as job growth has 
     lagged in working-age population since March 2001. As for the 
     unemployed, 43 states have higher unemployment rates than 
     when the recession began.

  And, lastly, they go in and point out a projected job creation of 
306,000 jobs per month. Obviously, we are way off those numbers.
  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which does not have a 
political ax to grind at all--national job creation has fallen over two 
million jobs short of that pace. . . .job growth projected for the Bush 
Administration's economic plan has fallen short in 49 of the 50 states 
as of February 2004. Thirteen states have actually lost jobs since the 
Administration's tax cut was supposed to start creating job growth.
  I was not sure if my colleague was aware of those numbers. Don't they 
make the case even further? These are numbers released today, not going 
back 6 months. But they point out, once again, the sluggishness, to put 
it mildly, of job creation.
  I wonder if my colleague has any statement on that?
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Senator for his question.

[[Page 5837]]

  I had not seen those specific numbers, but for the year 2004, the 
estimate was for 2.6 million jobs. And if you take that by a monthly 
basis, our pace should be more at 250,000 jobs. We have now seen the 
January and February numbers, and they are nowhere close to that. In 
fact, December and January were actually revised down from their 
original projections.
  Now, we will either see, this Friday or the following Friday, what 
the numbers are for March. I do not expect them to be anywhere near 
close to the 250,000 range that would keep us on pace for the original 
2.6 million projection.
  But the Senator is correct in saying the job growth is not happening, 
which is the point I was trying to make. I see the other side of the 
aisle has objected to my unanimous consent request. I have made my 
point on this issue.
  Does the Senator have another question?
  Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield for one additional question. I 
heard the objection expressed by the distinguished chairman of the 
Finance Committee. Does my colleague from Washington have any 
indication when we might get a chance to actually vote on this matter? 
I think there have been 90,000 people a week, if I am not mistaken, who 
exhausted their unemployment benefits--90,000 of our fellow citizens. 
Yet we cannot even get a vote on whether or not we can extend these 
benefits.
  Is there any indication my colleague has received or heard from the 
Republican leadership that we might get a chance to vote on whether we 
could extend these benefits?
  Ms. CANTWELL. Again, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from 
Connecticut, and his question, because I think this must be about the 
15th time or 16th time we have been to the floor to ask for unanimous 
consent to bring this issue up. It is a priority, we believe, for 
America, and it should be brought up.
  As to your question, I have heard rumblings from House Members in 
positions of leadership from the other side that they, too, want a vote 
on it. They are interested in having us send them something. So I think 
the hat trick needs to stop. We need to tell America who is holding up 
this bill. We need to go forward in giving the American people the kind 
of security and support they need in this economic downturn.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DODD. I thank my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. If she is yielding the floor, then I want the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has been recognized.
  Mr. DODD. Will my colleague from Iowa yield--maybe we can work out a 
sequence. I know the Senator from Texas has some comments. I presume 
others do, too----
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Would it be OK if I take 5 minutes?
  Mr. DODD. Absolutely. Even more.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Or even 6 or 7 minutes.
  Mr. DODD. Even 10.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. That is what I would like to do.
  First of all, the Senator from Connecticut asks a legitimate question 
of the Senator from Washington about when this might come up. There is 
an orderly way of doing things around here. And usually in the Senate, 
the leader--and that is not me; that is Senator Frist from Tennessee--
sets the agenda for the Senate.
  It is my understanding that right now we are working on it. I do not 
know whether the Senator from Washington or the Senator from 
Connecticut has been in contact with the leadership of the Senate so we 
can do things in an orderly way or whether they want to make political 
points. But I hope they want to do it in an orderly way because that is 
the way things get done around here. So it is not with pleasure that I 
object right now, and look like a bad person to the Senator from 
Washington--because she has always treated me very fairly in her 
service in the Senate--and to object particularly when we are probably, 
in a matter of hours or a few days, going to pass this legislation. I 
am sure it is going to be passed in a way so that the unemployment 
compensation is seamless for those who are otherwise entitled to it.
  That is all I can do to answer the question of the Senator from 
Connecticut. It is my firm conviction it is going to happen.
  Now, maybe I think things are going to happen, but they might not 
because of something beyond what I know now. But I think they are going 
to happen. I know there have already been suggestions made between the 
two leaders of the Senate's political parties--our respective 
caucuses--to move some of these important issues along.
  But do the members of the Democratic Party in the Senate think only 
Democrats have important issues they want to bring up? Don't they think 
there might be a few Republicans who have something they want to bring 
up? So you work these accommodations out. That is what I think we ought 
to do.
  But what I would like to do, for just a few minutes, is speak to--not 
to challenge anything the Senator from Washington said about 
unemployment because, factually, I do not think you can do that--but 
there are other thoughts that need to be put on the table at the same 
time.
  I made a presentation here 2 weeks ago to try to bring into this 
debate points of view that are made by the intellectual wing of the 
Democratic Party to offset what we have just heard from the political 
wing of the Democratic Party. And I quoted a former Democratic 
Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich. I want 
to quote him again because he writes very eloquently about job changes 
going on in America and about job loss in America.
  I will quote this long paragraph:

       It's true that U.S. manufacturing employment has been 
     dropping for many years, but that's not primarily due to 
     foreigners taking these jobs. Factory jobs are vanishing all 
     over the world. Economists at Alliance Capital Management 
     took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and 
     found that between 1995 and 2002, 22 million factory jobs had 
     disappeared.

  Now get this:

       The U.S. wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11 
     percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the 
     Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations 
     lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline, 
     China a 15 percent drop. What happened to factory jobs? In 
     two words, higher productivity.

  He says:

       I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees 
     and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front 
     of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years 
     this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for 
     an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades 
     the robots, like the gas man changing your meter.

  The points about productivity she made very well, I believe. But here 
is the other side of that. You can create jobs and not have 
productivity--be inefficient, be uncompetitive, and not have a business 
after a while. Or you can be productive because enhancing productivity 
in America is what it takes to raise wages. If you want to increase the 
standard of living in America, you have to raise wages. To raise wages, 
you have to enhance productivity.
  So are they suggesting we ought to turn the clock back and forget 
about productivity, forget about raising the standard of living in 
America? Do they want us to become some Third World economy over the 
period of the next 50 years, if you went down that road, or do you want 
to do what America can do best, the other things Secretary Reich is 
referring to? We have a knowledge base in America. Take advantage of 
that knowledge base. Create jobs that are more productive and, in the 
process, raise wages and raise the standard of living. Those are the 
choices we have.
  America is a dynamic economy. Every month 7 million jobs go out of 
existence, and 7 million jobs come into existence. It would be ideal if 
it were more than 7 million jobs coming on board. That hasn't happened, 
and that is why we have the 2.3 million jobs that are referred to all 
the time.

[[Page 5838]]

  Do you think it is always going to be this way in America? Absolutely 
not, because of the dynamic economy we have. It is because we are 
always enhancing productivity that we are going to do better.
  You don't have to be a defeatist when it comes to the economy. We 
have gone through tougher times. We have gone through tougher times 
when unemployment was 25 percent, not 5.6 percent. We got through it. 
America is stronger today. Don't lose faith in America.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Senator. This Senator has the utmost 
respect for him and his positions and his understanding of this issue. 
He is right. Productivity is something we want to embrace. It is good 
for America. You will not that I did not talk about the outsourcing 
issue. I talked about the fact that these things are good and there are 
lots of sectors of the economy that are going to be very robust for us 
in the future, issues the Senator is well advised on--nanotechnology, 
biotechnology, aerospace, and software. They are all going to be 
positive sectors.
  The question is, what do we do in this particular recession when 
things haven't been so positive? I certainly respect the challenge the 
Senator has managing this particular legislation and moving it through 
the process. I have found him one of the most cooperative Members with 
whom to work.
  But I feel compelled to ask: Is it possible, then, if we cannot pass 
this bill by Unanimous Consent, can we bring up amendment No. 2940 for 
an up-or-down vote which is a vote on the unemployment benefits and do 
that as part of the TANF legislation?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. The Senator asks a very legitimate question. For my 
part, eventually we have to face this. I don't care how we face it, as 
a separate bill or as an amendment. I think she has to ask somebody 
just one step above my pay grade to get an answer to that. I am not 
prepared to answer that. I do not have an answer from the people that 
give it because, as I said, the leader sets the schedule. I respect the 
leader, and I don't want to put him in a position. I might be able to 
say, but I don't have certainty of it. So I don't want to put him in a 
bad position.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Senator from Iowa.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Iowa yield the floor?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, there are three or four of us here. Maybe we 
should make a unanimous consent request. I plan on taking about 15 
minutes. I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 
15 minutes. My colleague from Texas was next on the floor. I don't know 
how much time he would request, and then I know our colleagues from 
Wisconsin and from Delaware are here as well. Maybe we could set up a 
process so we will have predictability to proceed. May I ask my 
colleague how much time he would like?
  Mr. CORNYN. Fifteen minutes.
  Mr. DODD. And the Senator from Wisconsin?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Twenty minutes.
  Mr. DODD. And my colleague from Delaware?
  Mr. CARPER. Ten minutes.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the 
conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Texas be recognized for 15 
minutes, the Senator from Wisconsin be recognized for 20 minutes, and 
the Senator from Delaware for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Reserving the right to object, I don't think I need to 
object, but I think there ought to be some consideration that if other 
Republicans come to the Chamber, we don't have Democrats ganging up on 
us to give one point of view. There ought to be some accommodation to 
Republicans if they would come over here. I don't expect anybody beyond 
the Senator from Texas to come over and speak, but if they do, I would 
hope you will be a gentleman and try to work them in so we let America 
know there are two sides to every story.
  Mr. DODD. I have no objection to that.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. With that consideration, I do not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, before my colleague from Iowa leaves the 
floor, I want to express my gratitude to the Senator from Iowa, as I 
did yesterday, for his support of the amendment offered by the Senator 
from Maine, Ms. Snowe, and me on the childcare provisions. It was a 
significant vote: 78 to 20 was the final vote.
  Certainly, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senator from 
Iowa, was tremendously helpful in that regard. I wouldn't want him to 
leave without once again expressing my sincere appreciation for his 
support. I have always been treated well by him. We have served 
together now for almost three decades in the Congress, and we have 
always had a strong and good relationship with each other.
  I was disappointed by the position of the administration. To quote 
them from their bulletin:

       In considering this legislation, the administration would 
     strongly oppose any amendment that increases funding for the 
     Child Development Block Grant fund.

  ``Strongly oppose'' is an indication of how they fail to understand 
what I think the Senator from Iowa pointed out--certainly the Senator 
from Maine did--the critical transition that is necessary from welfare 
to work, particularly considering the jobs these people are able to 
get. Most of them are very low-wage jobs. Having a strong childcare 
component is the lifeboat that will get them from one side of the shore 
of this raging river to the other, the side of the shore from welfare 
dependency to work.
  If you cannot get across that gulf because you have young children, 
as many of these people do who are presently on welfare--trying to get 
to work, or those who work today barely holding on--then the likelihood 
they are going to succeed is very small.
  There was a strong vote in this Chamber yesterday to support the 
effort to provide the assistance for literally thousands of young 
children who are on waiting lists in 24 States that we know about, some 
600,000 who will need that kind of assistance.
  I am terribly disappointed the administration strongly opposes 
childcare assistance. My hope is the position of this body will prevail 
in the conference, if we get there.
  I also want to comment briefly on the issue of the minimum wage. I 
thank our colleagues from California and Massachusetts who have raised 
it. The better description of this might be called a livable wage. We 
talk about the minimum wage, but what we are really looking for is a 
livable wage. It is a standard we have embraced for years. 
Administrations, regardless of party, have always embraced the idea of 
setting a floor of what ought to be a livable wage. It is hardly 
livable when you consider the poverty level for a family of three is 
$15,700 and we are talking about people making $10,700 a year working 
full time making minimum wage. That is $5,000 below the poverty level. 
I can't even imagine anywhere in the United States one could live today 
as a family of three with a gross income of $10,700. And that is what 
we are talking about.
  There are 34 million people who are living in poverty in the United 
States. In a nation of 280 million people, 12 million are children 
living in poverty. Obviously, we are not going to solve that problem 
simply by raising the minimum wage level, but we certainly want to give 
people a chance to be hired for a little more than $5 an hour in the 
21st century. As we begin trying to move people from welfare to work so 
they at least have a chance, once they get that job, to hold on and 
then move into more independent living, they must be able to earn a 
livable wage.
  So I am terribly disappointed again that we have not been able to 
have a vote on this matter. I don't think it is terribly complicated. A 
livable wage in

[[Page 5839]]

the United States, certainly in light of what happened since the last 
time we raised it, is in order--considering that every administration, 
from the most progressive to the most conservative, has found time and 
space in which to increase the minimum wage. This is one of the longest 
periods of time we have ever gone without increasing that. It has been 
7 years since we have actually raised the minimum wage.
  During that same time, by the way, this body found room to increase 
our salaries six different times; six times we have raised our 
salaries. Yet, in 7 years, we have not increased the minimum wage. I 
have not objected to salary increases for Congress. I understand that. 
The point is, when we find time to debate and vote on matters that 
allow us on six different occasions to raise our salaries and not on 
one occasion have we been able to raise the minimum wage or the livable 
wage for people living in the levels of poverty they do, this is 
something I find rather distressing, to put it mildly.
  The great majority of welfare payments go to single mothers. 
Unfortunately, the kinds of jobs women leaving welfare find are often 
minimum wage jobs, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to 
sustain a family and meet the demands of raising children. Life is 
precarious for low-income people, particularly for single mothers 
raising children. In the U.S., regardless of whether they have been on 
welfare or not, for them, survival is a daily goal. If they work hard 
enough and their hours are long enough, maybe they can make ends meet, 
but only barely. They don't have time for their families because they 
are working tremendous hours, sometimes a couple of jobs to make ends 
meet. They are not buying homes, going on vacation, going to the 
theater, or symphonies, or buying extra clothes. They are trying to 
hold their families together. The idea of buying gifts for children, 
taking them on special trips, that is not part of the family's agenda 
if you are part of the 34 million people in this country living in 
poverty. We are trying to get that minimum wage after 7 years to a 
point that makes it possible to at least make it a little easier to 
meet the daily goal of survival. We must stop asking families to do it 
alone. They are working too many hours for too little pay.
  Often these children who are being raised in this environment are not 
entering our school system--particularly well prepared to learn. Talk 
to any teacher in any rural area where there is poverty, or to a 
teacher who works in our inner cities where poverty exists. Without 
exception, regardless of their politics, teachers will tell you 
children who are not getting the attention and time and care needed are 
starting their lives way behind.
  Ultimately, we pay a price in this country for that. I will not 
suggest to you the minimum wage solves all of those problems. But 
should we not in this great country, after 7 long years, provide an 
extra couple of dollars an hour so people might have a little bit more 
income to provide for their children. We need to help raise wages for 
these families so they can make ends meet and improve the quality of 
their lives. One of the best first steps is to ensure the work pays a 
fair, livable wage. The real value of the livable wage has fallen 
dramatically over the past 30 years. The livable wage workers are being 
left further behind every year. Working families have waited long 
enough. Minimum wage employees work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, 
and earn $10,700. That is if you work every week. Forget that 2 weeks 
vacation or even 1 week of vacation--you earn $10,700.
  This is the 21st century. In America, what community can you live in 
with a family of 3 on $10,700? I don't think you are going to find one. 
The poverty level is approximately $15,000 for a family of 3. We must 
raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour, and I think we can do it.
  Under the proposed bill, we go from $5.15 to $5.85 to, one year 
later, $6.45, and the year after that, to $7. That is what we are 
proposing. I suspect some negotiation might happen in order to get 
something done. But, we cannot even vote on the issue.
  Today, more than 34 million people live in poverty, including 12 
million children. Among full-time, year-round workers poverty has 
doubled since the late 1970s, from 1.3 million then to 2.6 million in 
2002. An unacceptably low minimum wage is a key part of the problem we 
are trying to solve. Every day the minimum wage is not increased, it 
continues to lose value and workers fall farther behind.
  Minimum wage workers have already lost all of the gains of the 1996-
1997 increase, 7 long years ago. Today, the real value of the minimum 
wage is more than $3 below what it was in 1968. To have the purchasing 
power it had in 1968, the minimum wage would actually have to be closer 
to $8.50 an hour than to $5.15, which is where we are today.
  In the past 7 years, salaries of lawmakers have gone up by $23,400, 
giving ourselves 6 raises, while minimum wage workers continue to earn 
$10,700 a year. Nearly 7 million workers would directly benefit from 
the proposed minimum wage increase 35 percent are their family's sole 
earners and 61 percent are women. Almost one-third of those women are 
raising children. An increase to $7 an hour for a full-time, year-round 
worker would add $3,800 to their income.
  What does that buy? If you are living in affluence, not much. But 
$3,800 for a minimum wage worker and their families means buying more 
than a year of groceries; 9 months of rent; a year and a half of heat 
and electricity in their homes; or full tuition for a community college 
degree. I know there are those who object to this increase and believe 
it is going to slow economic growth in the country. That is not true.
  Ever since there has been a minimum wage increase, there has been no 
ill effect on economic growth in the country. I suggest by doing this, 
there is a greater likelihood we are going to keep people in the 
workforce--even if they are minimum wage jobs--and allow them to 
provide the bare survival needs of their families, so they don't fall 
back into a dependency situation of one kind or another.
  I think we all become winners if we give these people a chance to 
have a higher standard of living than that which they are presently 
getting with the $5.15 an hour wage.
  I know it is not the job of the chairman of the Finance Committee to 
set the agenda. But somebody has to set the agenda around here. We have 
been debating other issues of almost total irrelevancy. I guess at some 
point we are going to debate gay marriage. Well, that is a compelling 
issue for the vast majority of people who are trying to make ends meet. 
Or we will debate medical malpractice where you cannot even negotiate 
what comes out of it. We can debate whether the gun manufacturers ought 
to be excused from any liability. Heaven forbid we take an hour or two 
and debate whether we increase the minimum wage a few dollars more than 
$5.15 an hour.
  I will emphasize to you again $10,700. That is what the minimum wage 
provides today. I don't think anyone believes that is a condition or a 
circumstance, economically, in which you can expect a family of 3 to 
survive. You cannot make it, no matter how determined you are. I 
believe we ought to be able to take care of this issue and do it 
promptly. It would be a great piece of economic news for millions of 
Americans and not just for those living in poverty. I think for 
millions more who don't live in poverty and see people doing it every 
day there would be a sense of gratification that we are doing something 
for people. We are doing something for people who make the effort every 
day not to fall back into dependency, but to provide an opportunity for 
their families, to stay independent, become self-sufficient, and raise 
a family. I have often said that the best social program ever 
envisioned was a decent paying job. The second thing you and I ask a 
person we meet for the first time after their name is: What do you do?
  Everybody I have ever met wants to take pride in what they do. By 
giving people a livable wage, we allow them to be able to say to their 
children and families and neighbors: I do something. I have value. I 
have worth.
  Providing an additional $3,800 over 2 or 3 years is not asking too 
much. I

[[Page 5840]]

would hope we could adopt the Boxer-Kennedy amendment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Texas is recognized.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to make a few comments about what I 
believe to be a better way than we have heard today, which has so far 
been a proposal for greater Government regulation and intervention, 
more of a straitjacket on those who create jobs and create those 
livable wages about which the Senator from Connecticut has spoken.
  I also want to say a few words in response to the breathless negative 
comments we have heard in recent weeks about our economy and about job 
creation in this country, and in the process the attacks that are made 
repeatedly on this floor and elsewhere against President Bush.
  Of course, in every election year, we all understand there will be a 
rise in political sniping, but no one should ever cross the line and 
mislead the American people about the fundamental strength of our 
economy or champion this negative view just because they view it to be 
in their own political self-interest to undermine public confidence in 
the economy.
  Sadly, it seems there are some interested in playing on fear and 
anxiety. Some who talk about job loss and unemployment provoke, rather 
than actually working, as we have the opportunity to do on this floor, 
to actually fix some of the problems and some of the conditions that 
would give rise to job creation and more job security in this country.
  The truth is we ought to be able to agree on the facts. The public 
policies we argue based on those facts are something else. We are going 
to have policy differences. We are going to have differences of 
position, and that is to be expected, and that is fine. But we should 
agree on the facts.
  Fact No. 1: Home ownership is at an all-time high in the United 
States of America, and that is an enormously good and positive thing. 
More people in this country are achieving part of the American dream.
  Interest rates we know are at a historic low. Productivity is booming 
which, in turn, increases the ability of employers to invest in their 
business and to create even more jobs. And indeed, the gross domestic 
product in this country is growing by leaps and bounds.
  One fact we should and I think we can agree on is the unemployment 
rate is standing at about 5.6 percent. The interesting thing about that 
is the story we heard in 1996 from the distinguished minority leader 
from South Dakota, back at a time when we had a 5.6 percent 
unemployment rate. Senator Daschle said:

       The economy is doing extraordinarily well. . . . We have 
     the lowest rate of inflation and unemployment we've had in 27 
     years.

  What was the unemployment rate then, and what is the unemployment 
rate now? It is identical.
  Today I read the comments of the junior Senator from New York who 
said with a 5.6 percent unemployment rate, it is obvious the economy is 
not creating any jobs. But indeed it was another Clinton back in 1996 
who said:

       I was gratified to hear our partners praise the strength of 
     our economy . . . Lower interest rates have helped us slash 
     unemployment--

  To what? That is right, to 5.6 percent.
  It seems for many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, a 
5.6 percent unemployment rate under a President named Bush is a 
travesty, but a 5.6 percent employment rate under a President named 
Clinton is just fine and dandy.
  We have more than 138 million Americans working today, a figure we 
should be very proud of, the highest in our Nation's history. But you 
would not know that from listening to those who try to talk down the 
economy.
  Something we can all agree on, I am sure, is any person out of work 
who wants to work is one person too many. Indeed, I would hope the one 
thing we would all be able to agree on is we ought to pursue policies 
which encourage full employment and we ought to provide everybody in 
this country who wants a job the ability to provide for themselves and 
their families.
  Sometimes you get the idea our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle really want to have it both ways. They want to have low 
unemployment, which is what we all want, but they also want to oppose 
policies which are designed to reduce unemployment and to encourage 
full employment. For example, I read this morning the reaction of some 
in this body to the comments made by Treasury Secretary John Snow who 
pointed out that outsourcing, a subject of frequent commentary in this 
body, is an important aspect and, indeed, an inevitable aspect of free 
trade that ultimately produces jobs in this economy.
  The Senator from Massachusetts, who happens to be a candidate for 
President of the United States, said he wants to crack down on 
``Benedict Arnold CEOs and corporations'' who engage in outsourcing as 
a way to maintain their competitiveness in this global economy. As the 
junior Senator from New York said, when it comes to outsourcing:

       I really don't know what reality the Bush administration is 
     living in . . . [outsourcing] isn't good for America.

  I suggest those who say outsourcing is something that we actually 
have the capacity to stop or they think is bad to job creation in 
global competitiveness sit down and have a conversation with Robert 
Reich, President Clinton's former Secretary of Labor, who claimed in a 
Washington Post op-ed on November 2, 2003, that ``High-Tech Jobs Are 
Going Abroad, But That's Okay.''
  Getting a meeting with Professor Reich should be convenient, as Mr. 
Reich is candidate Kerry's top labor adviser and a member of his 
steering committee.
  I think Mr. Snow, the Treasury Secretary, knows an awful lot about 
economics, but I also agree that so does Mr. Reich. They both agree 
outsour-
cing is an inevitable result of free trade that ultimately benefits 
America and America's competitiveness in the world economy.
  As Mr. Reich wrote:

       It makes no sense for us to try to block efforts by 
     American companies to outsource.

  Just this month, Mr. Reich was interviewed in the Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette and asked: What do you think about the move in Congress to bar 
Federal contracts from being outsourced to other lower cost countries? 
Mr. Reich's response:

       A silly political ploy.

  Yet even as outsourcing continues to be a subject of discussion and 
even as some of my colleagues in this body throw it out as something 
that is bad and hurtful to America and America's competitiveness, we 
all seem to have forgotten it also goes the other way. Indeed, my State 
of Texas is one of the leading beneficiaries of what I will call 
insourcing; that is, foreign investments in America.
  According to the Texas Department of Economic Development, Texas has 
more than $110 billion in foreign investment, direct investment in our 
State, and that is approximately $5,000 in foreign investment for every 
Texan--$5,000 for each of 22 million Texans in direct foreign 
investment because of free trade.
  There are 430,000 jobs in Texas thanks to outsourcing by these 
foreign corporations. People who would otherwise be out of work if we 
did as some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle suggested. 
Members who are appealing to the anxieties and fears of the American 
people rather than giving them the information they need to understand 
and that we all need to embrace in terms of maintaining our global 
competitiveness.
  I ask my colleagues to tell me why creating jobs for the hard-working 
citizens of my State by encouraging this foreign investment in our 
country is a bad idea. If we are to cave in to fear mongering by those 
who want to erect a protectionist wall around our country, do my 
colleagues think other countries might choose to retaliate against the 
United States? You bet.
  This is a two-way street, and there is a natural flux. New jobs are 
created and old jobs fade away. That is what

[[Page 5841]]

being part of a market economy is all about. In the end, the net 
increase is a good one.
  This week in my State, a study found we will lose 3,000 technology 
jobs over the next 5 years due to outsourcing. That is the bad news. 
The good news is we are going to gain 24,000 jobs over the same period.
  I reassure my colleague from New York, according to this report, her 
State will have a net gain of more than 18,000 jobs over the same 
period thanks to outsourcing, which she has said is a bad idea and out 
of touch with reality.
  When companies that provide employment save money and maintain their 
competitiveness in a global economy because of outsourcing, they can 
afford to hire more U.S. employees. As a matter of fact, if we were 
somehow trying to find a way to prohibit this phenomenon, the only 
choice some of these employers would have would be to pack up their 
American company and simply move it overseas. What good would that do? 
That would obviously cause more harm than good.
  We are dealing with a simple economic truth, and one that far too 
many ignore or choose to distort for partisan political purposes in 
this election year. We have to recognize that in the 21st century, we 
are competing in a true global economy, and our job in Government ought 
to be to try to find ways to enhance America's competitiveness in the 
economy, not the other way around. That is why I believe education, job 
training, and the President's community college initiative he talked 
about during his State of the Union address are so important, steps 
also endorsed by Chairman Alan Greenspan. These programs, which I have 
seen in operation in communities across my State, from Amarillo to 
Houston to Austin, have created opportunities for young men and women 
to train and retrain, to hold better paying jobs in an ever-changing 
economy. I have seen the positive results of these partnerships between 
businesses and community colleges when it comes to training and 
retraining the workforce for these good, high-paying jobs.
  High taxes, overregulation, and rising health care costs, in an 
environment that encourages people to sue first and ask questions 
later, are damaging our global competitiveness. Those on the other side 
who seem to persistently favor higher taxes and more regulation are at 
the same time complaining about America's inability to compete and to 
keep these jobs in America. Those who still honestly believe we can 
sue, tax, and regulate our way to economic growth and prosperity are 
just flat wrong.
  In this body, we have had many opportunities to address some of these 
competitiveness issues. We had the opportunity earlier this year to 
pass class action reform and medical liability reform which would lower 
health care costs so more employers could provide health care coverage 
at a more reasonable cost to more employees. We have had a chance to 
reform our broken asbestos liability system. Yet, there are those who 
consistently vote against these reforms that would make America more 
competitive in this global economy and would increase the opportunity 
to create jobs. Members who now are prescribing the wrong medicine for 
what ails the American economy. This is even at a time when our economy 
is roaring back, thanks to the leadership of our President and the 
actions of this Congress in reducing the tax burden on hard-working 
Americans.
  I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, when they talk 
about their desire to increase competitiveness of American job creators 
in this global economy, will join us in reconsidering the position they 
have taken so far in opposing the JOBS bill, medical liability reform, 
a rational national energy policy, class action reform, asbestos 
litigation reform, and many other measures that would enhance America's 
competitiveness in this global economy. They need to allow us to vote.
  I believe a bipartisan majority stands ready to pass many of these 
reforms which would create more jobs and improve the economy. Time and 
time again, when we have had the chance to fix these problems, when we 
have had a chance to address these issues, there are those on the other 
side whose only answer is, no, no vote, no closing off of debate, no 
improving of the competitiveness of America in the global economy.
  In closing, I want to reinforce what I have tried to say throughout. 
There is a lot of good news I do not think is breaking through the 
clutter on the 24-hour cable news cycle in this highly politicized 
election year. There are those who want to bad-mouth the economy, 
increase the anxiety of people who are working, and compound the misery 
of those who are out of work by saying there is no hope; America cannot 
compete; the only way we can protect American workers is to build a 
wall around our country and to stop free markets.
  I think that is absolutely the wrong medicine for what ails this 
country. What we need is to be true to our principles. Americans have 
always and will always be able to compete given a level playing field. 
This is not a time for us to lose confidence in America's ability to 
compete and to create jobs in a way that has made us the envy of the 
world. This is not the time to tell the American people that America 
cannot compete and our only hope is to retreat into our shell and to 
build the walls of protectionism around our country.
  Indeed, we have been preaching to the entire free world, including 
the new democracies that have just joined NATO and will soon join the 
European Union, that free markets and free trade are the answer. 
America must stick by that answer because it is the last best hope for 
improved quality of life and freedom for people all across this planet.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). The Senator from Wisconsin.


                          The 9/11 Commission

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, yesterday the 9/11 Commission heard the 
public testimony of current and former Cabinet and National Security 
Council officials. It is critically important to make certain the 
historical record is accurate and complete and to establish all of the 
facts surrounding what the various elements of the U.S. Government knew 
about the terrorist threat before September 11, 2001.
  The most important task before us, our first priority, should be to 
stop future attacks, to crush the terrorist organizations that are 
trying to kill us and trying to kill our children.
  Over 2\1/2\ years have passed since that horrible day. We are 
dutybound to get our post-September 11 response right, and I think 
getting it right means keeping this fight focused on the terrorist 
networks that attacked this Nation. Putting it more simply, it means 
keeping our eye on the ball. We need to take this fight to the 
terrorists. That is why every Member of this body voted to go after 
those responsible for attacking this country on September 11, 2001. But 
the further we get from September 11, I am concerned that we are not 
doing enough to root out the terrorists in Afghanistan.
  Recently, we have all heard a lot about the spring offensive in the 
border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I support the offensive 
and I remain deeply grateful for the service of our men and women in 
uniform. But why is this offensive happening this spring? We are 
talking about forces that attacked this country in 2001. This offensive 
should have taken place last spring. In fact, by the end of last 
spring, Rand Beers, who had served as counterterrorism adviser to this 
administration in the National Security Council, had resigned his job 
and was voicing his concerns about the insufficient effort in 
Afghanistan. ``Terrorists move around the country with ease. We don't 
even know what is going on,'' he told a reporter.
  The director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York 
University just found that ``the low level of funding for the 
reconstruction of Afghanistan remains astonishing, given the importance 
with which major nations claim to regard it and the consequences of the 
previous neglect of that country.''
  When it comes to terrorists in Afghanistan, we need to finish the job

[[Page 5842]]

and finish them off. Then we need to make sure that we support the 
Afghan people and help them create a climate in their country that will 
make it impossible for terrorist forces to survive there in the future.
  Make no mistake: The al-Qaida network is not confined only to 
Afghanistan. It would be misleading and dangerous to suggest that 
eliminating a handful of al-Qaida leaders eliminates the threat from 
the network. None of these al-Qaida forces should ever know a moment's 
peace. We must wage a relentless campaign against al-Qaida around the 
world, and we will not be done until they have nowhere left to hide.
  I joined my colleagues in authorizing the use of force against those 
responsible for the September 11 attacks. When I cast that vote, I 
expected a serious campaign targeting the terrorists who attacked this 
country. I am pretty confident most Americans expected the same thing. 
What we did not expect was that elements of that effort would be left 
to tread water so that we could focus resources on the war in Iraq 
instead.
  Instead of keeping our eye on the ball, instead of focusing on 
winning the fight we are in, this administration launched into a 
tremendously costly initiative in Iraq. Of course, they have used a 
whole lot of different arguments to justify this war, and a lot of 
arguments trying to link the war to the fight against terrorism, even 
though on January 8 of this year, Secretary of State Colin Powell 
stated he had not seen any ``smoking gun or concrete evidence'' of ties 
between former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Even though 
the report The Network of Terrorism, published by the State Department 
in the wake of 9/11, which begins with the words of the President of 
the United States, listed 45 countries where al-Qaida or affiliated 
groups were known to have operated--and guess what, Iraq was not one of 
the 45. Iraq was not on the list in the report. Even though Richard 
Clarke, the man whom the Bush administration chose to head up 
counterterrorism policy within the National Security Council, told the 
President and members of his Cabinet that Iraq had nothing to do with 
9/11.
  By the summer of 2002, national security debates weren't about the 
fight against terrorism anymore; they were all about the invasion of 
Iraq. We got sidetracked. We are facing one of the most serious threats 
to our national security in the history of this country, and I dare 
anyone to say that is an exaggeration, but what did we do? We took our 
eye off the ball.
  As I said before, even as our brave troops were taking Baghdad, 10 
men allegedly involved in the bombing of the USS Cole--a terrorist 
attack that killed 17 American sailors--escaped from a prison in Yemen. 
That news was disturbing, and I wanted answers, answers about what we 
knew about their escape, the circumstances of their detention and the 
security of the facility, about the implications of this lapse. The 
answers were of a deeply troubling ``no one is minding the store'' 
variety. I can assure you I tried again and again to get some 
information about this.
  This month, reports indicate these escapees have finally been 
recaptured. Of course this is good news. But we must take steps to 
avoid this kind of scenario in the future. We must give these issues 
the focus they deserve and devote resources and support to monitoring 
these situations closely and acting to protect our interests.
  As you know, by October 2003, even Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld 
indicated in a memo that, despite over 2 years having passed since 
September 11, ``relatively little effort'' had gone into developing ``a 
long range plan'' to win the fight against terrorism. In the memo of 
the Secretary of Defense, he pointed out that there is no consensus 
within the national security community in the U.S. about how to even 
measure success in this fight. No thoughtful and useful way to tell 
where we stand? So not only have we lost our focus in this fight, we 
don't even have a way to measure our lack of focus. This is our most 
important national security priority. Something is not right with this 
picture.
  Iraq is a mammoth undertaking. We only have so many national security 
resources, and all the resources we used to fight the war with Iraq--
the military resources, the intelligence resources, the money, effort, 
and the long hours--all of them came from what is surely a finite 
supply. The fight against the terrorists who attacked this country had 
to be addressed with what was left, wedged into the margins.
  Jeffrey Record, visiting professor at the Army War College, published 
a paper that very clearly acknowledged this problem. His analysis 
indicated that the U.S. fight against terrorism has been 
``strategically unfocused.'' He writes as follows:

       In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist 
     attacks on the United States, the U.S. Government declared a 
     global war on terrorism. The nature and parameters of that 
     war, however, remain frustratingly unclear. The 
     administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, 
     including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction 
     proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, 
     and national scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to 
     have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing 
     has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it 
     strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United 
     States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with 
     states and nonstate entities that posed no serious threat to 
     the United States. Of particular concern has been the 
     conflation of al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single, 
     undifferentiated terrorist threat.

  He continues:

       This was a strategic error of the first order because it 
     ignored critical differences between the two in character, 
     threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and 
     military action. The result has been an unnecessary 
     preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has 
     created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism 
     and diverted attention and resources away from securing the 
     American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable 
     al-Qaida. The war against Iraq was not integral to the 
     [Global War on Terrorism], but rather a detour from it.

  Some have argued that Iraq itself is the central front in the fight 
against terrorism, despite the absence of significant evidence linking 
the Saddam Hussein regime to terrorists who attacked this country. They 
point to the indisputable fact that in post-Saddam Iraq, terrorists are 
operating in Iraq and they are targeting our brave American soldiers as 
well as innocent American and Iraqi and other civilians. This is a true 
statement. It is also a painful reality. But it is not a strategy for 
defeating al-Qaida. Just because there are attacks in Iraq does not 
mean there will not be attacks elsewhere. The terrorists working for 
and with the al-Qaida network will not all be attracted to Iraq. We 
can't bring them all in there and defeat them there.
  Right now, terror cells are plotting and planning and operating in 
many other places around the world--in the Middle East, in east Africa, 
in southeast Asia, in northern Africa, in central Asia. Pretending that 
a ``roach motel'' strategy against terrorist networks is a viable way 
to protect our national security would be almost laughable if the 
consequences were not so deadly serious.
  There are heartbreaking human costs to the families of killed and 
injured troops, and there are astronomical economic costs--costs that 
America is writing bad checks to cover--as well. And there is the cost 
we can never know or measure, the cost of missed opportunities to make 
progress in the fight against al-Qaida and associated terrorist 
networks.
  I am glad the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein is gone. I am glad the 
Iraqi people have a chance at a better life. I recognize it is not in 
our national interest to let Iraq dissolve into chaotic disorder, but 
my first priority is my concern for the American people, and I doubt 
our effort in Iraq has helped to eliminate the terrorist threat we face 
from the forces that actually attacked us on September 11.
  I also fear that the way the administration has approached Iraq--the 
blurring of facts, the conflating of villains, the shifting 
justifications for war--may undermine our capacity to lead the global 
fight against terrorism. As David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons 
inspector in Iraq said on March 22, ``We are in grave danger of having 
destroyed our credibility internationally

[[Page 5843]]

and domestically with regard to warning about future events.''
  International credibility matters. It is part and parcel of our 
country's power--our power to inspire, to motivate, to persuade. Our 
enemies have a global network. We must have a global response. That 
means close cooperation with countries around the world. It means 
sharing intelligence, and coordinating with other countries to clamp 
down on terrorist financing, squeezing terrorist networks out of the 
shadows in which they operate, leaving them vulnerable and exposed. But 
since September 11, we have seen a loss of this critical American 
power. In fact, today, a majority of people living in Jordan, Morocco, 
Pakistan and Turkey say they believe the U.S. is conducting its 
campaign against terror to dominate others and control the world's oil. 
Somehow the fight against terrorism, which was and should still be a 
rallying point for global unity and resolve, has become divisive.
  We know that the military plays a critical role in fighting 
terrorism. But some have twisted the importance of the military's role 
into an argument that suggests that fighting terrorism is about nothing 
but military force. I believe at best this is delusional and wildly 
dangerous at worst. Military force absolutely must be part of our 
response, and all of us in the Senate voted to give the President the 
authority to use it. And the vast resources available to DOD, which 
unfortunately do not always trickle down to the level of our men and 
women in the field, makes it tempting to turn to our Armed Forces for 
solutions again and again. But we all know this is true: The answers do 
not lie with the military alone--and it is not fair to our brave men 
and women in uniform to make them bear the brunt of conducting the 
fight against terrorism all by themselves. We must also take a hard 
look at all the other forms of power that America has at its disposal, 
strengthen those tools, and apply them wisely.
  Consider what a quick glance at the international section of daily 
newspapers tells us--uranium seizures at insecure borders, money 
laundering through the diamond trade that has been linked to terrorist 
financing, and pirates boarding chemical tankers, steering them for a 
while, and then disappearing.
  As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs, I know 
that we do not have the intelligence resources that we should around 
the world. I know that we do not really have any policy at all to deal 
with Somalia, a failed state in which terrorists have operated and 
found sanctuary. I know that there is a great deal of work to be done 
to help countries in which we know terrorists have operated. We need to 
improve the basic capacities of border patrols who could stop wanted 
individuals, and customs agents who could help stop weapons 
proliferation and auditors who could freeze terrorist assets. And we 
can do more to root out the corruption that undermines these safeguards 
at every turn.
  In the wake of the terrible bombings in Madrid, my heart goes out to 
the people of Spain, and my judgment tells me that too many people are 
misinterpreting the subsequent Spanish election. I don't believe that 
the Spanish people will let their political choices be dictated to them 
by terrorists. The real lesson, the most important lesson that we can 
draw from recent events in Spain is this: A democracy cannot be unified 
and mobilized to fight terrorism when citizens believe that their 
government is willing to mislead them about the threats they face, and 
when they believe that their government does not have its eye on the 
ball.
  Americans know that the battle against terrorism is not a matter of 
choice, and they know that the battle is worth fighting fiercely. We 
will not run scared, and we will not be frightened into abandoning our 
most cherished national values or liberties. So let us move forward to 
harness the strength of this great country, to learn from our mistakes, 
to use all of the tools at our disposal, and to stay focused on the 
most important national security priority before us--fighting and 
defeating the forces that have attacked our country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I extend my appreciation to my friend from 
Wisconsin for his statement. When the senior Senator from Wisconsin 
comes to the floor, he is prepared. I am always so impressed with the 
substance of his statements. The Senator and I have traveled to parts 
of the world. He has a great concern about what is going on in the 
world. He is able to express himself very well. I acknowledge his 
statement today and extend for the second time this afternoon my 
appreciation for his statement.
  Mr. President, there has been a lot of talk on the Senate floor 
today, but I am very disappointed it has only been talk. We are not 
legislating. For this very important bill on the floor, we have had one 
vote. There are many people in the Senate who have more experience than 
I as a national legislator, but I have been here 22 years. I know how 
the Senate operates. I know how it used to operate.
  The way it operates today is not pleasant, I am sorry to say. There 
is no reason we cannot be real legislators, take these amendments and 
work through them. I am convinced this is not the right way to 
legislate.
  I have the greatest respect for the majority leader. He is a fine 
man. He is a humanitarian, as shown by his chosen profession. He is a 
real medical expert. He is an organ transplant specialist. And he has, 
in his capacity as a Senator, gone to countries where there is a 
shortage of doctors, and he does work that he is overqualified for but 
that is badly needed, doing hernias and other types of surgery.
  So I do not say this in any way to take away from the dignity of his 
job. I do not want, in any way, to demean him personally. But I am just 
saying, the Senate is not being handled right. I do not know if it is 
because of the advice he is getting from his other Senators or what the 
reason is. Maybe he is getting advice from the White House. I do not 
know. But we should be moving through these pieces of legislation.
  For example, the FSC bill, this very important tax bill, Senator 
Harkin offered an amendment on overtime. Why did he offer this 
amendment on overtime? Because we believe--and we have substantive 
facts to back us up--that 8 million people, because of actions taken by 
this administration, will no longer be entitled to overtime pay.
  Who are these people? They are firemen; they are police officers; 
they are nurses. If someone disagrees with us, let them come and oppose 
the Harkin amendment in the light of day and say I don't like the 
Harkin amendment for this reason or this reason or this reason. And 
then let's vote on it.
  Senator Harkin has said, on many occasions, he will take a very short 
time agreement on the amendment. What does that mean? It means he would 
take 15 minutes. The majority could have 15 minutes. Let's have a vote 
on the amendment.
  This amendment passed before. It passed the Senate last October. The 
House instructed its conferees to do exactly what the Senate did. But 
that bill was not allowed to move forward because there was an effort 
made--and successfully--not to vote on that overtime amendment.
  So now we move to the reauthorization of the welfare bill, TANF. 
Senators Boxer and Kennedy offered an amendment dealing with minimum 
wage. Certainly, on a welfare bill that is an amendment that seems to 
have some bearing. We want to do what we can. I have supported the 
welfare-to-work programs we have had going. But one of the things we 
have to do is make sure these people moving off welfare and on to work 
can earn a living.
  As we have established on the Senate floor, quite clearly, minimum 
wage jobs are not jobs that are set aside for kids from high school to 
flip hamburgers or for old Americans who are in a state of 
semiretirement and need a little extra work. No. Sixty percent of the 
minimum wage jobs are held by women. And for the majority of those 
women, that is the only money they get for them and their families.
  We want to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour. If someone 
opposes,

[[Page 5844]]

let's have a debate on whether we should raise the minimum wage. But, 
no, we are not allowed to vote on that issue. There have been some 
complaints that, well, there are other amendments. We will give you a 
vote on that maybe, but we have to have an agreement on the other 
amendments.
  Why can't we legislate the way we used to? Just work our way through 
these amendments and produce a tax bill and produce a welfare bill? It 
might require we work a night or two. It might require we have votes on 
Friday and even Monday, but I do not understand why we are in this 
situation. I do not think it is good for the institution. I know it is 
not good for the American public.
  We are not in control of the Senate. Because of the untimely death of 
Paul Wellstone, our margin dropped from 50 to 49. It would have been 
50-50 had he not been untimely killed in that plane crash. Now we are 
in the minority, 51-49. We understand that. We understand there will be 
a day in the future when we will be in control, and we will want as 
much cooperation as we can get from the minority. I hope when we are in 
the majority we will be treated to the sense that the Senate is the 
Senate, as it has been for more than 200 years, and we will work 
through these amendments.
  We have been concerned--and I am happy to see the fact that in a bill 
earlier today the leader of the Budget Committee, Senator Nickles, and 
the ranking member, Senator Conrad, agreed there would be a real 
conference where Democrats and Republicans sit down and try to work out 
differences between the bill. That is the way we need to do it.
  There has been a pattern where Democrats are not even allowed into 
the room at a conference. My limited amount of math shows me we are in 
the minority. And when you have a conference, we are going to lose most 
of those votes anyway, but we are entitled to have a discussion in 
those conference committees about ideas we have. Maybe if our ideas are 
good enough, we can get somebody from the majority to agree with us and 
we can win on some issues in those conferences.
  I can't imagine why we are not doing a better job on moving these 
pieces of legislation. I see my distinguished friend, the majority 
whip, my counterpart. Maybe he is here with some good news that we are 
going to start moving some of this legislation. I hope that is the 
case.
  I want to be as constructive as I can to help work through this 
legislation. But for the life of me, I cannot see why we can't vote on 
overtime and on the minimum wage. It is good for the institution. It is 
good for the country. We are willing to take our chances. If there are 
more votes to defeat overtime and the minimum wage, that is OK. That is 
the way things happen. But we think we can win both measures and move 
past this on to something else that is related.
  I have heard discussions of the ranking member, Senator Baucus, who 
has indicated some of the things we need to get done in the TANF bill. 
I have said on the Senate floor on a number of occasions, I don't know 
of two Senators, in leadership positions with committee assignments, 
who get along better than the senior Senator from Iowa and the senior 
Senator from Montana. They work out their differences.
  I am convinced there is ground to be made up here. We can still do 
these two bills. We want both of them passed. Forty-nine Democrats want 
the welfare bill to pass. We also want the tax bill we were on last 
week to pass. We want these bills to pass, but we believe there are 
some institutional issues that are important, and the American people 
are entitled to votes. I am not going to be drawing any overtime, but 
there are 8 million people who are entitled to a vote on overtime, 
whether the administration should be able to take that away from them. 
There are tens of millions of people who are entitled to a minimum wage 
increase. We need to do that.
  Some States have gone ahead and said Congress is acting too slowly, 
and they have a minimum wage above ours right now. There is going to be 
a ballot initiative in the State of Nevada this year--they have to get 
some signatures, but I am sure they will get enough--to raise the 
minimum wage in Nevada to $6.15 an hour, a dollar more than what we do. 
The people of the State of Nevada will vote on that in November. I 
don't think they should have to vote on it. We should be doing our job. 
But we are not able to do our job because we are being stopped from 
doing this because we are in the minority.
  We are going to continue exercising the rights we have. The Senate 
allows us to offer amendments. People can say: Why do you offer 
amendments that have no bearing on what we are doing? I think everyone 
would acknowledge that this overtime pay issue does have a bearing on 
what we do. It would be without any foundation in logic to say we don't 
have a right on a welfare bill to offer a minimum wage amendment. We 
should be able to do so.
  I repeat--I want the record spread--we are not trying to stall. We 
believe passage of these two measures is extremely important. We want 
them to pass. We have confidence in the two managers of the bill. But 
the leadership of the majority has to allow us to move past where we 
are now because we are in a deadlock, and that is too bad.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I listened carefully to my good friend 
from Nevada who is my counterpart on the Democratic side. I recall he 
said, just a few moments ago--I think this is a direct quote: ``Why 
can't we legislate the way we used to?''
  I say to my good friend from Nevada, I couldn't agree more. Why can't 
we legislate the way we used to? I have been here a while. But you 
wouldn't have had to be here all that long to remember how we used to 
legislate. Just as recently as a Congress ago, we didn't filibuster 
judges on the floor of the Senate. In fact, we hadn't done that for a 
couple hundred years.
  Just as recently as the previous Congress, we didn't prevent the 
legislative process from going forward by prohibiting the appointment 
of conferees, but adhered to the normal legislative process, so that 
differences between legislation in the House and Senate can be 
reconciled and we can move forward.
  I think we can stipulate the minority has always had a lot of power 
in the Senate, but never before has the minority insisted on writing 
legislation for the majority--not just in the Senate but in the House 
as well. That is the practical effect of preventing a conference. It is 
the minority of Senators saying: We won't allow the legislative process 
to go forward unless it is just the way we want it. Even though we are 
a minority in one of the two bodies, we are going to dictate to the 
other body the content.
  When my friend from Nevada criticizes the majority leader for the way 
he is ``handling the Senate,'' he is pointing the finger in the wrong 
direction. I say to my friends on the other side: You have met the 
enemy, and it is you.
  I think I can safely speak for the majority when I say that we are 
perfectly happy to have votes on the Democratic Party outbasket items. 
But, of course, one of the privileges each Member of the Senate has is 
to prevent a time certain for a vote. And that is used around here 
frequently in order to make sure something else happens.
  The something else the majority would like to have happen--and 
certainly the majority leader would like to have happen--is the chance 
of finishing a piece of legislation, getting it to conference, 
resolving the differences, and sending it on down to the President for 
signature. That is the way we used to legislate, I say to the Senator 
from Nevada, who was suggesting longingly that we ought to go back to 
the way we used to legislate, as he put it. That is the way we used to 
legislate.
  Our position has been, as we have discussed this back and forth off 
the floor, let's see a limitation on amendments that allows the 
minority the opportunity to have their vote, allows the majority an 
opportunity to have a

[[Page 5845]]

similar vote on a similar subject, to work our way through the 
legislative process, and then a guarantee at the end that there will be 
a conference allowed so the legislation we have spent time on has some 
chance of becoming law.
  I can say to my friends on the other side, there is no chance--zero 
chance--that the majority in the House of Representatives is going to 
let the minority in the Senate dictate to them the final content of 
legislation that leaves the Senate. That is simply not going to happen.
  I agree with my good friend from Nevada: Let's get back to 
legislating the way we used to. Legislating the way we used to means a 
limitation on amendments, amendments that are relevant certainly to the 
underlying bill but not just those, even those that are not relevant, 
with opportunities for the other side to offer their substitute ideas, 
and then a chance to get to the end of the process, to finally pass the 
bill, to get to conference, and to move along.
  That is what the majority leader is looking for. We are going to 
continue our discussions, both on and off the floor, in the hopes that 
we can reach agreements to move forward on this important piece of 
legislation.
  The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was a conspicuous success story, a 
bipartisan success story passed by a Republican Congress, signed by a 
Democratic President, something all of us are proud of. It should be 
reauthorized. And the JOBS bill that had to be shelved last week 
because of an excessive number of amendments is something we know is 
extremely important to accomplish.
  Levies have been put in place, a European tax on American 
manufacturers, at 5 percent beginning March 1. Tomorrow, it goes up to 
6 percent, and then another percent each month until it is up to 17 
percent--European taxes on American manufacturers, killing jobs here at 
home when we are told that jobs is an important issue.
  So we need to do business. We need to do welfare reform. We need to 
get back, as my good friend from Nevada said, to legislating the way we 
used to. I hope we can reach that point very shortly.


                        Tribute to Steven J. Law

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a good friend, 
Steven J. Law, who is the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of 
Labor.
  Deputy Secretary Law was nominated by the President and was confirmed 
by the Senate on December 9, 2003. Prior to holding his current 
position, he served the President and Secretary Elaine L. Chao as Chief 
of Staff at the Department. In that position, Steven has played a 
fundamental role in crafting major administration initiatives, such as 
the post 9/11 economic recovery plan, retirement security, and 
regulatory reform. Steven is valued as an asset to the Department, 
greatly admired by his peers, and respected throughout the Washington 
community.
  Steven began his career in this city after graduating from the 
University of California at Davis. From there, he went on to receive 
his juris doctorate from Columbia University School of Law, where he 
was named the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and graduated cum laude.
  It was after those academic pursuits that our lives happily crossed 
when he began in my office as a legislative assistant. Displaying the 
hard work and talent he is well known for, Steven quickly advanced to 
Chief of Staff shortly after successfully managing my 1990 reelection 
campaign.
  Steven didn't just make a big impression on me. He was recognized by 
Roll Call as one of the 50 most influential staffers on the Hill. 
Eventually, he left my office to become executive director of the 
National Republican Senatorial Committee during my chairmanship and 
helped secure the Republican majority through both cycles. Over 4 
years, and through 2 tough election cycles, he has very skillful and 
professionally managed that operation in an extraordinarily able 
fashion.
  I have had the privilege of working with Steven for the past 15 
years. I have had the honor of calling him my friend and confidant 
during that time as well.
  Mr. President, it is easy to see why President Bush chose to nominate 
Steven to this high post. It is easy to see why my Elaine Chao, the 
Secretary of Labor, also exercised good judgment in giving this 
talented man this opportunity. I applaud his confirmation and wish both 
Steven and his marvelous wife, Elizabeth, and their two beautiful 
children, Charlotte and John James, continued success in their future 
endeavors. Elaine and I have been blessed to be a part of their lives 
for the last 15 years. This is truly a remarkable individual and a 
magnificent public servant. I wish him well not only in his new job as 
Deputy Secretary of Labor, but in all of the endeavors he may undertake 
in the coming years.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have an opportunity to, based on the 
statement of the Senator from Kentucky, move some of this legislation. 
But I cannot understand why, when we finish running one race, we have 
to immediately go to the other race. We need a little time to rest.
  What I am saying about that is that we have on many occasions passed 
bills in the Senate and accomplished the desire of the people working 
on that legislation by working things out with the House. We have done 
that without using conference. We have done this simply in negotiating 
the differences between the House and Senate. We have done it in the 
108th Congress; we did it 21 times then. In the 107th Congress, we did 
it 51 times.
  I think before the end of this year, if we can get a few things done 
on the floor, instead of 21 bills, we can get it up to maybe 40. We 
have done it on very important things, such as AIDS assistance, TANF 
extension, military family tax relief, national flood insurance, Syria 
accountability, veterans benefits, the Defense Production Act, which 
are very important pieces of legislation. There have been some things 
we have done with a conference. As some will recall, last year we had a 
difficult situation with the fair credit reporting. But Senator Shelby 
and Senator Sarbanes decided that the best thing they could do would be 
to set a standard and the two leaders said, yes, we are willing to go 
to conference, we think we can do a good job. They did that. It became 
law.
  We are one step ahead of where we should be. We want legislation 
passed in the Senate. When that is done, there are many ways to resolve 
differences with the House. We can do it in conference and there are 
occasions when we need to do that. Some may ask why we have balked at 
conferences. Very simply, for example, the overtime measure which 
passed here went to conference, and Democrats weren't even invited into 
the room where the conference was held. A bill came back here and, of 
course, overtime was stripped from it, and we had a bill that did not 
go through the conference process. They did not follow the Shelby-
Sarbanes model.
  We are willing to work to get legislation passed. We have said we 
want to do that, we want to work our way through these amendments. But 
to come here and say we will do it if you only have 4 amendments, the 
best way to get these bills passed is to work on them. These bills 
don't come magically. We have 49 of us here and 51 on the other side. 
We all have ideas as to how the legislation could be improved. 
Sometimes our ideas are good and sometimes they are bad. But individual 
Senators--there are two Senators from every State with the ability to 
get elected. We have wide interests we represent in our States. We have 
an obligation to allow them to offer amendments and move through this 
legislation.
  I am not an expert in parliamentary procedure in the Senate. I don't 
think many people can claim that. I do understand a lot of the 
procedures in the Senate, and I understand that the best way to do 
legislation is to work through it. If you have an amendment you don't 
agree with, speak against it and vote against it. But don't stop others 
from having the opportunity to vote.

[[Page 5846]]

  So, again, we are being told today, yes, we will let you have some 
amendments, or we will let you have more than some, but if we do that, 
you have to agree to go to conference. We are not going to do that. We 
are going to do everything we can to get a bill passed.
  As I have indicated, Mr. President, in the 108th Congress, 21 times 
we have been able to get legislation passed and sent to the President 
without a conference. We have negotiated our differences in the 
language between the House and Senate. We can continue to do that. We 
did it 51 times in 107th Congress. So as I said before, and I repeat, 
there is no reason we should not legislate the way we always have in 
days past: You introduce legislation, it goes to committee, comes to 
the floor, we debate it, offer amendments, and vote on it. When that is 
done, you figure out how you are going to work your way through the 
differences with the House.
  We want to pass the tax bill that was in effect on the Senate floor 
last week. I repeat, we want to pass this welfare bill. The only way we 
can show that is by agreeing to work through these amendments. There is 
not a single Senator who wants to filibuster this bill. We are not 
going to be stopped from offering these amendments, and we will hold 
together as a body and not allow cloture to be invoked tomorrow. It is 
not fair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized first.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          High Gasoline Prices

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I rise today as consumers in America--
businesses and farmers and families--are facing gasoline prices at a 
record high. Prices for natural gas, which is used to heat our homes 
and workplaces, have gone through the roof.
  In fact, I chair the Environment and Public Works Committee, and we 
had a hearing this week on the crisis we are facing, and that is our 
farmers are having to pay twice as much as they did 6 months ago 
because of the skyrocketing costs of natural gas. And all of this is 
due to the fact we have a lot of the far-left environmental groups 
trying to keep us from being able to produce more oil and gas, and it 
is a crisis. It is a crisis, as we pointed out in this committee 
hearing. Unfortunately, due to obstructionist tactics led by the 
radical environmental groups, bipartisan energy policy legislation 
continues to just be out of grasp of passage in the Congress.
  Yesterday, those who are against domestic energy production and in 
favor of higher costing energy prices plaguing us today were given a 
boost by the presumptive Democrat for President who said in a speech in 
San Diego, CA:

       We need a new direction on energy policy.

  And went on to lay blame for the high cost of gas on the Bush 
administration, while attempting to put forth an energy plan of his 
own. Rather than advance a policy actually related to our Nation's 
energy needs and supplies, the Senator consistently suggested policies 
that would increase cost to consumers, that would consistently increase 
cost to businesses, that would consistently undermine our economy and 
force high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas. We have seen this taking 
place. It is taking place today. I heard our very eloquent junior 
Senator from Ohio talk about the number of jobs they have lost in the 
State of Ohio just for this reason.
  His statements about the Bush administration are incorrect. One of 
the first proposals the Bush administration made was a comprehensive 
energy plan in 2001 that would increase domestic energy supplies and 
make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
  Congress took up legislation and incorporated many aspects of the 
President's plan, and I note that the Senator who finds it easier to 
criticize than do was nowhere to be found when the bipartisan Energy 
bill, H.R. 6, was debated and passed by the Senate by a vote of 84 to 
14 on July 13, 2003.
  It intrigues me that this issue is important enough for the Member to 
take time to discuss it out of his busy campaign schedule, but not 
important enough for him to be present and vote on the bipartisan 
legislation that was brought before this body. In fact, to my 
recollection, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, prior to 
yesterday, never once proposed comprehensive energy legislation during 
his 19 years in the Senate.
  What we heard from San Diego yesterday was really less of an energy 
policy for the Nation and more of a checklist of how to increase energy 
costs to consumers. I am not surprised at that fact since it is clear 
from his voting record over the last many Congresses that affordable 
domestically produced energy was far from a priority of the Senator. 
His claim yesterday to aggressively develop domestic oil and gas 
supplies does not seem genuine to me as he has no specific plan to do 
so and has spent a lot of his time stopping us and this country from 
being able to explore such areas as ANWR and offshore that would allow 
us to be energy independent.
  Let me be perfectly fair. This goes back a number of years. I can 
remember even back during the Reagan administration making talks about 
the fact at that time we were 35 percent dependent on foreign countries 
for our ability to fight a war. And yet now it is closer to 60 percent. 
So there we are only 2,000 acres of ANWR's Coastal Plain, about the 
size of Dulles Airport, for oil exploration and development; 2,000 
acres that could provide the United States with enough oil to replace 
imports from Saudi Arabia for the next 30 years.
  But actually, as the junior Senator from Massachusetts proposes to 
solve the energy crisis, for one he is going against his own advice and 
now calling for President Bush to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 
a move that would threaten our national security without any benefit.
  We know from recent history that releasing oil from the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve would have no impact on gasoline prices. On September 
22, 2000, former President Clinton released 30 million barrels of oil 
from our strategic stockpiles. The effect, according to Energy 
Information Administration, was 1 penny savings per gallon of gasoline. 
So that does not work. It makes good conversation, it sounds good, but 
we know it does not work, and he knows it, too.
  During that time, the junior Senator from Massachusetts stated 
himself that a release is not relevant. It would take months for the 
oil to get to the market, he said. Now he has flip-flopped and it is 
the cornerstone of an energy plan more about politics than meeting the 
real needs for American families and businesses.
  Even experts such as the Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, 
former Carter Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, and other top energy 
officials have warned for years that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve 
should not be used as a market management scheme. It is there for 
national security. I think we all understand that.
  Further, it is important to note while we have a Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, we do not release our strategically held resources to fit 
political whims but should only do it to address a major supply 
disruption, such as political instability from a source nation, which 
is highly likely, and I think we understand that situation. The 
relative instability of supply nations is well known. Our Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve is our Nation's buffer, a safety net. The junior 
Senator from Massachusetts would have us squander our Nation's 
strategic reserves for his political gain, forcing our country into a 
far weaker position.
  The presumptive Democrat nominee's call to release oil from our 
strategic reserves is also surprising to me because what he is really 
calling for is to increase our domestic supplies. Experts agree that 
one of the principal reasons that our Nation was able to weather the 
oil embargo of the 1970s was largely because new supplies were coming 
online from Prudhoe Bay, AK. Yet, as I said before, the Senator 
staunchly opposes developing oil from

[[Page 5847]]

the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. The policy of the junior Senator 
from Massachusetts seems to be: Let us use our strategic reserves but 
not have any more oil to replenish them.
  The Senator is also quick to praise himself for his foreign policy 
experience. Yet that experience must not have translated to the energy 
sector. Oil is a global commodity; therefore, the world market must be 
considered. What has happened in the global market? China's increased 
demand for oil has constrained world oil supplies which have only been 
exacerbated by OPEC's recent reduction restrictions.
  We should also note that another key component of the Senator's plan 
to address our Nation's high gasoline prices is for the administration 
to get tough with or jawbone OPEC, the implication being that President 
Bush is not advocating America's interest, that he is too soft.
  The foreign policy of the junior Senator from Massachusetts is 
interesting on this point. On one hand he criticized the President for 
not kowtowing to the United Nations and countries such as France in the 
war on terrorism and on the other hand suggests that the administration 
is too soft on oil-producing nations. You cannot have it both ways.
  In addition, the Senator has been a supporter of drastic climate 
change legislation that would cripple our economy and legislation that 
would literally shut down powerplants in the United States, the outcome 
of which would send hundreds of thousands of American jobs overseas and 
seriously stress our supply of energy.
  It was the Wharton Econometrics Survey that came out with the 
conclusion that if we signed on to the Kyoto Treaty, it would cost 1.4 
million jobs--that is what we are talking about today: jobs--it would 
double the price of energy, it would cost an increase of 65 cents a 
gallon on gasoline, and it would cost the average family of four $2,700 
a year. That is not Jim Inhofe talking; that is what came from the 
Wharton School of Economics.
  In addition, the Senator has been a supporter of drastic climate 
change legislation that we have talked about that would be disastrous 
for this country. Again, since the Senator has not developed an energy 
policy before and failed to show up for the Energy bill vote, I must 
look to his words and not his actions to determine what is the intent 
of his energy policy.
  The Senator's recommended energy and environmental policy seems to be 
tainted with an overriding intent to impose his utopian view of the 
future without any consideration on present reality at any cost. The 
junior Senator from Massachusetts makes nonhydropower renewable energy 
a cornerstone of his energy policy. Again, however, we must look to the 
Senator's words on the matter and not his deeds.
  Last year's energy bill renewed a tax credit for wind and solar 
energy, a credit that expired on December 31. The Senator failed to 
show up for the crucial vote and the tax credit died. Prior to that 
vote, Randall Swisher of the American Wind Energy Association said: If 
the energy bill dies, extension of the wind production tax credit will 
also die for any time in the foreseeable future.
  Swisher and many in the industry contend the credit is essential to 
maintaining their businesses. He said:

       If we weren't in the bill, the credit that is the 
     foundation of our industry was going to expire and with it 
     our industry would expire.

  So, yes, it was important for them to see the energy bill move 
forward. President Bush recognizes the valuable contribution renewables 
can play in our Nation's energy mix. The President dedicated $1.7 
billion over 5 years to develop hydrogen fuel cells and related 
technologies. In 2005, in his budget, it includes $228 million for a 
hydrogen fuel initiative, an increase of $69 million, or 43 percent, 
over the 2004 funding to develop the technologies to produce, store, 
and distribute hydrogen for the use of fuel cell vehicles, electricity 
generation, and other applications.
  The 2005 budget proposes tax incentives totaling $4.1 billion through 
2009 to spur the use of clean, renewable energy and energy-efficient 
technologies.
  President Bush's plan invests in the future. He wisely recognizes 
nonhydropower renewable energy represents only about 1 percent of our 
Nation's energy mix.
  The Senator, on the other hand, would mandate 20 percent of our 
Nation's electricity be generated with those very same renewable 
sources by 2020.
  In 2003, DOE's Energy Information Administration concluded a 10-
percent mandate could cost Americans more than $100 billion. However, 
the effect would likely be far more severe in certain regions of the 
country where ``not in my backyard'' and the risks seem to drive policy 
without regard to fixed and low-income residents.
  The fact is wind energy, the most cost-effective renewable, is only 
effective when the wind blows. We already know where the rich elite 
stand on developing wind turbines off the coast of Cape Code in the 
Senator's home State of Massachusetts.
  The presumptive Democrat nominee also supports legislation that would 
cap carbon dioxide under pollution-reducing bills as well as under the 
auspices of global climate change. Again, the Senator seeks to impose 
his utopian world view on people without bothering to consider our 
Nation's energy makeup, or more likely he is but does not seem to care.
  Drastic carbon dioxide reduction strategies the Senator supports 
would effectively force coal out of use. I think we all understand 
that. Coal right now, whether the junior Senator from Massachusetts and 
his special interest radical supporters like it or not, makes up one-
quarter of our country's energy mix.
  Recently, it has been reported the junior Senator from Massachusetts 
supported a 50-cent per gallon tax on gasoline. The effects of such a 
tax on our country are obvious. However, I think it is important to 
note such a tax is another example of the Senator's overriding 
opposition to fossil fuels and his blind and unwavering support for 
nonhydropower renewables without regard to the state of our Nation's 
actual energy mix.
  Nonhydropower renewable energy is a wonderful concept and with the 
administration's investments in developing technology, I am confident 
its use will increase considerably. However, today it is too costly, 
which leads me back to the Senator's overriding intent behind his 
suggested energy policies.
  The presumptive Democrat nominee and his radical environmental group 
supporters also recognize renewables are not cost competitive compared 
with traditional energy sources today. Their answer: Embark on a 
strategy to make fossil fuel use so expensive and burdened with 
regulations that nonhydropower renewables suddenly become more cost 
effective by comparison.
  Let's recap a few of the highlights of the recommendations of the 
junior Senator from Massachusetts. No. 1, empty the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve. No. 2, do not produce domestic oil. No. 3, impose a tax on 
gasoline, some 50 cents a gallon. No. 4, impose a mandate increasing 
nonhydropower renewable energies from 1 percent to 20 percent in 15 
years. No. 5, restrict carbon dioxide emissions, which translates to 
reducing U.S. economic production.
  The Senator's energy policy is certainly bold, if nothing else. It is 
just that the Senator's utopian view of the future ignores our very 
real present.
  Like his radical special interest supporters, the Senator's energy 
policies would increase costs on American consumers, disproportionately 
affect the low and fixed-income taxpayers, and drastically undermine 
the ability to compete in the global market.
  If this were not a Presidential election year and we were asked to 
judge a man not on his words but on his actions, we would in large 
measure know what the Senator's energy policy would be: Do nothing but 
make speeches.
  Some may scoff at what I am saying. We all know the Senator was too 
busy campaigning to do the job his constituents elected him to do and 
the job American taxpayers have paid him to do. Instead of actually 
doing some work and crafting an energy policy, the

[[Page 5848]]

junior Senator from Massachusetts chooses to make outrageous 
allegations from the comfort of multimillion-dollar mansions in Beverly 
Hills.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I had not expected to hear the kind of 
statement with regard to the criticism of the Senator from 
Massachusetts, my colleague and friend John Kerry, on the energy 
policy. I will include in my comments a response to Senator Inhofe.
  I am wondering whether the Senator could possibly tell us what was 
the position of the President of the United States when OPEC continued 
to cut back on production today. We have a statement by a colleague 
talking about a candidate for the President of the United States when 
today OPEC primarily--
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I have the floor.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I was asked a question, and I would like 
to answer the question.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Regular order. Regular order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY. No, I do not yield.
  We have today more than 150,000 servicemen who are over there 
protecting the oil countries in the Middle East, and American service 
men and women are dying every single day. If we have a President of the 
United States who is lacking in sufficient influence to try and 
indicate to our allies that it is of vital importance to the security 
of the families and industry in the United States that they increase 
their production, what kind of influence do we have? Where is our 
President of the United States on this issue? Why are we hearing 
Members who are so eager to talk about John Kerry's policy on energy 
talking about what we ought to be doing over there today as OPEC is 
cutting back on its production?
  We hear silence. We have silence about that. Where is the 
administration?
  I remember last week we had my good friend Spencer Abraham, who is 
the Secretary of Energy, and I asked him the question whether this 
President was going to try and persuade the oil-producing countries in 
the Middle East to produce more energy, particularly at a time when we 
are faced with difficult economic significance. His answer was: This 
administration is not going to beg for oil.
  Beg for oil? When we have 140,000 men and women over there protecting 
their interests and protecting their oil and they are cutting back 
production?
  I would not think there would be many Members of the Senate who would 
be criticizing my colleague, who has done so, who recognize that their 
President should provide Presidential leadership. This election is 
about Presidential leadership. My colleague has been demanding that 
this President do something about the cutbacks in production.
  We hear criticism--well, he didn't show up for a vote. Sure, he is 
running for the Presidency of the United States.
  I will certainly respond to my colleague, but I am absolutely baffled 
that one of the major energy decisions being made in the world is being 
made within the last 24 hours by the OPEC countries, the primary 
producers, Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, other middle eastern 
countries whose security American servicemen have been fighting for and 
dying for, and this President and this administration has not 
sufficient influence to be able to stop them from cutting back in 
production or getting them to increase production. You talk about a 
bankrupt energy policy--there it is.
  Every consumer ought to know when they pay those extra funds for the 
gasoline, they are paying it directly to countries over there in the 
Middle East whose security we are protecting and for which American 
lives are being lost. It is beyond belief to me.


                           Amendment No. 2945

  Madam President, we have, over the course of the day, had a number of 
our colleagues speak about the amendment that is before us, and that is 
the increase in the minimum wage over a 2-year period, up to $7 an 
hour. I want to wrap up this evening and summarize a couple of 
important points because during the course of the afternoon, I followed 
the debate when I wasn't here for a few hours, meeting with the head of 
the VA about some of the challenges we are facing up in Massachusetts 
about veterans health.
  We heard statements, speeches from some of our colleagues on the 
other side, that the increase in the minimum wage was delaying action 
on the TANF reauthorization. Of course nothing could be further from 
the truth. As Senator Boxer, my friend and colleague who introduced the 
legislation, and I have stated, we would have been willing to have a 
20-minute time agreement, 10 minutes a side, and had a vote and final 
disposition and then moved ahead with other amendments.
  But the opposition is so strong in opposition to this amendment that 
the Republican leadership has insisted we have, effectively, a cloture 
vote, delaying progress on the underlying bill for some 2\1/2\ days, so 
if they are successful in getting cloture, cutting off the debate, they 
will eliminate the possibility of even voting on an increase in the 
minimum wage.
  Maybe there are those who are opposed to the increase in the minimum 
wage. We have heard some of them speak today in opposition. But the 
idea that this is not related and relevant to the underlying bill 
defies any logic and any fair understanding of what the underlying 
bill, the TANF bill, is all about.
  I bring to their attention the statement that was made by Secretary 
Thompson regarding the TANF reauthorization when he testified on March 
6, 2002. He said:

       This administration recognizes the only way to escape 
     poverty is through work, and that is why we have made work 
     and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the 
     centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary 
     Assistance for Needy Family Program.

  That will pay at least the minimum wage. There it is in the words of 
the President's own representative. That is exactly the issue we are 
attempting to address and we are being denied getting final action on 
it.
  I am going to take a moment to review for the benefit of the Senate 
about where the minimum wage is now. The purchasing power of the 
minimum wage has dramatically decreased.
  We reviewed with the Senate what the impact of the increase in the 
minimum wage has been on unemployment and have shown many times when we 
have had increase in the minium wage it had virtually no adverse impact 
on the question of unemployment. We reviewed the fact if we have the 
increase in the minimum wage it virtually has no impact on the issue of 
inflation. We responded to the question of different conditions and 
different parts of the country. There are small mom-and-pop stores that 
would not be able to afford the increase in the minimum wage. We 
responded and pointed out those stores by and large are excluded under 
the provisions of the existing minimum wage.
  We heard: We don't want to do this because we want to encourage young 
people to work in agriculture. We responded: It doesn't relate to 
agricultural workers.
  We have addressed all of these kinds of conditions.
  These minimum wage workers are men and women of dignity. They work 
hard and long. The men and women who clean out the buildings in this 
country at nighttime, teachers' aides, and assistants working in homes 
looking after the elderly are men and women of dignity. They do not 
want any assistance. They want to have a wage so they can provide for 
themselves and their children and their families.
  I want to reiterate and give some examples. I gave some examples 
earlier. These are the real faces of people who are going to be 
affected by what we do here tomorrow on the floor of the Senate, 
whether we are going to be able to get a vote on the increase in the 
minimum wage or whether we are going to be denied that opportunity to 
do so.

[[Page 5849]]

  The minimum wage affects a person such as Cynthia Porter.

       Cynthia Porter is not on welfare. She works as a certified 
     nursing assistant at a nursing home in Marian, Alabama. When 
     Cynthia comes on duty at 11:00 p.m., she makes rounds. She 
     checks the residents for skin tears and helps them go to the 
     toilet or use a bedpan. She has to make sure she turns the 
     residents every two hours or they will get bedsores, and if 
     bedsores are left unattended, they can get so bad that you 
     can put your fist in them.
       But there aren't enough people on her shift. Often there 
     are only two nursing assistants for forty-five residents. In 
     addition to responding to the needs of the residents, Cynthia 
     must also wash the wheelchairs, clean up the dining rooms, 
     mop the floors and scrub out the refrigerator, drawers, and 
     closets during her shift. Before she leaves, she helps the 
     residents get dressed for breakfast.
       For all of this, Cynthia makes $350 every two weeks. She is 
     separated from her husband, who gives her no child support. 
     The first two weeks each month she pays her $150 rent. The 
     next two weeks, she pays her water and her electric bills. It 
     is difficult to afford Clorox or shampoo. Ensuring that her 
     children are fed properly is a stretch, and she is still 
     paying off the bicycles she bought for her children last 
     Christmas.
       She can't afford a car, so she ends up paying someone to 
     drive her the twenty-five miles to work. And there have been 
     a few days when she couldn't find a ride. ``I walked at 
     twelve o'clock at night,'' she said. ``I'd rather walk and be 
     a little late than call in. I'd rather make the effort. I 
     couldn't just sit here. I don't want to miss a day, 
     otherwise, I might be fired.'' There is no public 
     transportation that would take her to work.
       I first met Cynthia at a union meeting. She had a quiet, 
     dignified presence with her dark suit and her hair pulled 
     back in a bun. She and twenty-five others from the nursing 
     home--all eighty of her coworkers are African American women 
     like her--gathered in the little brick Masonic building 
     outside of Marian to talk about having a union. Like Cynthia, 
     none has ever gotten a raise of more than 13 cents. Some who 
     had been there ten years were still making $6.00 an hour.

  She is effectively a minimum wage worker.
  These are the people this legislation is trying to help.
  Linda Stevens:

       The only job she could find with a high school degree and 
     some college courses was a part-time cashier's position at a 
     small market called George and Stanley's, working the night 
     shift from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Not surprisingly, the 
     $5.00 an hour she made at her retail job was not enough to 
     support her and her daughter, so she worked a second job from 
     2:00 to 5:00 p.m. as a receptionist at H&R Block, which paid 
     $5.50 an hour. She liked the work and would have preferred to 
     go full-time, but H&R Block only offered work from January 
     through April. The money from these two part-time jobs still 
     did not cover her bills, so she worked as a lunch supervisor 
     for the Flint public schools from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. She 
     had to put planners up on the wall to keep track of her 
     schedule. And even then, she had no benefits.
       After a year, Linda left her job at George and Stanley's 
     after they refused to give her a 25 cent raise and went to 
     work at Kessell's on the day shift for $5.25 an hour. But 
     Kessell (which has since been purchased by Kroger) would only 
     give her a part-time position and without full-time status, 
     she still did not get benefits. Working three jobs became so 
     exhausting that she left her lunch supervisor position, but 
     had to continue to work her second job at H&R Block.
       Linda's typical day started at 6:00 a.m. when she got her 
     daughter ready for school. Her job at Kessell started at 7:00 
     a.m. and ended at 3:00 p.m. She came home, changed, and went 
     to her job at H&R Block at 5:00 p.m. and got off at 10:00 
     p.m. Her schedule left little time to spend with her 
     daughter.

  She needs a minimum wage to help that family.
  Flor Segunda of Newark, NJ:

       Flor lives in a primarily African-American neighborhood of 
     Newark, New Jersey, with her husband and three children: 
     Jose, who is nine years old; Luis, who is two and a half; and 
     Paul, who is one and a half. To reach Flor's place, you must 
     walk down a flight of concrete stairs, through a narrow hall, 
     and past the washer and dryer. Like most basement apartments, 
     it is damp and dark. One small window allows the only 
     daylight to enter. They pay $700 per month for this two-
     bedroom apartment without utilities. There are no parks near 
     her apartment and she doesn't have a car. So most days, the 
     children stay inside.
       At night when most workers are at home, Flor begins her 
     day. She cleans, dusts, vacuums, dumps trash, and straightens 
     the offices of law firms in a large suburban office building 
     in West Orange, New Jersey. Flor is a janitor. She works for 
     a private contractor who contracts with the owners of 
     commercial buildings to provide cleaning services.

  She would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.
  Finally, Judy Smithfield:

       Judy Smithfield works in a superstore as a pharmacy 
     technical assistant, a ``pharmacy tech.'' Her 12:00-9:00 p.m. 
     shift begins with a call from a nurse in a doctor's office 
     dictating a prescription over the phone or a customer at the 
     counter giving her a prescription. Once she has the 
     information, she gives it to the pharmacist to process in the 
     computer. Then it is Judy's responsibility to check that 
     information and get the proper medication from the shelf. She 
     counts the pills that are prescribed, puts them into the 
     bottle, affixes the proper label to the medication, gives the 
     filled prescription to the pharmacist for her review, and 
     puts it in the proper bin for the customer to pick up.
       Once the customer arrives, Judy must ensure that she has 
     the right prescription and that the proper forms are filled 
     out. She must ask the customer whether they understand the 
     prescription, whether they want counseling or have any 
     further questions. Their response must be put in writing.
       There are two pharmacy techs and three pharmacists on 
     Judy's shift that fill over 400 prescriptions per day. If the 
     pharmacy gets behind in the prescriptions, Judy stays late, 
     sometimes until midnight. Many times she works six days a 
     week because they don't have enough help. Her feet and back 
     ache from standing all day.

  This will help Judy.
  I want to conclude again by talking about the impact of the minimum 
wage and the failure of increasing the minimum wage on families, 
particularly on children.
  I pointed out earlier we have 35 million Americans, according to the 
Department of Agriculture, who are hungry or living on the edge of 
hunger for economic reasons--35 million in a country of 290 million.
  Today 300,000 more families are hungry than there were 3 years ago. 
The 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that looked at hunger 
found effectively 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance 
were employed. A leading cause of hunger is low-paying jobs.
  Emergency food assistance increased by 14 percent. Of those 
requesting emergency food assistance, 59 percent were members of 
families with children and elderly parents.
  City officials recommend raising of the Federal minimum wage as the 
way the Federal Government could alleviate hunger.
  This is their No. 1 recommendation. This is the survey of the U.S. 
Conference of Mayors, Republican and Democrat alike, for raising the 
minimum wage.
  Finally, I have the excellent report of the National Urban League, 
October 2002. I will read just parts of it. In the foreword, it says:

       Too often, changes in the minimum wage are viewed as poorly 
     targeted to the needs of America's working families. Minimum 
     wage workers are too often presented as teenagers, or wives 
     in middle class families. Yet, the clear implications of this 
     study are that the proposed increase in the minimum wage from 
     $5.15 to $6.65 an hour would move 1.4 million American 
     households to the level of being food secure, having enough 
     money to buy nutritious and safe food for their families. 
     And, a disproportionate share of the households that would 
     benefit would be African American or Hispanic. Single parent 
     households would also benefit disproportionately from an 
     increase in the minimum wage.

  Again raising the minimum wage is a clear policy solution for helping 
meet the needs of America's poor children.
  Then it goes on in the executive summary:

       Second, we show that increases in the minimum wage raised 
     the food security of households in which the householder, 
     principal person in the household, has no more than a high 
     school diploma or is a single parent or both. The increases 
     in the minimum wage lessened hunger in all households, but 
     particularly in low-income households and in those households 
     in which the householder was less educated, African-American, 
     Hispanic or was a single parent.

  Finally, I will include in the Record the findings. These are briefly 
the findings.

       We find that:
       (1) Increases in the Federal minimum wage to $4.25 in 
     October of 1996 and $5.15 per hour in September 1997--

  That was 7 years ago--

     reduced hunger among all households and in particular, in 
     low-income households where individuals had completed no more 
     than a high school degree. . . . Hunger is defined as a 
     psychological condition where household members experience an 
     uneasy or painful sensation caused by the involuntary lack of 
     food.

[[Page 5850]]

       (2) Relative to the general population, food security rates 
     are lower among households in which the householder has no 
     more than a high school degree. . . .
       (3) A direct relationship between food security and 
     increases in the minimum wage was observed following two 
     modest increases in the minimum wage in 1996 and 1997--when 
     food security rates increased slightly; and following 
     administration of the Food Security Supplement . . . of 1995. 
     Food security rates also increased modestly following 1995. . 
     . .
       (4) Inner city households have the highest levels of food 
     insecurity, followed by suburban and rural households. Other 
     studies have demonstrated that groups most-at-risk for food 
     insecurity are those who are most economically vulnerable, 
     and whose households are most directly impacted by increases 
     in the minimum wage.

  The failure of our increase in the minimum wage is wrong because 
Americans believe people who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, 
should not have to live in poverty in the United States of America. And 
it is wrong because we now have millions of children who are going 
hungry every night, and millions of families who are going hungry as 
well.
  We can make some difference by increasing the minimum wage. It is now 
at a dramatically decreased level of purchasing power. Certainly, we 
can do better. We should do better. How can we possibly tolerate the 
conditions of our fellow Americans and not say that we need an increase 
in the minimum wage? I hope we will be able to do so tomorrow.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in 
support of the amendment offered by Senators Kennedy and Boxer to raise 
the minimum wage over the next 2\1/2\ years.
  My staff provided me with some information about the history of the 
minimum wage. One important date cited is 1968, which was my senior 
year at Ohio State University. I had a couple of jobs then. I was the 
pots-and-pans man at the Delta Gamma sorority house. I also had a part-
time job at the university bookstore. I was paid the minimum wage for 
both jobs, which at the time was $1.60 per hour. If you adjust $1.60 
for inflation, then the minimum wage would presently be $8.50 per hour.
  Senators Boxer and Kennedy propose that we gradually raise the 
minimum wage over the next 2\1/2\ years. They recommend raising it from 
the current level of $5.15 per hour to $5.85 in the next 60 days, from 
$5.85 to $6.45 a year later, and finally from $6.45 to $7 the following 
year.
  Some have said that such an increase goes too far, too fast, and have 
suggested that we take a different approach. However, we should do some 
math on the decline of the real value of the minimum wage. The current 
minimum wage has been $5.15 per hour since 1997. If you adjust $5.15 
for inflation, then we would have a minimum wage of $5.95 per hour. 
But, if you adjust the minimum wage for inflation from its 1968 level 
of $1.60, then the minimum wage would presently be $8.50.
  Senators Kennedy and Boxer are right in the middle between the two, 
and I would suggest to my colleagues that they are not far off the 
mark. In fact, their amendment is a pretty good compromise.
  I know that some people do not want to raise the minimum wage, and 
that they are concerned by the potential for job losses if we were to 
do so. And some of our employers--both large and small--have expressed 
concerns with an increase in the minimum wage and urge us to be mindful 
of those concerns.
  Having said that, we also need to be mindful of minimum wage workers. 
Senator Kennedy shared with us some real-life examples. Let me share 
with you some of my own experience from when I was a college student 
earning the minimum wage. A lot of people who received the minimum wage 
in 1968 were not supporting a family. I was not supporting a family in 
1968. Many of them were students or just out of school.
  But a lot of the people who earn the minimum wage these days are 
people with a family, with one child, or maybe two. They may be in a 
two-parent family. But in a lot of cases, a minimum wage earner is a 
single parent.
  I urge my colleagues to keep this statistic in mind as we consider 
whether to support an increase in the minimum wage. If you or I were 
working full time, 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year, with no time 
off, then we would be making about $206 a week if we were paid the 
minimum wage. That is less than $11,000 per year.
  Madam President, less than $11,000 per year does not crack the 
poverty line for one person, much less two or three.
  As a Governor who worked on welfare reform in my state and with the 
National Governors Association I understand what it takes in order for 
people to move off of welfare. For people to move successfully from 
welfare to work, four things have to happen: One, they have to have a 
job to go to; they have to have a way to get to the job; they have to 
get some help with their health care; and they need some help with 
their childcare. Those four things: a job, the ability to get to a job, 
health care, and childcare are critical.
  The other thing people have to have when they get off of welfare for 
work is the belief that they will be better off working than on 
welfare.
  In my own State of Delaware, we adopted comprehensive welfare reform 
in the mid-1990s and phased in an increase in the minimum wage. Today, 
the minimum wage in Delaware is $6.15 per hour. We increased the 
minimum wage to help people move off of welfare. We wanted to make sure 
that they were better off working than on welfare.
  I ask people to understand, whether you happen to be from Delaware or 
Maine--where the Presiding Officer is from--or from any other State, to 
try to make it these days on $11,000 per year, while trying to hold a 
family together. It is incredibly difficult to do so.
  The other thing I want to say is on a more macro-issue with respect 
to welfare reform legislation currently on the Senate floor. We should 
be able to pass welfare reform legislation. Both sides agree on about 
90 percent of the issues. For those issues that we do not agree on, we 
should be able to reconcile our differences.
  I believe that legislation I introduced with Senator Collins, the 
Presiding Officer, and with Senator Ben Nelson is a consensus bill on 
welfare reform--we think it is a pretty good compromise from what has 
been reported out of the committee and has some of the changes that 
Democrats would like to see. That bill is a good compromise.
  On our side, we want to have an opportunity to offer relevant 
amendments to legislation before the Senate. One amendment is an 
increase in the minimum wage, which I think is relevant to this 
particular bill. A second amendment is an extension in unemployment 
compensation benefits. We should extend unemployment compensation 
benefits until our economy is stronger and we have more jobs for people 
looking to work.
  Senator Harkin has an interest in offering an amendment on overtime 
regulations, which has already passed the House and the Senate. He is 
determined to make sure he has a chance to offer that again.
  We are smart enough around here to be able to work with our 
Republican colleagues to come up with an agreement that allows those 
three amendments to be offered.
  Once those amendments are offered, we should be able to offer other 
relevant amendments to this welfare bill. I have a few amendments to 
offer, and I know others do as well. We should be able to agree on a 
reasonable number of amendments--it could be 10, 20. We could also 
agree to an amount of time on such amendments, for example, 10 minutes 
for proponents of the amendment and 10 minutes for opponents of the 
amendment. When the debate on an amendment is completed the Senate 
should vote.
  I would be very disappointed if we went along and, at the end of next 
week, were not able to close our differences on welfare reform 
legislation and the FSC bill.

[[Page 5851]]

  The last thing I will mention has to do with conference committees. 
When the House passes one bill, and the Senate passes a different bill, 
we end up, a lot of times, in a conference negotiation to resolve 
differences between the bills. And we, in the Democratic Party, have 
been stung because we have not been allowed to participate in these 
conferences.
  We saw that happen with respect to the Energy bill, where Democrats 
were not invited to participate. We saw it happen to a large extent in 
the conference on the Medicare prescription drug bill, where, for the 
most part, Democrats were not allowed to participate in conference 
negotiations. We cannot allow that to continue. Democrats are not going 
to allow that to continue. Someday Democrats will be in the majority. 
Someday our friends on the other side will be in the minority. I ask 
them to keep that in mind because what is good for the goose is good 
for the gander.
  To the extent that we get closed out of conference committees without 
any active participation, the same thing could happen to them. I would 
not want to do it to them, and I do not like having it done to us.
  Part of this universal agreement in moving welfare reform and getting 
the FSC bill onto the Senate floor is not just encouraging words about 
the conference, but a good, hard, fast agreement that Democrats will be 
full participants in a welfare reform conference with the House.
  It is too bad that the presiding officer, Senator Collins, and I 
cannot work out these differences by ourselves. We would pass a bill 
that we negotiated with Senator Nelson of Nebraska. It would be pretty 
easy.
  I do not mean to minimize nor make light of the toughness of the 
situation we face, but we can get this done. We need to get this done. 
We are going to take a recess week sometime around Good Friday. I sure 
hope we can go home having passed welfare reform legislation through 
the Senate, and to have made good progress on FSC legislation as well.
  With respect to a reasonable increase in the minimum wage, we should 
be able to get that done. It is the right and fair thing to do. We need 
to have an extension of unemployment compensation benefits. While we 
have an official unemployment rate of about 5.6 percent, the rate is 
actually closer to 7.5 percent once you count all the people who have 
run out of benefits or stopped looking for employment.
  If we agree to those things, we ought to be able to get those bills 
done and move on to the next step in welfare reform. Welfare reform is 
a great experiment, made successful by our Nation's Governors. Members 
of the Senate know how to make it even more successful going forward.
  It has been a pleasure to do business with the Presiding Officer and 
Senator Nelson on our side. I hope we can take some of the provisions 
in our bill and have an opportunity to offer them as an amendment to 
the bill in the next day or two.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. TALENT. Madam President, the hour is getting late. I am going to 
take a few minutes of the Senate's time to talk a little bit about 
welfare reform. It is a subject that has been close to my heart for a 
long time. I was a freshman in the House when I introduced, along with 
then-Congressman Tim Hutchinson who subsequently served in this body, 
what we called the real welfare reform act.
  The idea behind that bill was to stop talking about welfare reform in 
terms of whether we could save money or whether we could stop fraud in 
the welfare system and start talking about what was really at stake, 
which was replacing a system that had punished work, that had 
discouraged marriage, that had torn down neighborhoods, and had mired 
people in despair and replaced it with a system that encouraged work 
for able-bodied people, required it in some cases, that supported 
community-based solutions, and built up neighborhoods.
  We talked about that bill for several years. Welfare reform gained 
steam. There were some who opposed it the whole time, who fought a last 
ditch effort on behalf of the status quo; a pretty lousy status quo it 
was, too. But eventually we passed the bill by very large majorities in 
both Houses. President Clinton signed it. There were predictions of 
doom. It has turned out to be--I guess now by consensus--the most 
successful legislation of the 1990s, and the most significant social 
reform passed in the last generation in this Congress. Now the 
extension of that bill, the new welfare reform bill, the attempt to 
extend the benefits of work and marriage to more and more people around 
this country, is being filibustered.
  That is not a new thing in this Senate. I made a quick list. We can't 
approve nominations for judges; that is being filibustered. The Energy 
bill was filibustered. The liability relief bill was filibustered. The 
tax break for manufacturers to try and keep manufacturing jobs in the 
United States was filibustered. Now welfare reform is being 
filibustered in the name of passing a minimum wage increase.
  Of course, there are varying opinions in the Senate and around the 
country about the minimum wage. I have supported it in the past, when 
it was linked to tax benefits or other kinds of support for small 
business because whatever you think of it, it is a mandate on small 
business. We ought to support small businesspeople, the ones who are 
creating the jobs in the country, if we are asking them to increase 
their payments.
  Whether you do or you do not support the minimum wage, though, it is 
a terrible mistake to filibuster the welfare reform bill in the name of 
passing the minimum wage bill. As a matter of fact, my understanding is 
the leadership has offered to take votes on that and several other 
measures that Senators on the other side want to offer, if we can have 
some assurance the bill will pass, some assurance that going through 
these amendments that are not germane to the bill will allow us to pass 
the bill and then get to conference and finally pass the bill and send 
it to the President. That does not seem to me to be an unreasonable 
request.
  Why is it so important that we pass welfare reform? What has happened 
since 1996? Mr. President, 3.6 million fewer Americans live in poverty 
now; 2.9 million fewer children live in poverty. Child poverty is at 
its lowest rate. Kids are not as poor as they were. In June 2002, there 
were 5 million welfare recipients, which was a 65-percent decrease from 
the 1994 level. The poverty rate of single moms is the lowest rate in 
U.S. history. Even the out-of-wedlock birth rate has stabilized and 
gone down slightly since 1996.
  I was at a press conference earlier today when a lady talked about 
the effect of this on her life. Because of welfare reform, she is now 
working and supporting her family. She talked about what it meant to 
her kids. The first day she came home from work with a paycheck, they 
waited for her, and they wanted to go to the store and pay cash at the 
grocery store instead of having to use food stamps. They were proud of 
their mother. There are stories such as this all over the country.
  Now in the name of helping the poor, some Members are holding up the 
welfare reform bill. There is an irony in that.
  Let me talk a little bit about history. Poverty in the United States 
in the immediate postwar era was about 30 percent. It declined steadily 
for 20 years until 1965; reached about 15 percent in 1965. And that is 
when the Federal Government declared war on poverty, which was a good 
thing. One of the frustrations about this whole experience is there is 
a consensus. If we look beyond the politics of the 24-hour news cycle 
and look where the two great parties in this country have come from, 
what their mainstream beliefs are, there should be a consensus about 
welfare reform. There is on final votes.
  Liberals, in 1965, got the Federal Government aggressively in the 
business of trying to do something about poverty. That was a good 
impulse. What went wrong with it was that they did it in such a way 
that showed a disrespect for the basic values that have

[[Page 5852]]

always gotten people out of poverty. The two best antipoverty programs, 
historically, in the United States, the way people get out of poverty 
have been work and marriage, family. They work and they marry somebody 
who works. They get out of poverty.
  Poverty is not that unusual an experience for Americans. Most 
Americans either grew up in poverty or they have a parent who grew up 
in poverty or at least a grandparent who grew up in poverty. That is 
how they got out of poverty.
  For 30 years, from 1965 to 1995, in the name of fighting poverty, the 
Federal Government conditioned assistance to poor people on them not 
doing the two things that get people out of poverty. They offered a 
package of benefits that, to somebody coming from a low-income 
background, looked like a lot of money--cash benefits, Medicaid, 
housing subsidies, food stamps--but only on the condition they not get 
a job, they not get married, and they have children anyway. That is how 
we ran the welfare system for 30 years.
  The poverty rate, which was 15 percent in 1965, 30 years later was 15 
percent. But it was intractable poverty because if you are 18 or 19 
years old, you have a child without being married, you don't have your 
education yet, a couple years later you realize it is hard now to climb 
the ladder. It is hard now to realize the American dream.
  Well, we fixed that in 1996. We introduced a system where if you are 
able bodied, we are going to help you work. There is a constellation of 
benefits and supports in the bill to enable you to work. The other day, 
we passed an amendment increasing daycare in this bill. I supported 
that to enable people to work.
  The bill extends the benefits of work to more people and makes sure 
that the States around this country have to keep trying to help people 
get off welfare and into self-sufficiency. We should define success not 
by how many people we get on the welfare rolls, but by how many we get 
off. We can open opportunities for millions of people who currently 
don't have it.
  The bill contains a provision I strongly support. It was in a measure 
I had introduced, establishing a promarriage program. In 1996, we 
talked a lot about reducing the out-of-wedlock birth rate. That was a 
good thing to do. We wanted kids to have dads. I am glad we introduced 
that subject. In a sense, we were fighting the darkness by talking 
about what we were against. The bill we are debating today lights a 
candle. You cannot just fight the darkness; you have to let in the 
light.
  There is a $300 million grant program here, encouraging the States to 
go to people when they apply for welfare and talk to them about the 
benefits of healthy marriage. The surveys show that a majority of folks 
applying for welfare--or many of them--are living with the partner with 
whom they are having a child. Many of them, if not most, are thinking 
about marriage. There may be many reasons in their minds why they don't 
want to do it. Maybe their parents had bad experiences. Maybe they are 
not certain about the partner. Maybe they have fights and they don't 
know how to resolve that. What an opportunity we have at that point--
and often through community-based organizations that have grown up in 
the last 10 years--to approach them and say, here are the benefits to 
your children of being married, if you can do it in a healthy way. Here 
is how you can do it that way. We can help you learn how to resolve 
disputes, help you learn how to build healthy relationships. That is in 
this bill.
  There are a lot of things in this bill we know will make a difference 
for people because they have made a difference for the last 7 or 8 
years. It is being filibustered in the name of helping the poor.
  Well, I don't really know what to say. It seems to me we ought to be 
able to come to some kind of an agreement here. I have been in meetings 
of Senators on this side of the aisle, when the Republican leaders have 
said, we are willing to give votes on some of these message amendments, 
but we want some assurance that we are going to have an opportunity to 
vote on the bill in final passage after a reasonable period of debate, 
and then go to conference.
  I know the Senate is different than other legislative bodies. I am 
new here and it is an honor to be here. I have had the privilege of 
meeting and working with people on both sides of the aisle that I read 
about and saw on television for years, and they are an extremely able 
group of people. But most legislative bodies are about actually doing 
something. We have measures before us that I know, if we can get to 
final passage, would have substantial majorities--bipartisan 
majorities. This is one of them. How come we cannot get there?
  It is hard not to reach the conclusion that politics is being 
played--not politics in the broadest sense because actually that is 
part of what democracy is about, not laying forward an agenda, 
presenting it to people, and driving distinctions between you and the 
people who disagree with you and getting support from the public so you 
can move an agenda that makes a difference, but the politics of 
controlling or shifting the discussion from an issue focus groups say 
doesn't help you on an issue, but the focus group says does help. I 
don't think that politics works. Here we are holding up legislation on 
behalf of--I am afraid to say it, but I think of politics that is not 
even very good politics and certainly will end up hurting a lot of 
people.
  I have worked on this subject for a long time. I have an underlying 
faith that we are going to get our act together at some point and get 
this done. I know too many people of good will in this body. I 
emphasize again how important this is to real people. I have been all 
over this country, all over my State of Missouri, and I have talked to 
so many people, recipients, people who work with welfare recipients, 
who are excited about what has happened in the last 7 or 8 years as a 
result of the passage of the 1996 bill. We did something good.
  Work and marriage can make a difference for people. We can have a 
Federal Government that is aggressive in helping people in a way that 
is consistent with the great values upon which we built this country. 
That is at stake with this bill.
  I hope we can reach some kind of conclusion. I am certainly willing 
to vote on these other issues. I might have a few extraneous amendments 
I would not mind offering myself. But at the end of the day, we need to 
get this bill done, send it to the House, conference on it, and get it 
to the President. We can all be certain that when we do that, the bill 
we produce is not going to be perfect in anybody's eyes, but it will be 
a step down the road we took in 1996, which made a difference in the 
country to those who are the most powerless.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                              The Economy

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I have a couple of statements I wish 
to make. I appreciate the recognition from the Presiding Officer for 
this purpose.
  Earlier today, there were statements made on the floor, echoed by the 
junior Senator from Colorado, in which he claimed several times 
President Bush inherited a bad economy. I know my friends on the other 
side of the aisle genuinely want to believe that, but it is simply not 
true. That is not the fact.
  The official arbiter of when recessions begin and end is the National 
Bureau of Economic Research, NBER. Despite intense and inappropriate 
political pressure from the White House, the NBER continues to insist 
the recession began in March of 2001, nearly 3 months after President 
Bush took office. Facts are stubborn.

[[Page 5853]]

  On a related note, the junior Senator from Texas was on the floor 
some time ago with a poster that read: Most jobs ever. Perhaps he was 
referring to India. He certainly could not be referring to the United 
States.
  Yesterday, we had another administration official--in this instance 
Treasury Secretary Snow--talking about how wonderful outsourcing is for 
our economy. Don't ask the people who are out of work, I can tell you 
that, and don't ask their families.
  This notion the U.S. economy is currently generating record numbers 
of jobs is thoroughly specious. It would be laughable if it were not so 
pathetic. The claim is based on data selectively culled from something 
called the household survey. Economists from Alan Greenspan on down 
insist the accurate measure of jobs gained and lost is the payroll 
survey. Even the President's own Council of Economic Advisers relies on 
that which we call the payroll survey.
  This is something I know something about. Before I came to the 
Senate, I was the chairman and CEO of a company called ADP, Automatic 
Data Processing. It was a company I started with two other neighborhood 
friends in the city of Paterson, NJ. The company was named in its 
earliest days Automatic Payroll. Later on, as we expanded our reach of 
services, it was changed to Automatic Data Processing, ADP. For the 
information we are discussing here, it specialized, among other 
services, in payroll processing--in other words, writing paychecks for 
client companies that relied on us to compute their payrolls. Now, I 
know a paycheck when I see one. ADP, the company I helped found and run 
for many years, pays over 30 million people each and every pay period. 
Approximately 10 million of them are outside our boundaries in other 
countries, but more than 20 million work in America and are paid right 
here. So I know something about payroll structure.
  Interestingly, one of our most distinguished board members was a 
fellow named Alan Greenspan, the Alan Greenspan who is now the Chairman 
of the Fed. He was on the ADP board. He was on the ADP board as a very 
valuable director. He developed a service that was called the 
``econometrics'' plan. ADP, my company, the computer service company, 
would deliver this service--they called it an online service--and we 
would process the work we did for Alan Greenspan's company as well as 
for clients, over 500,000 of them today, through cities and towns 
across America.
  When Alan Greenspan, the talented and credible Chairman of the 
Federal Reserve, says use the payroll survey to get reliable data on 
how many people have jobs and are getting paid that way, I think it has 
to be treated with great respect.
  According again to the payroll survey--not the household survey. The 
household survey is done in a different manner. They are both done by 
BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the payroll survey is the one 
that tells the true story--they say the economy has lost more than 2 
million jobs since George Bush took office, making him the first 
President since Herbert Hoover--and I said this before and I mean no 
disrespect--and the Great Depression to preside over a net job loss 
during his term in office. Again, I mean no personal disrespect, but 
the facts ought to be presented accurately.
  These are the facts: For every minute George Bush has been President, 
nearly two Americans have lost their private sector jobs. I know it is 
difficult for our friends on the other side. The Republicans have an 
impossible task of trying to convince Americans the economy is better 
now than it was before George Bush became President. It is a difficult 
task. They should try to refrain from saying things everyone knows are 
just plain untrue.
  On Monday, I attended a symposium in New York City on the life and 
career of our dear friend and former colleague Pat Moynihan. As 
conservative columnist George Will noted, Pat was fond of saying: 
Everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. I 
wonder if Members on the other side of the aisle agree with me.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a statement 
Alan Greenspan and others have attested to. That statement refers to 
the household survey versus the payroll survey and it quotes several 
people. One is Alan Greenspan, who said at the House Budget Committee 
hearing on February 11, 2004: Everything we have looked at suggests 
that the payroll data is what has to be followed. Additionally, the 
establishment survey, the payroll survey, better reflects the state of 
labor markets. That is from CBO, the Congressional Budget Office. That 
was done in a report called the Budget and the Economic Outlook, an 
update, August 2003.
  Another statement that the payroll survey is the best indicator of 
current job trends was made by Kathleen Utgoff, the Commissioner of the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics--which is the organization that conducts the 
surveys--at a hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, March of 
2004. One final thing is the fact that the 2004 economic report of the 
President uses the payroll survey to assess the state of the labor 
market. I do not think there can be any doubt about which one is the 
more reliable one to use.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       ``Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll 
     data . . . which you have to follow.''--Alan Greenspan, 
     testifying before a House Budget Committee Hearing, February 
     11th, 2004.
       ``The establishment [payroll] survey better reflects the 
     state of labor markets.''--Congressional Budget Office, The 
     Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2003, page 34.
       ``The payroll survey is the best indicator of current job 
     trends.''--Kathleen Utgoff, Commissioner of the Bureau of 
     Labor Statistics, which conducts the surveys, at a hearing 
     before the Joint Economic Committee, March 2004.
       The 2004 Economic Report of the President uses the payroll 
     survey to assess the state of the labor market.

                        Emergency Contraception

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. I would like to discuss another subject, if I might, 
and that is something that came about this week that was discussed in 
my State's largest newspapers about the administration's interference 
in the FDA's proposed approval of emergency contraception for over-the-
counter sales. I believe the administration's activity is another 
example of their desire to establish a ``maleogarchy'' in this country. 
``Maleogarchy'' is a phrase I coined. It talks about men making all the 
decisions that affect not only themselves but the female population of 
the country.
  We saw that most notably on November 6, 2003, in the Washington Post 
when a group of men was standing with the President of the United 
States gleefully talking when the President signed a bill that 
restricted a woman's choice, even though it was made ostensibly with 
her doctor and in the best interest of her health. Yet again President 
Bush and other male politicians want to take away a woman's right to 
make decisions about her health and her body.
  These are the facts: On December 16, 2003, two separate FDA advisory 
committees overwhelmingly recommended the emergency contraception known 
as plan B be made available to women over the counter. The FDA almost 
always follows the advice of its scientific advisory committees. But 
then a funny thing got in the way of the science. I will call it 
rightwing politics. Extremists, anti-choice groups, and their allies in 
Congress objected to the FDA advisory committee decision. They made 
their opposition loud and clear. Once again I say, these decisions are 
made by the FDA after their scientific advisory committees come up with 
their recommendations. Science first and then the decision.
  The effect of this opposition? FDA suddenly announced, after they 
were ready to clear it, that it was delaying any decision on the 
approval of the drug. This is no coincidence. The Bush administration 
is caving to political pressure from ultraconservatives and risking the 
credibility of FDA's scientific panels.
  For an understanding of what has taken place, it is hard to come up 
with

[[Page 5854]]

a conclusion that this emergency contraception ought not to be 
available. These actions they took beg the question about who is 
running the FDA, scientists or politicians? I think the answer is 
clear. Science has taken a backseat to politics in this administration. 
It is disgraceful. Using the FDA to promote a political agenda not only 
threatens women's health but everyone's health. It threatens the health 
of our society.
  Do we want to resemble what we see in places such as Iraq, where 
women are subjected to second-class treatment? I was once in Saudi 
Arabia, in the first Gulf war. I was in the airport. There was a fellow 
there wearing a turban and a long dress-type suit. At his feet was what 
I thought was a bag of rags, black rags, because it just looked tumbled 
together and there it was. The man was standing there smoking a 
cigarette. But when he moved to another location, the bag of rags 
turned out to be a lady, small in stature, wearing black over her face 
and her body, and she followed this man, and as soon as he stopped 
walking, she sat down again, curled herself up like a bag, covered 
herself over with the black cloth. I will never forget that. This 
disdain for a female, for the rights of women is so outrageous that 
every woman has to cover her face--whether she wants to or not, by the 
way. That's not an option. It's ``you must.''
  In countries such as Saudi Arabia they have morals police who chase 
these women, embarrass them, and who will hit them. We in this country 
believe that, regardless of gender, people are appropriately treated as 
equals.
  We see a dangerous trend by this administration. We see the 
corruption of science. In some ways they are adopting the scientific 
standards we saw in Afghanistan, allowing religious fundamentalists to 
trump legitimate science. The Bush administration's intrusions into 
scientific decisionmaking threaten the future credibility of American 
science.
  Should high school science teachers tell students that the 
discoveries in their textbooks become null and void if rightwing 
politicians decide they don't like the results? No, that cannot happen. 
We are in the 21st century, but in many ways we are still fighting the 
Scopes trial. In fact, we have seen far right politicians in many 
States, and even here in Congress, continue to challenge the teaching 
of evolution in schools. What is next? Will the flat Earth theory make 
a comeback?
  Aside from serious scientific concerns, there are grave consequences 
for women who are denied this drug. Each year, approximately 25,000 
women in the United States become pregnant as a result of rape. An 
estimated 22,000 of these pregnancies could be prevented if these 
victims have access to emergency contraception. Increased use of 
emergency contraception could reduce the number of unintended 
pregnancies and abortions by half. Reducing abortions is something we 
would all like to see, but it is not our choice. It is the choice, it 
should be the choice, of the woman, her conscience, with her doctor and 
perhaps her entire family. But the choice is not ours to make. It is 
not for the ``maleogarchy'' to make those decisions.
  The FDA advisory committee agreed that emergency contraception meets 
all of the standards for an over-the-counter drug: It is safe; it is 
effective; it is simple to use; it is not associated with any serious 
or harmful side effects; and it is not dangerous to women with 
particular medical conditions. Leading medical organizations including 
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Society for 
Adolescent Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all support 
over-the-counter access to emergency contraception. It is time for the 
administration to stop playing games with women's health and the 
integrity of American science. The FDA should be allowed to act, free 
of political interference.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article on the 
administration's action on emergency contraception from our State's 
largest paper, the Newark Star-Ledger, be printed in the Record, and I 
yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Newark Star-Ledger, Mar. 29, 2004]

         FDA's Indecision on `Morning After' Pill Stirs Concern

                           (By Robert Cohen)

       Washington.--A scientific advisory panel's overwhelming 
     vote three months ago endorsing over-the-counter sales of the 
     ``morning after'' pill left family planning groups confident 
     of the Food and Drug Administration's approval.
       But that was before the FDA unexpectedly delayed its 
     decision after 49 conservative members of Congress wrote 
     President Bush objecting to the panel's conclusion and urging 
     that sales of the emergency contraceptive be restricted to 
     prescription holders.
       The FDA's action last month has raised fears among the 
     pill's proponents that the panel's scientific and public 
     health findings will be trumped by election-year politics.
       ``For some members of the Bush administration and the 
     president's political base, this product being available 
     without a prescription to young people files in the face of 
     their message, which is abstinence or else. At this point, 
     we're very concerned that politics was involved,'' said 
     Kristen Moore of the Reproductive Health Technologies 
     Project, a group that promotes contraception.
       But FDA officials said the delay has nothing to do with 
     politics, and that a final decision will be made by May. 
     Susan Cruzan, an FDA spokeswoman, said the agency first wants 
     to review data on use of the contraceptive by teenagers.
       ``The FDA bases its decisions on science,'' she said.
       This is not the first time the Bush administration has been 
     accused of politicizing science. Last month, 60 leading 
     scientists, including 12 Nobel laureates, accused the 
     administration of undermining the government's scientific 
     advisory system by distorting and suppressing data to meet 
     its policy goals.
       Critics of the emergency contraceptive--mostly religious 
     conservatives and anti-abortion groups--counter the claims of 
     politics by accusing liberal, pro-abortion organizations of 
     ignoring health concerns to foster their own agenda.
       ``When the supporters argue politics, they are simply 
     trying to divert attention from the real risks of making this 
     product readily available,'' said Wendy Wright, a policy 
     director for Concerned Women for America, a conservative 
     advocacy group dedicated to promoting biblical values.
       ``We don't know how this affects adolescents, who are the 
     target market,'' she said.
       Wright's group, along with the Catholic Medical 
     Association, the American Life League and others, argue that 
     making emergency contraceptives as easy to purchase as 
     aspiring will increase sexual promiscuity among adolescents 
     and cause the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
       Morning-after pills have been sold by prescription in the 
     United States since 1998, and contain higher doses of the 
     hormones used in regular birth control pills. The emergency 
     contraceptives are considered effective in preventing 
     pregnancy up to 72 hours after sex, but work best if taken in 
     the first 24 hours.
       Barr Laboratories of Woodcliff Lake recently purchased the 
     rights to the contraceptive, known as Plan B, from the 
     privately held Woman's Capital Corp. Barr holds the pending 
     FDA application to sell its product without a prescription.
       An FDA advisory panel voted 23-4 in December to recommend 
     the over-the-counter sale of Plan B, finding it to be a safe 
     and effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce 
     the number of abortions. The FDA normally follows the advice 
     of its advisory committees.
       But in January, 49 members of the House, led by Rep. David 
     Weldon (F-Fla), sent their letter to President Bush.
       ``We are very concerned that no data is available to 
     suggest what impact this decision will have on the sexual 
     behavior of adolescents and the subsequent impact on 
     adolescent sexual health,'' the letter said. ``We are 
     concerned that adolescent exposure to sexually transmitted 
     infection will increase. This availability may ultimately 
     result in significant increases in cancer, infertility, and 
     HIV/AIDS.''
       The lawmakers are among the supporters of Bush's policy 
     stressing abstinence rather than birth control and sex 
     education. The president has proposed doubling the funding 
     next year to $270 million for ``abstinence only'' programs 
     for teens.
       ``Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to 
     avoid sexually transmitted diseases,'' Bush said in his State 
     of the Union address in January.
       Carol Cox, a spokeswoman for Barr Labs, said the company 
     has submitted the information sought by the FDA and will 
     ``continue to work with the agency.'' Cox said the company 
     ``does not view the delay as a positive development,'' but 
     remains hopeful.
       ``We believe this product meets criteria of over-the-
     counter status,'' she said.
       James Trussell, director of Princeton University's Office 
     of Population Research and a member of the FDA advisory 
     panel, said the studies sought by the FDA were thoroughly 
     reviewed by the committee.

[[Page 5855]]

       ``The studies find that easy availability of emergency 
     contraception does not promote risk taking, does not 
     discourage condom use or use of regular contraception. This 
     product should go over-the-counter because it will reduce 
     unintended pregnancies,'' Trussell said.
       ``If the FDA does not approve Plan B to go over-the-
     counter, the decision will not have been based on the science 
     because the science says the drug is safe and effective to be 
     sold without a prescription,'' he said.
       Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent 
     Teen Pregnancy, said pregnancy rates among adolescents in the 
     United States have been dropping but are still the highest in 
     the industrialized world. She said multiple strategies 
     involving ``less sex and more contraception'' are needed.
       ``The government should approve the over-the-counter 
     availability of the emergency contraceptives,'' Brown said. 
     ``It probably will make some contribution to reduce teen 
     pregnancies. Will it eliminate it or dramatically change 
     adolescent sexual behavior? I doubt it.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.


                       Escalating Gasoline Prices

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for 
his leadership in the presentation he just made to the Senate. I would 
like at this time to address an issue that is extremely topical in 
Illinois and across the Nation, more so in some States than others, but 
it is the escalating gasoline prices people are facing.
  Global crude oil prices are as high as they have been in a year. 
Domestically, retail gasoline prices are as high as they ever were, 
with the average price of gasoline $1.738, higher than a year ago. In 
Illinois, the current sale price of gas is $1.756 cents, which is 
higher than the current national average, higher than a month ago, and 
4 cents higher than the average a year ago.
  Gasoline prices affect Americans in the pocketbook. On the average, 
the cost of gasoline is about half of a family's transportation 
expenses. We love our cars, we love our trucks, we are in them a lot, 
and when gasoline prices go up, we pay more. The low-income families 
are hit the hardest by high transportation costs. The poorest 20 
percent of American households, those earning less than $13,908 after 
taxes per year, spend 40 percent of their take-home pay on 
transportation.
  There are many factors that have led to these high prices, some of 
them on the supply side and some on the demand side. U.S. crude oil 
inventories hit a 28-year low in January of this year. OPEC has been 
very prudent in putting oil on the market. I will get to the most 
current announcement on OPEC policy in a few minutes. In addition, 
refinery capacity in the United States has been down for years.
  In the United States, cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans account 
for 40 percent of oil consumption, and the transportation sector itself 
accounts for 60 percent overall. Almost nothing has been done to curb 
this demand. The best way to address rising gasoline prices is to curb 
our Nation's insatiable thirst for guzzling gas.
  I am leading the fight in the Senate to try to lessen overall demand 
for gas by improving the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks. Last 
year, I offered an amendment to the energy bill which would have 
increased the Corporate Average Fuel Economy--or CAFE--law's standard 
for cars and SUVs to 40 miles a gallon by the year 2015, and the 
standard for trucks to 27.5 gallons in the same year.
  I also introduced legislation that would discourage the building of 
more SUVs that achieve less than 15 miles per gallon, and to address 
the tax credit currently given to these SUVs, these gas guzzlers, and 
instead create a tax credit for consumers who purchase more fuel-
efficient cars.
  The Bush administration finalized regulations for SUVs and pickup 
trucks that would save at the most 20 billion gallons by 2015. This is 
one-sixth of the savings that would have occurred under the proposal I 
am offering--one-sixth. What I offered would have saved 123 billion 
gallons of gasoline by the year 2015--123 billion by reducing demand.
  I urged my colleagues at the time to read the writing on the wall and 
realize if we didn't reduce the demand for gasoline for cars and 
trucks, we would not only have skyrocketing gasoline prices but even 
more pollution.
  The New York Times editorial, Monday, March 22, 2004:

       A much better way to strengthen America's leverage . . . is 
     for the United States to limit its own consumption of energy 
     . . . [T]he most straightforward [way] is to raise fuel 
     economy standards by significant amounts. This is exactly 
     what the country did after the oil shocks of the 1970's, 
     resulting in huge savings in imported oil.

  Thanks to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE, oil consumption 
is about 2.8 million barrels per day lower than it otherwise would be.
  Studies have shown consumers can save as much as $2,000 over the 
lifetime of a car from higher fuel efficiency, even accounting for the 
cost of new vehicle technology.
  Raising fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon would save 
consumers a cumulative $45.8 billion within about 10 years.
  Unfortunately, since peaking at 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 and 
1998, average fuel economy declined nearly 8 percent to 20.4 in 2001, 
lower than it has been at any time since 1980.
  Consider that for a moment. Instead of having more fuel efficiency 
and more fuel economy and less demand for foreign oil, our cars and 
trucks are less efficient burning gasoline, cause more pollution, and 
increase our dependence on foreign oil.
  The Energy bill brought to us by the Bush administration didn't 
include any provision whatsoever to improve efficiency.
  I will add, in all honesty and candor, that the automobile 
manufacturers in the United States and their unions also oppose 
increasing the fuel efficiency in cars. I think their reasoning is 
wrong. I think their excuses are lame. I think they are so shortsighted 
to believe that we can continue to build the most fuel-inefficient cars 
and trucks in the world and not run into the same problem we face today 
of increasing costs for fuel. As our demand increases, we can't produce 
enough fuel on our own. We import more and become more dependent on 
foreign fuel and, frankly, enslaved to OPEC. In a minute I will tell 
you what that enslaved position resulted in.
  I say to my colleagues and many who have come to the floor to talk 
about gasoline prices, go back and check the Congressional Record. How 
did you vote when it came to making cars and trucks more fuel 
efficient? Sadly, very few of my colleagues joined me. It did not win a 
majority vote. I think those who complain today ought to take an 
inventory of their own voting record on this issue.
  There are many things we should do. If we don't start fuel 
conservation and fuel efficiency and fuel economy, frankly, we will 
continue to be captives of the oil cartel. We will continue to watch 
these prices rise at the pump with very little we can do in response.
  The next time we debate energy policy, I will be offering this 
amendment again. I hope we will do the right thing.
  In the meantime, what do we do about the current prices? It is 
interesting what some have said when it comes to the current prices.
  During the Republican primary debate in Manchester, NH, in the year 
2000, in January, then-Governor Bush of Texas said:

       What I think the President ought to do is he ought to get 
     on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to 
     open your spigots. One reason why the price is so high is 
     because the price of crude oil has been driven up. OPEC has 
     gotten its supply act together and it is driving the price 
     like it did in the past, and the President of the United 
     States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price.

  Faced with these skyrocketing gasoline prices, the obvious question 
is, Did President Bush do what candidate Bush suggested? The answer is 
no.
  Listen to what the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, had to say 
on March 24, just a few days ago, when he was asked about whether the 
administration should put pressure on OPEC not to cut the supply of oil 
and raise prices in America.
  I quote the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, from the Washington 
Times.

       Abraham said the administration would not temporarily stop 
     filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help lower oil 
     prices and it would not publicly call on OPEC to

[[Page 5856]]

     roll back production cuts scheduled for April 1st.

  Here are the words of Secretary Abraham:

       We've . . . made clear we are not going to beg them for 
     oil.

  What it means is when candidate Bush went to Manchester, NH, and said 
we need a forceful President who will stand up to OPEC to defend 
businesses and families and individuals across America who are paying 
the price of higher gasoline prices, candidate Bush when he became 
President Bush suffered severe political amnesia. He forgot what he 
said. Look where we are today.
  The unfortunate reality is that we have a press release today from 
Vienna, Austria, from Reuters, which said:

       '`OPEC agreed Wednesday to endorse tighter curbs on oil 
     production, ignoring concerns in some countries about crude 
     oil prices near their highest level in 13 years,'' ministers 
     said.
       ``The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided 
     to implement a deal cutting 1 million barrels a day from 
     April 1,'' Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said. Libyan 
     Oil Minister Fethi bin Chetwane also said that the cartel 
     formally agreed Wednesday to implement the cuts, which were 
     first proposed in Algiers in February.

  Benchmark U.S. crude traded up 25 cents to $36.50 a barrel with the 
New York Mercantile Exchange's gasoline contracts sitting at an all-
time high of $1.177 a gallon.
  What is happening? Because this administration refuses to confront 
OPEC, because as Secretary of Energy Abraham said, we are not going to 
beg for oil, because President Bush forgot what he promised when he ran 
for President 4 years ago, American families and businesses will face 
oil prices at record high and historic levels.
  What has been the response of the Bush administration to this 
reality? The response was to prepare a campaign ad attacking John 
Kerry. The campaign ad just started to run. It is an ad which 
criticizes Senator John Kerry, the purported Democratic nominee for 
President of United States, for supporting a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax, 
saying that the tax increase will cause the average consumer to pay 
$657 more a year, and that he supported high gasoline taxes 11 times.
  This morning, the Washington Post decided to look at the charges, the 
negative ad, that is being run against John Kerry. Here is what they 
had to say:

       Unlike three previous negative ads, this spot softens its 
     charges with a mocking tone and funny footage against the 
     ``wacky'' Kerry.

  This is from the Washington Post.

       But it unfairly presents a gas-tax hike as if it were the 
     Senator's current position, when most of the examples are a 
     decade old. Kerry voted in 1993 for the Clinton economic 
     package, which included a 4.3 cent increase in the gas tax, 
     and is widely credited with boosting the economy. He also 
     opposed several Republican efforts to repeal the tax.

  The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush negative ad:

       Kerry spoke in favor of a 50-cent hike in 1994 and as a 
     possible way of cutting the deficit, but no such proposal 
     came to a vote and he later changed his mind. His only recent 
     vote was in 2000, when Kerry opposed the GOP effort to 
     suspend 18 cents in gas taxes for five months.

  The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush attack ad:

       The ad fails to mention that the President, who promised in 
     2000 to trim gas taxes, has never proposed such a cut. Bush 
     campaign manager Ken Mehlman said Kerry last year opposed 
     Bush's energy bill, designed to boost oil in part by allowing 
     drilling in Alaska. Kerry's spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter 
     called the measure ``a giveaway'' to the oil companies and a 
     Republican-controlled Congress killed it. The Kerry camp dug 
     out a quote in which Bush's top economic adviser [the ever-
     present and almost infamous] N. Gregory Mankiw, backed a 50-
     cent gas tax in 1999.

  You may remember Mr. Mankiw. Mr. Mankiw was the man, the President's 
economic adviser, who sent the economic report to Congress. In it Mr. 
Mankiw, with his own insight as the top economist of the Bush 
administration, said that the outsourcing of jobs to India and China 
was a good thing. Now we were trading in new things like call centers. 
It was a good thing--Mankiw's own words.
  So Mr. Mankiw, top economic adviser to George Bush, it turns out, was 
supporting a 50-cent increase in the gasoline tax in 1999. Interesting. 
And President Bush and his campaign continue to run ads attacking John 
Kerry and saying that the real reason for the gasoline price increases 
that we are seeing across America is John Kerry voting for a 4.3-cent 
gasoline tax increase 11 years ago.
  Is that as good as they can get? Is that the best they can come up 
with? What they are ignoring is the obvious. They are ignoring the fact 
that this President has the power, as President of the United States, 
to put the pressure on OPEC, and refuses to do it. Why? Why is this 
President backing away? Is it this oil connection with the President 
and Vice President Cheney? Is it the fact that some of the OPEC cartel 
countries have been some of the favorites of this administration for 
political and other reasons?
  What is it all about? Why wouldn't this President, facing a gasoline 
crisis in America today, do what he said he would do when he ran for 
office in the year 2000? It is an answer I cannot come up with. But I 
will tell you, the American people will come up with it. They 
understand what this is all about.
  The President can promise tiny little tax cuts for working families 
and massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and then turn around and fail to 
show leadership on gasoline prices, and watch whatever benefit those 
small tax cuts meant to lower-income families disappear.
  The Bush administration's failed policies have created record high 
prices for gasoline. Americans are paying 12 percent more for gasoline 
since former oil industry executives President Bush and Vice President 
Cheney took office on the pledge that their ties to the oil industry 
would lead to lower gas prices.
  Well, it did not work, just as the President's economic policy did 
not work. Here we have a President who, in a matter of 3 years and a 
few months, has lost more jobs in America than any President in the 
last 70 years, and that includes Republicans and Democrats alike. Tax 
cuts to the wealthy did not create jobs. And the President's cozy 
relationship with the oil companies and the oil sector certainly has 
not kept gasoline prices under control. The President refuses to 
confront OPEC and tell them they have to stop taking advantage of 
American families and businesses.
  Secretary Abraham: ``We won't beg for oil.''
  Well, I do not think you have to beg. Many of these countries in the 
Middle East, as part of the OPEC cartel, depend on the United States 
for an important and valuable market. They depend on the United States 
for many security items. They depend on the United States and its 
friendship and alliance when things get tough, such as the instance in 
Kuwait and the Persian Gulf crisis.
  Why wouldn't this President go to the leaders in OPEC and tell them 
what they were doing to America and the American economy, gripped with 
this so-called jobless recovery. Frankly, a jobless recovery is no 
recovery at all. We all know that. Facing a jobless recovery, this 
President will not confront OPEC and tell them: Keep gasoline prices 
low; increase your exports of crude oil so we do not run up the cost of 
business for small and large businesses alike, and run up the cost of 
living for average working families.
  Economist David Rosenberg told CNN's Lou Dobbs:

       [P]ain at the pump has wiped out more than $20 billion of 
     the coming $40 billion in tax refund checks.

  How did he come to that conclusion? On January 5, American consumers 
paid $1.51 for an average gallon of gas. As of today, less than 3 
months later, they are paying $1.75 a gallon--a 24-cent increase since 
January.
  According to the Wall Street Journal:

       [E]very penny increase in a gallon of gas costs consumers 
     $1 billion a year.

  So if prices remain high, that means a $24 billion gas tax hike has 
been placed on the American people, for the failure of the Bush 
administration to confront the OPEC cartel, as he promised to do.
  But that is not all.

[[Page 5857]]

  Nationwide gas prices have risen 12 percent since the year 2000 and 
are expected to skyrocket upwards to $1.83 a gallon this summer when 
gasoline prices usually peak--a 17-percent increase in gasoline prices 
since President Bush took office.
  So what is wrong with this picture? When it comes to employment, 
there is nothing but bad news in statistics. The unemployment rates 
continue to go up. When it comes to gasoline prices and its cost to 
families and businesses, more bad news from the Bush administration: a 
17-percent anticipated increase by this summer.
  Guy Caruso, the administrator of the Energy Information 
Administration, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee 
that an average family will spend about $1,700 for gasoline in 2004. At 
today's gas prices, this means the average family will spend over $300 
more for gas than they would have if prices were at the level they were 
the week President George W. Bush took office.
  As I said, candidate Bush knew what to do. President Bush refused to 
do it. Candidate Bush said: Confront the OPEC cartel. President Bush 
said: We are not going to dirty our hands by ``begging for oil.''
  Because the Bush administration did not follow its own advice from 
2000, OPEC has decided to pursue additional cuts, leaving American 
consumers more susceptible to higher gas prices.
  Let me say, gas prices have been an issue for the Vice President, 
too. On October 9, 1986--since President Bush's campaign is dredging up 
history when it comes to John Kerry--as a Member of the House of 
Representatives, Dick Cheney, our Vice President, introduced a bill to 
establish a $24-per-barrel price floor on imported crude oil--a 
mandatory minimum price, indexed to inflation, that today would have 
reached as high as $36.12 a gallon. If Vice President Cheney's bill had 
passed in 1986, consumers would have paid over $1.2 trillion in 
increased gas prices since that year, with $600 billion going to oil 
companies.
  In 2001, as Vice President, former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney led an 
energy task force that met with energy industry officials in closed 
meetings to write the energy bill of this administration. The meetings 
led to the administration's energy policy, which has failed on the 
Senate floor. The administration has refused to release detailed 
records of the meetings to the General Accounting Office, the 
investigative branch of Congress. The secrecy surrounding the meetings 
is so unusual and unprecedented that the Supreme Court on April 27--
just a few weeks from now--will hear arguments that the records for the 
meetings should be opened.
  Republicans have criticized John Kerry for supporting gas taxes in 
his Senate career, but, as I have said, these charges are grossly 
exaggerated and a distortion. This, frankly, is what I am afraid we can 
expect more of during this campaign. But I think the American people 
know, while Republicans make a lot of noise about opposing a gas tax, 
the record tells a different story.
  Ronald Reagan said of the gas tax:

       The cost to the average motorist will be small, but the 
     benefit to our transportation system will be immense.

  Republican leaders in the House have pushed for a gas tax hike this 
year. In fact, House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don 
Young of Alaska proposed a 5.4-cent-per-gallon gas increase this 
Congress. And President Bush, who promised to cut the gas tax as a 
candidate, has never acted to do so once in office.
  So I think what faces America is clear. We need leadership in the 
White House that is not afraid to confront OPEC. We need a President 
who is not afraid to get on the phone, through his Secretary of State, 
Secretary of Energy, and say to those in the OPEC cartel that they 
cannot unilaterally put us in a position where our economy--struggling 
to come out of recession, struggling to recover, struggling to create 
jobs--is going to end up hat in hand, in a situation where we have no 
recourse for families and for businesses.
  But the Bush administration failed. They failed to do what the 
President should have done in showing leadership on this issue. The 
President said one thing in the campaign and has done another thing now 
in the White House.
  American families are going to have to face that cost. When you look 
at this record, sadly, it is not too much of a surprise. Here we are 
faced with a struggling economy and an administration which, despite 
losing more jobs than any President in 7 years, refuses to support a 
payout of unemployment compensation to the workers and families who 
have lost their jobs, an administration which understands that more 
workers are working longer hours to make ends meet and comes up with a 
proposal to eliminate overtime pay for 8 million American workers.
  We created the overtime law in 1938. Since we said that after you 
work 40 hours, you are going to be paid more under the law, every 
administration that has addressed this law has increased the 
eligibility of American workers until this administration. With the 
Bush administration, for the first time in history, a President has 
proposed cutting overtime pay for 8 million workers in America.
  Think about that. If he is successful in doing that, it means that 
the workers who are going to work today will have to work longer hours 
just to keep up with the lost pay from this Bush administration policy. 
So who are these workers? They are policemen, firefighters, nurses, and 
people, frankly, who we count on every single day. This is an 
administration which won't provide unemployment compensation despite 
losing millions of jobs since the President was elected, an 
administration which cuts overtime pay for some 8 million workers, and 
an administration which has decided as a matter of policy it will not 
support an increase in the minimum wage for workers in America.
  We are in the midst of debating the welfare bill. I voted for welfare 
reform. I hope I can vote for this bill. There are many positive 
aspects to it. But if we want to keep people off welfare, if we want to 
reward work and reward the right decisions, then we certainly should 
give fair and adequate compensation to those who struggle. Can you 
think of what life would be like if you faced $5.15 an hour, a little 
over $10,000 a year, as your total income, and then add on to that a 
second job, if you could get it, that has you working 16 hours a day 
and doubles your income to $20,000 or $22,000 a year?
  These proud and hard-working people get up and go to work every 
single day. They are the visible Americans who make the beds in our 
hotel rooms, bus our tables in the restaurants, wash the dishes in back 
of the kitchen, deal with tending our children in daycare facilities. 
We have said, because of the refusal of this administration and 
Congress to increase the minimum wage, that we have so little respect 
for their work ethic we will not allow the minimum wage to be increased 
in America.
  The insensitivity of this administration to working families and to 
the sad state of the economy has been documented again, not just with 
unemployment compensation, not just with overtime pay, not just with 
its resistance to increasing the minimum wage, but with the refusal of 
this President to keep his campaign promise from the year 2000 and to 
put pressure on OPEC not to cut the production of oil, forcing an 
increase in gasoline prices across America.
  We need more compassion from this administration. We need more of a 
connection between this administration and working families across 
America. We need a change.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to speak about an amendment I wish to 
offer to the bill currently under consideration to reauthorize the 
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. This program is one of 
the largest Federal programs ever designed to help families reach self 
sufficiency. I believe this amendment is a strong addition to the 
current bill, and one that this body should pass. I thank my friend and 
colleague from Iowa, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for his 
hard work in preparing this bill for floor consideration and for making

[[Page 5858]]

important improvements to the 1996 welfare reauthorization. The 1996 
reauthorization is one of the greatest success stories of the recent 
past. Even now, it continues to produce positive results far beyond 
what many thought was possible. Now it only makes sense for us to pass 
this legislation to continue the reforms we began 8 years ago.
  Mr. President, as I mentioned, the key principle of this welfare 
reauthorization is self-sufficiency. As this body considered welfare 
reform in 1996 we found that families could end their dependence on 
Federal assistance if we provided the incentives to help them find jobs 
and start providing for themselves. It was the most important change we 
could have ever made. In response, families went out and found good 
jobs that provided them with the resources they needed to make ends 
meet today and prepare for their future needs.
  Even today, the results of that effort continue to speak for 
themselves. As my colleague from Pennsylvania has pointed out, child 
poverty has declined significantly since 1996. Families receiving 
welfare assistance have found a renewed sense of confidence and self 
worth by meeting life on their own terms. Their newfound jobs have 
given them a sense of security many have never had before.
  We congratulate all those who have been able to work themselves off 
the welfare rolls and we encourage those who are trying to do the same 
not to be discouraged. That is why this legislation is so important. It 
enables us to continue that piece of the reform we started, to get 
people into work and on to self-sufficiency.
  I don't think there is any more vital aspect of self-sufficiency than 
making sure that these families know how to budget and manage their 
money wisely so they can maintain their financial independence and work 
toward financial security. That calls for education in financial 
literacy.
  When I served as mayor of Gillette, WY, I saw firsthand the 
effectiveness of helping individuals understand the importance of 
financial planning. This is a skill that is essential to self-
sufficiency, and it should be a part of the welfare assistance program.
  My amendment would permit welfare recipients to participate in a 
limited amount of financial literacy training that would allow them to 
learn about personal finance management, credit counseling, budgeting, 
and debt management. This important course work and study would then 
count toward the work requirement under the Financial bill. As my 
colleagues are aware, the Finance bill separates the permissible work 
hour activities into two groups: core work and work preparation 
activities, and allowable activities. Both are required for a recipient 
to meet the work hour requirement. My amendment would add financial 
literacy training as an allowable activity.
  Financial literacy and education is an essential tool that must be 
mastered to fully participate in today's society. Only an educated 
individual consumer will be able to fully unlock the financial markets 
available to them. A basic understanding of the credit process and 
managing personal finances will prepare consumers and their families 
for making major financial purchases like a home, saving for college 
and planning for retirement. All of these are part of achieving self-
sufficiency because they require people to create a plan that will 
enable them to meet short term needs and still reach long term goals.
  It is essential that welfare recipients be given an opportunity to 
receive this training and that states have an incentive to provide it. 
The Federal Government operates several financial literacy and 
education information programs designed to help individuals make smart 
decisions about their finances. It is my hope that by including 
financial literacy training in the welfare reauthorization we will 
improve and build upon the growing Federal recognition of the 
importance of this training.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, our support of childcare assistance is 
essential to ensuring the health and safety of children in working 
families. Without greater support for childcare, parents of young 
children may be forced to choose cheaper, poor quality care for their 
children or fail to provide it entirely. These families need to know 
their children are cared for while the parents do their part to attain 
self-sufficiency and to provide for their families.
  At 73 percent, my State of South Dakota has the highest percentage of 
children six years of age and younger with both parents working and the 
highest number of children under the age of 6 in paid daycare, at 47 
percent. This is almost double the national average of 24 percent. On 
average, 1 year of childcare costs families in South Dakota $4,000. 
This estimate is close to a semester of college at a State institution.
  A study done by the South Dakota Coalition for Children found that 
parents seek a safe, nurturing environment for their children when they 
are under someone else's care. As more and more families need both 
parents to work in order to make ends meet, safe reliable day care has 
become essential to the peace of mind of working families in South 
Dakota and across the country. Without the increased funding for 
childcare that the Snowe-Dodd amendment provides, more parents will be 
forced to seek childcare that meets their budgets rather than their 
hopes for the care of their children. In some cases, families may go 
without childcare all together.
  Without the increase in childcare funding provided by this amendment, 
hundreds of thousands of eligible children will lose childcare 
assistance over the next 5 years. At a time when only one out of seven 
eligible children is currently served, I urge my colleagues to 
strengthen our commitment to children in working families by supporting 
the Snowe amendment and providing additional resources to increase the 
number of children able to receive quality care.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I am proud to cosponsor the Boxer/
Kennedy amendment to raise the minimum wage for the first time in seven 
years. This increase is long overdue. The last time Congress increased 
the minimum wage was in 1997. Yet inflation has already wiped out the 
real value of that increase. For working people, a full-time job should 
not mean full-time poverty.
  I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet 
minimum wage jobs aren't paying enough to keep families out of poverty. 
There are more than 100,000 Marylanders earning minimum wage. Most of 
them can't even afford a two-bedroom apartment. At $5.15 per hour, 
minimum wage workers working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, earn 
an annual salary of only $10,700. That's $5,000 below the national 
poverty line for a family of three.
  Every day the minimum wage is not increased, workers fall farther and 
farther behind. Throughout Maryland, I keep hearing about families 
turning to soup kitchens and local charities for help. They are forced 
to do this because the economy is bad, and their jobs simply don't pay 
them enough to stay afloat.
  An increase in the minimum wage equals an increase in the standard of 
living for working Americans. This amendment would raise the minimum 
wage from $5.15 and hour to $7.00 an hour. It would help nearly 7 
million working Americans. It helps low wage workers like the home 
health aides who take care of our elderly parents and the child care 
workers who take care of our children. It helps farm workers, security 
guards and housekeepers.
  Right now we are debating the reauthorization of Welfare Reform. I 
voted for Welfare Reform in 1996 because I agree that the best way to 
help lift someone out of poverty is to help him or her get a job. But 
it doesn't help anyone to get a job that doesn't pay enough to stay off 
of public assistance. While we're working to move our most vulnerable 
citizens from welfare to work, we need to make sure those jobs pay a 
livable wage.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

[[Page 5859]]


  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Boxer-Kennedy 
amendment to raise the minimum wage. A fair increase is long overdue 
and the Congress must act to set a minimum wage that accurately 
reflects current economic conditions.
  The majority has decried this amendment as non-germane and accused 
the minority of holding up the underlying legislation. While the 
amendment may not be germane in a procedural sense, it is certainly 
relevant, it is certainly appropriate, and it deserves an up or down 
vote.
  Indeed, as my able colleague Senator Kennedy mentioned earlier on the 
floor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as recently as March 
of 2002, has acknowledged that moving people to jobs that pay at least 
the minimum wage is the centerpiece of TANF. Minimum wage jobs are the 
centerpiece of TANF.
  But in order for people to move off these rolls and still support 
their families, such jobs must provide a livable wage. Mr. President, 
if the true goal of this legislation--as has been stated--is to reduce 
the number of individuals enrolled in our Nation's welfare system, this 
amendment would directly serve to accomplish that goal.
  To achieve self-sufficiency, a working family needs more. By working 
40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, an employee will earn $10,700 at the 
current minimum wage. For a family of three, that represents an income 
that falls $5,000 below the poverty line.
  And this is a pervasive trend. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 
in 2002 the number of working poor in the United States stood at 
8,954,000. This is unacceptable. If Americans are willing and able to 
work full time jobs, they should be able to provide for their family.
  At the current minimum wage, this situation is not likely to improve 
any time soon. According to the Congressional Research Service, the 
minimum wage today is at its lowest level in terms of purchasing power 
since the 1940s. And each day we fail to act, inflation continues to 
erode this purchasing power. As this happens, workers earning the 
minimum wage will only become more and more dependent on the government 
assistance to make ends meet.
  If enacted, at its full implementation, the Kennedy amendment would 
increase this wage to $7 an hour. This would provide an increase in the 
incomes of minimum wage earners by $3,800 a year, which represents a 
positive step toward purchasing power that comports with modern day 
needs and prices.
  The other side will argue that increasing the minimum wage will hurt 
business and stunt job growth. They argue that we need to give more tax 
cuts to the wealthiest among us, run large and growing Federal 
deficits, and hope that things improve.
  Mr. President, this has been our policy for over three years since 
this Administration took office. In that time, we have seen the largest 
job loss in our Nation's history. We have seen Federal surpluses erased 
in favor of record deficits. And we have been told time and time again 
by the Administration that things will turn around soon.
  However, today's release of state-level job growth data by the Bureau 
of Labor Statistics flies in the face of the Administration's 
assertions in this regard. These statistics indicate that 49 states 
failed to meet the Bush Administration's projections for job creation 
in the month of February 2004. As of February 2004, 35 states have 
failed to get back to their pre-recession employment levels. 
Furthermore, 49 states have not created enough jobs to keep up with the 
natural growth in the number of potential workers, as job growth has 
lagged the growth in working-age population since March 2001. As for 
the unemployed, 43 states have higher unemployment rates than when the 
recession began. As a Nation, the cumulative job growth shortfall is 
over two million jobs since July 2003, when the first of this 
Administration's tax cuts went into effect.
  Raising the minimum wage will not only benefit low-income wage 
earners, it will provide economic stimulus by putting additional 
dollars in the hands of those who must spend them to make ends meet. 
When the Congress last increased the minimum wage, the economy 
experienced its strongest growth in over three decades. Nearly 11 
million new jobs were added. This is quite a different result from the 
economic policies we have pursued under the current Administration.
  Mr. President, increasing the minimum wage is the fair thing to do 
and it is sound economic policy. I urge my colleagues to support the 
Boxer-Kennedy amendment.

                          ____________________