[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 19844-19874]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR SCIENCE, THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE, JUSTICE, 
   AND COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006--Continued

  Ms. MIKULSKI. For the Commerce, State, Justice appropriations, we are 
now waiting for the chairman to give his statement. We will correct 
some technical amendments. We are urging colleagues to come and offer 
amendments. We know of six on our side of the aisle. We are doing our 
best. We would like to be able to finish this bill today, but if we 
start offering amendments at sundown--sundown is a great cocktail 
party, but that is not a great way to do appropriations. So we really 
want to do this bill because it funds the FBI, it funds the Justice 
Department, it funds important help to the FEMA victims. We would like 
to move it along.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I first compliment my colleagues, 
Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby, for doing such a fine job and for 
the hard work they have done on a very important issue. I compliment my 
colleague and neighbor from Tennessee, Senator Frist, for working so 
diligently to get the supplemental emergency appropriations bill over 
here so we can help our neighbors in the delta region, in the Midsouth, 
lower Midsouth region. And I again compliment my colleagues from the 
States of Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana for their incredible 
passion and concern, as well as their hard work and their diligent 
efforts in responding to the needs of their constituency.
  Sitting here on the Senate floor listening to my colleague from 
Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, I thought so desperately about some 
lessons I had learned growing up along the Mississippi River. My father 
was very emphatic about how important it is to not only have good 
neighbors but to be a good neighbor, how critically important it is 
that you have good neighbors that can help you raise your children, 
educate them, to help out with a cup of sugar or other needs you might 
have at the end of the month if you do not have enough, to make sure if 
you are trying to harvest your crops--as many of our farmers are right 
now--and you find out that to diligently get those crops out of the 
field you may not have enough hands or equipment to do that, that you 
can look to your neighbor to help you do that and others things.
  I think during times like these, as we look to our neighbors from 
Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the needs they have, it is 
important for us--as we have been the recipient of their generosity and 
their camaraderie and fellowship--to understand how important it is for 
us, as neighbors, to be the good neighbor they have been to us and 
welcoming their constituency into our homes in Arkansas, to help 
provide them not only the necessities of life--the water, the food, the 
rest, the shelter, the clothes--they might need right now in such a 
difficult time but also to provide them the hug, the love, the comfort, 
the stability, the idea that we will be there with them, we will be 
there for them, as long as they need us.
  That is why I come to the floor of the Senate today. As Senator Frist 
has mentioned, bringing an emergency supplemental appropriations bill 
over is really critical. But as many of us know who have worked 
diligently on so many of the components of our Government--that 
provides assistance and aid as well as just everyday services to the 
people we represent--it is very important to enable these agencies, 
these providers of services the language and the ability to use these 
dollars as efficiently, as effectively, and as quickly

[[Page 19845]]

as they possibly can be used in reaching the needs of our fellow 
Americans whose lives have been shattered.


                           Amendment No. 1652

    (Purpose: To provide for temporary medicaid disaster relief for 
        survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and for other purposes)

  Mr. President, I wanted to wait until the Senator from Alabama had 
come to offer an amendment, but I do rise today to offer an amendment 
to respond to the dire health care crisis that has been created by 
Hurricane Katrina.
  Hurricane Katrina has created a crisis of epic proportions for our 
Nation but particularly in the Midsouth region. It is a humanitarian 
crisis for the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It is a 
capacity crisis for hospitals, for clinics, and community health 
centers, for physicians and nursing homes that are bursting at the 
seams with a surge in demand for care, mostly emergency care, mostly 
dire care, that has been evidenced by not only those who have been 
victimized by the dangerous natural elements but also by those who have 
been removed at a moment's notice from their homes where they have left 
their insulin, perhaps, or their high blood pressure medicine or other 
things that allow them a quality of life and a sustainability of life 
on a day-to-day basis.
  It is a fiscal crisis for the States directly affected as well as 
those which have welcomed the displaced survivors, including Arkansas, 
Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, and so many other States. When New York City 
faced a similar set of crises after 9/11, the city turned to Medicaid, 
the Federal-State partnership of health care for the poor, to provide 
temporary coverage for victims of the tragedy. Our Nation's health care 
safety net met the needs of millions of New York families, ensuring 
them access to comprehensive health care services.
  Current law restrictions on Medicaid eligibility impede our efforts 
to let Medicaid provide a safety net for Katrina's victims. Under 
current law, low-income individuals must be residents of a State in 
order to qualify for Medicaid coverage in that State. Once the 
individual is determined eligible and enrolled in Medicaid, Federal and 
State Governments share in the cost of purchasing medically necessary 
services from hospitals, clinics, and other providers. The amount the 
State pays varies from State to State--from 29 percent in Louisiana to 
39 percent in Texas to 50 percent in the State of Virginia.
  Katrina has displaced tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of 
citizens of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who have lost 
everything and who will not be able to return to their homes until 
their communities are rebuilt. We are looking here to put into place 
some commonsense directives, some flexibility to allow these 
individuals to be able to access the kind of health care we in this 
Nation know they need and as Americans we want to provide.
  These citizens cannot return to their homes and may not return to 
their homes for months, but under current Medicaid law, they are only 
eligible for benefits as residents of their home State. Under current 
law, Medicaid services can only be provided if the State puts up its 
own money for the match for the survivors, but the States directly 
affected by Katrina and those hosting the survivors will not be able to 
put up their match payments due to the fiscal crisis Katrina has 
created. This could put Medicaid coverage for our Nation's neediest 
individuals in jeopardy.
  We want to prevent that from happening. We want to assure our 
providers and those in the communities who are there to wrap their arms 
around their fellow Americans--their neighbors, many of them to the 
south or to the east or wherever their neighbors from Louisiana, 
Alabama, and Mississippi have come from--that the Federal Government 
has the common sense and the wisdom to be able to provide these 
services with the flexibility and without the redtape that in many 
instances would cause providers to turn them away.
  In the face of the public health, and State budget crises Katrina has 
created, current law is not plausible. If normal application procedures 
apply, the displaced survivors will face delays in establishing their 
eligibility for Medicaid. The providers serving them during these 
delays will not be reimbursed until after eligibility is established 
and may not receive reimbursement for their services at all. And for 
many of us from States that already have a disproportionate share of 
low-income individuals who depend on Medicaid services, this could be 
detrimental to not just those who are surviving Katrina but those who 
are hosting those victims and those survivors as well. The host States 
could incur large, unexpected increases in their Medicaid costs at the 
same time their revenues are reduced by the economic dislocation caused 
by Katrina.
  What we are looking for here is something very similar to what we did 
in New York--to try to provide that flexibility that is needed, 
streamlining those services, and, more importantly, making sure the 
paperwork is not the mountain of paperwork that so many are used to but 
that they are simplistic and something that can expedite getting the 
needs of these individuals met.
  This is a critical issue that has to be addressed immediately. Our 
States and our fellow Americans deserve it. To address these crises, I 
have proposed the temporary disaster relief Medicaid amendment.
  The amendment, just briefly, is as follows:
  It would provide the Katrina survivors with health coverage through 
Medicaid wherever they find refuge. A simplified eligibility and 
enrollment process would be created for people from Federal disaster 
counties in Mississippi and Alabama and Federal disaster parishes in 
Louisiana. It would be extended to those who live in those States and 
who have lost their jobs since the Hurricane Katrina crisis has 
happened. This, again, is something very similar to what we did in New 
York after 9/11. Using what we have learned there, we want to expedite 
these services for the victims today.
  We want to make it easy for health providers to care for Katrina 
survivors. Once enrolled, Katrina survivors who are in other States 
would receive Medicaid as though they were Medicaid enrollees in that 
very State. Medicaid would also temporarily finance people's private 
insurance if they have access to it. This means no new systems or rules 
for health care providers so they can again rest assured that they are 
providing these services and will still be able to maintain their 
wholeness in providing services to their own communities.
  It would guarantee Federal funding for health care for Katrina 
survivors. The Federal Government would fully finance the cost of 
providing Medicaid to Katrina survivors in any State in which they are 
enrolled. Additionally, the scheduled decline in some States' Medicaid 
matching rate for fiscal year 2006 would be canceled.
  Mr. President, you may be certainly well aware, as many of us are 
here in the Senate, that the Federal matching rate was due to change as 
of October 1 of this year. We want to make sure we extend, for those 
who are affected, the current Federal matching rate in order to be able 
to maintain their wholeness and for those to be able to continue to 
offer their services, as a good neighbor wants to, to those victims of 
this crisis. This would continue for 6 months, with a possible 
extension for another 6 months if the need exists and continues.
  It would also ensure a smooth transition to the Medicare drug benefit 
for Katrina survivors. In addition, parts of the implementation of the 
drug benefit would be delayed in States directly affected by the 
hurricane, along with their neighbors. Specifically, the transition of 
``dual eligibles'' from Medicaid to Medicare--as well as the 
``clawback'' payments, which we discussed at great length when we did 
the Medicare reform package--would be temporarily suspended to prevent 
survivors from losing their drug coverage. We have tried--and I know I 
have in my own home State, having supported the Medicare reform 
package--to make sure the information is out there for the elderly and 
the disabled and those who use Medicare as to what their opportunities 
and options are through

[[Page 19846]]

Medicare, particularly the new Part D Medicare drug component.
  For the low-income, there is an incredibly good component of the 
Medicare drug piece in the Medicare reform package. All of these are 
available, but they do have deadlines. They do have deadlines. The 
enrollment begins on November 15 of this year. Those who do not enroll 
in a drug plan by May 15, 2006, this coming spring, will see a premium 
penalty. Many of us have learned, as we have delved into Medicare over 
the years, that those others receive premium penalties if they don't 
sign up for Medicare on time. We want to make sure those kinds of 
penalties don't exist for victims who find themselves not only 
displaced from their families, their homes, their regular medical 
providers, but also all of their information, their documents, the kind 
of information and certainly the normalcy of life that allows one to go 
through that kind of paperwork and try to make the best decisions 
possible.
  The requirement of proof of assets for the low-income drug benefit 
would be delayed. As we know, many of these individuals have no idea if 
their old job will be there; will there be a new job; how long it will 
take for these businesses to rebuild, to replenish, to be back in 
action. There are so many who are dealing with so much unknown. It is 
certainly our responsibility, not only as legislators but as fellow 
Americans, to recognize they need time. They need time and flexibility 
to work through these issues and to access the programs that we have 
very carefully designed to fit their needs.
  The penalties for not immediately enrolling in Medicare and its drug 
program would also be temporarily suspended. Providing this 
assistance--certainly the dollars Senator Frist spoke of, the ability 
to make sure that the victims, our fellow Americans who have gone 
through such atrocities, and the health care providers in the 
communities who want to be there to serve them, making sure of the 
technical parts of this recovery--is our responsibility. I hope the 
managers of the bill will understand how important it is for us to move 
quickly to ensure that those who are providing the relief and those who 
are receiving it can take it with great comfort levels that they won't 
have to deal with the bureaucracy but that they will be dealing with a 
compassionate Federal Government that understands the necessity of 
making this process more streamlined and more accessible.
  It is not only the right thing to do; it is what we must do to ensure 
that our Nation's safety net does not unravel in the face of this 
growing national emergency. We still have the precautions in here. We 
still have the fraud and abuse precautions that exist in our current 
law. We just want to make sure that our fellow man, our fellow 
Americans, in a time of dire need, as has been described eloquently by 
Senators from those States who have been there with these individuals, 
for those of us who are from States where they are coming, seeing these 
individuals coming in--we had a group come in through Fort Chaffee, AR, 
almost 10,000 evacuees processed in about a 12-hour period, all of whom 
came with what they had left in a plastic sack, perhaps, who had been 
sitting on buses for almost 2 days while people figured out where they 
should go, what they should do, where they should be sent, who should 
be taking care of them. We don't want that to happen in their medical 
care and in their access to the kind of things that we know they are 
going to need now and they are going to need in the coming weeks and 
months.
  I hope we will do our homework quickly. I urge my colleagues to 
support this amendment to create temporary disaster relief Medicaid 
today. I ask them all to think about how they would feel, many of whom 
have experienced it. Senators from Alabama and Mississippi and 
Louisiana who have lost their homes and have found their family members 
displaced can understand how heavy the hearts are of our fellow 
Americans who have been victimized by this incredible storm. We, in our 
way, can help in bringing down the wall of bureaucracy and redtape to 
allow them the helping hand that we can provide.
  I send the amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arkansas [Mrs. Lincoln] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1652.

  Mrs. LINCOLN. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of 
Amendments.'')
  Mrs. LINCOLN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I am pleased to present to the Senate the 
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill 
for fiscal year 2006. Since August 25, our Nation has been gripped by 
the devastation and destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 
We have all watched in horror as this category 4 hurricane ravaged an 
entire region, and each of us share in the sorrow of those who have 
lost their lives and their livelihoods. I am confident that the 
strength of the American spirit will rise to this challenge and, just 
as we have many times before, that we can and will recover.
  The bill before us today provides funding for many U.S. Government 
functions that are critical to hurricane prediction, response, and 
recovery. The Small Business Administration provides low-interest loans 
to disaster victims to rebuild their homes and businesses. The Economic 
Development Administration, under the Department of Commerce, can make 
funds available to distressed communities to help repair their physical 
infrastructure. Under the Department of Justice, State and local law 
enforcement assistance grants can help provide relief to gulf coast law 
enforcement agencies. Finally, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration is one of three lead agencies responsible for 
researching, forecasting, monitoring, and warning of hurricanes.
  It is timely that this bill is being considered on the Senate floor, 
and I commend the leader for recognizing how important it is to send 
this bill to the President.
  This afternoon, I want to take a moment to provide some general 
background about the bill before us and the programs it funds. The 
reorganization of the Appropriations Committee earlier this year 
significantly changed the jurisdiction of the subcommittee. The newly 
formed subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Departments of Justice 
and Commerce, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration, the National Science Foundation, and a number of 
independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, 
the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, 
and the Small Business Administration. The major areas of jurisdiction 
of the CJS bill are counterterrorism, Federal, State, and local law 
enforcement, our Nation's economy, regulation of the banking and 
telecommunications sectors, scientific research, including programs to 
study the oceans and atmosphere, and our Nation's space program.
  In a year when domestic discretionary dollars are scarce, it has been 
our goal to ensure that the priorities of our Nation and our States are 
met while remaining within our allocation. I believe we have 
accomplished those savings wherever possible and that we have allocated 
limited resources to meet the highest priority programs. These 
priorities include bolstering our capabilities for fighting terrorism, 
assisting with law enforcement activities at the State and local level, 
measuring and strengthening our Nation's economy, furthering scientific 
research, and reforming and reenergizing our Nation's space program. In 
the wake of three successive hurricanes last year and now Hurricane 
Katrina, we have also taken steps to ensure our Nation's ability to 
predict and monitor hurricanes. And we have done what we reasonably 
could within our purview to improve our response and recovery 
capabilities.
  The total amount recommended is $885 million above the fiscal year 
2005

[[Page 19847]]

level at this point in the debate, which is a 2-percent increase. These 
numbers might suggest that the bill is well below the budget request. 
However, the bill does not include the proposed Strengthening America's 
Communities Initiative. The President's budget request for the 
Department of Commerce included $3.7 billion to implement this new 
program. The bill before us does not reflect the President's proposal 
to transfer and significantly reduce these programs.
  Another noteworthy aspect of the bill is that it includes an increase 
of over $1 billion above the budget request for the Department of 
Justice. This is mainly due to the restoration of the proposed cuts to 
State and local law enforcement grants. I know the Presiding Officer is 
very involved in that. The bill also recommends nearly $7.2 billion for 
the Department of Commerce, including NOAA and NIST, which is an 8-
percent increase over last year's funding level. Many Department of 
Commerce programs were proposed for termination in the President's 
budget for 2006. Rather than terminating these programs, the bill 
before us includes funding for the Economic Development Administration, 
which is so important to every State, the public telecommunications 
facilities, planning and construction grants, and the Technology 
Opportunities Program.
  In the science title of the bill, we have restored the 8-percent 
reduction from last year's enacted level that was proposed by NOAA. 
There is continued frustration among many of my Senate colleagues about 
the Department's repeated request to reduce NOAA funding. NOAA provides 
many critical functions to hurricane prediction and warning. Further, 
our oceans and atmosphere constitute one of our most precious natural 
resources, and I believe we can all appreciate the importance of both 
to human subsistence. I believe we should be increasing NOAA's budget, 
as the bill does, not cutting it.
  In addition, this bill provides funding for NASA to move forward with 
the exploration vision while fully funding the ongoing activities of 
the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The 
recommendation fully funds constellation systems and provides NASA with 
funds to prepare a servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope. 
Many of NASA's facilities in the gulf region sustained significant 
damage from Hurricane Katrina, and we have not addressed those issues 
in this bill. We expect to address them in the next supplemental 
spending measure that will be considered.
  Finally, in the related agencies title of the bill, we include full 
funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission, for the Federal 
Communications Commission. The recommendation rejects a number of 
proposed program eliminations within the Small Business Administration.
  This, overall, is a pretty lean bill. We had to work with our 
allocation. We had to make tough decisions to get here. I think my 
colleagues will find that this bill does support core functions and 
even provides increases where critical. The bill addresses the most 
pressing needs that were brought to our attention both by the 
administration and by my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Overall 
we believe we have crafted a bill that reflects the priorities of this 
committee, as well as of the entire Senate.
  I take this opportunity to thank Senator Mikulski, my friend and 
colleague, who is the ranking member on the committee. We have worked 
together this year, as we have in many years, to produce a bill that is 
fair and forward looking under intense time and budget constraints. I 
look forward to continuing to work with Senator Mikulski on the Senate 
floor and in the future.
  I also reiterate the leader's position, which is that we must act on 
this bill expeditiously. I urge my colleagues to come to the floor and 
offer their amendments. I will try to work with them, but let's act in 
a timely manner. Time is of the essence now.


               Amendments Nos. 1655 through 1658, en bloc

  Mr. President, I now send a series of amendments to the desk. I ask 
that the amendments be considered read and agreed to, the motions to 
reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to 
these amendments be printed in the Record, with all of the above 
occurring en bloc. These amendments have been cleared on both sides of 
the aisle.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendments were agreed to, as follows:


                           Amendment No. 1655

       On page 144, line 10, strike ``$409,625,000'' and insert 
     ``404,625,000''.
       On page 152, between line 20 and 21, insert the following: 
     ``United States Travel and Tourism Promotion
       For necessary expenses of the United States Travel and 
     Tourism Promotion Program, as authorized by section 210 of 
     Public Law 108-7, for programs promoting travel to the United 
     States including grants, contracts, cooperative agreements 
     and related costs, $5,000,000, to remain available until 
     September 30, 2007.''.


                           Amendment No. 1656

 (Purpose: To provide funding and personnel for the National Hurricane 
                                Center)

       On page 170, between lines 9 and 10, insert the following:
       Sec. 304. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, 
     of the amounts made available in this title under the heading 
     ``National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration'' and under 
     the subheading ``operations, research, and facilities'', not 
     less than $5,800,000 shall be made available for the National 
     Hurricane Center and that such amount may be used to employ 
     individuals in 43 full-time equivalent positions at the 
     National Hurricane Center.


                           Amendment No. 1657

       On page 173, beginning in line 2, strike ``: Provided 
     further,'' and all that follows through ``this Act'' in line 
     10.


                           Amendment No. 1658

 (Purpose: To expand the disaster loans that shall not be sold by the 
                     Small Business Administration)

       On page 188, line 10, after ``Alaska'' insert ``or North 
     Dakota''.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeMint). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment to this bill that I 
will be offering shortly along with Senator Smith of Oregon, my 
cosponsor, and cosponsored by Senators Bingaman, Wyden, Feingold, and 
Kennedy.
  This amendment will increase the amount of money going to legal aid 
programs across the country from $324.5 million to $358.5 million.
  Again, this amendment will throw a lifeline of legal services 
assistance to people in need.
  I point out that this is $4 million less than what the Legal Services 
Corporation requested in their budget earlier this year. The reason it 
is slightly less is because we had to do that to get the proper offset 
for the amendment. Forty-five Members of the Senate, on a strong 
bipartisan basis, sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member 
earlier this year seeking the full funding for legal services, which 
was $362.5 million. As I said, this amendment is $4 million less than 
what 45 Members of the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, requested earlier 
this year.
  I also point out that 25 percent of the increase goes specifically to 
those programs providing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
  Even before the devastation and displacement of Katrina, this 
increase was sorely needed. That is because today, as I stand here, 50 
percent of the people eligible for legal services in America are being 
turned away because the programs simply are underfunded.
  Keep in mind, to even be eligible for legal services, one must be 
below 125 percent poverty. That means for a family of four, you have to 
have less than a $23,000-per-year income to even qualify for legal 
services. Again, we are now turning away half of the families in 
America who need civil legal help who make less than $23,000 a year. 
That is not justice.
  Furthermore, the clients served by legal services are overwhelmingly 
female. Seventy-two percent of the clients served by legal services are 
women, most of whom are seeking help with domestic abuse issues, 
including custody, retraining orders, and safe housing.
  Legal services is also the only assistance most low-income women have 
in getting and keeping safe, habitable housing. It is critical in 
reducing homelessness among women and children.

[[Page 19848]]

  In the last 2 years, cuts to legal services programs have resulted in 
the loss of funding for 200 attorney positions. Every single one of 
those attorney positions means at least 385 people a year not able to 
get the legal help they need.
  To sum it up, last year, legal services was forced to serve 77,000 
fewer people than they did the year before.
  The Senate bill before us today, instead of taking a small step to 
fix this injustice, imposes an additional $6 million in cuts to legal 
services programs. This is simply unacceptable.
  I don't want anyone here to think this amendment we are offering is a 
drastic fix to the problem. All this amendment does is restore funding 
for legal services to the fiscal year 2003 level adjusted for 
inflation. This amendment restores legal services funding to the 2003 
level.
  If we were serious about providing equal justice under law for all of 
our citizens and providing the resources that legal services really 
needs, we would restore legal services to the 1995 funding level of 
over $500 million a year.
  Think about it this way: Since 1995, we have cut legal services, the 
only civil legal help poor people have in this country, by a third. And 
need I remind anyone what has happened to poverty since 1995? Has it 
gone down by a third? No; it has gone up. So poverty has gone up, and 
we have cut legal services by a third since 1995. Unconscionable.
  This, of course, is the picture legal services was facing before 
Hurricane Katrina. Legal services always plays a critical role in a 
national disaster, but this disaster will impose more burdens and more 
challenges than ever before. That is why this amendment devotes $8 
million or, as I said, 25 percent of the increase goes to programs 
directly helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. Again, is that enough? 
Hardly. This will be a small downpayment on the funding that will be 
needed, and I hope will be provided, in some of the supplemental 
funding bills coming down the road.
  I heard the majority leader today saying there is going to be a 
supplemental on the floor today. I don't know what is in it, but there 
better be something in it to help legal services serve the people 
displaced. We have to have immediate assistance to these programs to 
help assist people in the largest displacement in this country since 
the Civil War. Think about it: The largest displacement of people since 
the Civil War.
  One might say people need food, water, they need clothing, they need 
shelter, they need schooling. Yes, they need all those immediate needs. 
But here is why they are going to need legal services immediately, not 
a year from now.
  Let me share with you an e-mail from the State director of the 
Alabama program, one of the hardest hit States, describing what they 
will be doing in the next few weeks:

     . . . legal services programs are traditionally a critical 
     partner in long-term disaster response. We will be doing 
     everything from trying to clear title for FEMA award purposes 
     (many low-income folks land in houses passed from generation 
     to generation without any formal conveyance . . . ); to 
     contractor fraud; to handling credit problems for folks who 
     are trying to get SBA or other loans with which to rebuild 
     their lives. Not only will we be helping victims of Hurricane 
     Katrina [in this State], but there are over 35,000 evacuees 
     from Louisiana and Mississippi in the State. Every one of our 
     offices in the State will be serving Hurricane Katrina 
     victims with already scarce resources.

  So it is not something they are going to need a year or two from now, 
they need it now because, in the initial stages, legal services will be 
responsible for helping hundreds of thousands of people navigate the 
system for obtaining disaster-related food stamps, unemployment 
compensation, and housing assistance. They will be on the frontlines 
representing people with the agencies to get the needed relief.
  Legal services will be the best on-the-ground arbiters of whether 
deadlines need to be extended to reach the hundreds of thousands 
eligible for assistance.
  I have a little experience in this from both standpoints: One, I was 
a legal services attorney before I came to Congress. That was my job. 
So I know a little bit about how legal services work and who they 
serve. Second, our State of Iowa in 1993 was hit by a devastating 
flood. Every single one of our counties--99 counties--was declared a 
disaster area. Some of our small towns were totally wiped out.
  So I have a great deal of sympathy and empathy for what is going on 
in New Orleans. We saw whole towns in our State underwater. Some of 
them were never rebuilt. We had to move people to other places.
  That was 1993. Legal aid lawyers represented thousands of clients in 
the State of Iowa in landlord-tenant disputes about the ability to 
terminate leases of uninhabitable property. They assisted people in 
Iowa with a whole range of issues.
  In one example, there was a certain FEMA determination that a woman 
was not entitled to compensation because the property was in the name 
of an ex-spouse. It turned out it was not an ex-spouse; it was her 
spouse who had died, and only legal services could help clear this up 
for this poor woman. She didn't have enough money to hire an attorney. 
As I said, to be qualified, one has to have an income of less than 25 
percent of the poverty level.
  Another example of what they did in Iowa: FEMA determinations that 
massive property damages were, in fact, preexisting conditions; 
determinations of SBA loan eligibility.
  This all happened in Iowa in 1993, so I know what it means to go 
through a devastating flood such as this and to have people who are 
homeless, without housing, with no place to go and needing the help of 
legal services to navigate, to find out what they can get, to know for 
what they are eligible.
  In the situation we are now facing, much bigger than the flood of 
Iowa, legal services lawyers will be trying to represent clients who 
have no access to their homes, many who are temporarily living out of 
State. At least that did not happen in Iowa, at least not to any great 
extent. There are evacuees in Texas, in Arkansas, some in Washington, 
DC. Providing legal help to those most in need is critical in this 
instance.
  Beyond the immediate need of helping the victims of Hurricane 
Katrina, legal services is critical to reducing violence in this 
country. When people cannot get results through the legal system, they 
resort to extralegal means. We have seen that in all areas of the 
country. We have seen that sometimes in disaster areas in the last 
week, and we should expect to see more if we cannot quickly get legal 
help to the people displaced.
  It is not true because of Hurricane Katrina; it is true in everyday 
disputes. Having access to quality legal help reduces tensions, focuses 
people on compromise, negotiations. Legal services reduces the burdens 
on our courts. They help to ensure that those people with disabilities 
get the benefits to which they are entitled.
  That is why the Legal Services Program has the complete support of 
the American Bar Association and every State bar in the United States. 
I point out that the American Bar Association supports the amendment we 
are offering.
  Let me add that this amendment is fully offset, as it stands now.
  I want to also add Senator Obama as a cosponsor to this amendment.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. As I said, 45 
Senators signed a letter earlier this year seeking this level of 
funding; $4 million actually more than what we are asking for in this 
amendment.
  So I hope and trust that we will hold this in conference. We cannot 
continue to say we are a nation of equal justice under law when the 
poverty rate keeps going up and the amount of money we are giving the 
Legal Services keeps going down. Poor people are being excluded from 
our civil justice system. That is wrong. It should not happen in this 
country.
  So this year, next year, the year after, I will be here, and I am 
sure along with many others on both sides of the aisle, saying we have 
to get this funding back up. Our courts are plugged with people 
sometimes with crimes that have to do with property.

[[Page 19849]]

How many of those might have been forestalled if they had had Legal 
Services help--or courts plugged because someone is there because of 
domestic violence. It could have been forestalled if people had had 
Legal Services.
  So that is why we need to get the Legal Services Corporation back up 
to the level it was at least in the mid-1990s, and actually it probably 
should be more than that because of the huge increase in poverty in 
this country.
  So if my colleagues believe in equal justice under law, if they 
believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, if they 
believe by a little bit of money upfront helping people solve their 
legal problems, domestic violence problems, and things like that it 
will help keep people out of court, which we have proven is true, then 
we ask for support for this amendment, and hopefully we can hold this 
amount when we go to conference.


                           Amendment No. 1659

  I send the amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate 
consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is 
laid aside.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], for himself, Mr. Smith, 
     Mr. Bingaman, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. 
     Obama, proposes an amendment numbered 1659.

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

 (Purpose: To increase the appropriation for nationwide legal services 
 field programs and to provide additional funds to programs providing 
          legal services to the victims of Hurricane Katrina)

       On page 175, strike lines 6 through 9 and insert the 
     following:
       For payment to the Legal Services Corporation to carry out 
     the purposes of the Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974, 
     $358,527,000, of which $346,251,000 is for basic field 
     programs and required independent audits (of which $8,000,000 
     is for basic field programs providing legal assistance to 
     victims of Hurricane Katrina)

     Notwithstanding any other provisions in the Act, the sums 
     appropriated for the Department of Justice are reduced by $37 
     million. This reduction is to be taken by the Attorney 
     General from accounts receiving an increase in travel and 
     transportation of persons as specified in the President's 
     Fiscal Year 2006 Budget Submittal to Congress pursuant to 31 
     U.S.C. section 1105 and which are in excess of the fiscal 
     year 2005 level;

  Mr. HARKIN. I yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to speak in support of 
Senator Harkin's amendment to add $38.2 million to the reported funding 
level for the Legal Services Corporation, and am proud to join him as a 
cosponsor. I was one of 47 colleagues joining in a bipartisan letter in 
June urging the subcommittee to support the Legal Service Corporation 
quest for $363.8 million.
  Liberty and justice for all is one of America's most cherished 
principles, and a fundamental part of the very fabric of our Nation. 
Our Founding Fathers fought a revolution for it. Thousands of brave men 
and women since then--from Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony to 
Martin Luther King and all who fought with them--risked their lives to 
ensure that the principle of justice for all truly applied to all 
Americans. And today, thousands of men and women of our armed forces 
are fighting and sacrificing their own lives to secure these freedoms 
for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
  Justice for all knows no political exclusivity. It is not a Democrat 
or Republican value, but an American value. At the opening of each and 
every session of this Senate, we stand together and pledge our 
allegiance to this founding principle. Millions of schoolchildren 
pledge their allegiance every day to this fundamental tenet of our 
country.
  Yet today in Illinois and throughout the United States, we are 
falling far short of fulfilling our Nation's promise of ``justice for 
all.''
  A recently released study, ``The Legal Aid Safety Net: A Report on 
the Legal Needs of Low-Income Illinoisans,'' found that over the course 
of a year, tens of thousands of less fortunate Illinois residents were 
unable to obtain legal assistance that was often critical to their 
safety and independence. Hundreds of thousands more attempted to solve 
often complex legal problems on their own.
  Studies in other parts of the country have reached similar 
conclusions. Millions of Americans are being shut out of our civil 
justice system, with grave consequences for themselves personally and 
for our country as a whole when legal assistance is not available to 
them. We are a long way from fulfilling our Nation's promise of equal 
justice for all.
  This widespread lack of access to justice can only be described as a 
crisis for our country, and with increases in the poverty rate 
compounded by the vast devastation to so many of our fellow citizens 
caused by Hurricane Katrina, it will only get worse if we do not act.
  Those being left behind by the alarming gap in access to our justice 
system are our friends, relatives and neighbors. They are children, 
families and the elderly of diverse creeds and backgrounds, and they 
often are the men and women fighting for our country and their 
families.
  The story of a young man in our armed forces from Galesburg, a small 
city in the western part of Illinois, is a prime illustration. Before 
being deployed to Iraq, he visited Prairie State Legal Services, an 
organization funded by the Legal Services Corporation that serves 
residents in 36 mostly rural counties in northern Illinois, to seek 
help in getting a power of attorney and will prepared so that if 
something happened to him his family would know what to do.
  Other examples of the Americans who are helped every day by legal aid 
groups funded by the Legal Services Corporation--and for too many of 
whom help is not available--include a woman and her children victimized 
by domestic violence seeking an order of protection and child support 
to give them a fair chance to start a new life, a senior couple facing 
foreclosure of the only home they have ever lived in after being 
victimized by consumer fraud, a World War II veteran who served his 
country so well but now is being denied the benefits we have promised 
him, and numerous other less fortunate residents facing legal matters 
critical to their safety and independence as they try to pursue the 
American dream.
  The legal aid system in Illinois is able to address only a small 
fraction of the civil legal problems encountered by low-income 
Illinoisans. The ``safety net'' is inadequate and fraying. Low-income 
Illinoisans faced over 1.3 million civil legal problems in 2003--from 
child custody disputes to mortgage foreclosure to physical and 
financial elder abuse. Low-income Illinoisans had the assistance of an 
attorney for only one of every six legal problems they encountered. 
Illinois's legal aid system is facing critical shortage of resources, 
with layoffs and hiring freezes becoming widespread at programs 
throughout the State.
  The Legal Services Corporation has historically been grossly 
underfunded. In 1996, Congress reduced funding by 33 percent--from $415 
million to $278 million, resulting in closure of more than 100 legal 
aid offices across the country. By fiscal year 2003, the appropriation 
had been increased to $338.8 million, but levels have steadily declined 
as a result of Government-wide reductions.
  The Legal Services Corporation has already had to absorb $9 million 
in cuts over the last 2 years. That translates to almost 200 attorney 
positions across the country who are no longer helping those in need of 
legal assistance. Just in the last 2 years, the number of people that 
were able to receive needed services declined from 978,000 to 901,000. 
Three States are experiencing layoffs and many other States have a 
hiring freeze in place that has led to as many as one third of the 
staffing positions being vacant.
  While it is not the Federal Government's responsibility to be the 
sole source of legal aid funding, the Federal Government has a 
significant role to play in partnership with State and

[[Page 19850]]

local governments, the legal community and other public and private 
sources.
  The need and the cost effectiveness of increased funding for civil 
legal aid have been amply demonstrated. The excuse that there is not 
enough money is no longer acceptable. We are failing to protect the 
legal rights of too many of our most vulnerable residents.
  But if Congress adopts the Harkin amendment reflecting the bipartisan 
Legal Services Corporation Board's funding request, it would mean 
almost $1 million in additional funding for Illinois programs over last 
year's appropriation and thereby ensure services for thousands of 
lower-income Illinois residents.
  By contrast, if the appropriation remains at the $324 million level 
in the underlying bill we are considering, it will result in additional 
cuts of more than $200,000 for Illinois programs. Attorneys throughout 
Illinois already contribute more than $5 million annually to civil 
legal aid, as well as providing hundreds of thousands of hours of pro 
bono services. While members of the legal community must continue to be 
leaders in this effort, they cannot do it alone. Congress must step up 
to the plate.
  Access to and availability of legal services will be even more acute 
in the coming months as thousands of victims of the devastation in the 
wake of Hurricane Katrina grapple with housing, unemployment, and other 
complicated assistance programs. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, there was 
already a critical need for an increase in the budget for legal 
services programs. Between March and May of 2005, legal service 
programs across the country were forced to turn away 50 percent of 
people eligible for assistance. An additional 20 percent were forced to 
make due with less legal help than necessary.
  By adopting this very modest amendment offered by Senator Harkin, we 
can ensure that tens of thousands more Americans like those I described 
have access to critical legal services that will enable them to 
continue to be independent and productive members of our communities.
  Senator Harkin's amendment would merely restore Legal Services 
Corporation funding to its level from 2 years ago when adjusted for 
inflation. It is only a modest increase from last year's $335 million 
pre-rescission funding level, yet it would help ensure services for 
tens of thousands of Americans are protected. It will help give them 
access to reliable web-based legal information and resources, legal aid 
hotlines, and extended representation by legal aid attorneys in more 
complex matters.
  I hope we will all join in full support of Senator Harkin's 
reasonable amendment. Let's demonstrate that ``justice for all'' is a 
meaningful commitment--and never becomes a meaningless cliche.
  Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President. I rise in strong support of the amendment 
offered by Senator Harkin to increase funding for the Legal Services 
Corporation. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the amendment.
  The Legal Services Corporation provides vital legal assistance to the 
poor around the country. It was created in 1974 with bipartisan 
congressional sponsorship and the support of the Nixon administration.
  In Chicago, the Legal Services Corporation funds make it possible for 
the Legal Assistance Foundation to help my constituents navigate the 
foster care system and receive compensation after violent crimes. In 
Galesburg and Peoria, these funds make it possible for the Prairie 
State Legal Services organization to help people dealing with domestic 
violence issues and elder abuse.
  In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you can bet that Legal 
Services Corporation will be in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and 
the many States where hurricane victims are being relocated helping 
newly impoverished citizens obtain food and shelter assistance, health 
care and insurance benefits, unemployment insurance, Social Security 
benefits, and FEMA assistance.
  This program makes a real difference in people's lives. Take the 
story of Irene and her family for example, who live in Section 8 
housing and needed help. They visited the Prairie State Legal Services 
office in Illinois. Every day, Irene had to get two wheelchair-bound 
grandchildren up the stairs and into a second floor apartment. Both her 
grandchildren have cerebral palsy and are confined to wheelchairs. The 
oldest is now 14 and weighs 160 lbs. And after 11 years, as I am sure 
you can imagine, Irene was having a hard time getting her grandchildren 
up those stairs. But when she tried to make this difficult situation 
better, it only got worse.
  Irene applied for and received a transfer certificate from Section 8 
to allow her to move to a new apartment. But she could not find a 
first-floor apartment to transfer to within the 60 days that the 
transfer allowed. Irene tried calling the Section 8 offices to let them 
know of the delay, but she was forced to leave messages. When she 
finally sent a letter asking for a response to her messages, she was 
informed that she was too late--not only was the Public Housing Agency 
terminating her transfer, it was also terminating the Section 8 subsidy 
for her current apartment.
  But that is when Prairie State and Legal Services Corporation 
intervened. A staff attorney represented Irene in an administrative 
appeal, and pointed out that under the Fair Housing Act and the 
Americans with Disabilities Act, Irene had not been provided the 
support needed to assist her in finding an apartment. As a result of 
her attorney's efforts, Irene's subsidy was reinstated, she was given a 
new transfer certificate and was provided with active assistance in 
helping her find a new apartment.
  Legal Services Corporation helps folks like Irene all across the 
country, from South Carolina to South Dakota, Illinois to Iowa. And 
when someone displaced by Hurricane Katrina cannot afford a lawyer but 
is having trouble getting her unemployment insurance or Social Security 
benefits, or getting her utilities turned back on, Legal Services 
Corporation will be right there. Legal Services Corporation-funded 
organizations have won dozens of awards, and groups ranging from AARP 
to the American Bar Association have voiced their strong support of 
LSC. We should do the same.
  Over the last decade, the LSC budget has suffered $196 million in 
cuts. The Appropriations Committee proposed this year to cut $6 million 
more. I do not think this is the time to deny legal services to those 
who need them most. I believe that in light of the pressing crises 
confronting individuals in the gulf coast, we should be increasing 
funding for the Legal Services Corporation, not decreasing it. So I 
strongly support Senator Harkin's amendment, and I urge my colleagues 
to do the same.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the amendment 
introduced by my colleague, Senator Harkin, from Iowa, which would 
increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation by $38.2 million to 
$363 million.
  If there was ever a time to provide adequate funding for legal 
services for the poor, that time is now.
  In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there will be thousands and 
thousands of Americans in desperate need of legal advice who lack the 
resources to hire their own attorneys or the skills necessary to meet 
the legal challenges they must confront.
  These are the same folks that didn't have the means to get out of 
harm's way when the hurricane struck.
  These are the same folks that waited for days on their rooftops, at 
the New Orleans Convention Center, the Superdome, and so many other 
places down on the Gulf Coast to be rescued.
  These are the same folks that now must rebuild their lives--often 
times from scratch.
  They will need legal assistance. Congress needs to step in and help 
make this a reality. And Congress needs to step and increase funding so 
that the thousands of other Americans--in addition to the victims of 
Katrina--who are unable to afford legal advice get the access to 
justice that they deserve.
  How can it be, in a country where we teach our children from an early 
age the Pledge of Allegiance and its closing

[[Page 19851]]

words--``with liberty and justice for all''--so many children and their 
families cannot obtain equal access to justice?
  How can it be, in a country that saw an historic economic boom in the 
last decade, that 80 percent of low-income Americans still lack access 
to a lawyer when they're in serious legal situations?
  How can it be, in a country as strong and rich as this one, that tens 
of thousands of Americans who need legal representation are turned away 
every year because their Government won't support the very program 
designed to help them?
  This year, the House has appropriated only $324.5 million in funding 
for Legal Services. The current version of the Senate CJS 
Appropriations bill funds the program at about the same level.
  This is less than Legal Services received in FY 2005. It's almost $40 
million less than the FY 2006 budget request made by the bipartisan 
Legal Services Corporation Board of Directors. In fact, the current 
level of funding is not much more than it was in 1981--in real dollars.
  The issues that Legal Aid works to address are not esoteric legal 
questions. They are issues of life and death and food and shelter.
  When folks who are already hurting can't get the legal representation 
they need, all too often it gets harder to put food on the table and 
harder to pay the rent and harder to get the medicine for the kids or 
for Grandma.
  In the State of Oregon, the need for legal aid is clear, and the 
choice to fund it should be obvious. Oregon's Legal Aid programs are 
the primary source of representation available to more than 500,000 
low-income folks in my State, and they assist 20,000 of those low-
income Oregonians every year.
  But because of Legal Aid funding shortfalls in recent years, the 
Oregon programs have had to layoff staff, cut salaries for remaining 
staff, slash their medical benefits, freeze vacancies, and close the 
Klamath Falls office. Less than 20 percent of low income Oregonians 
have access to an attorney who could make a critical difference in 
helping them deal with a legal issue--from a getting restraining order 
from an abusive boyfriend to helping a predatory lending victim.
  The idea that Legal Aid is the practice of political law is 
preposterous.
  It's simply making sure that legal services are available for the 
very people who need them most.
  Make no mistake--State, local and private resources are providing the 
vast majority of Legal Aid funding in Oregon and elsewhere. In 1980, 
Federal funding accounted for 80 percent of the total legal aid money 
in Oregon. In 2005, Federal funding accounts for 28 percent. Everyone 
else is doing their part to provide these folks with equal access to 
justice--it's time that the Federal Government did its part too.
  I am determined that the victims of Hurricane Katrina and poor 
Americans throughout the United States, who, as children, stood in 
their classrooms with their hands over their hearts and recited the 
Pledge of Allegiance and the words ``with liberty and justice for all'' 
will not find out those words were a lie.
  I am determined that the victims of Hurricane Katrina living in the 
Houston Astrodome will have legal help they need when applying for food 
stamps and other forms of assistance available to them.
  I am determined that the victims of Hurricane Katrina relocated to 
San Antonio will get legal help they need to deal with their insurance 
companies.
  I am determined that the victims of Hurricane Katrina spread all 
across the country will get the legal assistance they need to rebuild 
their homes--and their lives.
  With Federal, State and local partners working together, we can 
ensure equal access to the law for all Americans, including the 
thousands and thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
  Mr. SHELBY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. 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 Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Iowa for 
offering this amendment. I know he has been a passionate supporter of 
Legal Services and quite frankly so have I over the years, having used 
it when I was a social worker in Baltimore and a child abuse worker, I 
might add, when many of these children had very little protection, the 
kind of protection we have now.
  Legal Services will perform services at multiple levels. One is the 
traditional services in all 50 States. No. 2, though, they will be very 
important now to people with Katrina, particularly those who are 
unfamiliar with paperwork and bureaucracy and applying and all of those 
things and will need someone to help them navigate.
  One might ask, why would they need a lawyer? Legal Services offers 
more than lawyers, and they will be there. I think the Senator's 
amendment is excellent. I think what we need to be able to do is find 
both the will and the wallet to fully support Legal Services.
  When I think back on what Legal Services has meant, it often helped 
people get their lives together. I know in my own case as a social 
worker, it helped a welfare mother get a divorce from an abusive 
husband. It helped her be able to clear up all of her credit issues so 
that she could begin a new life. She got a GED so she could move off of 
welfare and establish herself. The credit card mess was due to the 
abusive husband. So Legal Services, really, in many instances helps 
families get their lives together.
  So we look forward to supporting this amendment and working with him 
on other advocacy issues.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1652

  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the amendment 
offered by Senator Lincoln to ensure that victims of this terrible 
hurricane have access to the health care their situation demands today. 
This is the least we can do, and I urge Senators to support her 
amendment.
  I was moved to hear the words of Senator Landrieu this morning. She 
has been a tireless warrior for her State throughout her career, and I 
commend her for her work and her efforts over the last tragic days she 
has been through in Louisiana. To her and to my other colleagues, to 
Senator Lott, Senator Cochran, Senator Vitter, Senator Sessions, and 
Senator Shelby, I simply say we should do everything in our power as a 
Senate to help the victims of this terrible storm and to help rebuild 
their States, cities, and communities.
  Let me say, too, that I am proud of Coloradans and their response to 
this disaster. In the 10 days since the devastating storm hit the 
shores off the gulf coast, people of our State have stepped up to help 
the victims.
  Experts from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
laboratory in Fort Collins will be dispatched to the region soon. 
Disease trackers from Fort Collins likely will be sent to the gulf 
coast to help contain the spread of the West Nile virus and the spread 
of other mosquito-borne illnesses in the aftermath of Hurricane 
Katrina. The U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base, which is 
charged with defending against military attacks within our borders, is 
now charged with mobilizing military resources for the Hurricane 
Katrina disaster. The U.S. Joint Operations Center in Colorado Springs 
has nearly 1,000 people on 24-hour duty to facilitate Federal Emergency 
Management Agency requests.

[[Page 19852]]

  I am proud of the men and women in uniform who today are helping our 
country within our borders.
  Nearly 800 Colorado National Guard men and women are deployed to that 
region today. Churches in Denver and throughout the State of Colorado 
are mobilizing to help with relief efforts, whether that means 
collecting donations, physically traveling to the devastated 
communities, or taking in displaced refugees. The University of 
Colorado has started a streamlined admissions process for students 
temporarily displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Colorado State University 
has taken similar steps.
  The American Red Cross Mile High Chapter, which houses the Nation's 
second largest disaster response phone operation and which for a time 
was handling one-third of the calls pouring into the Red Cross national 
headquarters in Washington, DC, has done a tremendous job, and in the 
immediate aftermath of the storm more than 800 Coloradans volunteered 
to receive training and field phone calls and take donations for the 
Red Cross. My wife Hope and my daughter Melinda and I visited the 
Denver operation last week and helped man the phones. I could not have 
been more proud of our State and its people. I am sure the experience 
of Colorado is an experience that has gone across all of our 50 States 
of our great Nation.
  I remember Sunday, August 28, very well. The country held its 
collective breath as we awaited landfall of Hurricane Katrina. In my 
faith, we celebrate Feast Days of Saints, symbols of the kinds of lives 
Catholics aspire to lead. Sunday, August 28, was the Feast Day of Saint 
Augustine, an intellectual giant in our church who became so only after 
battling great personal challenges in his own personal life. Augustine 
had an important piece of advice for all of us that is applicable 
today. He said:

       Pray, as though everything depended on God. Work as though 
     everything depended on you.

  One look at the devastation in the gulf coast--the destruction 
wrought in Biloxi, MS, the obliteration of towns all along the 
Mississippi coast, and the suffering in New Orleans and across 
Louisiana--and none of us could have imagined that kind of devastation 
could ever occur here in our homeland. We cannot help but feel that the 
reconstruction of this wonderful part of our country will depend not 
only on our human powers but also on the supernatural powers that will 
guide us.
  But seeing the suffering on the faces of our fellow countrymen, 
women, and children, you cannot feel anything but to be ready to work 
as if the end of their suffering depends on our work. In point of fact, 
those suffering people depend on us to end their suffering, and we owe 
it to them to work as though everything depends on us. I submit that a 
basic function of the Federal Government is to respond to a national 
disaster such as Katrina which has devastated 90,000 square miles of 
America.
  We can and we must do everything we can. I submit we should take on 
our challenge in three critical ways. First, we must provide immediate 
humanitarian assistance. Second, the President should lead a Marshall-
like plan to reconstruct the gulf coast region. Third, we must learn 
the lessons from the Katrina disaster so we can prevent these kinds of 
disasters from happening elsewhere in our great Nation.
  Let me review each of those points. First, by providing immediate 
humanitarian aid and assistance to the victims of this terrible 
disaster, we should be doing what is our duty as a nation. Last week, 
Congress provide FEMA $10.5 billion in emergency funding. Today, we 
anticipate we will provide another $51.8 billion for this national 
disaster. Passing these appropriations will help the victims of 
Hurricane Katrina, and it is the right thing to do. I am proud we are 
taking these steps.
  At the same time, the Federal Government can and should do more. That 
is why I commend Senators Reid and Landrieu for introducing the Katrina 
Emergency Relief Plan earlier today. I am proud to cosponsor that 
legislation, and I urge my colleagues to join us in immediately passing 
this much needed relief for the victims.
  We can take that first step now by passing Senator Lincoln's proposed 
amendment. The people of our great Nation have the right to expect and 
deserve the best emergency and disaster response services in the world. 
It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to protect its 
citizens, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina much more needs to 
be done to live up to that responsibility.
  The Katrina Emergency Relief Plan is the right first step. I also 
will continue to press for additional immediate relief, including: 
first, an emergency appropriation for CDC, for disease surveillance and 
mitigation; second, immediate assistance to States for those 
universities and school districts, such as those in Colorado, that take 
on displaced students from Katrina-affected elementary, middle, high 
schools, and university settings; third, an expansion of the cap on the 
amount of charitable donations that can be claimed for tax purposes 
when those donations are given for Hurricane Katrina responses; fourth, 
a fix in the Tax Code to permit the expenses associated with the 
provision of room and board to victims of Hurricane Katrina to be tax 
deductible; and, finally, exempting the victims of Hurricane Katrina 
from the means test under the new bankruptcy law due to take effect on 
October 17 of this year.
  Second, we must respond to this disaster by creating a Marshall plan 
for reconstruction of the gulf coast. From jazz to William Faulkner, 
these affected States have given much to our country and to our 
history. As such, I cannot imagine that anyone would not consider 
investing the resources necessary to rebuild this vital part of our 
great country. We owe it to our fellow countrymen and people on the 
gulf coast.
  This will require a recovery and reconstruction effort on the scale 
of the Marshall plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II. Not unlike 
post-World War II Europe, the Gulf States are now facing unprecedented 
damages which require immediate action. Entire towns in Mississippi 
were destroyed and it will take months to make New Orleans and other 
communities in Louisiana habitable again.
  Such a plan should include the creation of a small and effective 
Cabinet member-chaired task force--that the President would appoint--
with State and local participation, and that task force would have a 
singular focus on this challenge. The task force should develop a plan 
for reconstruction, identify the costs associated with that plan, and 
oversee its successful implementation.
  In addition, I recommend getting our hands around the pain at the 
pump created by the record high gas prices, and the impact they are 
having on our country, including consumers, farmers, ranchers, and 
businesses. A first step in that effort is for the Department of 
Justice to provide assistance, both technical and financial, to State 
attorneys general to fight price gouging and contractor fraud, and 
freeze any requirements for small businesses and farmers affected by 
Katrina to service Small Business Administration and USDA loans or any 
other Federal Government-provided loans until the affected areas can be 
reconstructed.
  If we are to have a Marshall plan, we also will need to have a leader 
of the caliber of General George C. Marshall. That is why I repeat 
today my request to the President that he seek the resignation of 
Michael Brown, the FEMA Director, and replace him with a leader who has 
the experience and expertise to meet the challenges of the greatest 
natural disaster in our country's history.
  Thirdly, we must expeditiously determine what happened in response to 
this disaster and how we should reform FEMA and our Federal agencies to 
ensure that this slow response does not happen again.
  I have already joined my colleagues in calling for an independent 
commission to investigate the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina and 
how we can be better prepared for future cataclysmic events. This 
effort can be helpful, and, as was the case in the wake of the terrible 
9/11 terrorist attacks, we can, in fact, do something to learn the 
lessons we must learn.

[[Page 19853]]

  But what we do not need is a partisan investigation that produces 
predetermined results. Remember the history of the 9/11 Commission, the 
most bipartisan and successful commission in a long time. It was only 
against the backdrop of opposition from the White House and after 
months of calls from the families of the victims of 9/11 that the 
commission was created, and, once created, that commission did its job.
  I hope we can avoid the partisan wrangling this time around and get a 
commission that gets right to work on this very important effort.
  I will also propose legislation to improve training for evacuation 
and relocation in reaction to natural or manmade disasters. We often 
cannot predict when natural disasters will strike, but we must begin 
preparation for future incidents without further delay.
  I hope, too, that the conferees on the Homeland Security will keep in 
that conference report my amendment to require a national survey of 
first responders. I recently conducted such a survey of Colorado's 
first responders and was appalled at the result which demonstrated how 
unprepared our first responders are in dealing with these kinds of 
disasters. Given what we have seen in the last 10 days--where the 
Federal Government's response has without question failed--we need to 
hear directly from the police, firefighters, and others how we can 
improve our response.
  In closing, I am reminded of another saying by Saint Augustine. He 
asked:

       What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. 
     It has the feet to hasten to the poor and the needy. It has 
     eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the 
     sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

  The victims of this terrible tragedy love this country, but this 
country has let them down. It is now time for this Senate, this 
Congress, and this President, who runs the executive branch, to get to 
work to rectify that letdown.
  We are this great country's hands, and we can do more to help those 
victims. We are this great country's feet, and we can do more to carry 
assistance to those victims. We are this great country's eyes, and we 
must see what they are suffering through. We are this great country's 
ears, and we cannot turn a deaf ear to the pleas from the gulf coast.
  We can do better, and I look forward to working with all of my 
colleagues to ensure that we do.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of 
a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1654

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendments and call up amendment numbered 1654.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Dayton], for himself, and 
     Mr. Chambliss, Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry, and Mr. Harkin, proposes 
     an amendment numbered 1654.

  Mr. DAYTON. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The amendment (No. 1654) is as follows:

      (Purpose: To increase funding for Justice Assistance Grants)

       On page 133, line 24, strike ``$1,078,350,000'' and insert 
     ``$1,353,350,000 of which in addition to amounts provided by 
     the following table $275,000,000 shall be available for 
     Justice Assistance Grants to be offset by reducing 
     appropriations in this title by a total of $275,000,000 to 
     come from activities as follows: $43,000,000 from travel and 
     transportation of persons; $3,000,000 from transportation of 
     things; $27,000,000 from communications, utilities, and 
     miscellaneous charges; $6,000,000 from printing and 
     reproduction; and $196,000,000 from other services''.

  Mr. DAYTON. I thank the distinguished ranking member for assistance 
in putting this together. I thank my distinguished cosponsor of this 
amendment, Senator Chambliss of Georgia, for his leadership and 
involvement in the Byrne Grants, along with Senator Lieberman whose 
long-time involvement in the grants has been recognized nationally.
  It is my understanding the amendment is further cosponsored by 
Senator Obama, Senator Kerry, and Senator Harkin, and I ask unanimous 
consent Senators Hagel, Clinton, Cantwell, and Salazar be added as 
original cosponsors of the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, this amendment increases the funding for 
the Juvenile Assistance Grants by $275 million, with particular focus 
on adding that funding to what are called the Byrne Grants, which are 
local law enforcement grants vital in my State of Minnesota for 
fighting the scourge of meth that has ravaged communities, that has 
been so destructive to schoolchildren of all ages, I am sorry to say, 
particularly teenagers and young adults.
  The illegal meth used in production in Minnesota has increased in a 
skyrocketing fashion. I understand that is true in many other States as 
well. These Byrne Grants have been essential to Minnesota and other law 
enforcement efforts to provide the funds necessary to combat the 
scourge. The funds go to local law enforcement block grants.
  The Byrne Formula Grants consolidated into the Justice Assistance 
Grant have been reduced in the last couple of years. This restores 
badly needed funding for those purposes. I commend the chairman of the 
subcommittee and the ranking member for providing $625 million of 
funding that is well above what the House of Representatives has 
provided, $348 million.
  This money is desperately needed and will be well used. My amendment 
is fully offset by various reductions in administrative expenses. I can 
detail those if Members desire, but it will be fully offset, and has 
been determined as such by the Congressional Budget Office.
  I ask unanimous consent, at the conclusion of my remarks, the 
following letters of endorsement from the national organizations be 
added: The National Association of Police Officers, the International 
Association of Chiefs of Police, the Minnesota Sheriff's Association, 
the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1).
  Mr. DAYTON. I ask my colleagues to support this bipartisan effort. I 
believe they will find, as I have, this has almost unanimous support of 
local law enforcement officials in their States, as it does in mine. 
The funding is desperately needed, and it will be well used and go to 
our communities, to our counties, to our States in ways that will be 
directly involved in reducing juvenile crime as well as other forms of 
crime.

                               Exhibit 1

                                          The National Association


                                           of Police Officers,

                                                September 8, 2005.
     Re Dayton Amendment re JAG funding.

     Office of Senator Dayton,
     Washington, DC.
       NAPO supports Senator Dayton's amendment to increase JAG 
     funding by $275 million. The Justice Assistance Grants have 
     provided beneficial support for local law enforcement, 
     fostered community initiatives against crime and facilitated 
     improvements to State criminal justice systems. We thank the 
     Senator for his continued work to ensure that local law 
     enforcement is afforded the ability to receive the effective 
     and user-friendly funds it Deeds the most.
       Please keep me posted on how the amendment fares today.
           Thank you.
                                  ____

                                         International Association


                                          of Chiefs of Police,

                                                September 6, 2005.
     Hon. Mark Dayton,
     Russell Senate Office Building,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Dayton: On behalf of the International 
     Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), I am writing to 
     express our support for your amendment to restore funding to 
     the Justice Accountability Grant (JAG) program. As you know, 
     the IACP is the world's oldest and largest association of law 
     enforcement executives with more than 20,000 members in 100 
     countries.

[[Page 19854]]

       The JAG program, which was formed by consolidating the 
     Edward Byrne Memorial Grant program and the Local Law 
     Enforcement Block Grant program, is one of the primary 
     federal assistance programs for state, tribal and local law 
     enforcement agencies. For more than a decade, the resources 
     provided under the JAG program have allowed law enforcement 
     agencies to expand their capabilities and make great strides 
     in reducing the incidence of crime in communities across the 
     nation. The JAG program provides crucial funding to assist 
     states, tribes and local governments in controlling and 
     preventing drug abuse, crime and violence, and in improving 
     the functioning of the criminal justice system.
       However, this vital program has seen significant cuts in 
     recent years. H.R. 2862 as currently drafted in the Senate 
     would provide $625 million, a cut of $275 million or 30 
     percent, from FY 2003 levels. Cuts of this magnitude will 
     certainly have a significant and negative impact on the 
     ability of state, tribal and local law enforcement agencies 
     to maintain the many critical anti-crime programs that are 
     currently supported by funds received under the JAG program.
       It is vital that Congress act to ensure that state, tribal 
     and local law enforcement agencies continue to receive the 
     resources necessary to fulfill their mission of protecting 
     the public and the communities they serve. For these reasons, 
     the IACP urges all Members of Congress to support your 
     efforts to restore funding to the JAG program to FY 2003 
     levels.
       Thank you for your efforts on behalf of law enforcement.
           Sincerely,
                                                 Gene R. Voegtlin,
     Legislative Counsel.
                                  ____



                               Minnesota Sheriffs Association,

                                                September 7, 2005.
       Dear Senator Mark Dayton: The Sheriffs of Minnesota are 
     asking for your support and leadership in restoring funding 
     for the Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, including the 
     Byrne Grant Program and LLEBG. It is my understanding you are 
     considering an amendment that would add $275M to JAG which 
     would increase funding to 2003 level of funding.
       Under the Administration's current proposal funding for 
     several of these crime fighting programs are significantly 
     decreased or eliminated altogether. The Minnesota Sheriffs 
     Association is requesting your support in restoring funding 
     for the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant and COPS 
     programs. In Minnesota the Byrne Grant program is critical to 
     the success of our Gang and Drug Task Force operations. 
     During our Minnesota 2005 Legislative session, our 
     legislature appropriated local funds to match the Byrne Grant 
     funds. The coordination of these funds will give our law 
     enforcement officers the resources and necessary support as 
     they battle both increased gang activity and massive increase 
     in meth addiction and use within our state. Example: in a 
     recent sample survey at several of our county jails it was 
     revealed over 53% of our prisoners are in jail due to meth/
     drug related charges. Without the Byrne Grant funding, local 
     crime fighting resources will have to be reduced.
       Please do what you can to restore the Byrne Grant funding. 
     This is a very important source of federal funding for our 
     Sheriffs and local units of government. Thank you for your 
     consideration.
           Sincerely,
                                                James D. Franklin,
     Executive Director.
                                  ____

                                              Minnesota Police and


                                   Peace Officers Association,

                                                September 8, 2005.
     Hon. Senator Mark Dayton,
     Russell Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Dayton: I write today to thank you and commend 
     your efforts to ensure continued and critically needed 
     funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Program. I wish to 
     express the strong support of police officers across the 
     state and the 7,500 members of the Minnesota Police and Peace 
     Officers Association (MPPOA), for the Dayton-Chambliss 
     amendment to the FY 2006 Commerce, Justice, Science 
     Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2862) to enhance funds provided for 
     this critically important program.
       In Minnesota and other states across the country, the Byrne 
     Justice Assistance Program is a significant source of support 
     for education, treatment, and law enforcement initiatives 
     combating the scourge of methamphetamine. As you know, 
     methamphetamine is a serious and still growing problem in 
     Minnesota, and it continues to spread throughout the nation. 
     Exposure to methamphetamme and the waste and by-products from 
     its production poses significant risks and has devastating 
     consequences--for individuals, children, communities, and 
     emergency services personnel. Indeed, nearly every day a 
     tragic story is reported in the Minnesota news media telling 
     of the devastating effect of methamphetamine on our 
     residents, our families, and our communities.
       As President of Minnesota Police and Peace Officers 
     Association (MPPOA), I have witnessed first hand the benefits 
     of the Byrne Program in protecting our communities and 
     families from the growing problem of methamphetamine. In 
     Minnesota, the Byrne Justice Assistance Program funds local 
     drug education treatment, and law enforcement programs, 
     including 21 multi-jurisdictional drug task forces that are 
     tasked with combating the epidemic of methamphetamine 
     trafficking and production in our communities. Without the 
     support of the Byrne Justice Assistance Program funding, 
     these drug task forces face reductions that will decrease 
     their abilities and effectiveness. Should this occur, 
     Minnesota's ability to fight the war on drugs would 
     undoubtedly be diminished, with potentially disastrous 
     consequences. I have attached a recent article from the 
     Fergus Falls (MN) Daily Herald which illustrates the 
     importance of the drug task forces and the potential 
     consequences of reductions in available resources.
       The concerns of Minnesota law enforcement officers are not 
     limited to the borders of the state--methamphetamine 
     ``cooks'' often obtain the necessary ingredients in 
     surrounding states and manufacture the drug locally. In 
     addition, the international and interstate trafficking of 
     methamphetamine is increasing as the drug task forces succeed 
     in their efforts to identify, arrest, and prosecute domestic 
     clandestine methamphetamine laboratory operators. These 
     challenges exhibit the need for a strong federal response to 
     methamphetamine, an effort that, in many areas, depends on 
     the support of the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program.
       Once again Senator Dayton, thank you for your continued 
     support of Minnesota's law enforcement community and your 
     efforts to ensure adequate resources in the national fight 
     against methamphetamine.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Bob Bushman,
                                                        President.

  Mr. DAYTON. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Dayton and 
Senator Chambliss's amendment. In the wake of the devastation of 
Hurricane Katrina and the massive displacement of hundreds of thousands 
of people, the country has once again relied on the strong efforts of 
the Nation's first responders to provide aid during a time of national 
tragedy.
  Although the Federal response to this disaster may have been too 
slow, there can be no doubt that the men and women on the nation's 
front lines have valiantly come to the aid of their fellow citizens.
  Police officers from New York City, NY, to Alton, IL, have answered 
the call of duty and volunteered to go to New Orleans to assist in 
rescue, recovery, and reconstruction efforts. These brave men and women 
are the Nation's heroes, and this body should do all it can to provide 
them with the resources they need to do their jobs.
  Unfortunately, at a time when we are relying on the Nation's first 
responders--our law enforcement, our fire fighters, our emergency 
technicians--to protect us against terrorism, to respond to natural 
disasters, to protect us from the normal everyday ravages of crime and 
drug use that do not abate just because the Nation is at war--it is 
shocking to me that Washington is contemplating major cuts to important 
law enforcement assistance programs.
  That is why I am proud to be joining Senators Dayton and Chambliss in 
cosponsoring an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science 
appropriations bill to increase funding for the Edward Byrne Memorial 
Justice Assistance Grant Program.
  The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, provides 
an important source of funding for state and local law enforcement to 
make communities safer and improve criminal justice.
  In Illinois, these dollars are put to good use. They help fight the 
scourge of methamphetamine, which has traveled from the West Coast to 
the Midwest and is ruining rural communities across the country.
  The meth problem has grown exponentially in the last few years. 
Police in Illinois encountered 971 meth labs in 2003--more than double 
the number seen in the year 2000. The quantity of meth seized by the 
Illinois State Police increased nearly ten-fold between 1997 and 2003.

[[Page 19855]]

  The meth problem is taking over communities--depleting already 
limited resources, taxing the police, the judicial system, social 
services, and the schools. Every aspect of the local communities are 
touched and harmed by meth.
  Luckily, one program has proven helpful in Illinois' battle against 
meth--the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program.
  In 2004 alone, Byrne Justice Assistance Grant dollars helped make 
1,267 methamphetamine drug arrests in Illinois. That same year, Byrne 
Justice Assistance Grant dollars helped seize 348,923 grams of 
methamphetamine.
  For rural Illinois, Justice Assistance Grant dollars have provided a 
much-needed life raft, funding important multi-jurisdictional programs 
that have allowed various counties and communities to join together, 
combine resources and work to stop the onslaught of meth.
  The Southern Illinois Enforcement Group--a coalition of three 
Southern, predominantly rural Illinois counties, is one of these task 
forces. The unit has responded to 84 meth labs so far this year, more 
than 40 percent of all meth labs in the greater Southern Illinois 33-
county region for 2005.
  When I visited with law enforcement from the Metropolitan Enforcement 
Group of Southwestern Illinois, another one of these task forces, this 
August, they shared with me how important these dollars are to their 
efforts. They fear that any cuts will mean a reduction in the number of 
officers, or even worse, the loss of the task force, either of which 
will mean that they will have to battle a growing meth problem with 
fewer resources. Now, this body is proposing to flatfund the Byrne 
Grant Program at $625 million.
  While this is much better than the alternative proposed by the 
President--who wanted to eliminate the program--and it is better than 
the House option, which has voted to fund the Justice Assistance Grant 
Program at $366.4 million--this is woefully short of the funding 
provided this program only 3 years ago.
  The amendment I cosponsor today would fund the Justice Assistance 
Grant program at $900 million, the same amount provided the Byrne 
Formula Grants and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grants, which 
comprise the Justice Assistance Grant program in fiscal year 2003.
  I hope my colleagues will join me and Senators Dayton and Chambliss 
in supporting our Nation's law enforcement--and giving them the 
resources they need to do their jobs.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOND. 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.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to 
speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            USA PATRIOT ACT

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, we are all very busily working on 
appropriations bills, and we are working in committees as individuals 
and leaders on the terrible tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and our 
hearts and our thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims. We know 
a tremendous amount of work needs to be done, and we are just beginning 
to see how big it is and how difficult it is going to be. Certainly, 
the distinguished manager of the bill knows in his own State how 
terrible this crisis is.
  But I believe it is important to issue a cautionary message that as 
we approach the anniversary of 9/11, we cannot lose sight of the fact 
that we are still at war and under attack by those who want to end our 
way of life and destroy our civilization and terrorize our citizens.
  I have been asking myself: Are we safe from another terrorist attack 
on the scale of 9/11? Is the Government doing everything it can to 
protect us? What can we do better? We have heard recently some very 
ominous warnings from leaders of al-Qaida that they are preparing 
another terrorist attack. Obviously, we have to maintain the 
appropriate means of defense, and we have done a good job of making it 
more difficult for terrorists to strike commercial airlines, but we 
also know, from having seen the attacks in London in July, that 
terrorists are looking for soft targets.
  It is not enough to protect what we know they have attacked in the 
past. We have to do a better job. I think President Bush was right in 
saying the best way we can keep our country safe is to carry the war on 
terror to those countries that harbor terrorists.
  I heard some discussion recently about whether we should have gone 
into Iraq. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record an article by Christopher Hitchens in last week's Weekly 
Standard that lays out in detail, for anybody who is interested, why we 
had to go into Iraq, why it is the right war. I would incorporate that 
by reference because that article does a good job of outlining my own 
beliefs.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Weekly Standard, Sept. 5-12, 2005]

      A War to Be Proud of: The Case for Overthrowing Saddam Was 
      Unimpeachable. Why, Then, Is the Administration Tongue-Tied?

                       (By Christopher Hitchens)

       Let me begin with a simple sentence that, even as I write 
     it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its 
     proposal: ``Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved 
     markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition 
     troops in Baghdad.''
       I could undertake to defend that statement against any 
     member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I 
     know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let 
     alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an 
     abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, 
     and not without reason, it is an international byword for 
     Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, 
     unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it 
     possible that the advocates of a post Saddam Iraq have been 
     placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one 
     begin?
       I once tried to calculate how long the post-Cold War 
     liberal Utopia had actually lasted. Whether you chose to date 
     its inception from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 
     1989, or the death of Nicolae Ceausescu in late December of 
     the same year, or the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, 
     or the referendum defeat suffered by Augusto Pinochet (or 
     indeed from the publication of Francis Fukuyama's book about 
     the ``end of history'' and the unarguable triumph of market 
     liberal pluralism), it was an epoch that in retrospect was 
     over before it began. By the middle of 1990, Saddam Hussein 
     had abolished Kuwait and Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to 
     erase the identity and the existence of Bosnia. It turned out 
     that we had not by any means escaped the reach of atavistic, 
     aggressive, expansionist, and totalitarian ideology. Proving 
     the same point in another way, and within approximately the 
     same period, the theocratic dictator of Iran had publicly 
     claimed the right to offer money in his own name for the 
     suborning of the murder of a novelist living in London, and 
     the genocidaire faction in Rwanda had decided that it could 
     probably get away with putting its long-fantasized plan of 
     mass murder into operation.
       One is not mentioning these apparently discrepant crimes 
     and nightmares as a random or unsorted list.
       Khomeini, for example, was attempting to compensate for the 
     humiliation of the peace agreement he had been compelled to 
     sign with Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein needed to make 
     up the loss, of prestige and income, that he had himself 
     suffered in the very same war. Milosevic (anticipating Putin, 
     as it now seems to me, and perhaps Beijing also) was riding a 
     mutation of socialist nationalism into national socialism. It 
     was to be noticed in all cases that the aggressors, whether 
     they were killing Muslims, or exalting Islam, or just killing 
     their neighbors, shared a deep and abiding hatred of the 
     United States.
       The balance sheet of the Iraq war, if it is to be seriously 
     drawn up, must also involve a confrontation with at least 
     this much of recent history. Was the Bush administration 
     right to leave--actually to confirm--Saddam Hussein in power 
     after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Was James Baker 
     correct to say, in his delightfully folksy manner, that the 
     United States did not ``have a dog in the fight'' that 
     involved ethnic cleansing for the mad dream of a Greater 
     Serbia? Was the

[[Page 19856]]

     Clinton administration prudent in its retreat from Somalia, 
     or wise in its opposition to the U.N. resolution that called 
     for a preemptive strengthening of the U.N. forces in Rwanda?
       I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination 
     with complete credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered 
     at Rushdie in 1989 and who couldn't see the point when 
     Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992. There were leftist 
     humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and called 
     for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad 
     conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation 
     with Saddam Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state 
     that was a full member of the Arab League and of the U.N. (I 
     suppose I have to admit that I was for a time a member of 
     that second group.) But there were consistencies, too. French 
     statecraft, for example, was uniformly hostile to any 
     resistance to any aggression, and Paris even sent troops to 
     rescue its filthy clientele in Rwanda. And some on the hard 
     left and the brute right were also opposed to any exercise, 
     for any reason, of American military force.
       The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting 
     from that low, dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he 
     spoke in Chicago in 1999. Welcoming the defeat and overthrow 
     of Milosevic after the Kosovo intervention, he warned against 
     any self-satisfaction and drew attention to an inescapable 
     confrontation that was coming with Saddam Hussein. So far 
     from being an American ``poodle,'' as his taunting and 
     ignorant foes like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on 
     Clinton over Kosovo and was insisting on the importance of 
     Iraq while George Bush was still an isolationist governor of 
     Texas.
       Notwithstanding this prescience and principle on his part, 
     one still cannot read the journals of the 2000/2001 
     millennium without the feeling that one is revisiting a 
     hopelessly somnambulist relative in a neglected home. I am 
     one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden 
     did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his 
     mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. 
     Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have 
     been able to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to 
     our list of the threats we failed to recognize in time. (This 
     threat still exists, but it is no longer so casually 
     overlooked.)
       The subsequent liberation of Pakistan's theocratic colony 
     in Afghanistan, and the so-far decisive eviction and defeat 
     of its bin Ladenist guests, was only a reprisal. It took care 
     of the last attack. But what about the next one? For anyone 
     with eyes to see, there was only one other state that 
     combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both 
     ``rogue'' and ``failed.'' This state--Saddam's ruined and 
     tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions 
     under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its 
     own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its 
     neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and 
     nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every 
     provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United 
     Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own 
     resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a 
     system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had 
     things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would 
     have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. 
     Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of 
     gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu 
     Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's 
     crumbling roof.
       One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's 
     decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of 
     affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of 
     long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the 
     decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia 
     and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus 
     exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that 
     the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the 
     salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false 
     pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression. How can this 
     possibly be?
       There is, first, the problem of humorless and pseudo-
     legalistic literalism. In Saki's short story The Lumber Room, 
     the naughty but clever child Nicholas, who has actually 
     placed a frog in his morning bread-and-milk, rejoices in his 
     triumph over the adults who don't credit this excuse for not 
     eating his healthful dish:
       ``You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-
     and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk,'' he 
     repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does 
     not intend to shift from favorable ground.
       Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this 
     wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the 
     grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in 
     adults is quite another thing, and considerably less 
     charming. ``You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam 
     had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire.'' I 
     have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes 
     ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on 
     my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes 
     to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for 
     the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought 
     and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's 
     senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to 
     nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete 
     centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the 
     orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in 
     Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase 
     missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, 
     the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection 
     process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that 
     he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to face meeting 
     with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no 
     means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must 
     be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, 
     largely because they preferred to scare people rather than 
     enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real 
     strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or 
     pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.
       I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an 
     agent and tool of the Bush-Cheney administration (which is 
     the nicest thing that my enemies can find to say). Attempting 
     a little levity, I respond that I could stay at home if the 
     authorities could bother to make their own case, but that I 
     meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know about the 
     permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the Saddam 
     regime. However, having debated almost all of the 
     spokespeople for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the 
     deranged, I was recently asked a question that I was 
     temporarily unable to answer. ``If what you claim is true,'' 
     the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, ``how 
     come the White House hasn't told us?''
       I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and 
     bitter is the split within official Washington, most 
     especially between the Defense Department and the CIA, that 
     any claim made by the former has been undermined by leaks 
     from the latter. (The latter being those who maintained, with 
     a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen since 
     Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein 
     was both a ``secular'' actor and--this is the really rich 
     bit--a rational and calculating one.)
       There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting 
     bureaucratic chaos and unease has cornered the president into 
     his current fallback upon platitude and hollowness. It has 
     also induced him to give hostages to fortune. The claim that 
     if we fight fundamentalism ``over there'' we won't have to 
     confront it ``over here'' is not just a standing invitation 
     for disproof by the next suicide-maniac in London or Chicago, 
     but a coded appeal to provincial and isolationist opinion in 
     the United States. Surely the elementary lesson of the grim 
     anniversary that will shortly be upon us is that American 
     civilians are as near to the front line as American soldiers.
       It is exactly this point that makes nonsense of the sob-
     sister tripe pumped out by the Cindy Sheehan circus and its 
     surrogates. But in reply, why bother to call a struggle 
     ``global'' if you then try to localize it? Just say plainly 
     that we shall fight them everywhere they show themselves, and 
     fight them on principle as well as in practice, and get ready 
     to warn people that Nigeria is very probably the next target 
     of the jihadists. The peaceniks love to ask: When and where 
     will it all end? The answer is easy: It will end with the 
     surrender or defeat of one of the contending parties. Should 
     I add that I am certain which party that ought to be? Defeat 
     is just about imaginable, though the mathematics and the 
     algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors. Surrender to 
     such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even 
     worthy of consideration.
       Antaeus was able to draw strength from the earth every time 
     an antagonist wrestled him to the ground. A reverse mythology 
     has been permitted to take hold in the present case, where 
     bad news is deemed to be bad news only for regime-change. 
     Anyone with the smallest knowledge of Iraq knows that its 
     society and infrastructure and institutions have been 
     appallingly maimed and beggared by three decades of war and 
     fascism (and the ``divide-and-rule'' tactics by which Saddam 
     maintained his own tribal minority of the Sunni minority in 
     power). In logic and morality, one must therefore compare the 
     current state of the country with the likely or probable 
     state of it had Saddam and his sons been allowed to go on 
     ruling.
       At once, one sees that all the alternatives would have been 
     infinitely worse, and would most likely have led to an 
     implosion--as well as opportunistic invasions from Iran and 
     Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf of their respective 
     interests or confessional clienteles. This would in turn have 
     necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some 
     kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and 
     conditions. This is the lesson of Bosnia and Rwanda 
     yesterday, and of Darfur today. When I have made this point 
     in public, I have never had anyone offer an answer to it. A 
     broken Iraq was in our future no matter what, and was a 
     responsibility (somewhat conditioned by our past blunders) 
     that no decent person could shirk. The only unthinkable 
     policy was one of abstention.
       Two pieces of good fortune still attend those of us who go 
     out on the road for this

[[Page 19857]]

     urgent and worthy cause. The first is contingent: There are 
     an astounding number of plain frauds and charlatans (to 
     phrase it at is highest) in charge of the propaganda of the 
     other side. Just to tell off the names is to frighten 
     children more than Saki ever could: Michael Moore, George 
     Galloway, Jacques Chirac, Tim Robbins, Richard Clarke, Joseph 
     Wilson . . . a roster of gargoyles that would send Ripley 
     himself into early retirement. Some of these characters are 
     flippant, and make heavy jokes about Halliburton, and some 
     disdain to conceal their sympathy for the opposite side. So 
     that's easy enough.
       The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a 
     huge number of anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant 
     drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, 
     millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am 
     no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are 
     clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly 
     and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender 
     the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous 
     alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear 
     the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been 
     created by the resistance to it, voters know in their 
     intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft 
     on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as Mark 
     Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term ``a war 
     of choice.'' One should have no problem in accepting this 
     concept. As they cannot and do not deny, there was going to 
     be another round with Saddam Hussein no matter what. To whom, 
     then, should the ``choice'' of time and place have fallen? 
     The clear implication of the antichoice faction--if I may so 
     dub them--is that this decision should have been left up to 
     Saddam Hussein. As so often before.
       Does the President deserve the benefit of the reserve of 
     fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We 
     need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even 
     the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But 
     a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, 
     and would include:
       (1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the 
     exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two 
     elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, 
     who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition 
     intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his 
     organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
       (2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point 
     of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was 
     offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
       (3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for 
     the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, 
     and North Korea.
       (4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform 
     is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-
     criminal network within its elite.
       (5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor 
     Schroder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of 
     cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the 
     part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment 
     to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the 
     Iraqi case. )
       (6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, 
     rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
       (7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless 
     minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this 
     example to other states.
       (8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil 
     society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, 
     which has regained a version of its autonomy.
       (9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin 
     Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real 
     prospect of greatly enlarging this number.
       (10) The training and hardening of many thousands of 
     American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces 
     of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will 
     surely be of great use in future combat.
       It would be admirable if the president could manage to make 
     such a presentation. It would also be welcome if he and his 
     deputies adopted a clear attitude toward the war within the 
     war: in other words, stated plainly, that the secular and 
     pluralist forces within Afghan and Iraqi society, while they 
     are not our clients, can in no circumstance be allowed to 
     wonder which outcome we favor.
       The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it 
     asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or 
     expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not 
     in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the 
     additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, 
     either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized 
     federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I 
     shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching 
     myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the 
     comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any 
     word or deed that contributed to a defeat.

  Mr. BOND. But more important, we cannot just play defense against the 
terrorists. We have to collect more and better information. We have to 
get information on the location and activities of the next attack that 
is being planned. Unless we do a good job of that, we cannot have a 
good chance of stopping the next major terrorist attack on the United 
States.
  I believe one part of that vital solution is found in a robust USA 
PATRIOT Act that would continue to provide national security 
investigators with the tools needed to continue to keep our country 
safe.
  The PATRIOT Act has been the subject of national controversy and has 
undergone many unsubstantiated attacks by its opponents. But the fact 
is that the PATRIOT Act saved lives, and its original content must be 
preserved. We need to continue to focus on making sure we have the 
intelligence and the investigative resources necessary to protect 
against further attacks. We not only need to make permanent the 
provisions that are already in law, but we also must modify the current 
House version to include expanded authorities needed by national 
security investigators.
  The men and women who are fighting the war on terror every day here 
at home say that without the PATRIOT Act, many of our Nation's most 
important successes would not have been possible.Itaddressedcritical 
vulnerabilities in the pre-9/11 homeland defense posture. For example, 
it allowed national security investigators, pending a court's approval, 
to obtain and use a multiple wiretap to track a suspect's phone 
communications, even when a terrorist switches, changes, or abandons 
phones to avoid detection, a common terrorist tactic.
  Specifically, according to senior law enforcement officials, during 
the summer of 2002, the act allowed our Nation's law enforcement 
intelligence communities to break up the Portland Seven terrorist cell. 
Members of that cell had traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 to 
join the Taliban and al-Qaida against the United States.
  In 2004, the act was used to protect the El Paso Islamic Center. When 
Jared Bjarnason sent an e-mail threatening to burn the center to the 
ground if hostages in Iraq were not freed, the FBI used provisions of 
the PATRIOT Act to identify him as the source of the threat. Without 
the provisions in that act, it would have taken 30 days to obtain a 
string of needed search warrants, while the threat of attack was only 3 
days away.
  Why is it that we need to make permanent several of the acts's 
provisions? Why do we need to modify proposed legislation to enhance 
further the ability of our Nation's law enforcement authorities? Some 
may argue: If it ain't broke, then don't fix it. But I am a show-me 
Missourian, and I can tell you that making permanent these provisions 
is very important.
  Terrorism is the operative challenge we face. Over the last 4 years 
since 9/11, we have seen terrorism and specifically violent Sunni 
extremists waging war against us and our allies, led and inspired by 
Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant Ayman Al-Zawahiri. They are not a 
static, monolithic, or predictable enemy. They do not have a country. 
They are not identifiable as a nation or a state. They are a 
combination of stateless hierarchical and formalistic structures, 
equally lethal and fragmented. Because of the traits in the cultural 
and religious complexities, they are not predictable, quantifiable, or 
vulnerable to penetration. We have seen this in the Intelligence 
Committee, and we know that there is a great danger out there that we 
must continue to work to avoid.
  These groups are highly organized and disciplined. They are inspired 
by bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. They have been led, trained, and 
funded by graduates of al-Qaida training centers. Our enemy is 
determined to win. It is committed to victory. We cannot afford just to 
be hopeful.
  As CIA Director James Woolsey once said: It is as if we were fighting 
with the dragon for some 45 years, slew the dragon, and then found 
ourselves in a jungle of poisonous snakes. The snakes are a lot harder 
to keep track of than the dragon ever was.

[[Page 19858]]

  The PATRIOT Act is designed to be preventive. We know that the 
terrorists want to bleed us. Unfortunately, we have seen the blasphemy 
of Osama bin Laden taking the God of Abraham and claiming:

       Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.

  This videotape was just released. And more recently his deputy, Ayman 
Al-Zawahiri, released a message saying:

       The land and interests of the countries which took part in 
     the aggression against Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan are 
     targets for us. If you continue your politics against 
     Muslims, you will see, God willing, such horror that you will 
     forget the horrors of Vietnam.

  This is the same kind of challenge and the same kind of threat we saw 
before 9/11. This, I am saying, requires us to be even more attuned and 
prepared for a potential terrorist attack.
  I also note that in the recent BRAC proposals, we have gotten rid of 
many of the Air National Guard's air national defense missions. On 9/
11, the Air National Guard flew 90 percent of the first 400 combat air 
patrols after the first 24 hours of the attack. We need to rethink our 
dismemberment of those critical assets.
  Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. We are 
still facing a danger that we cannot overlook as we deal with the very 
real and certain tragedies of Katrina. I hope we will be able to 
continue our efforts to make sure that our law enforcement and 
intelligence agencies have the kind of resources they need to root out, 
to ferret out, to discover and, we hope, to defend against future 
terrorist attacks.
  I thank the Chair and my colleagues, the managers of the bill. I 
yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.


                  Senate Response to Hurricane Katrina

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, in times of catastrophe, when 
destruction, suffering, and death are so overwhelming that it breaks 
your heart and almost leaves you numb, it is comforting to find that an 
outpouring of generosity, kindness, and help from our fellow man 
restores our faith and strengthens our souls.
  With all the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, we see more 
and more acts of extraordinary generosity and kindness. In Louisville, 
Kentucky, my hometown, we are preparing right now to receive over 500 
evacuees who have lost their homes due to Katrina. With all their 
worldly possessions gone, they are reliant on the kindness and 
generosity of their fellow Americans, and we are finding all across the 
country that kindness and generosity is certainly not lacking.
  Red Cross volunteers in Louisville are working around the clock to 
turn the city's fairgrounds into a temporary shelter. At home, over 300 
families turned out to shower donations on a local Salvation Army 
center. One man alone brought over 6,000 diapers. Others are bringing 
basic necessities such as soap, toothpaste, and towels.
  This spirit of generosity for our fellow man is by no means limited 
to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Across America, we have all seen 
pictures or heard stories over the last several days of millions of 
total strangers reaching out to help their fellow citizens who have 
been displaced by the tragic events on the Gulf Coast. We see Girl 
Scouts filling old backpacks with clothes, blankets and, yes, a stuffed 
animal for children who have lost everything. We hear of Boy Scouts 
collecting food and clothes, as well as raising funds for the Red 
Cross, the Salvation Army, and other aid organizations. Businesses 
small and large have opened their hearts, wallets, and warehouses to 
provide cash as well as in-kind aid. Churches of all denominations have 
taken up the cause of their brother's keeper.
  Thanks to the support of so many Americans, the thousands of people 
from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama affected by Katrina will have 
a chance to build new lives. Of course, local, State, and Federal 
Government has the major role to play at this point. I am pleased we 
were able to act quickly last week and pass a $10.5 billion 
appropriation for emergency response and recovery efforts. We are going 
to pass later today, hopefully, another $51.8 billion in assistance, 
and more will be on the way if and when that is needed.
  Our thoughts and prayers are with our fellow Americans who have 
tragically lost loved ones and with many others who have lost their 
homes and all of their worldly possessions. The Senate must focus on 
the immediate task before us of providing support for the relief, 
recovery, and rebuilding of the Gulf Coast region.
  While we have much important work to do in the days and weeks ahead, 
we can take some comfort that, once again, in the midst of a tragedy, 
the worst of times seems to bring out the best in our people. So let us 
appreciate the people of Louisville, of Atlanta, Houston, Baton Rouge, 
and all over the country who are reaching out to help Katrina's victims 
all across the Gulf States. While one person alone may make little 
difference in comparison to the magnitude of this disaster, millions of 
individual acts of compassion taking place all over our country will go 
a long way to alleviate the suffering.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, are we still in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is considering the appropriations 
bill for Commerce-Justice-Science.


                           Amendment No. 1661

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
amendments be laid aside so that I may send an amendment to the desk 
and ask for its consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1661.

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

    (Purpose: To provide emergency funding for victims of Hurricane 
                                Katrina)

       At the end of the bill, insert the following:

      TITLE VII--EMERGENCY RELIEF FOR VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA

       In addition to amounts otherwise provided for in this Act, 
     the following amounts are appropriated for fiscal year 2006 
     and designated as an emergency requirement pursuant to 
     section 402 of H. Con. Res. 95 (109th Congress):
       (1) Enhancing state and local law enforcement.--
     $1,000,000,000 to the Community Oriented Policing Services 
     function in the following amounts:
       (A) $700,000,000 added to the Hiring section.
       (B) $300,000,000 to the Interoperable Communications 
     Technology section.
       (2) Assisting children impacted by hurricane katrina.--
     Under the Missing Children Program, $10,000,000 to the 
     National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to find, 
     unite, and transport children impacted by Hurricane Katrina 
     to their parents, legal guardian, or next of kin.
       (3) Assisting victims of sexual abuse and domestic 
     violence.--Under the Violence Against Women Act function, 
     $8,000,000 for the Office of Violence Against Women to assist 
     victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse in the areas 
     impacted by Hurricane Katrina in the following amounts:
       (A) $2,000,000 for the Rape Abuse and Incest National 
     Network (RAINN) to rebuild crises centers, provide emergency 
     counseling services in shelters, provide emergency counseling 
     services in shelters, provide adequate services in 
     communities with evacuees, and provide adequate short- and 
     long-term support for displaced persons across the country.
       (B) $1,000,000 for nonprofit, nongovernmental statewide 
     coalitions serving sexual assault victims within the State to 
     be used to assist victims of sexual assault affected by 
     Hurricane Katrina as determined by the assessment of 
     statewide coalitions.
       (C) $6,000,000 to be allocated, in consultation with the 
     Department of Health and Human Services, to nonprofit, 
     nongovernmental statewide domestic violence coalitions 
     serving domestic violence programs within the State to be 
     used to assist victims of domestic violence affected by 
     Hurricane Katrina as determined by the assessment of the 
     statewide coalitions, and that the statewide coalitions can 
     assess those needs.

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I have a number of points to make today. 
The

[[Page 19859]]

bottom line of what I am proposing is an amendment to the Commerce-
Justice-Science appropriations bill relating to law enforcement and 
COPS. The bottom line is--and I will explain this briefly--No. 1, I 
propose adding $1.019 billion to assist local law enforcement, support 
victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and deal with some 
aspects of the impact of the hurricane on local law enforcement.
  No. 2, this amendment contains $1 billion for the Office of Community 
Oriented Policing Services, the so-called COPS Program. It provides 
$700 million for hiring local officers, and it provides $300 million 
for interoperable communications equipment for local agencies. If you 
ever need any evidence of the fact that we need that equipment and need 
more of it, I think Katrina has demonstrated that, unfortunately, 
fairly well.
  It also contains $10 million for the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children to help find and reunite children displaced by 
Hurricane Katrina, and it has $9 million to support victims of domestic 
violence and sexual assault impacted by what happened during this 
crisis.
  It sounds like a lot of money--and it is a lot of money--but we have 
made a serious mistake relating to our domestic security, our homeland 
security, and our need to deal with the looming threats that flow from 
not only national disasters we are facing now--and I hope we don't face 
another like this--but the terrors spoken about by my friend from 
Missouri.
  In 2002, we were aiding local law enforcement collectively by $2.4 
billion a year. Although there has been some correction made, this 
administration proposed cutting that direct aid to local law 
enforcement down to $168 million. I find that mind-boggling. I find 
that as misplaced and misunderstood a representation as I do cutting 
money for levees and cutting money for the Corps of Engineers, as we 
have done the last 4 years. This is an attempt to not restore all but 
restore part of the assistance we provided for local law enforcement in 
the past.
  The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina has revealed the best and 
the worst about our great Nation. It has revealed a great economic 
divide that exists among our citizens, while it demonstrated as well 
the capacity of the majority of our citizens to be compassionate and 
even heroic during times of great need. It also exposed the demons of 
some who will use any opportunity to prey on the weak.
  The hurricane also demonstrated the best and the worst in our 
Government. It is clear by all accounts that the Federal response was 
insufficient, and we will be discussing that in the coming days, weeks, 
and months to hopefully address the concerns so that, God forbid, faced 
with this or an attack, we would not go through the same degree of 
incompetence that seems to have been spread across the governmental 
front.
  It also demonstrates clearly to me we have to do more to support 
State and local law enforcement officials. These men and women, in my 
opinion, demonstrated the best the Government had to offer, as opposed 
to the sudden incompetence we have seen. The men and women in Biloxi, 
New Orleans, and other police departments in the region have been 
working 24 hours a day. Many of them have lost their homes, and their 
families have been displaced. They have been working with limited food 
and water.
  Many of them do not even have the facilities to take a shower and use 
a restroom. Lieutenant Bennelli of the New Orleans Police Department 
stated:

       I spent a year in Vietnam. The ordeal that these officials 
     have gone through has been as trying as the time I spent in 
     Vietnam.

  For everyone who argues that--and I hear this a lot around here these 
days--local law enforcement is a local problem, they should take a look 
at what is happening in the Gulf States. I know many of my colleagues--
and I respect my colleagues who have this view, but they are into this 
devolution of Government stuff, the new paradigm they like to talk 
about. They talk about the new paradigm in foreign policy. They talk 
about a new paradigm in local law enforcement in terms of devolution of 
Government. Translated, that means the only thing the Federal 
Government should do is those things which no State can do. Or put 
another way, if the State can do any of what is required to meet the 
needs of their citizens, only the State should do it.
  From men and women on this floor who are equally as adamant about 
fighting crime as I have been in my years, they are saying they support 
eliminating the COPS Program. Why? They say it is not the business of 
the Federal Government. The Federal Government should not be involved 
in local law enforcement.
  Well, I like to point out that 60 percent of all the crimes committed 
in America relate to drugs, abuse of drugs, the sale of drugs, illicit 
drugs. Is that a State responsibility or does not that stuff come 
across the border? Does not that stuff come from the Andes? Does not 
that stuff come from Afghanistan? Does not that stuff come from abroad? 
We can have the best police department, the most significant--and I 
think we have the best law enforcement agencies in the Nation in the 
State of Delaware, and you cannot stop the drugs coming down from 
Aramingo Avenue in Philadelphia. They cross State lines. So I 
respectfully suggest to the devolution-of-Government guys that Federal 
responsibility exists as it relates to local crime and local law 
enforcement.
  I would like to point out another thing. God forbid we have an 
attack. Let us assume--and it was not, but let us assume some divers 
were planting explosives to blow up the levees along the Mississippi as 
opposed to Lake Pontchartrain, which by the way is a lot higher. Who is 
going to find them? Is it going to be some brave special forces officer 
in night vision goggles watching this happen and they are going to 
capture them or is it going to be my son who is now in the National 
Guard down in Gulfport, MS, patrolling the streets? Is he the one going 
to be doing that? No, it is going to be a local cop.
  Who is going to find the guy or the woman or the terrorist who is 
going to try to put sarin gas into the Houston Astrodome or a giant 
shopping mall? It is going to be some cop coming from Dunkin' Donuts 
riding behind the facility catching someone in a dumpster.
  I do not know what we are thinking about here. Cutting local law 
enforcement moneys? Forget Katrina, which only makes the point more 
starkly, but forget it for a moment. What are we doing? We had a great 
President named Reagan who said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
  Guess what. Nobody has argued the COPS Program has not succeeded. No 
one has argued it has failed. A former Attorney General said, when it 
was time to eliminate it, I think the word he used was miraculous, it 
has been a miraculous program.
  Let us cut it? Let us eliminate it?
  I would make the suggestion that law enforcement is not purely a 
local problem. Look at what is happening in the Gulf States right now. 
Law enforcement is a national concern and requires a national response 
and a national commitment. Local communities need robust police 
departments. They need superior communication technology and equipment. 
I know my friends in the Commerce Committee know more about the 
spectrum fight, which I will not get into now, than most do, but the 
idea that there is not sufficient spectrum available to our first 
responders because the broadcast industry is unwilling to commit to the 
deal they made is beyond me.
  Local communities are the ones that not only affect the overall 
security of the country but the day-to-day lives of their citizens by 
reducing crime. This also helps local governments be better at 
responding in periods of crisis. What could be more important to the 
national priority than the safety of our citizens?
  We simply have not been doing right by our States and local 
government partners over the past few years. Throughout the 1990s we 
allocated billions of dollars to hire local law enforcement, provided 
them with the technology they needed. We all know the story. Reduce 
crime each year for 8

[[Page 19860]]

consecutive years and we are still reaping the benefits of those 
successes as crime rates still go down.
  I would like to point out one other simple fact. Having chaired the 
Judiciary Committee or been its ranking member for I think 17 years and 
being on that committee for 30 years, to the best of my knowledge, 
there is no other time in American history when the cadre of those in 
their crime-committing years, meaning young people between the ages of 
14 and 25, have increased and violent crime has gone down. This program 
has worked because the States have made it work. We reduced crime, as I 
said, 8 years in a row. But we did more than reduce crime by this 
legislation we have cut so drastically. We also demonstrated a 
commitment to local agencies. We increased their capacity to respond to 
any situations of the local communities.
  In this year's budget, we have allocated only $2 million to hire 
police officers. This amount will hire approximately 25 officers 
throughout the Nation, hardly a ringing endorsement of our local 
agencies. Right now, the COPS office has pending applications to hire 
8,000 local officers left unfilled due to lack of funds. The amendment 
I am offering today would provide $700 million to immediately fill 
these needs with special emphasis on filling the needs of those 
agencies in the devastated regions. The New Orleans Police Department 
in particular will need special assistance. If this funding is 
allocated to the COPS office, it should work with those agencies first.
  We also know that network capabilities of agencies in the area have 
been destroyed. We need to help them get those networks back on line so 
they can continue to do their job. My amendment would add $300 million 
to the current allocation of $37 million, which is all that has been 
allocated. It would add $300 million to help agencies in the gulf coast 
get up and running again. The COPS office has had an overtime program 
to help local agencies pay overtime. We all understand the need to 
assist local agencies that have been working around the clock, but 
based on conversations with the Louisiana Association of Chiefs of 
Police and the National Sheriffs Association, it is my understanding 
that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be reimbursing local 
agencies for those costs. Because of this understanding, we have not 
included additional assistance for overtime in this amendment.
  Finally, we include $19 million for children who have been displaced 
and to support the domestic violence shelters that have been destroyed. 
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reported 
that over 1,000 children have been displaced by this storm--that means 
they are not with their parents or guardians--and in this amendment we 
provide $10 million for that effort.
  We also provide $9 million to support domestic violence victims 
impacted by the storms. We all heard of the reports of sexual assaults 
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and we will support those 
victims who have not been moved to new shelters.
  In addition, this funding will support the shelters in Louisiana, 
Mississippi, and Alabama that have been impacted and will help support 
shelters in adjoining States that have been called upon to do much more 
in the coming months.
  I think all of my colleagues have heard me say that I believe there 
is not a more important responsibility in Government than the safety of 
its citizens. It comes before their health, before their education, 
before everything. There are no civil liberties, there are no 
opportunities if one is not able to be safe on the street. Without 
safety and security, nothing else matters. Our local law enforcement 
agencies are there every day fighting crime and responding to 
emergencies. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated quite starkly the way we 
rely on them. The Federal support for these officers has been on a 
steady decline, as I said at the outset, the past few years. We need to 
reverse that trend. This amendment will help us get back on track.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Could I ask what the parliamentary situation is?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations 
bill is pending.
  Mr. SARBANES. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be 
set aside so I may offer an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1662

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

       The Senator from Maryland [Mr. Sarbanes] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1662.

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

 (Purpose: To assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina with finding new 
                    housing, and for other purposes)

       On page 190, after line 14, insert the following:

     SECTION 522. HURRICANE KATRINA EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE VOUCHERS.

       (a) Short Title.--This section may be cited as the 
     ``Helping to House the Victims of Hurricane Katrina Act of 
     2005''.
       (b) Hurricane Katrina Emergency Assistance Vouchers.--
     Section 8(o) of the United States Housing Act of 1937 (42 
     U.S.C. 1437f(o)) is amended by adding at the end the 
     following:
       ``(20) Hurricane katrina emergency assistance vouchers.--
       ``(A) In general.--During the 6-month period beginning on 
     the date of enactment of the Helping to House the Victims of 
     Hurricane Katrina Act of 2005, the Secretary shall provide 
     temporary rental assistance to any individual or family, if--
       ``(i) the individual or family resides, or resided on 
     August 29, 2005, in any area that is subject to a declaration 
     by the President of a major disaster or emergency under the 
     Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance 
     Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.) in connection with Hurricane 
     Katrina; and
       ``(ii) the residence of the individual or family became 
     uninhabitable or inaccessible as result of that major 
     disaster or emergency.
       ``(B) Regulations.--Not later than 30 days after the date 
     of enactment of the Helping to House the Victims of Hurricane 
     Katrina Act of 2005, the Secretary shall issue final rules to 
     establish the procedures applicable to the issuance of 
     assistance under subparagraph (A).
       ``(C) Notice.--The Secretary, in consultation with the 
     Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and such 
     other agencies as the Secretary determines appropriate, shall 
     establish procedures for providing notice of the availability 
     of assistance under this paragraph to individuals or families 
     that may be eligible for such assistance.
       ``(D) Authority to contract with pha's and others.--The 
     Secretary may contract with any State or local government 
     agency or public housing agency, or in consultation with any 
     State or local government agency, with any other entity, to 
     ensure that assistance payments under this paragraph are 
     provided in an efficient and expeditious manner.
       ``(E) Waiver of eligibility requirements.--In providing 
     assistance under this paragraph, the Secretary shall waive 
     the requirements under--
       ``(i) paragraph (2), relating to tenant contributions 
     towards rent, except that any such waiver shall expire on an 
     individual's return to work;
       ``(ii) paragraph (4), relating to the eligibility of 
     individuals to receive assistance;
       ``(iii) subsection (k) and paragraph (5) of this 
     subsection, relating to verification of income;
       ``(iv) paragraph (7)(A), relating to the requirement that 
     leases shall be for a term of 1 year;
       ``(v) paragraph (8), relating to initial inspection of 
     housing units by a public housing agency; and
       ``(vi) subsection (r)(1)(B), relating to restrictions on 
     portability.
       ``(F) Use of funds.--Notwithstanding any other provision of 
     law, funds available for assistance under this paragraph--
       ``(i) shall be made available by the Secretary to 
     individuals to cover the cost of--

       ``(I) rent;
       ``(II) security and utility deposits;
       ``(III) relocation expenses, including expenses incurred in 
     relocating back to the major disaster area when such 
     relocation is permitted; and
       ``(IV) such additional expenses as the Secretary determines 
     necessary; and

[[Page 19861]]

       ``(ii) shall be used by the Secretary--

       ``(I) for payments to public housing agencies, State or 
     local government agencies, or other voucher administrators 
     for vouchers used to assist individuals or families affected 
     by the major disaster or emergency described in this 
     paragraph up to their authorized level of vouchers, if any 
     such vouchers are not otherwise funded; and
       ``(II) to provide operating subsidies to public housing 
     agencies for public housing units provided to individuals or 
     families affected by the major disaster or emergency 
     described in this paragraph, if such a subsidy was not 
     previously provided for those units.

       ``(G) Payment standard.--For purposes of this paragraph, 
     the payment standard for each size of dwelling unit in a 
     market area may not exceed 150 percent, or higher if the 
     Secretary approves of such increase, of the fair market 
     rental established under subsection (c) for the same size 
     dwelling unit in the same market area, and shall be not less 
     than 90 percent of that fair market rental.
       ``(H) Nondiscrimination.--In selecting individuals or 
     families for tenancy, a landlord or owner may not exclude or 
     penalize an individual or family solely because any portion 
     of the rental payment of that individual or family is 
     provided under this paragraph.
       ``(I) Termination of assistance.--Assistance provided under 
     this paragraph shall--
       ``(i) terminate 6 months after the date on which such 
     assistance was received; and
       ``(ii) extend for an additional 6 months unless at that 
     time the Secretary makes a determination that assistance 
     under this paragraph is no longer needed.
       ``(21) Assistance for current voucher recipients affected 
     by hurricane katrina.--
       ``(A) In general.--The Secretary shall waive any of the 
     requirements described in clauses (i) through (vi) of 
     paragraph (20)(E) for any individual or family receiving 
     assistance under this section on August 29, 2005, if--
       ``(i) the individual or family resides, or resided on 
     August 29, 2005, in any area that is subject to a declaration 
     by the President of a major disaster or emergency under the 
     Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance 
     Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.) in connection with Hurricane 
     Katrina; and
       ``(ii) the residence of the individual or family became 
     uninhabitable or inaccessible as result of that major 
     disaster or emergency.
       ``(B) Additional uses of funds.--Notwithstanding any other 
     provision of law, the Secretary shall provide, as the 
     Secretary determines appropriate, supplemental assistance to 
     an individual or family receiving assistance under this 
     section on August 29, 2005, and meeting the requirements 
     described in subparagraph (A), to assist the individual or 
     family with the additional costs of relocating to new 
     housing, including to cover--
       ``(i) the additional cost of rent and utilities;
       ``(ii) security and utility deposits;
       ``(iii) relocation expenses, including expenses incurred in 
     relocating back to the major disaster area when such 
     relocation is permitted; and
       ``(iv) such additional expenses as the Secretary determines 
     necessary.
       ``(C) Payment standard.--For purposes of this paragraph, 
     the payment standard for each size of dwelling unit in a 
     market area may not exceed 150 percent, or higher if the 
     Secretary approves of such increase, of the fair market 
     rental established under subsection (c) for the same size 
     dwelling unit in the same market area, and shall be not less 
     than 90 percent of that fair market rental.
       ``(D) Nondiscrimination.--A landlord or owner may not 
     exclude or penalize an individual or family solely because 
     that individual or family is eligible for any waivers or 
     benefits provided under this paragraph.
       ``(E) Termination of authority.--The authority of the 
     Secretary to provide assistance under this paragraph shall--
       ``(i) apply during the 6-month period beginning on the date 
     of enactment of the Helping to House the Victims of Hurricane 
     Katrina Act of 2005; and
       ``(ii) extend for an additional 6 months after that period, 
     unless if at that time the Secretary makes a determination 
     that assistance under this paragraph is no longer needed.
       ``(22) Authority of the secretary to directly administer 
     vouchers when pha's are unable to do so.--If the Secretary 
     determines that a public housing agency is unable to 
     implement the provisions of this subsection due to the 
     effects of Hurricane Katrina, the Secretary may--
       ``(A) directly administer any voucher program described in 
     paragraphs (1) through (20); and
       ``(B) perform the functions assigned to a public housing 
     agency by this subsection.''.
       (c) Report on Inventory of Availability of Temporary 
     Housing.--Not later than 10 days after the date of enactment 
     of this Act, the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator of 
     the General Services Administration, the Secretary of 
     Agriculture, and such other agency heads as the Secretary 
     determines appropriate, shall compile and report to the 
     Secretary an inventory of Federal civilian and defense 
     facilities that can be used--
       (1) to provide emergency housing; or
       (2) as locations for the construction or deployment of 
     temporary housing units.
       (d) Appropriation of Funding.--
       (1) In general.--There are authorized to be appropriated 
     and are appropriated $3,500,000,000 to provide assistance 
     under this Act.
       (2) Emergency designation.--The amount appropriated under 
     paragraph (1) is designated as an emergency requirement 
     pursuant to section 402 of H. Con. Res. 95 (109th Congress).

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I am pleased to join the leadership of 
Senator Reid and Senator Landrieu who have announced a package of 
proposals to be of assistance to the Hurricane Katrina victims so that 
the millions of people affected by the devastation along the gulf coast 
can begin to rebuild their lives.
  The amendment which I have sent to the desk is only part of that 
broader proposal and deals with the housing situation which now 
confronts the victims of this tragic storm. Before going into the 
details of the proposal, I want to extend my deepest sympathies to 
those in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi who have lost loved ones 
or who are still searching for family members, neighbors, and friends. 
They need to know that the thoughts and prayers of the country are with 
them during these very difficult and trying times. We know that 
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their houses, 
their jobs, their belongings, indeed, their communities.
  An effort is now underway in the Congress to come to their 
assistance. We know the road to recovery will not be easy and it will 
not be short, but we need to undertake these efforts immediately.
  It was earlier estimated this week by FEMA officials and told to the 
President that 500,000 to a million people were rendered homeless by 
Hurricane Katrina and the deadly floods that followed the hurricane. In 
fact, yesterday's New York Times reported that as many as a million 
people are without housing. While the first job was to evacuate people, 
to get them food and water and to address their medical needs, in other 
words, to in effect save the lives of those who have been so heavily 
impacted, I think it is fair to say that the next job confronting us 
would be to find adequate housing for the survivors of Katrina.
  The Americans displaced by the hurricane are scattered throughout the 
country now. I want to underscore the comments made by some of my 
colleagues earlier about the opening up of the arms of Americans across 
the country to take people in in this time of emergency and the great 
need. Families coming out of the gulf coast are in effect living 
wherever they can find a roof over their heads, with relatives, with 
friends, with caring strangers who have volunteered to take them in, in 
shelters--for example, Houston opened up the Astrodome--on cruise ships 
or in tents. It is fair to say if one stops and thinks about this for a 
moment it is, at best, a temporary housing situation.
  The hundreds of thousands of displaced families need to have access 
to stable housing so they can send their kids to school, start pulling 
their lives back together again, which is, of course, a pressing 
challenge, seek employment and chart out a future for themselves.
  This amendment, recognizing the overwhelming need for stable housing, 
proposes an emergency housing voucher program of $3.5 billion, which 
would provide temporary rental assistance to more than 350,000 
displaced families. It eliminates--I should say more accurately 
suspends for a limited period of time--many of the requirements and the 
restrictions that ordinarily apply to the housing voucher program. For 
example, any person or family displaced as a result of Hurricane 
Katrina would be eligible to receive this much needed assistance; they 
could get a temporary housing voucher. This is without regard to their 
income situation. It recognizes the storm hit rich and poor alike and 
this is an effort to give them some immediate, short-term help so they 
can move out of the situation in which they find themselves.
  The temporary rental vouchers would quickly and efficiently move 
families into stable housing across the country in the communities to 
which they have relocated. So it would give them an opportunity, with 
the voucher that would

[[Page 19862]]

come to them, to find housing for themselves and their families. They 
could move out of the shelters. They could move out of temporary 
facilities. They could cease to live with relatives, friends or, 
indeed, strangers.
  The rental assistance will be flexible and it will be easy to use. It 
will have payments sufficient so they can find suitable housing. The 
funds provided could be used anywhere in the country by those who have 
been impacted by the hurricane whose situation was created by the 
hurricane to pay for rent, security deposits, relocation expenses and 
moving expenses back to the affected areas at the appropriate time. So, 
if and when the time comes, they could return to their homes if that 
was the choice.
  The assistance would be available for an initial period of 6 months. 
It is limited. A further 6 months is available, an extension, unless 
the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 
finds that the assistance is no longer needed. But the maximum extent 
of these temporary housing vouchers would be 1 year. It would be 6 
months, with a possibility of an extension.
  The emergency program would be administered by HUD, which could 
operate the vouchers directly or provide the vouchers to local housing 
agencies, State and local governments or other entities, so long as the 
vouchers get out quickly to those in need.
  We have a complicated problem here because the public housing 
authorities, of course, are locally based. The ones in areas where the 
people have been displaced are, in effect, out of business. There is no 
housing there by definition, since people have had to evacuate and 
leave. These people have now been moved to different parts of the 
country. We need to be able to get these vouchers to them and get them 
to them quickly.
  We know people want to return to their neighborhoods, but it will 
probably be months before that is at all possible. Ordinarily, FEMA 
provides trailers and other housing after a disaster. That is how 
ordinarily it works. But the magnitude and scope of this disaster is 
unprecedented. FEMA has never had to deal with something of this 
magnitude, and it was the judgment, in putting this amendment together, 
that HUD had an expertise with respect to these rental vouchers. The 
emergency is a new dimension for HUD, but we thought that they have 
trained staff and could take over this responsibility and move it 
forward quickly.
  I might note that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, 
Secretary Jackson, earlier in his career, has had very extensive 
experience directing public housing authorities--in Washington, DC; St. 
Louis, MO, and in Dallas, TX. So he has had a lot of experience 
actually on the ground with respect to housing. We think he could 
marshal the Department and its staff to respond in this situation.
  This only begins to deal with the problem. I do not begin to assert 
that this represents a total or comprehensive solution to the housing 
challenge. But it enables us to get underway. Any family displaced by 
the hurricane would be eligible to receive a temporary voucher to pay 
for renting safe and decent housing, pay for rent, security, utility 
deposits, relocation expenses, and then eventually, we hope, moving 
expenses back to their permanent homes. These vouchers could be used 
anywhere across the country. It would not require a certification of 
income initially in order to get the voucher, and the families would be 
relieved of paying the rent, their portion of the rent which is 
required under the regular voucher program, until family members return 
to work. Once they return to work, the tenants would have to pay rental 
payments, as they do in the regular housing voucher program.
  We are trying to cover all the bases here. We are trying to be very 
sensitive to the problem. We are trying to look at the problem through 
the eyes of those who have been struck by the hurricane, in terms of 
how they see it.
  These people are now there. All kinds of makeshift housing is being 
found for them. But that, even on a temporary basis, does not represent 
an appropriate response. So we want to move them a little further down 
the path toward having a more normal living situation. We ease up a 
little bit about the amount of rent they can pay. We allow it to go a 
bit above the median instead of having to be below the median because 
we know finding rental units will be a difficult job.
  As I said, this gives authorities to HUD they do not now have to 
directly administer the program so they can reach out to these former 
residents of the gulf coast who are now scattered out across the 
country. They can work with the housing agencies, State and local 
governments, and other entities. As I noted, it has a limited time 
provision. So it would enable us to, in effect, provide all of these 
people who have had to leave their homes an opportunity to put some 
stability into their lives. So they could then go on and deal with the 
other problems that are confronting them--the problems of getting their 
kids back in school, the problems of employment, the problems of 
meeting all of the other pressures that have come before us. But we 
have moved these people out. Some are being held in shelters. Others 
are being dispersed. But what is the next step for them? We think this 
represents the next step.
  It is a targeted approach. The authorities it gives are temporary. 
The limitations and restrictions it eases and removes are done on a 
temporary basis, so it is not permanent in its eventual impact. But it 
does provide, for the next 6 to 12 months, a degree of stability and a 
degree of permanence which I think is very important in enabling the 
people who have been struck by this tragedy to help put their lives 
back together again. I very much hope, when the appropriate time comes, 
my colleagues will support this proposal.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to comment on the amendment that 
has been offered by the senior Senator from Maryland, the ranking 
member on Housing on the housing voucher program. I want very much to 
support his amendment because I think it is absolutely crucial that we 
do this.
  There are people who are living under three basic circumstances. No. 
1, some are shelters, which is emergency housing. God bless all of the 
communities, the Red Cross, the people of Texas, and everywhere that 
have provided shelter housing. But shelter housing is for an emergency 
situation, and people do need to move to stable housing.
  Then there are those people who did evacuate. They might be of modest 
means, they might be of middle-class means, but they have been living 
in hotels and motels along the way. They have been living off of their 
credit cards. They are now out of money, they are out of gas, and they 
wonder what to do next. They need to be able to move into housing. 
Also, in order to be able to get a job, you need an address. In order 
to get a benefit, you need an address.
  Then there is the third group of people who have been embraced by 
churches, who are living maybe with strangers or even living with 
relatives. But for many people, their relatives are also on a tight 
budget, living on a shoestring or a small pocketbook. We have had 
generosity of spirit, generosity of heart, and even generosity of 
wallet. But that is limited until people can move into other types of 
housing.
  In this case, as someone who once was an appropriator for HUD, we 
need so-called housing vouchers, known as Section 8, for either the 
poor or the elderly. Because of what has happened, everyone is poor and 
stretched to the limit, with no income. They need help. I believe this 
program offers both the reimbursement--the voucher--and also enough 
constraints so that it is not a lavish giveaway program.
  The point I also want to make is that housing is really limited, even 
temporary housing. My colleague, Senator

[[Page 19863]]

Sarbanes, has spoken about FEMA and its trailers. We know about FEMA 
and its trailers because we were hit by Hurricane Isabel. We were 
absolutely grateful for them. But when I heard the FEMA trailers were 
coming to the Eastern Shore or Bailey's Quarters or to Miller Island, I 
thought they were trailers--almost a version of a manufactured home. 
When I went to see them and meet with the people in them, they were 
campers. So when we hear that the trailers are coming, these are not 
trailers the way we see in a trailer park. These are kind of campers 
you see for an overnight and they are very limited and they are also 
very expensive to heat or to air condition. But, thank God when they 
come.
  Yesterday I spoke to one of the leading private-sector people who has 
a substantial number, whose corporation has a substantial number of 
employees in both Louisiana and Mississippi.
  They tried to rent trailers and RVs to take out to their employees. 
They were going to get hold of them and lease them--or almost rent 
free--to their employees so the employees would have a place to work. 
They would know where those employees were, and begin to put them back 
to work.
  Guess what. They couldn't find any. Practically every trailer and 
every RV in America is on its way down to the gulf. They have already 
been purchased or leased. We think that is great. This is a private 
sector corporation with deep pockets which is trying to jump in to 
help.
  We have a sense of the magnitude of the crisis. These vouchers will 
add an ``R'' to what we need when we talk about emergency management 
response. I helped to form FEMA. I will not talk about that today. We 
have a reformed FEMA that went over to the Department called Homeland 
Security.
  I believe when it did that, it lost its focus. But we had three 
``R's'' we practiced: readiness, response and recovery. I am going to 
add a fourth ``R''--reimbursement. We have to reimburse these 
communities that are taking in people.
  Look at Texas and other communities. I know your community, Mr. 
President, has been very generous. Again, we salute you. But we can end 
up in compassion fatigue and we need to have a government safety net.
  I think this voucher will do a lot. I think it will also do a lot for 
mental health. If you have your own kitchen, your own stove, your own 
address, and your children can go to school, not at a shelter--though 
God bless the shelters--I think it will do a lot to begin to restore 
people's sense of stability.
  I think this is a very good idea. It is temporary. It is time 
limited, both in terms of the flexibility of the rent, and so on. I 
think it will go a long way to using the private marketplace and the 
private sector and also be able to reimburse other nonprofits that are 
already also finding housing.
  I salute my colleagues and the leadership for doing this, and I look 
forward to supporting it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coleman). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I want to take some time to review the 
situation we have seen in front of us for the last week. It was a 
terrible week for our country. One only had to listen to the eloquent 
remarks given by the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu. She 
described in very moving words and tones what kinds of things she 
personally witnessed and that went on in the State of Louisiana, 
particularly New Orleans. We all have to learn from that experience. We 
have to be ready for any eventuality.
  The American people watched in horror and disbelief as this 
incredible tragedy played out on live television in Louisiana, 
Mississippi, and Alabama. For most of us, it was from the safety of our 
homes or businesses that we watched with horror our fellow Americans 
suffering unbelievable loss and pain.
  The worst part is, as we watched this tragedy evolve, with thousands 
being displaced from their homes and families, without a significant 
response, why did they suffer so long before appropriate action was put 
into place? That is because the Federal Government was not prepared. 
How could the administration not have been prepared for this? We had 
advance warning that a major disaster was looming. We see this picture. 
It tells you what is happening. Sunday, August 28, the swirl of the 
wind and the ferocity of the action is almost enough to frighten you 
just looking at this picture.
  August 28, Sunday, Katrina became a massive hurricane, a category 5. 
It was in the Gulf of Mexico headed right for a large American city--a 
city with tradition and history that all of us relate to. Actually, 
however, this city sat below sea level--New Orleans. The mayor of New 
Orleans on that Sunday ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city. This 
wasn't news, friends. No. This was obvious. You were going to get a 
punch in the face like you never had before, and your opponent was 
standing full fist in front of you.
  Massive flooding was predicted before the storm hit. At 6 a.m. Monday 
morning, Hurricane Katrina and its storm surge hit greater New Orleans 
and the Mississippi coast. About 80 percent of the city's residents 
were able to flee. Others, especially the elderly, the infirm, and the 
poor were left behind.
  Also, on Monday, the 17th Street levee in New Orleans broke, and 
water flooded the city.
  One only needs to ask our junior Senator from Mississippi about the 
wave of water that destroyed his house. He told me it was 26 feet high. 
That is more than two stories. Levees gave way, and floodwaters quickly 
overtook homes. Residents scrambled for their lives, seeking refuge on 
rooftops. We all saw the vivid pictures of the heroic Coast Guard 
rescue putting people in baskets, or hanging onto them, around their 
necks, to get them out of the way of the oncoming flood. More than 30 
elderly residents of a nursing home died in that rapidly rising tide.
  On Monday, August 29--remember, the first picture was Sunday. That 
was the warning we saw going on. On Monday, August 29, many in New 
Orleans were evacuating their homes in rushing waters trying to keep 
themselves and their families from drowning.
  Here is a photo taken about midday that Monday. I would appreciate it 
if those who see this would keep this time in mind.
  That terrible image--look at it. People were standing in water up to 
their waists. Some are up to their necks, and obviously holding 
children, and at the same time holding bundles on their heads to keep 
them dry.
  By Tuesday, we saw conditions deteriorating at the Louisiana 
Superdome where people had already sought refuge. They suddenly needed 
to move again.
  A reporter at the scene told grim stories of no food, no air 
conditioning, no usable water, overflowing toilets in the Superdome, 
and of tens of thousands of human beings who were stranded in these 
inhumane conditions.
  While media members were spread across New Orleans, the Federal 
Government seemed to have no presence whatsoever. I remember personally 
watching Jean Meserve reporting for CNN, almost being blown over by the 
ferocity of the winds, with tears in her eyes, in a quivering voice. 
She was crying as she gave her report about the horror she was 
witnessing. She was barely able to hold herself in position.
  These desperate people trudged up elevated highways and overpasses. I 
am sure they assumed that help would soon come. But even though they 
waited in plain sight on an elevated highway, no help arrived. So they 
baked in the heat, and they looked desperately toward the skies for any 
hint of help. But there was little sign from the Federal Government; no 
sign of help other than the courageous Coast Guard rescue teams pulling 
people off of rooftops.
  On Tuesday, as this devastation was being unleashed on New Orleans, 
where was President Bush? He flew to California, in the opposite 
direction of the crisis as tens of thousands of Americans were fighting 
for their lives, many of them dying. The President was in California. 
It was an important moment. He gave a speech commemorating VJ Day. I 
remember VJ very

[[Page 19864]]

clearly. I was on a ship going from Europe where I served during the 
war back to America to go on to Japan. It was an important moment. But 
was it important enough for the President to leave his post, to leave 
his command, when people were trying to stay alive? This is a picture 
taken on Tuesday, August 30, 2005. It was 2:56 eastern time, which made 
it about 2 hours difference in central time, New Orleans. The President 
was enjoying the day. He was strumming a guitar. I don't deny him the 
pleasures of office. But people were drowning. They were trying to save 
their lives, save their homes, and save their kids at the same time. 
The President was not in touch with the country. It was one of the 
worst failures of leadership in our Nation's history. It was like an 
Army preparing for battle only to find out that the top general has 
gone AWOL.
  Millions of Americans asked: How could this happen in the 21st 
century in America?
  Our hearts were broken--all of us, anybody who saw it. I remember 
conversations with family and friends, and how horrified they were to 
see people struggling. They heard tales of children being swept from 
parents' arms, of the woman who sat with her husband as he pleaded for 
needed medication. And he died in her presence.
  Senator Landrieu told us the story about the man who was sent to 
protect the mayor of New Orleans. He stayed with the mayor 3 days. When 
he went to his home, he found that his wife and children had died. He 
was so overcome he took a pistol and blew his head off. He committed 
suicide. How terrible.
  What many people do not understand is the incompetence of the 
leadership in their country. It seems to be almost an indifference. 
What many Americans concluded last week is that the Bush administration 
cannot protect us. When faced with a real crisis, the White House 
displayed a lack of involvement, a failure of leadership.
  To make matters worse, our President refuses to accept 
responsibility. President Truman--who sat at this very desk; his name 
is written here--said: The buck stops here.
  That is not what we saw from the White House those terrible days. Now 
the President has an idea about how to determine what went wrong. He 
wants to begin an investigation, headed by himself. An investigation of 
self is not the best way to get the facts.
  The hurricane that struck New Orleans on August 29 was a force of 
nature. But the damage and the disaster that followed was compounded by 
a failure of leadership.
  Since the President and the President's team have already mishandled 
much of this tragedy, I urge my colleagues to roll up our sleeves and 
follow the lead of Senator Landrieu, with Senator Vitter, Senator Lott, 
Senator Cochran, as we craft a plan for recovery for these devastated 
communities. We have a moral obligation to rebuild not just these 
businesses and landmarks but homes and communities, schools in every 
community, regardless of class or color.
  One of our Republican colleagues said something this past weekend, in 
talking about the people who were suffering so much in the gulf area:

       You have people who don't heed those warnings and they put 
     people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings.

  He further said there is a need to look at tougher penalties on those 
who decide to risk it and understand there are consequences for not 
leaving; to administer more punishment to these people who did not heed 
the warning, who did not want to leave their homes, who did not want to 
leave their familiar territory, who did not want to leave a relative, 
perhaps; to put more punishment on them, suggesting that losing a 
child, losing a home, losing momentos, or losing a history is not 
enough. We should punish them further? A Senator suggested that. What 
an outrage. Yes, he yielded later and said he might have been 
misunderstood. Read that Senator's words.
  We have to learn from this terrible tragedy. The country certainly is 
alert to the risks we face from terror, from human-initiated attack. In 
the State of New Jersey we lost 700 people; New York, almost 2,000. We 
learned a lot. We learned we have to protect ourselves. It appears the 
number of dead in Louisiana and Mississippi is going to exceed the 
number, as terrible as it was, of September 11. So we have to prepare 
ourselves in some way to deal with that problem just as ardently, just 
as thoroughly, as we fight terrorism.
  We need to pass legislation as soon as possible. I hope we will not 
be delayed in doing that by recriminations from those who would pass 
the buck elsewhere, away from the place the responsibility belongs.
  We need to tell the gulf coast community that we believe in them, 
that the road to recovery is being built, and that we will then proceed 
to examine the history of what got us there. People understood in many 
quarters the levees were weak. The question arises about what we did to 
shore them up. I hope that examination will take place in the immediate 
future.
  We salute those people who have endured the most unimaginable 
tragedy--to have loved ones swept away by flood waters, to have 
memories taken away. In lots of places it was not just the housing but 
the memorabilia, the trinkets of childhood, childbearing, raising kids, 
and seeing it disappear. We have to be stronger. We have to be more 
leaderly. We cannot be AWOL when trouble strikes. I hope we will work 
together on a bipartisan basis, as they say, and do the right thing.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1665

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf 
of myself, Senator Graham, and Senator Stabenow.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is 
set aside. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], for himself, 
     Mr. Graham, and Ms. Stabenow, proposes an amendment numbered 
     1665.

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

 (Purpose: To prohibit weakening any law that provides safeguards from 
                    unfair foreign trade practices)

       On page 190, between lines 14 and 15, insert the following:
       Sec. 522. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made 
     available by this Act may be used to negotiate or enter into 
     a trade agreement that modifies or amends any law of the 
     United States that provides safeguards from unfair foreign 
     trade practices to United States businesses or workers, 
     including (1) imposition of countervailing and antidumping 
     duties (title VII of the Tariff Act of 1930; 19 U.S.C. 1671 
     et seq.); (2) protection from unfair methods of competition 
     and unfair acts in the importation of articles (section 337 
     of the Tariff Act of 1930; 19 U.S.C. 1337); (3) relief from 
     injury caused by import competition (title II of the Trade 
     Act of 1974; 19 U.S.C. 2251 et seq.); (4) relief from unfair 
     trade practices (title III of the Trade Act of 1974; 19 
     U.S.C. 2411 et seq.); or (5) national security import 
     restrictions (section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962; 
     19 U.S.C. 1862).

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that is relatively 
simple. It would prohibit funding in this bill for our trade 
negotiators to enter into any agreement that would weaken U.S. trade 
laws, such as antidumping laws and countervailing duty laws. Let me 
describe why these are important.
  We have provisions in our law that establish some level of protection 
for American industries if some foreign company or foreign country 
decides to dump products into our country at artificially low prices in 
order to capture a market or destroy an industry. These are the 
antidumping laws. We also have laws that provide for the opportunity to 
apply countervailing duties on products that come into this country 
that are unfairly subsidized and attempt to undercut American 
businesses.

[[Page 19865]]

  Why do I offer this amendment? Because we have U.S. negotiators who 
are engaged in WTO negotiations who are saying that everything is on 
the table; we are willing to negotiate away the protections that exist 
for fair trade for American businesses, American jobs, and American 
industries.
  We have the highest trade deficit in the history of this country. We 
have massive numbers of American jobs moving overseas every single day. 
American companies are closing their businesses, and American jobs are 
moving overseas.
  I have told the story repeatedly--and I will not tell it in great 
depth again--about Huffy bicycles. They used to be an American company. 
No longer. Huffy bikes are now made in China. Those proud workers in 
America made $11 an hour plus benefits. They all got fired. Were they 
bad workers? No. That company makes Huffy bicycles in China now and 
pays 33 cents an hour, working workers 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a 
day, and then they ship the Huffy bicycles back to this country to be 
sold.
  Interestingly enough, since they moved to China, Huffy has declared 
bankruptcy. It has now been purchased by a Chinese company, and they 
say they still want this to be one of the leading brands in America. 
Notice that I said ``brands.'' They don't want to make them here. It is 
too expensive to pay $11 to American workers to produce bicycles in 
this country; they just want the right to sell them here.
  I have given long speeches about the fact that Levi's doesn't make a 
single pair of Levi's anymore. That great American brand is now 
produced offshore. They are made by contract production in Haiti, Sri 
Lanka, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, and China.
  I have given speeches about the fact that if you wear your Tony Lama 
cowboy boots, they may not be American; they may be Chinese.
  I have given speeches talking about the fact that if you like Mexican 
food, you can eat Fig Newton cookies, because Fig Newton moved to 
Monterey, Mexico. So if you want Mexican food, go buy Fig Newtons.
  I have given speeches at length about jobs leaving this country. We 
have the biggest trade deficit in this country. It is dangerous. The 
question is, When will this country have the nerve, the backbone, and 
the will to stand up for the economic interests of this country?
  I am not suggesting putting walls up around this country; I am just 
suggesting demanding fair trade. We had people die on the streets of 
this country for the right of workers to organize. In the last century, 
we decided issues about minimum wage, about child labor laws, about 
rules that say you cannot dump chemicals into the air and the water 
from your production plant.
  We had people work very hard over a century to achieve these rules 
and regulations, which establish decent conditions of production. One 
can now escape all that by pole-vaulting over it. Move the plant to 
China, move the plant to Bangladesh, move the plant to Honduras and 
hire workers who will work for pennies on the dollar. Hire workers who 
will work for 33 cents an hour. Hire 12-year-olds and pay them 12 cents 
an hour and work them 12 hours a day and then ship the product to Los 
Angeles, Detroit, Fargo, or Mobile. Meanwhile, who is going to buy 
these products when American jobs have been lost, American workers are 
told they are no longer affordable, their jobs are gone?
  Little Red Wagon Radio Flyer, we all rode in that Little Red Wagon 
when we were kids. For 100 years that company produced in this country, 
and now it is all gone. So it can be produced more cheaply, less 
expensively by hiring workers who will work for pennies an hour.
  As we engage in new trade negotiations, which threaten to once again 
pull the rug out from under American workers and American businesses, 
this amendment says something very simple: We will not allow the 
funding we have approved in this appropriations bill to be used to 
weaken our trade laws.
  The United States-China Commission, a bipartisan commission 
established by Congress, sent us a letter August 1, 2005, that warned 
that the proposals that our trade negotiators are discussing with 
respect to antidumping and countervailing duties ``could severely limit 
our ability to protect our economic interests.'' That is from the 
United States-China Commission, a bipartisan commission.
  The Commission reiterated the proposals put on the table by foreign 
negotiators ``could have substantial impact on our nation's ability to 
utilize our trade laws and ensure that American farmers, workers, and 
businesses have the tools they need to respond to unfair and predatory 
foreign trade practices.''
  So the question for us is, Are we going to do anything about that? I 
hope the answer is, yes. I hope the answer is to say to our trade 
negotiators that we understand that foreign negotiators are proposing 
to weaken our trade laws. Our trade negotiators must have the backbone 
and the will to stand up for our economic interests, something they 
have not been willing to do for a long time.
  I offer this amendment, which is a prohibition on funding. It is 
germane, and I hope to have a vote on it when we have had a proper 
amount of time to discuss it.
  One final point. I intend to offer another amendment which I cannot 
offer at this moment. It is an amendment that I will offer to other 
appropriations bills as well if it is not acceptable here, and that is 
to establish a Truman-type committee to investigate the waste, fraud, 
and abuse in contracting that is going on in the Middle East, 
particularly in Iraq. I have described the conditions of Halliburton 
and other companies that have been given billions of dollars, have 
wasted a substantial amount of money, are now under criminal 
investigation, and are given a slap on the wrist and a pat on the back 
and more money and nobody seems to care. I believe there ought to be a 
Truman-type committee of the type Harry Truman headed long ago when 
there was a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic Senator said: 
We must investigate this kind of spending and profligate waste and 
abuse.
  I will ask that the Senate at some point decide that there ought to 
be oversight on what is happening to the taxpayers' money. I will offer 
that amendment tomorrow. I have offered this amendment today for its 
consideration, and I hope that as we go along that we will be able to 
get a vote on this amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, is it appropriate to speak on hurricane 
matters at this time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may speak on any matter he wishes 
at this time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Hurricane Katrina was a colossal natural 
disaster. Every hurricane is different. They bring different stresses 
and different damages. My home is in the city of Mobile, Alabama, right 
on the gulf coast. We were without power for 3 days. Trees and houses 
were damaged. Portions of the city were flooded that have not been 
flooded before. We experienced the highest surge of water up Mobile Bay 
driven by this storm that we have seen in anybody's lifetime there.
  The surge in the fishing communities of Bayou La Batre and Coden were 
unlike anything they have seen before--my best estimate is 5 feet 
deeper than we have ever seen before. I spent 3 days in that community 
working with and talking to the people. Many of them lived in small 
framed houses, some in mobile homes and things of that nature, that 
they have lived in for quite a long time in areas that had never 
flooded before but flooded this time.
  I will share a story of heroism that is symbolic of what happened, I 
am sure, throughout the gulf coast. It is regarding a young State 
trooper a corporal, Spencer Collier, also an Alabama State legislator, 
a wonderful young man, my wife and I have come to admire him so much 
whose house flooded, as did most of the leaders of the town of Bayou La 
Batre. The town began to receive 911

[[Page 19866]]

calls at the height of the storm. He and a marine resource officer and 
others, got in a vehicle and drove down to where the water was rising 
with 100-mile-per-hour winds blowing. They put their boat out and, 
before they could cast off, the water had risen so fast that the entire 
vehicle was flooded. They went out and they made the first trip to 
rescue stranded individuals. They went out in this storm, traveling 
almost a mile to an area where water had never reached before in this 
town. They rescued people and brought them back.
  Unfortunately, the first boat sank. Mayor Stan Wright had a flat-
bottom boat and they put it to work. He said it was a good boat. It 
worked quite well, but the bottom was thin and they were worried about 
it. They went out in these waves and in this storm under great live oak 
trees that were blowing, houses had been completely demolished towards 
the beach as well as inland. The water was littered with trash and 
debris, and they made six trips and brought people out. One lady had 
several children. So they left one of their group there holding two of 
the children. They took the boat back, came back again and got the 
children, and they had to leave the guy because they did not have room 
in the boat.
  All the time his house was being flooded, and he spent days, as did 
the other members of the city government, working for the people of 
that community, even though their own homes were flooded. So that is 
the kind of thing we are talking about.
  I talked to people remaining in town the next day. The storm ended 
Monday night. We still had strong winds at 5, 6, 7, even 8 at night. It 
began to calm down after going all day long. I talked to those people 
Tuesday afternoon. Many of them were in food lines provided by the good 
old Salvation Army. They were the first ones there serving hot meals, 
with a tub of ice and bottled water. People were lined up. They had not 
had a meal. The electricity was all off. The phones were off. Most of 
the cell phones did not work. Cell phone batteries quickly go down. 
They could not make phone calls. They lined up there. Several in that 
first line I talked to said: Senator, this is all we have. We lost 
everything we had. These clothes on my back are all we have. We had to 
get out of our house. The water flooded everything. I don't know what 
we are going to do.
  I met a young lady who asked me that night what about her 
grandfather's Social Security check? They were from New Orleans. They 
left the New Orleans area. They had come up here. They were expecting 
to go back. I knew what she was saying. She was saying they did not 
have any money. I called Wallace Davis of the Volunteers of America, a 
great organization in the Mobile area, and he really came through. I 
asked him to do what he could, and he immediately went into action. He 
brought some of his own money.
  He said: I have money. I am telling you I have seen hurricanes 
before, and some people just need a little cash.
  They gave them a little cash, and I saw her the next morning and she 
was a new person. That would allow them to get to other relatives and 
maybe stay with them and get gasoline or food in that fashion.
  So I want to say this: Many of the homes there are lost. On the east 
end of Dauphin Island, which is a sizable barrier island with a great 
many beachfront homes on it, one-third of the homes are completely 
gone, one-third badly damaged, and one-third somewhat damaged on the 
island. On the west end, the percentage of homes lost was even greater. 
The homes that were for many years on beautiful Mobile Bay around Point 
Clear and the Grand Hotel, homes that had not flooded before, flooded 
because of this surge of water. Homes that were built up high in recent 
years under hurricane restrictions did not flood, but many of those old 
homes suffered a good deal of damage.
  I just say that to point out that, without a doubt, we are going to 
have to spend more on this hurricane than we have ever spent before. 
People need us now. Many of these people I have talked with and I met 
were working class American citizens not living on the beach. People on 
the beaches, for the most part, have a second home. They have 
insurance. Maybe they can get by, although they are going to take a big 
hit. But these people were hurting, and hurting badly. We are going to 
need to step it up.
  When I see the damage from the incredible force of this hurricane on 
the Mississippi coast, our neighbors, and then in New Orleans with this 
incredible levee break and the floods there, I know we are in for a big 
job.
  I served as a U.S. attorney for 12 years. I had the responsibility, 
even as an assistant U.S. attorney in the 1970s after Camille, to 
survey the aftermath. I had to prosecute people for fraud, theft, and 
abuse in hurricane cleanups. When this much money gets put out this 
fast, there is a real danger of mischief.
  I have been in the Senate long enough to get a feel for things. I 
believe that the Senate is now in a bit of a hurricane mode; that all 
of Congress is--maybe even the White House--and that mode is that we do 
not need to be too careful. We need to get money out fast, and we need 
to pour it in there, and if we need 50,000 troops, let us send 70,000 
to make sure.
  Now we are seeing figures that it is going to cost $200 billion to 
complete this reconstruction. All of us know there is no money to pay 
for this. It is not coming out of our regular budget. That is not the 
plan. It will come in an emergency supplemental appropriations bill, 
and that means it will be added straight to the national debt, and our 
children and grandchildren will pay it, plus the interest that 
accumulates on it.
  So I think this Congress is doing the right thing in moving forward 
rapidly, but I think our majority leader, our appropriations leaders, 
our House leadership, and the President also need to be thinking about 
how to spend the money responsibly. Trust me, there will be abuses. 
People think we can just send our military to the region, but the 
Department of Defense is going to charge the disaster fund for the 
money they spend. These expenses will be allocated to the disaster. All 
the other responding Federal agencies are going to bill the fund for 
the disaster-related expenditures they incur as well.
  We are so pleased to see that States are just doing whatever it takes 
to bring schoolchildren in from these areas and do extra things for 
them, but we are already hearing--as we did this morning--they want to 
be paid for it by somebody. They ought to be paid for some of that.
  Governor Riley, in Alabama, has said that we will take any 
schoolchild who is in our State but cannot go home. We will take them. 
We will put them in a school somewhere in Alabama. Our community 
colleges have said that, no matter what, we will take you. If you don't 
have tuition right now, we will still take you anyway.
  While this is happening, people are making contributions and I think 
that is important. But $1 billion is a lot of money. We probably have 
less than 5,000 homes seriously damaged in our area. Maybe it is 4,000 
in the Bayou La Batre area, or maybe less. If you gave me $1 billion, I 
could build 10,000 new houses worth $100,000 each. One billion dollars 
is a lot of money. A billion dollars is a thousand million.
  But, now we are going to be in a big rush. FEMA is going to pay 
people who did not have flood insurance. Most of them should have 
gotten it. They should have, but they will still qualify under the 
grant program and can receive up to a maximum--all of them wouldn't get 
this much--up to a maximum of $26,000. I asked FEMA's Mr. Burns today 
if he discussed with the Senators how much it would be, and he said the 
maximum would be up to $26,000. That will include, I think, the $2,000 
that some received today. So it would be $24,000, maybe, for someone 
who already received the money.
  I said, when do you pay it? Apparently, we are already beginning to 
pay it. It is like flood insurance, I guess. If you have insurance and 
your house is destroyed and the adjuster comes out and admits your 
house is destroyed, they write you a check, sometimes on the spot.

[[Page 19867]]

  So this money is going to run out quickly. If this money is being 
allocated this quickly--before somebody has come up with a plan about 
which neighborhoods should be rebuilt--in Alabama, Mississippi, or even 
in New Orleans--we could end up with that money being unwisely spent 
and maybe not having enough money to help people construct the kind of 
houses they would like.
  Senator Shelby, I, and Congressman Jo Bonner talked with Secretary 
Alphonso Jackson of HUD when he was in Mobile, AL, last week. We 
discussed with him the possibility of using the FEMA money--whatever 
they get--plus some of the loans HUD already has for people of low 
income, to help buy a home. What if we use a small portion of these 
millions of dollars that are coming from charitable organizations? 
Maybe we could get some real estate people and some architects to help 
us redesign some of these communities and make them both beautiful and 
habitable--and safe so this wouldn't happen again.
  Do you see what I am saying? There are so many things happening right 
now, so fast. Some of this, almost by law, is required to be done in 
this fashion.
  We need somebody, I believe, to be a manager for the President. I am 
offering a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to call on the President to 
choose a person of his liking to be his representative with regard to 
spending, fraud, management, and reconstruction. I believe that the 
President should do that. It would be a person of his choice, in the 
mode of a Mit Romney or Peter Uberhoff who were put in charge of 
Olympic Games and billions of dollars in finances at stake there. We 
need someone with real experience who doesn't have a political agenda, 
someone who would come in and report to the President on a daily basis, 
report to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and who 
could call on the Cabinet to help coordinate the relief. You might say 
he will not have any power. Listen, I spent a long time in the Federal 
Government. I know who has power in the Federal Government. The person 
who has power in the Federal Government is the person the President 
says has power. If he chooses this person and he tells his Cabinet: I 
selected him and I want you to work with him. If he asks you to do 
something, I hope you will do it. If you can't do it, I want him to 
tell me, and you can come explain to me why you didn't do it. That is 
all it takes. Things will start work better.
  Anyway, I am hoping something like that will happen because this is 
so massive and the potential for fraud and abuse is so great we are 
going to have to watch it.
  We have towns and communities that are badly hurt. They have lost 
sales tax revenues and now they are going to be fighting for every dime 
they can get. They are going to be pushing the rules and regulations to 
the breaking point and beyond. We are going to have Congressmen and 
Senators browbeating us in here with stories that say: Forget the 
rules, send out the money. We all know that is going to happen. But I 
don't think the people of my State want us to waste any money.
  The people of my state want to help people in need. They want to be 
generous. They expect this Government to respond, and respond quickly, 
to take care of people whose lives are at risk.
  The people of my state know that this is bigger than we have ever 
seen before. They know that anyone can make mistakes and that you 
cannot anticipate certain things. They want the government to 
constantly get better and improve our response.
  But they don't want us wasting money. They don't want us throwing 
money at a problem that we have not thought through carefully. They 
want us to be careful with their money.
  In fact, if we are careful, we can get a lot more good done for a lot 
more communities. At this point I am not at liberty to explain to you 
what I think ought to be done. I am not able to. I don't know what 
ought to be done and how, precisely, the money should be spent at this 
time. But I have been there in the aftermath of hurricane cleanups, and 
I am telling you, it is a difficult thing to keep control of. The 
government will spend your money before you know what happened to it.
  That has happened before when there was a far smaller area of 
devastation than we have today. FEMA is going to be stretched from 
Louisiana to the Florida line. We have more people involved here than 
almost any hurricane ever, and the extent of the disaster is larger 
than ever. It is going to be even more difficult to monitor this 
recovery carefully. Some things are not going to be able to be done as 
fast as we would like to see them done. But if we do it right, I think 
we can meet the needs of our people, be generous to the American 
people, and also maintain the rule of law as we go forward.
  There are some special things that are going to be needed to be done. 
I talked to Senator Lott, and he is correct. Normally, when a hurricane 
hits and a person has trees down in their yard and shingles off their 
roof, that person takes all that to the street. They are responsible 
for it. They cut up the limbs, bring them out to the road, and FEMA 
pays for someone to come by and pick it up. It is a marvelous thing, I 
am telling you. If everyone had trees down in their yard and if 
everybody had to hire a tree surgeon to come haul them away, it would 
be an incredible cost. Volunteers come in with power saws and help 
people do it, and neighbors help neighbors, and you get that done. But 
if your house is blown away, the streets do not just have trees 
gathered up. There are whole chunks of houses, debris, foundations, 
nails, lumber, glass, and that kind of thing. It is more than the widow 
lady or the elderly can do to get that out there to the street.
  We are going to have to create some rules, particularly in these 
areas that are hardest hit. We must allow the Federal Government to 
help compensate, and it must be allowed go onto the private property 
and help get some of this debris away. Many of the people will have 
lost their jobs and don't have an income. They will not be able to have 
that done on their own.
  Those are some of my thoughts. I salute the majority leader and the 
Democratic leadership for moving the $10 billion supplemental promptly. 
That was a good thing last week.
  Under the Anti-Deficiency Act, FEMA cannot expend a dime that has not 
been authorized by Congress. FEMA has already used up all of that 
money. It is a crime for them to violate the law that says you can't 
spend money Congress has not appropriated. The result is that we must 
come back and do it again quickly. We are running out of money again 
quicker than we thought, and we had to respond.
  I salute the majority leader for bringing us up to date and doing it 
fast, but I say we are moving awfully fast now. It is time for our 
leadership, both in the Congress and in the White House, to ask how can 
we make sure we have integrity, wisdom, and good sense in handling this 
disaster.
  If we do so, we can make some of these communities bloom again. We 
can make some of these towns and areas as beautiful as they were 
before. It has happened before. We have had disasters and we bounced 
back before, and we will bounce back again. It is the right approach.
  I thank everybody in this country--faith-based groups, volunteers, 
civic groups--for the resources they provided to our people in Alabama. 
We got a call from the national group that makes modular housing and 
they were sending five office trailers down. They agreed to send one to 
Mobile. I talked to them. A group from Indiana sent in two 53-foot 
trailers. A businessman in north Alabama sent $100,000.
  The mayor of Ozark sent down two trucks and himself and a whole team 
to help. He adopted the city of Bayou La Batre. The mayor of Gadsden in 
north Alabama adopted the town of Bon Secour. Steve Means, the mayor of 
Gadsden, came down and was of great help and assistance. That kind of 
thing was helping, spontaneously, with resources all across the 
country.
  We are hopeful, pleased, and thankful. And that is the most common 
feeling I have observed, as did my wife, who served in the food lines 
in Bayou

[[Page 19868]]

La Batre and talked to people. People are thankful. It is amazing. You 
begin to count your blessings and recognize what is important in life 
when that occurs.
  Also, people are not whining, not the people I have talked to. They 
know this was a storm that nobody caused. They know it is a difficult 
time. They are thankful for the assistance they have received from 
their neighbors, and they are not complaining about the situation. It 
has made me proud to represent them.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.


                           Amendment No. 1669

  Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the pending 
amendments be set aside for the purpose of offering an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, I ask for consideration of an amendment 
that I had earlier sent to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Sununu] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1669.

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

 (Purpose: To increase funding for the State Criminal Alien Assistance 
Program, the Southwest Border Prosecutors Initiative, and transitional 
           housing for women subjected to domestic violence)

       On page 131, line 14, strike ``$15,000,000'' and insert 
     ``$30,000,000''.
       On page 134, between lines 4 and 5, strike ``$170,000,000'' 
     and insert ``$230,582,000''.
       On page 134, between lines 4 and 5, strike ``$30,000,000'' 
     and insert ``$48,418,000''.
       On page 156, strike lines 3 through 7 and insert the 
     following:
       In addition, for necessary expenses for existing grant 
     projects of the Advanced Technology Program of the National 
     Institute of Standards and Technology, $46,000,000, to remain 
     available until expended.

  Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, I offer an amendment today to make some 
changes in the funding allocations that are found in this bill. I very 
much appreciate the work of the subcommittee chairman and the ranking 
member and know, having served on the Appropriations Committee in the 
House, that theirs is not an easy task. You are asked to set a lot of 
priorities, and to make a lot of decisions about a good deal of money.
  It is not an easy task, but the purpose of bringing the bill to the 
floor is to give us an opportunity to try to adjust those priorities. I 
attempt to do so in this amendment in several ways.
  In this amendment I increase the funding in two general areas: first, 
in the area of border security and prosecution of illegal aliens who 
have committed crimes; an area that I think many people would say is in 
crisis right now, the problem with securing our borders, the problem 
with illegal aliens, and specifically the problem of dealing with the 
costs associated with illegal aliens who are committing crimes, violent 
crimes and otherwise. In this amendment I increase funding for the 
Criminal Alien Assistance Program by $60 million. It is still well 
short of the funding that has been provided in the companion bill in 
the House, but it is an increase which I believe will be well used. It 
deals in the area of illegal immigration and criminal alien assistance 
that I think most everyone agrees is in a crisis situation now with the 
state of emergency having been declared in parts of the Southwest to 
deal with this type of problem.
  Similarly, this amendment increases funding by $18 million for the 
Southwest Border Initiative that deals with prosecution, helping our 
Southwestern States deal with the costs associated with prosecuting 
aliens that have committed crimes. It brings funding up to the 
President's level, and I think the President's request in this 
particular area was well warranted, given how much attention has been 
given to the problem of illegal aliens in recent years. This increases 
funding in this critical area by $18 million.
  My amendment also provides additional funding of $15 million to 
transitional housing for women who have been exposed to domestic 
violence. This is a relatively new program. It is authorized at $30 
million per year. The bill appropriates only $15 million. I would 
increase that to $30 million for this transitional housing program, 
which is part of the programs authorized under the Violence Against 
Women Act.
  Transitional housing is critical. It meets the needs of those who 
require emergency shelter services or crisis intervention. There is no 
other program funded by the Federal Government that provides 
transitional housing solely for victims of domestic violence and sexual 
assault. This is not typically the case in the Federal Government. 
There are no other sources of funding, and we ought to provide funding 
at the authorized level. In the State of New Hampshire, there are 12 
emergency shelters for battered women. The average length of stay is 
about 27 nights. Therein lies the immediate need for transitional 
housing. I think this is probably a story that is repeated in State 
after State after State.
  I think it is not only a worthwhile area but an area in need of 
funds, but an area where there are no other programs at the Federal 
Government level for meeting this need.
  The funds that I allocate to deal with criminal alien prosecution and 
transitional housing for those affected by domestic violence will come 
from the Advanced Technology Program, APT. This is a program that has 
long been targeted for elimination. The funds over the last several 
years have been phased down. Last year, funding was provided only for 
existing contracts--for no new contracts, and I think it makes sense to 
at lease hold the line at that level. I have scaled back funding to a 
level that is appropriate to cover all the existing contracts so anyone 
who has an obligation under ATP will have that obligation met. We 
simply would not provide funds for new contracts, which I believe is 
the right policy. This program should be phased down and eliminated for 
a few fundamental reasons.
  First and foremost, it duplicates what already exists in the private 
sector. The ATP program gives funding to private companies that are 
developing new programs. That is why we have a venture capital system. 
That is why we have a private banking system. That is why we have 
private equity funding--to support companies that are competing in the 
marketplace and developing new products every day.
  I used to work for a technology firm, and we made investments to 
develop new products. We certainly didn't look to the Federal 
Government to fund new product development. It distorts the marketplace 
because inevitably you will have a bureaucrat in Washington deciding 
which new product ideas get funding and which do not. That is not a 
good idea, not a good use of public resources--to try to pick winners 
and losers in the product development marketplace.
  Finally, these are funds, resources, public funding that are going to 
private companies, many of which are very profitable and very 
successful, and we shouldn't have an industrial policy at the Federal 
level that provides unnecessary subsidies to private corporations.
  I think we can do better. We can find better areas in which to 
allocate these resources--dealing with illegal immigration, crimes 
committed by illegal aliens, and transitional housing for those 
affected by domestic violence are certainly priorities that are much 
more significant, much more valuable, much more appropriate than a 
project that subsidizes private companies.
  The final point about the Advanced Technology Program: It has been 
allocated at over $100 million per year, $150 million to even $200 
million per year, depending on how far back in time we look.
  I simply ask my colleagues to consider, if they were at a company 
that was developing microprocessors, and one of their competitors was 
being given a subsidy by the Federal Government to do the same thing, 
would you think that was fair? If you were developing heating equipment 
and one of

[[Page 19869]]

your competitors was being given a product development subsidy by the 
Federal Government, would you think that was fair?
  This distorts the marketplace. It is simply not a good use of 
taxpayer money, but we can only scale it back to the extent that all 
current obligations continue to be met.
  I think that's fair. It's the right thing to do, and I ask my 
colleagues to support the amendment.
  I yield the floor.


                            notice of intent

  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, in accordance with rule V of the 
Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it 
is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of rule XVI for the 
purpose of proposing to the bill, H.R. 2862, the Science, State, 
Justice, Commerce appropriations bill, the following amendment:

                               S.A. 1660

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

                      TITLE __--KATRINA COMMISSION

     SEC. __01. ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMISSION.

       There is established in the legislative branch the Katrina 
     Commission (in this title referred to as the ``Commission'').

     SEC. __02. COMPOSITION OF COMMISSION.

       (a) Members.--The Commission shall be composed of 10 
     members, of whom--
       (1) 1 member shall be appointed by the President, who shall 
     serve as chairman of the Commission;
       (2) 1 member shall be appointed by the leader of the Senate 
     (majority or minority leader, as the case may be) of the 
     Democratic Party, in consultation with the leader of the 
     House of Representatives (majority or minority leader, as the 
     case may be) of the Democratic Party, who shall serve as vice 
     chairman of the Commission;
       (3) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of 
     the Senate leadership of the Democratic Party;
       (4) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of 
     the leadership of the House of Representatives of the 
     Republican Party;
       (5) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of 
     the Senate leadership of the Republican Party; and
       (6) 2 members shall be appointed by the senior member of 
     the leadership of the House of Representatives of the 
     Democratic Party.
       (b) Qualifications; Initial Meeting.--
       (1) Political party affiliation.--Not more than 5 members 
     of the Commission shall be from the same political party.
       (2) Nongovernmental appointees.--An individual appointed to 
     the Commission may not be an officer or employee of the 
     Federal Government or any State or local government.
       (3) Other qualifications.--It is the sense of Congress that 
     individuals appointed to the Commission should be prominent 
     United States citizens who represent a diverse range of 
     citizens and enjoy national recognition and significant depth 
     of experience in such professions as governmental service, 
     emergency preparedness, mitigation planning, cataclysmic 
     planning and response, intergovernmental management, resource 
     planning, recovery operations and planning, Federal 
     coordination, military coordination, and other extensive 
     natural disaster and emergency response experience.
       (4) Deadline for appointment.--All members of the 
     Commission shall be appointed on or before October 1, 2005.
       (5) Initial meeting.--The Commission shall meet and begin 
     the operations of the Commission as soon as practicable.
       (c) Quorum; Vacancies.--After its initial meeting, the 
     Commission shall meet upon the call of the chairman or a 
     majority of its members. Six members of the Commission shall 
     constitute a quorum. Any vacancy in the Commission shall not 
     affect its powers, but shall be filled in the same manner in 
     which the original appointment was made.

     SEC. __03. DUTIES.

       The duties of the Commission are to--
       (1) examine and report upon the Federal, State, and local 
     response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 
     the Gulf Region of the United States of America especially in 
     the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other 
     areas impacted in the aftermath;
       (2) ascertain, evaluate, and report on the information 
     developed by all relevant governmental agencies regarding the 
     facts and circumstances related to Hurricane Katrina prior to 
     striking the United States and in the days and weeks 
     following;
       (3) build upon concurrent and prior investigations of other 
     entities, and avoid unnecessary duplication concerning 
     information related to existing vulnerabilities;
       (4) make a full and complete accounting of the 
     circumstances surrounding the approach of Hurricane Katrina 
     to the Gulf States, and the extent of the United States 
     government's preparedness for, and response to, the 
     hurricane;
       (5) planning necessary for future cataclysmic events 
     requiring a significant marshaling of Federal resources, 
     mitigation, response, and recovery to avoid significant loss 
     of life;
       (6) an analysis as to whether any decisions differed with 
     respect to response and recovery for different communities, 
     neighborhoods, parishes, and locations and what problems 
     occurred as a result of a lack of a common plan, 
     communication structure, and centralized command structure; 
     and
       (7) investigate and report to the President and Congress on 
     its findings, conclusions, and recommendations for immediate 
     corrective measures that can be taken to prevent problems 
     with Federal response that occurred in the preparation for, 
     and in the aftermath of, Hurricane Katrina so that future 
     cataclysmic events are responded to adequately.

     SEC. __04. FUNCTIONS OF COMMISSION.

       (a) In General.--The functions of the Commission are to--
       (1) conduct an investigation that--
       (A) investigates relevant facts and circumstances relating 
     to the catastrophic impacts that Hurricane Katrina exacted 
     upon the Gulf Region of the United States especially in New 
     Orleans and surrounding parishes, and impacted areas of 
     Mississippi and Alabama; and
       (B) shall include relevant facts and circumstances relating 
     to--
       (i) Federal emergency response planning and execution at 
     the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of 
     Homeland Security, the White House, and all other Federal 
     entities with responsibility for assisting during, and 
     responding to, natural disasters;
       (ii) military and law enforcement response planning and 
     execution;
       (iii) Federal mitigation plans, programs, and policies 
     including prior assessments of existing vulnerabilities and 
     exercises designed to test those vulnerabilities;
       (iv) Federal, State, and local communication 
     interoperability successes and failures;
       (v) past, present, and future Federal budgetary provisions 
     for preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery;
       (vi) the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response 
     capabilities as an independent agency and as part of the 
     Department of Homeland Security;
       (vii) the role of congressional oversight and resource 
     allocation;
       (viii) other areas of the public and private sectors 
     determined relevant by the Commission for its inquiry; and
       (ix) long-term needs for people impacted by Hurricane 
     Katrina and other forms of Federal assistance necessary for 
     large-scale recovery;
       (2) identify, review, and evaluate the lessons learned from 
     Hurricane Katrina including coordination, management 
     policies, and procedures of the Federal Government, State and 
     local governments, and nongovernmental entities, relative to 
     detection, planning, mitigation, asset prepositioning, and 
     responding to cataclysmic natural disasters such as Hurricane 
     Katrina; and
       (3) submit to the President and Congress such reports as 
     are required by this title containing such findings, 
     conclusions, and recommendations as the Commission shall 
     determine, including proposing organization, coordination, 
     planning, management arrangements, procedures, rules, and 
     regulations.

     SEC. __05. POWERS OF COMMISSION.

       (a) In General.--
       (1) Hearings and evidence.--The Commission or, on the 
     authority of the Commission, any subcommittee or member 
     thereof, may, for the purpose of carrying out this Act--
       (A) hold such hearings and sit and act at such times and 
     places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, 
     administer such oaths; and
       (B) subject to paragraph (2)(A), require, by subpoena or 
     otherwise, the attendance and testimony of such witnesses and 
     the production of such books, records, correspondence, 
     memoranda, papers, and documents, as the Commission or such 
     designated subcommittee or designated member may determine 
     advisable.
       (2) Subpoenas.--
       (A) Issuance.--
       (i) In general.--A subpoena may be issued under this 
     subsection only--

       (I) by the agreement of the chairman and the vice chairman; 
     or
       (II) by the affirmative vote of 6 members of the 
     Commission.

       (ii) Signature.--Subject to clause (i), subpoenas issued 
     under this subsection may be issued under the signature of 
     the chairman or any member designated by a majority of the 
     Commission, and may be served by any person designated by the 
     chairman or by a member designated by a majority of the 
     Commission.
       (B) Enforcement.--
       (i) In general.--In the case of contumacy or failure to 
     obey a subpoena issued under subsection (a), the United 
     States district court for the judicial district in which the 
     subpoenaed person resides, is served, or may be found, or 
     where the subpoena is returnable, may issue an order 
     requiring such person to appear at any designated place to 
     testify or to produce documentary or other evidence. Any 
     failure to obey the order of the court may be punished by the 
     court as a contempt of that court.

[[Page 19870]]

       (ii) Additional enforcement.--In the case of any failure of 
     any witness to comply with any subpoena or to testify when 
     summoned under authority of this section, the Commission may, 
     by majority vote, certify a statement of fact constituting 
     such failure to the appropriate United States attorney, who 
     may bring the matter before the grand jury for its action, 
     under the same statutory authority and procedures as if the 
     United States attorney had received a certification under 
     sections 102 through 104 of the Revised Statutes of the 
     United States (2 U.S.C. 192 through 194).
       (b) Contracting.--The Commission may, to such extent and in 
     such amounts as are provided in appropriation Acts, enter 
     into contracts to enable the Commission to discharge its 
     duties under this title.
       (c) Information From Federal Agencies.--
       (1) In general.--The Commission is authorized to secure 
     directly from any executive department, bureau, agency, 
     board, commission, office, independent establishment, or 
     instrumentality of the Government, information, suggestions, 
     estimates, and statistics for the purposes of this title. 
     Each department, bureau, agency, board, commission, office, 
     independent establishment, or instrumentality shall, to the 
     extent authorized by law, furnish such information, 
     suggestions, estimates, and statistics directly to the 
     Commission, upon request made by the chairman, the chairman 
     of any subcommittee created by a majority of the Commission, 
     or any member designated by a majority of the Commission.
       (2) Receipt, handling, storage, and dissemination.--
     Information shall only be received, handled, stored, and 
     disseminated by members of the Commission and its staff 
     consistent with all applicable statutes, regulations, and 
     Executive orders.
       (d) Assistance From Federal Agencies.--
       (1) General services administration.--The Administrator of 
     General Services shall provide to the Commission on a 
     reimbursable basis administrative support and other services 
     for the performance of the Commission's functions.
       (2) Other departments and agencies.--In addition to the 
     assistance prescribed in paragraph (1), departments and 
     agencies of the United States may provide to the Commission 
     such services, funds, facilities, staff, and other support 
     services as they may determine advisable and as may be 
     authorized by law.
       (e) Gifts.--The Commission may accept, use, and dispose of 
     gifts or donations of services or property.
       (f) Postal Services.--The Commission may use the United 
     States mails in the same manner and under the same conditions 
     as departments and agencies of the United States.

     SEC. __06. NONAPPLICABILITY OF FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE 
                   ACT.

       (a) In General.--The Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 
     U.S.C. App.) shall not apply to the Commission.
       (b) Public Meetings and Release of Public Versions of 
     Reports.--The Commission shall--
       (1) hold public hearings and meetings to the extent 
     appropriate; and
       (2) release public versions of the reports required under 
     section __10.
       (c) Public Hearings.--Any public hearings of the Commission 
     shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the protection 
     of information provided to or developed for or by the 
     Commission as required by any applicable statute, regulation, 
     or Executive order.

     SEC. __07. STAFF OF COMMISSION.

       (a) In General.--
       (1) Appointment and compensation.--The chairman, in 
     consultation with the vice chairman, in accordance with rules 
     agreed upon by the Commission, may appoint and fix the 
     compensation of a staff director and such other personnel as 
     may be necessary to enable the Commission to carry out its 
     functions, without regard to the provisions of title 5, 
     United States Code, governing appointments in the competitive 
     service, and without regard to the provisions of chapter 51 
     and subchapter III of chapter 53 of such title relating to 
     classification and General Schedule pay rates, except that no 
     rate of pay fixed under this subsection may exceed the 
     equivalent of that payable for a position at level V of the 
     Executive Schedule under section 5316 of title 5, United 
     States Code.
       (2) Personnel as federal employees.--
       (A) In general.--The executive director and any personnel 
     of the Commission who are employees shall be employees under 
     section 2105 of title 5, United States Code, for purposes of 
     chapters 63, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, and 90 of that title.
       (B) Members of commission.--Subparagraph (A) shall not be 
     construed to apply to members of the Commission.
       (b) Detailees.--Any Federal Government employee may be 
     detailed to the Commission without reimbursement from the 
     Commission, and such detailee shall retain the rights, 
     status, and privileges of his or her regular employment 
     without interruption.
       (c) Consultant Services.--The Commission is authorized to 
     procure the services of experts and consultants in accordance 
     with section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, but at 
     rates not to exceed the daily rate paid a person occupying a 
     position at level IV of the Executive Schedule under section 
     5315 of title 5, United States Code.

     SEC. __08. COMPENSATION AND TRAVEL EXPENSES.

       (a) Compensation.--Each member of the Commission may be 
     compensated at not to exceed the daily equivalent of the 
     annual rate of basic pay in effect for a position at level IV 
     of the Executive Schedule under section 5315 of title 5, 
     United States Code, for each day during which that member is 
     engaged in the actual performance of the duties of the 
     Commission.
       (b) Travel Expenses.--While away from their homes or 
     regular places of business in the performance of services for 
     the Commission, members of the Commission shall be allowed 
     travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, 
     in the same manner as persons employed intermittently in the 
     Government service are allowed expenses under section 5703(b) 
     of title 5, United States Code.

     SEC. __09. SECURITY CLEARANCES FOR COMMISSION MEMBERS AND 
                   STAFF.

       The appropriate Federal agencies or departments shall 
     cooperate with the Commission in expeditiously providing to 
     the Commission members and staff appropriate security 
     clearances to the extent possible pursuant to existing 
     procedures and requirements, except that no person shall be 
     provided with access to classified information under this 
     title without the appropriate security clearances.

     SEC. __10. REPORTS OF COMMISSION; TERMINATION.

       (a) Interim Reports.--The Commission may submit to the 
     President and Congress interim reports containing such 
     findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective 
     measures as have been agreed to by a majority of Commission 
     members.
       (b) Final Report.--Not later than 6 months after the date 
     of the enactment of this title, the Commission shall submit 
     to the President and Congress a final report containing such 
     findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective 
     measures as have been agreed to by a majority of Commission 
     members.
       (c) Termination.--
       (1) In general.--The Commission, and all the authorities of 
     this Act, shall terminate 60 days after the date on which the 
     final report is submitted under subsection (b).
       (2) Administrative activities before termination.--The 
     Commission may use the 60-day period referred to in paragraph 
     (1) for the purpose of concluding its activities, including 
     providing testimony to committees of Congress concerning its 
     reports and disseminating the final report.

     SEC. __11. FUNDING.

       (a) Emergency Appropriation of Funds.--There are authorized 
     to be appropriated $3,000,000 for purposes of the activities 
     of the Commission under this title and such funding is 
     designated as emergency spending under section 402 of H. Con. 
     Res. 95 (109th Congress).
       (b) Duration of Availability.--Amounts made available to 
     the Commission under subsection (a) shall remain available 
     until the termination of the Commission.


                            NOTICE OF INTENT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: 
In accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby 
give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend 
paragraph 4 of rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill H.R. 
2862 the following amendment:

                               S.A. 1670

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

    TITLE __--SPECIAL COMMITTEE OF SENATE ON WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 
                              CONTRACTING

     SEC. __01. FINDINGS.

       Congress makes the following findings:
       (1) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exerted very 
     large demands on the Treasury of the United States and 
     required tremendous sacrifice by the members of the Armed 
     Forces of the United States.
       (2) Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ensure 
     comprehensive oversight of the expenditure of United States 
     Government funds.
       (3) Waste and corporate abuse of United States Government 
     resources are particularly unacceptable and reprehensible 
     during times of war.
       (4) The magnitude of the funds involved in the 
     reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on 
     terrorism, together with the speed with which these funds 
     have been committed, presents a challenge to the effective 
     performance of the traditional oversight function of Congress 
     and the auditing functions of the executive branch.
       (5) The Senate Special Committee to Investigate the 
     National Defense Program, popularly know as the Truman 
     Committee, which was established during World War II, offers 
     a constructive precedent for bipartisan oversight of wartime 
     contracting that can also be extended to wartime and postwar 
     reconstruction activities.
       (6) The Truman Committee is credited with an extremely 
     successful investigative effort, performance of a significant 
     public education role, and achievement of fiscal savings 
     measured in the billions of dollars.

[[Page 19871]]

       (7) The public has a right to expect that taxpayer 
     resources will be carefully disbursed and honestly spent.

     SEC. __02. SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 
                   CONTRACTING.

       There is established a special committee of the Senate to 
     be known as the Special Committee on War and Reconstruction 
     Contracting (hereafter in this title referred to as the 
     ``Special Committee'').

     SEC. __03. PURPOSE AND DUTIES.

       (a) Purpose.--The purpose of the Special Committee is to 
     investigate the awarding and performance of contracts to 
     conduct military, security, and reconstruction activities in 
     Afghanistan and Iraq and to support the prosecution of the 
     war on terrorism.
       (b) Duties.--The Special Committee shall examine the 
     contracting actions described in subsection (a) and report on 
     such actions, in accordance with this section, regarding--
       (1) bidding, contracting, accounting, and auditing 
     standards for Federal Government contracts;
       (2) methods of contracting, including sole-source contracts 
     and limited competition or noncompetitive contracts;
       (3) subcontracting under large, comprehensive contracts;
       (4) oversight procedures;
       (5) consequences of cost-plus and fixed price contracting;
       (6) allegations of wasteful and fraudulent practices;
       (7) accountability of contractors and Government officials 
     involved in procurement and contracting;
       (8) penalties for violations of law and abuses in the 
     awarding and performance of Government contracts; and
       (9) lessons learned from the contracting process used in 
     Iraq and Afghanistan and in connection with the war on 
     terrorism with respect to the structure, coordination, 
     management policies, and procedures of the Federal 
     Government.
       (c) Investigation of Wasteful and Fraudulent Practices.--
     The investigation by the Special Committee of allegations of 
     wasteful and fraudulent practices under subsection (b)(6) 
     shall include investigation of allegations regarding any 
     contract or spending entered into, supervised by, or 
     otherwise involving the Coalition Provisional Authority, 
     regardless of whether or not such contract or spending 
     involved appropriated funds of the United States.
       (d) Evidence Considered.--In carrying out its duties, the 
     Special Committee shall ascertain and evaluate the evidence 
     developed by all relevant governmental agencies regarding the 
     facts and circumstances relevant to contracts described in 
     subsection (a) and any contract or spending covered by 
     subsection (c).

     SEC. __04. COMPOSITION OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE.

       (a) Membership.--
       (1) In general.--The Special Committee shall consist of 7 
     members of the Senate of whom--
       (A) 4 members shall be appointed by the President pro 
     tempore of the Senate, in consultation with the majority 
     leader of the Senate; and
       (B) 3 members shall be appointed by the minority leader of 
     the Senate.
       (2) Date.--The appointments of the members of the Special 
     Committee shall be made not later than 90 days after the date 
     of the enactment of this Act.
       (b) Vacancies.--Any vacancy in the Special Committee shall 
     not affect its powers, but shall be filled in the same manner 
     as the original appointment.
       (c) Service.--Service of a Senator as a member, chairman, 
     or ranking member of the Special Committee shall not be taken 
     into account for the purposes of paragraph (4) of rule XXV of 
     the Standing Rules of the Senate.
       (d) Chairman and Ranking Member.--The chairman of the 
     Special Committee shall be designated by the majority leader 
     of the Senate, and the ranking member of the Special 
     Committee shall be designated by the minority leader of the 
     Senate.
       (e) Quorum.--
       (1) Reports and recommendations.--A majority of the members 
     of the Special Committee shall constitute a quorum for the 
     purpose of reporting a matter or recommendation to the 
     Senate.
       (2) Testimony.--One member of the Special Committee shall 
     constitute a quorum for the purpose of taking testimony.
       (3) Other business.--A majority of the members of the 
     Special Committee, or \1/3\ of the members of the Special 
     Committee if at least one member of the minority party is 
     present, shall constitute a quorum for the purpose of 
     conducting any other business of the Special Committee.

     SEC. __05. RULES AND PROCEDURES.

       (a) Governance Under Standing Rules of Senate.--Except as 
     otherwise specifically provided in this resolution, the 
     investigation, study, and hearings conducted by the Special 
     Committee shall be governed by the Standing Rules of the 
     Senate.
       (b) Additional Rules and Procedures.--The Special Committee 
     may adopt additional rules or procedures if the chairman and 
     ranking member agree that such additional rules or procedures 
     are necessary to enable the Special Committee to conduct the 
     investigation, study, and hearings authorized by this 
     resolution. Any such additional rules and procedures--
       (1) shall not be inconsistent with this resolution or the 
     Standing Rules of the Senate; and
       (2) shall become effective upon publication in the 
     Congressional Record.

     SEC. __06. AUTHORITY OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE.

       (a) In General.--The Special Committee may exercise all of 
     the powers and responsibilities of a committee under rule 
     XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate.
       (b) Hearings.--The Special Committee or, at its direction, 
     any subcommittee or member of the Special Committee, may, for 
     the purpose of carrying out this resolution--
       (1) hold such hearings, sit and act at such times and 
     places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and 
     administer such oaths as the Special Committee or such 
     subcommittee or member considers advisable; and
       (2) require, by subpoena or otherwise, the attendance and 
     testimony of such witnesses and the production of such books, 
     records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, documents, tapes, 
     and materials as the Special Committee considers advisable.
       (c) Issuance and Enforcement of Subpoenas.--
       (1) Issuance.--Subpoenas issued under subsection (b) shall 
     bear the signature of the Chairman of the Special Committee 
     and shall be served by any person or class of persons 
     designated by the Chairman for that purpose.
       (2) Enforcement.--In the case of contumacy or failure to 
     obey a subpoena issued under subsection (a), the United 
     States district court for the judicial district in which the 
     subpoenaed person resides, is served, or may be found may 
     issue an order requiring such person to appear at any 
     designated place to testify or to produce documentary or 
     other evidence. Any failure to obey the order of the court 
     may be punished by the court as a contempt of that court.
       (d) Meetings.--The Special Committee may sit and act at any 
     time or place during sessions, recesses, and adjournment 
     periods of the Senate.

     SEC. __07. REPORTS.

       (a) Initial Report.--The Special Committee shall submit to 
     the Senate a report on the investigation conducted pursuant 
     to section __03 not later than 270 days after the appointment 
     of the Special Committee members.
       (b) Updated Report.--The Special Committee shall submit an 
     updated report on such investigation not later than 180 days 
     after the submission of the report under subsection (a).
       (c) Additional Reports.--The Special Committee may submit 
     any additional report or reports that the Special Committee 
     considers appropriate.
       (d) Findings and Recommendations.--The reports under this 
     section shall include findings and recommendations of the 
     Special Committee regarding the matters considered under 
     section __03.
       (e) Disposition of Reports.--Any report made by the Special 
     Committee when the Senate is not in session shall be 
     submitted to the Clerk of the Senate. Any report made by the 
     Special Committee shall be referred to the committee or 
     committees that have jurisdiction over the subject matter of 
     the report.

     SEC. __08. ADMINISTRATIVE PROVISIONS.

       (a) Staff.--
       (1) In general.--The Special Committee may employ in 
     accordance with paragraph (2) a staff composed of such 
     clerical, investigatory, legal, technical, and other 
     personnel as the Special Committee, or the chairman or the 
     ranking member, considers necessary or appropriate.
       (2) Appointment of staff.--
       (A) In general.--The Special Committee shall appoint a 
     staff for the majority, a staff for the minority, and a 
     nondesignated staff.
       (B) Majority staff.--The majority staff shall be appointed, 
     and may be removed, by the chairman and shall work under the 
     general supervision and direction of the chairman.
       (C) Minority staff.--The minority staff shall be appointed, 
     and may be removed, by the ranking member of the Special 
     Committee, and shall work under the general supervision and 
     direction of such member.
       (D) Nondesignated staff.--Nondesignated staff shall be 
     appointed, and may be removed, jointly by the chairman and 
     the ranking member, and shall work under the joint general 
     supervision and direction of the chairman and ranking member.
       (b) Compensation.--
       (1) Majority staff.--The chairman shall fix the 
     compensation of all personnel of the majority staff of the 
     Special Committee.
       (2) Minority staff.--The ranking member shall fix the 
     compensation of all personnel of the minority staff of the 
     Special Committee.
       (3) Nondesignated staff.--The chairman and ranking member 
     shall jointly fix the compensation of all nondesignated staff 
     of the Special Committee, within the budget approved for such 
     purposes for the Special Committee.
       (c) Reimbursement of Expenses.--The Special Committee may 
     reimburse the members of its staff for travel, subsistence, 
     and other necessary expenses incurred by such

[[Page 19872]]

     staff members in the performance of their functions for the 
     Special Committee.
       (d) Payment of Expenses.--There shall be paid out of the 
     applicable accounts of the Senate such sums as may be 
     necessary for the expenses of the Special Committee. Such 
     payments shall be made on vouchers signed by the chairman of 
     the Special Committee and approved in the manner directed by 
     the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate. 
     Amounts made available under this subsection shall be 
     expended in accordance with regulations prescribed by the 
     Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate.

     SEC. __09. TERMINATION.

       The Special Committee shall terminate on February 28, 2007.

     SEC. __10. SENSE OF SENATE ON CERTAIN CLAIMS REGARDING THE 
                   COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY.

       It is the sense of the Senate that any claim of fraud, 
     waste, or abuse under the False Claims Act that involves any 
     contract or spending by the Coalition Provisional Authority 
     should be considered a claim against the United States 
     Government.

  Ms. MIKULSKI. 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. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Hurricane Katrina

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues and all 
Americans in offering my condolences and my prayers to the residents of 
the gulf region. These families have suffered grievously. They have 
lost all of their possessions. They are without homes, without 
employment. We owe them a great deal of support and consideration, and, 
indeed, as I say again, all our prayers.
  As news reports show, there are heroes throughout the gulf--those who 
helped neighbors survive the hurricane and those who continue to work 
in the region to help reunite families and restore order.
  Americans throughout the Nation are opening their homes to hurricane 
survivors and volunteering their time and resources to meet the needs 
of evacuees. But while this disaster shows the best that America can 
offer, it also shows the worst. It shows that the Federal bureaucracy 
is ill prepared to respond to a natural catastrophe that we knew was 
possible. It shows the Federal bureaucracy ill prepared to respond to 
future potential disasters.
  It shows a government so tied up in red tape that it is not serving 
its people at their time of need.
  In the days, weeks, and months ahead, we will be investigating what 
went wrong, and there will be plenty of blame to pass around, but we 
cannot blame the victims of this tragedy as some have chosen to do. 
Many families in the gulf region did not have the resources or means to 
leave before Hurricane Katrina struck because this administration's 
economic policy favored tax cuts for the wealthy over programs that 
provide economic opportunities for all Americans. Over the last 3 
years, poverty has risen in America and the real median income of 
workers stagnated. We must be willing to look honestly at how budget 
decisions and tax policy at Federal, State, and local level left New 
Orleans residents and other communities vulnerable to this tragedy. We 
must look honestly at how these policies continue to leave millions of 
Americans vulnerable across the Nation.
  Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the economic, social, and racial 
divides that exists in America. As a Nation we must step back and 
evaluate our priorities. In my judgment, now is not the time to cut 
funding for social programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and 
community development block grants while the administration pushes to 
repeal the estate tax. Now is not the time to continue to provide 
corporate tax breaks, while we must help rebuild a region in the midst 
of massive deficits as a result of the administration's policies. The 
damage to the national economy wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the 
expense to rebuild, and the need to provide for low-income and working 
families in light of this disaster will add to our growing debt. We 
must prioritize and deal with the needs of the most vulnerable among 
us.
  For decades, we have known that New Orleans is in harm's way. Senator 
Landrieu has often spoken passionately about the Federal Government's 
duty to help protect wetlands in order to safeguard coastal states. 
Yet, we continued to allow coastal wetlands to degrade and cut funding 
to vital programs to protect these natural buffers as well as man-made 
levees to protect New Orleans. The flood waters from the city of New 
Orleans must be drained in an expedient fashion. However, we must not 
ignore the environmental impact that these heavily contaminated waters 
will have on the long-term public and environmental health of the city.
  The stagnant waters engulfing New Orleans for the past week contain a 
myriad of contaminants, including human waste, oil, and even dead 
bodies. This toxic mixing bowl is rife with disease and harmful 
chemicals. We are facing a potential ecological disaster as these flood 
waters continue to be dumped into the surrounding area, and I am 
greatly concerned that the impact will be seen for years to come. New 
Orleans is surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River, and 
many precious wetlands. All of these bodies of water drain directly 
into the Gulf of Mexico.
  Now is the time not only to evaluate, but also to act to prevent 
further ecological damage in the region. More must be done to ensure 
that while we are clearing the city of New Orleans from this 
devastating flood, we are also working toward its future rejuvenation.
  Our primary focus must be on getting rid of the red tape and getting 
aid and assistance to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. But we must 
also begin to ask how did this happen. The only way to do that 
effectively and apolitically is to have an independent commission to 
investigate the long-term impact of Hurricane Katrina on the people of 
the gulf region and on our Federal Government's response to this 
disaster as well as our ability to respond to future events. The 
bicameral commission announced yesterday by the Majority Leader and the 
Speaker is not the answer. Having the President head up a task force to 
investigate his Administration's response is not sufficient. The only 
way the people of the gulf region and the people of America will get 
the answers that they deserve is through an independent commission.
  I also support efforts to restore the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency, FEMA, to an independent, cabinet-level agency to ensure its 
effectiveness in preparing for and responding to these types of events. 
FEMA's director must have the qualifications and abilities to plan for, 
respond to, and assist in the recovery after such an emergency. We must 
do better.
  As the recovery efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina 
continue, we must stand beside the survivors to provide relief and 
assistance for their immediate needs now. For this reason, I am 
cosponsoring Senator Reid's Katrina Emergency Relief Act, which will 
help get these families by providing medical coverage, housing the 
homeless, educating children, and offering financial assistance.
  Hurricane Katrina upset the lives of millions, displacing families 
from their homes and inflicting severe economic damage. Neighborhoods 
that were once called home are now wastelands, and people are concerned 
their lives may never be the same. The economic impacts are being felt 
by low-income and working American families throughout the nation. 
Indeed, there is an imminent emergency confronting millions of low-
income Americans caused by soaring energy cost and diminishing 
affordability of home heating fuel as winter approaches. The 
administration cannot ignore this looming crisis. The administration 
must request emergency funding for the Low Income Home Energy 
Assistance Program so that these families can remain safe this winter. 
I also encourage the administration, and my colleagues, to

[[Page 19873]]

support greater investment in energy conservation programs such as the 
Weatherization Assistance Program and the State Energy Program to help 
families.
  In one way, Hurricane Katrina holds parallels to other situations. We 
could have anticipated this phenomenon. The reports of the class V 
hurricane were available to all Federal officials, State officials, and 
local officials. We knew the levees in New Orleans were not designed to 
withstand anything more than a class III. Yet we were not ready. This 
administration ignored what should have been obvious. We had to be 
ready for a severe hurricane with devastating consequences in New 
Orleans. This administration was not.
  This also speaks to what may happen in the future. This should give 
Americans pause if they think about another natural disaster and, God 
forbid, perhaps an intentional mass-casualty effect in the United 
States. If we bring this same level of expertise and skill and insight, 
then we surely will see another major disaster on our hands. I hope we 
do not. That is why it is important to look carefully and closely at 
what transpired and to do so through an independent commission. I hope 
we learn from this and apply it to the future, but most particularly, I 
hope we give real, immediate, and effective support to hundreds of 
thousands, perhaps even a million Americans who tonight still endure 
the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to engage in a colloquy with 
the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commerce, 
Justice and Science on funding for SCAAP, the State Criminal Alien 
Assistance Program. I also understand my colleague from Texas, Senator 
Hutchison, would also like to discuss the importance of this program to 
her State.
  I begin by thanking the chairman, Chairman Shelby, and the ranking 
member, Senator Mikulski, for including $200 million in funding for 
this program, with a carve-out of $30 million for the Southwest Border 
Prosecution Program. That is good. The problem is, it is not enough. 
With the rising costs associated with criminal alien incarceration, I 
had hoped the Senate would see fit to increase the funding for this 
program over last year's allocation of $305 million. Instead, it is 
down to $200 million, with $30 million reserved for the prosecutor's 
program.
  Immigration policy and control of our borders is an exclusively 
Federal responsibility. We all know this. Yet in our State prisons and 
our county jails, there is an incurrence of very heavy costs in 
incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens. Taxpayers should not have 
to foot the bill for incarcerating illegal aliens convicted of criminal 
offenses who are in State and local jails.
  There is a growing belief among many in this country that the 
immigration situation is out of control. This year, the Pew Hispanic 
Center released a study which shows that between 2000 and 2004, 
approximately 3.1 million individuals entered the country without 
proper authorization. That is approximately 700,000 a year. Compare 
that to the fact that in 2003, Border Patrol agents apprehended 
somewhat over 1 million individuals seeking to enter the country 
illegally. It is said that for every one individual caught, three more 
enter illegally. If that is the case, nearly 3 million seek to enter 
the country illegally in a given year.
  These costs are borne by our local educators, our hospitals, and our 
law enforcement officials. Let me use California as an example. This is 
based on a comprehensive study conducted by the Department of Finance. 
They estimate--and this goes back to costs in 1994-1995--$400 million 
for corrections for 23,000 individuals; $400 million for 390,000 
patients; and $1.7 billion for K-12 education. That is a total of $2.5 
billion.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Certainly.
  Mr. REID. We have a unanimous consent request to be offered on the 
emergency supplemental. We will return as soon as this is offered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                 Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 3673

  Mr. FRIST. We will be very brief. I appreciate the consideration of 
the distinguished Senator from California.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to 
the immediate consideration of H.R. 3673, the supplemental 
appropriations bill from the House, with 90 minutes of debate equally 
divided, with 30 minutes from the majority side under the control of 
Senator Coburn, with no amendments being in order. I further ask 
consent that following the use or yielding back of the time, the bill 
be read a third time and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage 
without any intervening action or debate.
  Let me modify this. We will proceed to the immediate consideration of 
H.R. 3673 immediately following the statement by the Senator from 
California and the Senator from Texas.
  Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, I am wondering if the two 
distinguished Senators from California and Texas could give us an 
indication--there are Members wanting to know when we will vote--as to 
how much time they will require.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I have a very short time. We will wrap this up in 10 
minutes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I am happy for you to start the time running right 
now and give us the first 5 minutes to finish this colloquy.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if I could, on the Democratic side the time 
will be divided in the following manner: Senator Byrd, 15 minutes; 
Senator Reid of Nevada, 10 minutes; Senator Kennedy, 5 minutes; Senator 
Durbin, 5 minutes; and Senator Clinton, 10 minutes. That uses our 45 
minutes.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask the unanimous consent request as 
propounded follow the completion of the statement by the Senator from 
California and the Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thune). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader and the 
Democratic leader.
  To give a couple of recent statistics, the General Accountability 
Office conducted a study of those criminal aliens incarcerated in 
Federal, State, and local prisons. They found the following regarding 
State jails: In fiscal year 2003, 47 States received reimbursement for 
incarcerating 74,000 criminal aliens. Four States alone spent a total 
of $1.6 billion in fiscal years 2002 and 2003 to incarcerate criminal 
aliens. Yet they were only reimbursed $233 million through this 
program. That is only 15 percent of the total spent by these States. So 
the Federal Government is only reimbursing States 15 percent of what 
they actually spend on incarceration costs. That is local costs, that 
is State costs.
  I can go on, but I want my colleagues to understand that the 
diversion of dollars from agencies such as the Los Angeles County 
Sheriff's Department to house criminal aliens has real operational 
impact on their law enforcement activities--fighting drugs, street 
gangs, and other pressing law enforcement operations.
  On March 17 of this year, the Senate agreed to a sense-of-the-Senate 
amendment to the budget resolution that SCAAP should be appropriated at 
a level of $750 million. While I recognize we cannot reach that number, 
the House bill does provide $405 million for this program. As this bill 
moves forward, I hope we will agree to the House funding level in 
conference. I ask the chairman and the ranking member to work with us 
on this issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank my good friend and colleague 
from California, Senator Feinstein, for bringing this issue forward 
again. She has been dedicated to SCAAP funding.
  I want to also mention Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona who has always 
stepped in when we had an appropriations bill to make sure our States 
got some reimbursement for their costs of incarcerating illegal aliens. 
Unfortunately, as Senator Feinstein has said, we have more and more 
illegal aliens

[[Page 19874]]

coming into our country and, unfortunately, committing crimes.
  This is a Federal responsibility. The counties along the border 
States should not have to fund what is a Federal responsibility. 
Incarcerating illegal aliens for criminal activities is absolutely a 
Federal responsibility. So I join my colleague, Senator Feinstein, in 
urging the chairman and ranking member of this subcommittee to accept 
the House position when we go to conference. Mr. President, $200 
million does not cover a 10th of the cost to the border States in 
reimbursing them for the incarceration of criminal aliens. And $400 
million goes a much longer way. I think it is a minimum.
  All of us realize that illegal immigration must be stopped in our 
country. We must know who is in our country for security purposes, and 
we must be able to deport or incarcerate people who are here illegally 
and commit crimes in our country.
  I hope the committee chairman and ranking member will work with us to 
increase the number from the Senate position of $200 million to the 
House position of $400 million, at a minimum. I thank the Senator from 
California for bringing this forward once again.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas. I also 
acknowledge as well Senator Kyl's work in this area. It seems to me 
those of us from the Southwest or whose borders are in the Southwest 
have been beating this drum year after year. Sometimes we make a little 
bit of progress, but very often we do not. This is a very bad year in 
terms of the amount and the need.
  So I thank the distinguished chairman of the Military Construction 
Subcommittee. I always appreciate working with her, and this is one 
more instance of that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________