[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22446-22459]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2863.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2863) making appropriations for the Department 
     of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Reed/Hagel amendment No. 1943, to transfer certain amounts 
     from the supplemental authorizations of appropriations for 
     Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terrorism to amounts 
     for Operation and Maintenance, Army, Operation and 
     Maintenance, Marine Corps, Operation and Maintenance, 
     Defense-wide activities, and Military Personnel in order to 
     provide for increased personnel strengths for the Army and 
     the Marine Corps for fiscal year 2006.
       Coburn amendment No. 2005, to curtail waste under the 
     Department of Defense web-based travel system.

  Mr. FRIST. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page 22447]]

  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to speak as in morning 
business. If any other Senator comes and wants to speak about an 
amendment on the underlying bill, I would be pleased to wrap up my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Speaking in my capacity as a Senator from 
Alaska and manager of the bill, I would agree to the unanimous consent 
that the Senator may speak but would yield the floor in the event 
someone wishes to call up an amendment or speak on the bill. Is that 
agreed?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Yes, I would.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator is recognized as in morning business.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I begin by thanking the Senator in the chair for his 
leadership in trying to help us move this Defense appropriations bill 
through the Congress. It is, of course, an extremely important bill, 
and it is a very difficult bill to manage because it is large and 
complicated and multidimensional and a great need. I thank the Senator 
from Alaska and the Senator from Hawaii for helping us to manage 
through this as we try to wrap up this week.
  (Ms. Murkowski assumed the Chair.)


                           Hurricane Katrina

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, one of the reasons I come to the floor 
this morning is to speak about an issue that I brought up on the floor, 
now many times, and so has the other Senator from Louisiana and Members 
of our delegation, as well as Members from the Gulf Coast States that 
have been affected by Katrina, to try to see what we can do to get some 
aid to our States, directly into the hands of people who can actually 
put that money to good use, so we do not leave here this weekend 
without having done something very clearly and very specifically.
  Now, this Congress has acted with dispatch over the last 4 weeks to 
allocate and appropriate money to FEMA, the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency, that is tasked with the responsibility of managing 
disasters such as this when they are of such a magnitude it is really 
impossible for individual cities or individual counties or individual 
parishes or even regions to handle them.
  This storm was just that. It was a category 5 storm, with a surge of 
tide that had the highest recorded level at 29 feet of water--a tsunami 
basically of 30 feet, approximately--that slammed into the gulf coast 
about 32 days ago and devastated the energy coast of this Nation--or a 
large part of the energy coast.
  Assessments are being done by insurance companies, corporations, 
multinational companies, small companies, law enforcement, cities, 
parishes, and counties to try to get a handle on the damage, but it is 
staggering.
  This special edition, which I have been reviewing since I picked it 
up yesterday, is done by National Geographic. It is a special edition 
on Katrina and Rita. It was contributed to by the Times-Picayune, the 
Dallas Morning News, the New York Times, and it truly is remarkable 
work: ``Katrina, Why It Became a Man-Made Disaster'' and ``Where It 
Could Happen Next.'' It takes us through a series of not just the way 
the hurricane formed and how powerful and devastating it was, but how 
the levees could have been breached or how the levees might have 
collapsed, because that assessment is still being made about how many 
houses have been lost, about how many thousands of square miles were 
flooded in New Orleans, in Saint Bernard, in Saint Tammany Parish, in 
Plaquemines Parish, how the entire parish of Cameron, that had 10,000 
structures 8 days ago, now has one structure standing; a courthouse 
that was built by the New Deal, the only structure standing in Cameron 
Parish.
  It talks about how the combination of these two killer storms, and 
the neglect on the part of many--cost cutting that obviously did not 
pay off--how it has now wrecked this economic powerhouse. It says, 
actually, the economic power has been brought to its knees. The center 
of that powerhouse would be the State I represent in the Senate, the 
State of Louisiana, that is home to the Mississippi River, the greatest 
delta on the continent, the greatest river on the continent.
  On that river are the largest ports in America. The eye of the first 
storm, Katrina, went right over the Port of New Orleans, the South 
Louisiana Port, and barely missed the other large port, which is the 
Port of Baton Rouge, which hosts the energy industry, the petrochemical 
industry, the refining industry, the agriculture industry, the 
commercial industry, the maritime industry--the bulk of it in the 
Nation. It was a direct hit to the heart of the energy coast.
  Not only is Louisiana feeling this, with 2 million people along the 
gulf coast displaced--hundreds of thousands of people have lost their 
entire home, their entire business; the people of New Orleans, in large 
measure, and Saint Bernard and Plaquemines have lost their entire 
parish--but everyone in America is feeling this because of the higher 
price of goods, the higher price of gasoline, and the higher price of 
natural gas.
  There are 9,000 miles of pipeline connecting oil and gas exploration 
in the Gulf of Mexico. We have been struggling to get those pipelines 
back up and running. The trade and commerce of the Port of South 
Louisiana, combined with the Port of New Orleans, dwarfs the Port of 
Houston, the Ports of New York and New Jersey, and the Port of 
Beaumont, TX, which was also hit and has some destruction from Rita--
thank goodness, not the same level of destruction, thank goodness that 
we didn't lose the Port of Beaumont or the Port of Houston.
  Our ports, from the Port of Lake Charles, from the western side, to 
the Port of Iberia, to the Port of Morgan City, to the ports along the 
Mississippi River, to the Port of Fourchon, which is the only deepwater 
energy port in the Nation right on the gulf, the damage has been 
extensive and tremendous. To this day, 30 days after--and we will be 
for months and perhaps even years--we are struggling to stand up that 
infrastructure.
  The long-term building effort is going to be difficult and 
complicated. I am sorry to say this because we have been criticized for 
saying it, but it is going to be expensive. There is no cheap or easy 
way out of it. How we pay for it, what revenues we assign, whether we 
raise revenues to do it, use revenues we have, assess new approaches, 
borrow the money, in some way the Federal Government and State 
governments and industry have to come up with the billions of dollars 
it is going to cost to restore the infrastructure and the marshland 
that protects this infrastructure, that services the economy of the 
Nation and the world.
  Let me try to be as clear as I can on some of these points. There are 
only a few ways to get grain out of Kansas and the Midwest. You can put 
it on railroads, put it on trucks, or you can put it on big barges. It 
is a little slower on the barges, but it is a lot less expensive. You 
can move the grain that we supply and literally feed ourselves and the 
world with it, but it has to go through on barges, down some rivers, 
and the Mississippi River is the River that we primarily use, that the 
Missouri and the Ohio run into down the Mississippi for trade around 
the world. If this infrastructure is left vulnerable, as it has been by 
exposure to the hurricane, if we don't figure out a way to invest 
better and more wisely, the commerce of this whole Nation will be 
undermined, unless you want to put all the grain that comes from the 
Midwest and all the wheat and the corn on trucks and put thousands of 
more trucks on a highway system that is already overcrowded, where 
people are already wondering how are we going to survive the next few 
years on a highway system like this, with trucks stacked up one after 
another.
  We better keep our river channels open. We better invest in our inner 
waterways. We better start investing in

[[Page 22448]]

more sophisticated lock and dam systems along the Gulf of Mexico. If we 
are not going to, then the other alternative is to abandon the coast 
and move somewhere else. Maybe we should consider that. I think it is a 
foolish idea because you couldn't accomplish it anyway. I don't know 
where we would move all the refineries. We can't even get another State 
anywhere in the country, except maybe Arizona, to build a refinery. 
Nobody wants to build refineries. Everybody wants to put gas in their 
car and turn the electricity on, but we can't get anybody to lay a 
pipeline, build a refinery, put up a petrochemical plant. I don't know 
how Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi would lift 40 percent of the 
industry and relocate it somewhere in the United States, but if some 
people think that is a cost-effective way, maybe we should do that.
  Having studied this issue for a pretty long time and represented this 
State for over 25 years, it is a foolish and foolhardy suggestion. I 
have a better one. The better one is a little bit of money every year, 
smartly invested, to protect this infrastructure, to restore our 
wetlands, to protect one of the greatest cities in the world and the 
region that surrounds it and the infrastructure that supports the 
commerce and trade for the entire Nation--if we just do a little bit 
well every year. Instead, we chose to do other things with our money.
  This is a picture of the gulf. This is Mississippi. The title surge 
hit the gulf coast of Mississippi 30 feet high, cleared everything in 
its path for a half a mile back. We saw this kind of destruction with 
Camille. We hoped we would never see it again. But there are 
vulnerabilities living on the coast. When a hurricane hits you 
directly, this is what it looks like. Right here we had houses and 
casinos. We also had a major shipyard that was damaged pretty badly. 
You can't do a lot of shipbuilding inland. You have to have some 
waterways and build your ships in a place where they have access to 
water. Thank goodness we didn't have just one shipyard on the gulf 
coast. Thank goodness we had two because the hurricane hit one and not 
the other. Avondale is today up and running and building ships for our 
military and the private sector.
  I don't know if you can see this, but the Presiding Officer knows 
because she is from Alaska and they do some oil and gas drilling for 
the Nation, we do most of it along the gulf coast. These are the 
pipelines that support that industry, as we send fuel and gas and 
electricity to Chicago, New York, California, the Midwest, and supply 
the energy necessary to keep this economy functioning. We have laid 
these pipelines for over 100 years. Maybe we could pick them all up and 
move them somewhere else, but I don't think that is going to happen. We 
can't even find the money to get a pipeline from Alaska--or figure out 
how to get a pipeline from Alaska. How are we going to take up all 
these pipelines and move them somewhere else? We don't have a choice.
  We have to take some of our general fund dollars, more than we have. 
We need to, as I have said for over 10 years, redirect a portion of the 
offshore oil and gas revenues that Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and 
Alabama contribute to the tune of $5 billion, actually $6 billion a 
year last year, $155 billion since the 1950s, redirect some of that 
money into restoring our coast that protects this infrastructure and, 
working in partnership with industries, large and small, have more 
security around the energy infrastructure, whether it is pipelines, 
petrochemical plants, or refineries, not just for the protection of the 
industry but for the safety of the people who live and work in this 
region.
  There is a beautiful series produced by Louisiana Public Television 
that I will submit for the Record. It is not in written form but in 
video form. I am hoping there is some way that I can submit that 
officially for the record. When Bienville and Niverville came and 
settled Louisiana and claimed it as a colony, they didn't come to 
sunbathe on the Mississippi River. They didn't come to put up condos. 
They came to secure the delta, the mouth of the greatest river in the 
country, for the strategic expansion and economic future of a nation. 
They asked people to come to Louisiana in hot, mosquito-ridden 
territory, not to sunbathe or to vacation. Who would vacation in a 
swamp with mosquitos? We leave the low-lying areas and leave the 
mosquitos when we want to vacation and go to the mountains. If you are 
lucky to be able to afford a tank of gas in your car, you don't stay in 
Louisiana to vacation. You go to Louisiana to work, even though a lot 
of people do come to New Orleans to enjoy themselves because it is a 
wonderful city. But down in the bayou, people fish, they trap, they 
hunt, they skin alligators, they drill for oil and gas, and they lay 
pipelines. They build ships, they fabricate so that we can produce jobs 
for people in America as well as ourselves.
  For 300 years, we have been growing crops, growing sugarcane, growing 
cotton, growing soybeans, shipping goods around the world, drilling for 
oil and gas, building ships and pipelines, and asking for a little bit 
of money, just a little bit, to help us invest in an infrastructure 
that doesn't just save us from death and destruction but supports a 
nation's future. I have been on this floor so many times giving this 
speech that I am positive that every Senator could give this speech 
better than I because they have heard it a thousand times. And they 
have not just heard it from me. They heard it from Senator Breaux when 
he was here. They heard it from Russell Long when he was here. They 
have heard it from David Vitter since he has been here. How much more 
clear can we be? They heard it from Billy Tauzin when he was chairman 
of the Energy Committee in the House. They heard it from Charlie 
Melancon who represents this district now. They have heard it from Gene 
Taylor who has represented the gulf coast of Mississippi since he was a 
kid.
  These are the kinds of people who live along the coast. They don't 
have a lot. But they do have their pride and their dignity. They have 
waited for 31 days now, but they have waited for decades actually for 
the Federal Government to recognize they are not in condos, having 
lunch at a club, sipping tea on a balcony, watching the waves. These 
people don't belong to a country club. They couldn't afford the monthly 
dues. They could barely afford gas in their automobile to get out when 
storms hit. Why do they live there? No. 1, because they love it; 2, 
because they work; 3, because the jobs are there; and 4, you can't move 
the jobs. Where would you put them?
  Let me show you another picture of people. This is Charlene Veillon 
and her son Thearon. This is a sad picture to look at. This is a 
picture of them after being told that Charlene's daughter--I am 
assuming his sister--who had been driving from Tennessee to the gulf 
coast to try to help her family, when no one else would come to help 
them, this is when they learned that she died.
  For a month and a half the people of the gulf coast have been crying 
for help, asking for help. I know that we didn't do everything right 
every minute of every day. But I can tell you one thing our delegation 
has done: It has come down here year after year and laid the case. We 
are happy to host the oil and gas industry, we are happy to build 
refineries, we are happy to organize our ports to transport goods all 
over the world so everybody can benefit. We are even glad we don't have 
to take a lot of vacations--some of us couldn't afford to go--to those 
highrises in Florida, anyway. But all we want is a little bit of 
support of money that we generate to protect us and to protect the 
Nation from something such as this disaster.
  I have to read news articles from some of the supposedly smartest 
magazines in the world telling me the reason this happened is because 
the levee board in New Orleans--I am not going to support everything 
the levee board did, but I have to read in some supposedly elite 
magazines the reason this happened is because the levee board took a 
few hundred thousand dollars and built a fountain when they should not 
have built a fountain, they should have been building a levee.

[[Page 22449]]

  I don't know about the fountain, but I can promise you this: $100,000 
or $200,000, or $300,000 for building a fountain when they should have 
put a few more sandbags on top of the levee would not have prevented 
this disaster. What would have prevented this disaster is better 
priorities in spending, smarter investments, and a better partnership 
between a Federal Government that has decided it has other things to 
do, such as building levees in Iraq, building schools in Iraq, and I 
cannot get 5 cents to build a school along the gulf coast.
  Then I have to have magazines tell me the people in the South are not 
self-reliant; we don't know how to walk on our own two legs. I am going 
to show a picture of self-reliance. See this family. They may or may 
not be related. They are of different colors of skin. Some people are 
related who have different skin color, but I don't know. This is how 
people all over the gulf coast are living--helping each other out, 
sharing the two bedrooms they have, sharing the food they have, not 
complaining. But it is my job to complain. I represent them.
  Before I keep talking about Louisiana, because people say the Senator 
only cares about her State, let me tell you what the last page of this 
magazine says, the National Geographic. It is the last page. Pick it up 
and read it.

       The next Katrina? New Orleans was a hurricane tragedy 
     waiting to happen.

  It describes why this was inevitable. We knew it during Betsy. We 
knew it again at 9/11. We have known it for a long time. We didn't do 
what we needed to do. But according to NOAA--which is a very excellent 
organization, I must say, out of the Commerce Department for which I 
have a lot of respect--according to meteorologist Joe Golden, ``the 
five places in the U.S. at greatest risk for calamitous hurricanes are: 
Tampa Bay, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; Houston, Texas; New York City and 
Long Island, New York; and Miami, Florida.''
  Wake up, delegations from these States. Many of these Senators have 
been helping. Many of these Senators understand the danger.
  Why do we have to go through this again? Why do we have to go through 
it this time? You can't stop hurricanes, but you can protect yourself. 
You can set up a communications system so families who are trying to 
help each other will have their cell phones work. You can help your 
police officers by giving them radios that function. You can figure out 
how to have more redundancy so if your electricity goes down, somebody 
can get a message through.
  The head of our National Guard from Alabama, during a CNN interview 
with me on this subject, said the Senator is right; we are sending 
runners in Alabama, as we did in the War of 1812, and it is 2005 and we 
do not have a communications system that protects Americans.
  I know times are tough in Baghdad. Times are tough on the gulf coast.
  This is a picture of a man named Pete. He is holding a 1950s picture 
of his grandparents' home in Empire, LA. I think Senator Cochran from 
Mississippi has fished off Empire. He knows it well. He fishes a great 
deal and respects the environment.
  When Pete's grandparents moved here in the 1950s, this camp--which 
was in a vulnerable place even before the marsh eroded. It was 
vulnerable. I don't know if this was his grandparents' home where they 
lived or if they were shrimpers, trappers, or campers, or if this is a 
camp, as we call them, where you go on the weekend to try to relax and 
get out of the city. Anyway, what you can see beyond this camp is a lot 
of marsh. They didn't go out in the middle of the water and build this 
camp and come miles by boat to camp, although some do that, but very 
few. Most of these camps were attached to land, or they were in the 
1950s. But 50 years later, there is no land around them because the 
saltwater has intruded because we channeled the Mississippi River, and 
the delta cannot replenish itself.
  We laid 9,000 miles of pipeline, took all the oil and gas out of the 
ground, and did not give anything back to keep the land stable so that 
Pete could maybe have a place to take his grandchildren. Of course, the 
place is gone.
  On page 57 of the National Geographic, there is a great article that 
begins ``How the Defenses Break Down.'' It talks about barrier islands. 
We have barrier islands all around the coast. We are losing them 
rapidly off the coast of South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, 
Georgia, Alabama, and Dolphin Island because we don't take care of our 
barrier islands, we don't protect our barrier islands, we don't invest 
in coastal erosion projects. We let them wash away into the ocean. Then 
we wonder why, when hurricanes come, they destroy a whole region. Every 
time a storm comes, we throw a little sandbag on the islands and say we 
did something. We are not doing anything.
  We used to have hundreds of miles of marshland between New Orleans 
and the ocean. Please don't insult the ancestors of my city to think 
that they would put a major metropolitan area right on the coast. If 
anybody would get the map of the Mississippi River, they had to go up 
over 100 miles from the mouth of the river, and they found the highest 
ground they could find, and they put the city of New Orleans there.
  Amazingly, even in Katrina, Jackson Square did not flood. The 
cathedral is still there, and the statue of Jesus is still standing in 
front.
  They did not put the city on low ground. Three hundred years ago, 
they went inland away from the coast to build a city to secure the 
westward expansion of the Nation. Thomas Jefferson had the sense to 
borrow money from the Treasury, not to spend it on tax cuts, but to 
invest it in the Louisiana Purchase at 3 cents an acre. Then Andrew 
Jackson went there in 1803 and fought the British again. Not once; we 
fought them twice because they knew when we beat them in 1776, they 
could come back and take New Orleans and take the country away, and we 
fought them again.
  But we have a Federal Government for the last couple of years--I have 
made some mistakes since I have been here, so I am not the only one; I 
am not saying I have not made mistakes. But we have a Federal 
Government whose only answer to any problem we have had, whether it is 
a recession, depression, or irrational exuberance, a high stock market, 
a low stock market, a war or no war, is to give tax cuts.
  Let me ask something: Could anybody describe to me how this woman 
could take advantage of any tax cut? What would she do? Do you think 
she has any money in her IRA she could borrow to help her rebuild her 
house? Do you think maybe she could call her accountant and see if he 
could figure out a strategy for her to save a few dollars on the next 
income tax check she pays? I don't think so.
  This woman--I don't know her name, but she looks a lot like my 
grandmother before she died. There are grandmothers and grandfathers 
all over the gulf coast sitting in chairs just like one looking at 
total destruction, and they have to hear from this Congress that we are 
about ready to pass yet another tranche of tax cuts, but we cannot send 
somebody to help her pick up the debris.
  And please don't tell me you are sending faith-based organizations. 
And I say that with the greatest respect. You know why? Because the 
church that used to be here does not exist any longer. I am certain 
some church could come from New Jersey or come from New York or come 
from California, but this woman's church does not stand any longer.
  In my State--this may be Mississippi, I don't know--but in the State 
of Louisiana, the Catholic Church, which is the largest church in New 
Orleans, is basically telling me and our delegation and any leaders who 
will listen that they may have to lay off thousands of workers at the 
archdiocese because their churches are destroyed and their schools are 
destroyed. But yet we have a Government that wants to say: Let the 
faith-based organizations do it. They are faith-based organizations. 
They are the Catholic Church. They need help.
  We have a bill we have been asking for--and the President has asked 
for it as well--and we cannot get this Congress to move to give some 
help to

[[Page 22450]]

some of the children who were in Catholic schools so they can get 
through this school year--70,000 of them. We cannot move that bill.
  That is why I am on the floor today to talk about a lot of issues. As 
Senators come, they may want to talk about the Defense bill, but our 
war is right here at home. Our war is right here in the gulf coast. 
This debate is about the protection we seek, our security, our way of 
life. Millions of people from the gulf coast have given their lives for 
this country in war after war, in crisis after crisis, and now we ask 
for help and we get $63 billion to FEMA, which cannot seem to function 
well enough to get anybody help. So I have come to the floor to say: 
OK, let's catch a breath. FEMA is not working that well. Let's not 
worry about why now, let's try to fix the problem and take $10 billion 
of the $43 billion FEMA has that is sitting there, not getting to any 
of the people I showed, take it, and give it through whatever 
accountability mechanisms we can come up with, to give people health 
care they desperately need, to give relief to our schools that are 
about to stagger and collapse--elementary, secondary, and our 
universities that are also our major employers, that also have the 
brain power that is going to help us rebuild this region; they are 
about ready to close their doors--to give direct aid to our sheriffs, 
our police, and our firefighters who are desperately trying to keep the 
doors open on the cities and counties and communities, large and small, 
throughout the gulf coast. Give us a few of those billion dollars we 
have given to FEMA, which cannot function, and let us use that money. 
And if FEMA needs more money down the line, we can always give them 
some more.
  But we cannot do that. All we can do is pass a Defense bill, argue 
about Defense authorization, take care of the war in Iraq, rebuild 
Iraq, but we cannot even focus on rebuilding the gulf coast where 
Americans have paid taxes their whole life and cannot get the Federal 
Government to act effectively.
  I compliment the Senator from Alaska for moving our Defense 
appropriations bill. It is an extremely important bill for our Nation, 
and he has been very gracious to allow me this time. I am looking to 
see if another Senator shows up. I will be happy to end my remarks and 
take some time later today. We are on the Defense bill, and we have to 
move this bill and, of course, under the rules we only have 30 more 
hours of debate and we have to vote on that bill.
  The bottom line, I guess, is this: We have been in negotiations with 
the White House and with the Republican leadership to pass something 
before we leave, something that is substantive but also in some ways 
symbolic, that somebody in Washington is hearing what people from the 
gulf coast are saying, which is, We know FEMA was funded, but we need 
help now.
  FEMA is not well led, even though we have a new leader and he is 
doing a better job than the former one. It is not well resourced. It is 
not well organized, and it is not being that well coordinated at home. 
We can fix that, I am confident, over time. I am certain we have 
learned some of the mistakes that we have made with FEMA, and we can 
fix it; FEMA can be fixed, and we will have some time to do that. But 
right now, we need to get help to the people of Louisiana and the gulf 
coast.
  We have asked for $1.5 billion for our State and local governments so 
that they can keep their doors open, not lay off their core workforce, 
either their police, their fire, their permitting offices, the support 
that a city or county needs to function, so that over the next few 
months and few years, we can actually rebuild our towns.
  Last night, from what I understand, the White House offered $300 
million, but $300 million is not enough to help the towns that are 
about to have to close their doors, including the city of New Orleans, 
which is struggling to stay open and to track people back to the third 
or fourth of the city that can function that is out of water.
  The mayor announced yesterday that he has to lay off 3,000 people. We 
do not need to be laying off people. We need to be hiring people. There 
is enough work to be done. Just imagine 90,000 square miles of 
destruction. Does anybody doubt that there is not a lot of work that 
could be done? We do not need to be laying off public employees and 
laying off people in the private sector. We need to be stabilizing 
those who are working now and then be smart, strategic, wise, careful, 
and accountable as we hire help to stand up a region that is not just 
for the people who live there but for the whole Nation. Does anyone 
doubt that there is enough work to be done?
  Let me show a picture of New Orleans. This is what parts of it looked 
like only a few weeks ago. It goes on for miles and miles, water 
standing 6 feet, 8 feet, 10 feet, interstates underwater. Does anybody 
doubt that there is a lot of work to be done? Why are we laying off 
people anywhere? I will say why--because sales taxes cannot be 
collected from empty buildings. Sales taxes cannot be collected from 
people who no longer live in their house and there is not a WalMart or 
a mom-and-pop store to shop within miles. How does a city with a $40 
million monthly payroll exist for more than a month or two?
  If somebody says, Well, they can borrow the money, let me talk about 
that for a minute because I was a State treasurer. I know a little bit 
about this issue. The constitution of the State of Louisiana smartly 
does not allow the State to borrow for operating expenses. Isn't that 
unique. We can only borrow money to build highways and invest in 
capital infrastructure. It is a very smart and wise restriction because 
if there are not restrictions like that, we end up being like the U.S. 
Government, which borrows to give tax cuts to people who did not even 
ask for them.
  I am sorry we cannot organize a constitutional referendum in the next 
30 days. Even if we could organize a constitutional referendum in the 
next 30 days, there are no polling places for people to vote, and if we 
tried to find our voters, we could not find them. So I am a little 
confused about how we would do that.
  The State of Mississippi does not have that same restriction. I 
understand they have borrowed $500 million. So this woman right here, 
who I am pretty sure is from Mississippi--and I am not criticizing 
Mississippi. They have their own plans, and maybe they are great. But 
this woman will have to pay that $500 million back. I do not believe 
that is a great idea. I do not think she has enough money to put food 
on her table the next couple of months. If that is what they want to 
do, I do not know how they are going to pay this $500 million back, but 
I promise they are either going to cut programs this woman benefits 
from or she is going to get charged directly for it. That might be a 
good plan. I would not support something like that.
  My State cannot borrow the money, and even if we could, we have a 
billion-dollar shortfall at the Federal level because the income is not 
coming in. The oil wells are not producing, so we do not get our 
severance taxes. The ports are crippled, so we are not getting that 
revenue. The sales taxes are way down, and the expenses are way up.
  I have listened to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the 
Wall Street Journal tell me the people of Louisiana are not self-
reliant. Why can't we just fix our own problem? First, it is not our 
problem, it is the Nation's problem. The last time I looked, we were 
the United States of America. I am not sure we are anymore, but that is 
what we were the last time I said the Pledge of Allegiance.
  Either people want me to keep talking or they do not have anything to 
say because nobody else is on the floor, so I will talk for a few more 
minutes and then I am going to sit down and just hold my time. I will 
talk more about the general subject, but I wish to be clear about why I 
am standing here and what we have asked for. We have asked for some 
help, just anything that we can take home before we leave so that 
people will have some hope that somebody up here is listening to them.
  I have asked to pull up the Grassley-Baucus bill, which has been 
unanimously approved by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, not a 
Democratic bill--thank God led by a great Senator, a Republican from 
Iowa who

[[Page 22451]]

is the chairman of the Finance Committee. He understands, even though 
he is not from Louisiana, how much people are suffering, and he wants 
to help. So he and Senator Baucus, leaders that they are, 3 weeks ago, 
with the help of Senator Lincoln from Arkansas, put a good bill 
together. It cost about $13 billion. If there were some things 
eliminated, we could scale it back to about $6 billion or $7 billion. 
When I say eliminated, there is some help for all the States. Maybe we 
just eliminate helping everyone else and help ourselves. We are trying 
to be generous. If other Senators want to try to help their States, who 
am I to say they cannot help their States. But if the Senate agrees to 
just help Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, fine with me. 
They put a bill together, we passed it unanimously, and we cannot get 
any action on that bill. So we have asked for that.
  We have asked for some education money to keep our schools open. We 
are trying not to ask too much because every time we ask for something, 
we are told we are greedy, we are looters, we are not self-reliant, how 
dare we ask on behalf of the people who have nothing for a little money 
out of the treasury, from their own money that they put in the 
treasury, how dare we ask for it. I am not going to stop asking, and I 
do not care how many editorials are written about me and my State at 
this point. Just go ahead and keep writing them.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator from Louisiana yield for a question?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I would be happy to.
  Mr. DURBIN. At the outset, I would like to say that I left the floor 
last night, about 12 hours ago, around 11. Senator Landrieu of 
Louisiana was on the floor last night. As I left, I said that she has 
shown such a passion and commitment to the poor people of her State of 
Louisiana who have been through this hurricane. I know she has tried to 
work within the system, she has tried to work within the Senate, and 
she has tried to move things along in a peaceful, bipartisan way. I 
sensed in her appearance last night and her appearance on the floor now 
that she is reaching a level of frustration and concern that this 
Senate is going to go home tonight or tomorrow and be gone for 10 days 
having done nothing to address the important issues she is raising.
  What the Senator has brought to our attention is the fact that we 
have a bipartisan proposal. Senator Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, and 
Senator Baucus, a Democrat of Montana, on the Finance Committee, have 
come up with a proposal to provide basic health care for the evacuees 
and survivors of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, basic health 
care. The Senator has come to the Chamber repeatedly--I have seen it--
trying to at least bring this to a vote. That is all she is asking for, 
bring it to a vote.
  It is my understanding that at this moment in time, she has no 
commitment from the Republican leadership in the Senate to even bring 
this matter for a vote before we go home for 10 days on a break. I ask 
the Senator from Louisiana if she could in the most general terms tell 
us what kind of health care she is trying to provide to these people. 
Some have characterized it as luxurious, over-the-top health care for 
people who do not really need it. In fact, I heard on the floor last 
night one of the Senators say: Well, they do not really need this.
  Could the Senator from Louisiana spell out for us what she is looking 
to achieve, what this bipartisan proposal would mean to the poor people 
who have lost their homes, lost their worldly possessions, seen their 
families torn apart, and are living in shelters somewhere around that 
part of our country?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I would be happy to, and I thank the Senator for his 
leadership because the Grassley-Baucus bill does a couple of important 
things that are essential for the rebuilding and emergency needs of a 
population--not just the poor but the middle income and those who had 
private insurance the day before Katrina hit. The Baucus-Grassley bill 
allows the States to know that they are going to be reimbursed for the 
care they are providing to people who have virtually no insurance. For 
a State such as Louisiana, whose legislature may be meeting in the next 
few weeks, with a billion-dollar shortfall looming, I say to Senator 
Durbin, it is critical that the States of Louisiana and Mississippi and 
Alabama and Texas have some idea now about what the Federal Government 
is going to do regarding their insurance. We share it 70/30. The State 
cannot put up a 30-percent match. This bill waives that match so that 
our States can start making good budget decisions at a very difficult 
time, in addition to providing health care for those who are 200 
percent or below of poverty--which in our State is only $18,000 or 
$20,000--to make sure that people have health insurance.
  But for middle-income families, working families, and even wealthy 
families that had health insurance, this bill allows them--even if 
their employers have gone under or taken bankruptcy or closed their 
doors and laid them off--to keep their health insurance for a few 
months, for 6 months or 12 months, depending on their category.
  A Senator said on the floor, Senator Durbin, that people can get 
health insurance, they can get health care. Yes, in some way; they can 
go to an emergency room and wait for 3 days. But if they want to go to 
their doctor's office to whom they have been going for their whole 
life, and take their child to their pediatrician and they now don't 
have health insurance, unless we pass this bill, they can't go knock on 
the door of their pediatrician, for example, unless they give them a 
credit card or cash because there is no health insurance without the 
Baucus-Grassley bill. People who don't have a home, don't have a church 
or don't have a school now do not even have health care because we have 
to go home on a 10-day break and leave them wondering where they are 
going to get their medicine. That is what the bill does, I say to 
Senator Durbin.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would like to ask the Senator from Louisiana, through 
the Chair, we have been through disasters before in America. We faced 
9/11, that terrible day in our history when 3,000 Americans lost their 
lives. I would like to ask the Senator from Louisiana, if I am not 
mistaken, didn't we say we were going to come in and help those 
families who may have been in the same circumstance, where their place 
of employment just exploded and disappeared? Also, I would ask the 
Senator from Louisiana, when we had an earthquake in California, in 
North-
ridge, didn't we step in and say we are going to provide housing 
vouchers to people displaced because of earthquakes?
  I ask this of the Senator because I don't quite understand this 
double standard. Why, if the worst natural disaster in modern memory 
occurred a few weeks ago, are we in the midst of debating the most 
basic things people need in crisis: health care, housing, cash so they 
can buy the basic necessities of life? Why are we facing this double 
standard, when America's heart was broken by the scenes we saw day 
after day and night after night on the television screen, coming from 
your hometown, your neighbors and their suffering?
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I do not know, I say to Senator Durbin. That is a 
puzzlement for us. I do not have a good answer for that. All I can say 
is there are 2 million people displaced, many towns are destroyed, many 
communities, both urban and suburban, rural as well as highly dense. 
Neighborhoods of black and white, Hispanic and Asian, poor and middle-
income are wondering the same thing.
  Why does Congress keep giving money to FEMA? FEMA is not functioning 
very well. So when our Governors and our mayors and our sheriffs ask 
for a little bit of help with health insurance and education and the 
basics to turn running water on--we have had enough bottled water. 
Please don't send us any more bottled water. We have plenty.
  We need to turn the faucets on so water will come out so a small 
business that wants to operate can actually function with some water. 
You cannot have a business operating without water. That is what we 
need.

[[Page 22452]]

  We have asked for these emergency things, to be told we do not have 
the money. I am going to sit down. In this amendment, we are asking for 
four or five things, for education, for health care, for immediate 
needs, for help for some hospitals that stayed up. Three hospitals 
stayed up the whole time in the region. If we do not help them, these 
hospitals will close, employees will be laid off, and whatever modest 
health care system we have for the region will basically be 
dysfunctional.
  But what we really want--we want those things, but what we want is 
some action taken before we leave. We can vote on these individually. 
We did get a commitment from the administration that they will do more 
than $300 million. Because if we do not get more than $300 million 
before we leave here, the city of New Orleans, the Archdiocesan--the 
Catholic Diocese--or St. Tammany Parish, or some parts of it, or 
Plaquemines or St. Bernard or any number of other places, I say to 
Senator Durbin, will have to lay off workers who then will lose their 
health insurance, lose whatever means they have of keeping themselves 
and their families intact, and the situation will be spiraling 
downward, not spiraling upward.
  The Senator has been very gracious. I am going to reserve the 
remainder of whatever time I have, but that is what we are asking for, 
and I hope we can get something done before we leave for this week-and-
a-half break.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, we now have the preliminary scanning of 
the amendments that have been passed by the Parliamentarian. We would 
be pleased to share that information with any Senator who has an 
amendment. The Senator from Louisiana does have the floor until someone 
is ready to offer an amendment or speak on the bill. We urge Members to 
come and start the process. We are prepared to handle amendments. On 
some amendments we will make a point of order as to germaneness, but we 
are trying to be as broad as possible in consideration of Members' 
amendments so we can finish late today, if possible.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to yield to 
Senator Landrieu at a later moment when she comes to the floor, 30 
minutes or more of the hour--30 minutes, I will yield to Senator 
Landrieu, postcloture.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). The Senator from Washington.


  Transportation, Treasury, HUD, and General Government Appropriations

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to urge the Senate 
leadership to call up H.R. 3058, the Transportation, Treasury, HUD, and 
General Government appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006, once the 
Department of Defense appropriations bill is done.
  We all want to make our country strong again. We all want to make our 
communities strong again. One way to do that is to invest in our 
transportation infrastructure, in public housing, and in the other 
priorities that are part of that important bill.
  Every day we go without a Transportation-Treasury bill is a day that 
we fall short of making the investments we need to make to strengthen 
this country. We are not talking about our physical infrastructure, we 
are talking about our own safety. As I will show in a moment, the 
failure of the Senate to bring up the Transportation-Treasury bill 
could actually be threatening the safety of every American who flies on 
a commercial air carrier.
  A floor debate on the Transportation-Treasury bill is long overdue. 
The House of Representatives passed this bill more than 3 months ago. 
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported this bill almost 2\1/2\ 
months ago. Today we are almost a full week into fiscal year 2006, and 
still the Senate has been denied an opportunity to consider and debate 
and pass this important bill. The Senate needs to debate and pass this 
bill so we can avoid the unruly and unfair process of funding the 
Government through another Omnibus appropriations bill. The Senate 
needs to debate and pass this bill so all of the Senators, not just 
those on the Appropriations Committee, can have an opportunity to 
consider and, if necessary, amend that bill. The Senate needs to debate 
and pass this bill so we can urgently address the critical needs of our 
transportation and public housing sectors, including the pressing need 
to protect the safety of all of our citizens.
  Mr. President, 2002 was the most recent year in which the 
Transportation appropriations bill was sent to the President as a 
freestanding measure. I was chair of the subcommittee at that time. 
Ever since then, the funding for the agencies under the subcommittee's 
jurisdiction has been enacted as part of a series of unwieldy Omnibus 
appropriations bills. The process by which these bills were put 
together did not reflect well on the Senate. It did not reflect well on 
the Congress as a whole.
  Last year's process was the worst of all. Last year, the 
Transportation, Treasury, and General Government appropriations bill 
for fiscal year 2005 was never even debated in the Senate. Once the 
appropriations bill was reported by the Appropriations committee, the 
bill languished for months before Congress went home for an election. 
Then, just before Thanksgiving, Congress reconvened and tried, in 3 
days, to assemble a final conference report for dozens of major Federal 
agencies, even though the Senate had never even passed many of the 
appropriations bills that funded those agencies.
  I think Members of all political stripes in both the House and in the 
Senate recognized how poorly the public and the Congress were served by 
that process. In January, everyone said we will not do that again. We 
heard it from the leadership of both the House and the Senate and from 
the new leadership of the House and the Senate appropriations 
committees. I am glad they said it back in January. But from where I 
sit as the ranking member of the Transportation-Treasury Subcommittee, 
it sure looks to me as though we are now heading toward another Omnibus 
appropriations bill.
  The bottom line is this. The Transportation-Treasury bill has been 
sitting on this calendar, ready to be called up, for almost 2\1/2\ 
months. If we want to avoid another Omnibus appropriations bill, we 
need to call up and pass that bill as soon as we are done with this 
Defense bill.
  This process of sending bills approved by the Appropriations 
Committee directly to conference without appropriate debate on the 
Senate floor is not just grossly unfair to Democratic Senators, it is 
grossly unfair to all of the 72 Senators who do not sit on the 
Appropriations Committee. The appropriations bill that Senator Bond and 
I are recommending to the Senate was approved unanimously by the 
Appropriations Committee back in mid-July. It proposes to spend over 
$137 billion.
  These are not just tax dollars that were collected in Missouri or 
collected in Washington or collected in States represented by members 
of the Appropriations Committee, these are tax dollars that were 
collected from all Americans. Since that is true, every Senator should 
have the opportunity to debate this bill and pass judgment on our 
recommendations. Every Senator should be given an opportunity to amend 
that bill.
  We need to avoid another Omnibus to ensure a fair process. There are 
also some very practical programmatic reasons why we must call up and, 
importantly, pass this Transportation-Treasury bill as soon as 
possible. Now the Government is functioning under a continuing 
resolution. Under the requirements of that resolution, programs that 
are funded in the Transportation-Treasury bill are all operating at 
either the lower of the funding levels passed by the House of 
Representatives back in June or at the level the program was funded in 
fiscal year 2005. Some observers have speculated we could be operating 
under this continuing resolution until Christmas.
  It would take hours for me to list all the programs and national 
needs that will suffer if they are required to operate for any length 
of time under the funding restrictions of this continuing resolution. 
If we do not get agreement

[[Page 22453]]

soon to debate the Transportation-Treasury bill, I may well take up a 
lot of the Senate floor time to explain each and every one of them.
  But today I want to focus on one topic and that is the topic of 
aviation safety and what our failure to move this Transportation-
Treasury appropriations bill means for millions of Americans who travel 
by air in this country today. Over the last few years, our national 
aviation enterprise--our airlines, our airports, and the FAA--have been 
under an unprecedented amount of financial pressure. We now have no 
fewer than six airlines in bankruptcy. If jet fuel prices do not start 
declining soon, that number could grow even higher.
  In the interests of cutting costs, airlines on which you and I travel 
have been cutting back on staff, have been renouncing their pension 
plans, and have been outsourcing an increasing percentage of their 
aircraft maintenance.
  I know many other Senators, including myself, travel home almost 
every weekend, and we have all noticed the changes in the service the 
airlines offer. Staffing is leaner than ever and we have a lot of 
flight delays. Mechanical problems are on the rise. One important area 
of cost cutting has been the airlines' continuing efforts to contract 
out their aircraft maintenance activities to third parties, including, 
you all should know, overseas vendors known as foreign repair stations.
  In the past, airlines maintained their planes with experienced 
veteran unionized mechanics. Today, they outsource more than 50 
percent, more than half of their maintenance work, to independent 
operators. Airlines such as Northwest send some of their aircraft as 
far as Singapore and Hong Kong for heavy maintenance.
  We have one major carrier, Jet Blue, that sends a large portion of 
their Airbus fleet to be maintained in El Salvador, Central America. 
That is where their planes are maintained.
  America West Airlines, now merged with U.S. Airways, does the same 
thing.
  Many of us watched in fear a few weeks ago when a Jet Blue A-320 was 
required to make an emergency landing at the Los Angeles International 
Airport. As we all watched on television, we saw its front landing gear 
facing sideways, at 90 degrees. That was not the first time the landing 
gear didn't engage correctly. In fact, it was not the 5th time, it was 
not even the 10th time, it was the 14th time that the FAA learned of 
the front landing gear of an A-320 aircraft not engaging correctly.
  According to the FAA, these 14 dangerous and frightening mishaps have 
occurred as a result of 5 separate and distinct causes.
  It is the job of the FAA inspectors to find out why these problems 
happen and to force the plane's manufacturer to fix that problem. We 
cannot afford to have an understaffed or an overwhelmed FAA safety 
office.
  Our airlines are going through a period of dramatic and rapid change. 
That puts an extraordinary amount of stress on the aircraft inspection 
function of the Federal Aviation Administration.
  We have received a disturbing series of reports from the DOT 
Inspector General, from the Government Accounting Office, and the 
National Transportation Safety Board citing deficiencies with the FAA's 
inspection effort.
  In 2004, the NTSB found that deficient maintenance by an outside 
contractor and inadequate oversight by the airline and the FAA 
contributed to the 2003 crash of a commuter flight to Charlotte, NC. 
That crash killed 21 people.
  The DOT Inspector General first identified serious deficiencies with 
the FAA's inspection efforts back in 2002. Just this past June, the IG 
reported that many of those deficiencies have still not been adequately 
addressed.
  The IG found that the FAA focused too much attention on the airline's 
dwindling in-house maintenance function and not enough attention on the 
outsourced maintenance activities of their foreign contractors.
  The IG found that the FAA inspectors were spending too much time 
inspecting maintenance facilities during the day, while a majority of 
the maintenance activities are actually conducted at night.
  The IG found the FAA was doing an insufficient job of its 
surveillance of financially distressed or rapidly growing airlines. And 
the IG found the FAA was not able to meet its own standards for 
frequent inspections because it was short staffed.
  In just the last few weeks, the FAA staffing shortage has become even 
more critical. As these airlines enter bankruptcy, the FAA is 
automatically required to step up its inspections of bankrupt carriers.
  Today, the FAA must give heightened scrutiny to the six bankrupt 
carriers, as well as four other carriers that are in merger 
proceedings.
  Following the liquidation of Eastern Airlines several years ago, a 
number of dramatic and horrifying revelations came out regarding the 
maintenance shortcuts that Eastern took in the interest of conserving 
cash in its waning days. The entire aviation community vowed that there 
would not ever be a repeat of the Eastern Airlines experience.
  I would think with the external recommendations and the record that I 
have just cited, the FAA would now be rapidly hiring more inspectors to 
keep up with its growing and challenging workload. Unfortunately, over 
the course of the last year, the exact opposite has been the case.
  Despite the fact that the Congress granted the FAA's inspections 
office every penny that was sought in the President's budget for fiscal 
year 2005, the office has been required to downsize by roughly 300 
inspectors over the course of just this last year. That is right. As 
the requirements on our FAA inspectors to maintain safety in our skies 
has increased dramatically, the FAA has been downsizing its inspection 
force each and every month.
  This unacceptable situation is one that Senator Bond and I pursued as 
part of our hearings with Secretary Mineta this year--and the House 
Appropriations Committee did the same. I am proud to say that on a 
bipartisan and bicameral basis, both the Transportation-Treasury bill 
passed by the House and the bill that has been reported by the Senate 
Appropriations Committee seeks to rectify the situation.
  The House Appropriations Committee provided this office with an 
increase of $4 million over the President's budget request and 
committed those funds to the hiring of additional inspectors.
  The Senate provided an increase of $8 million over the President's 
request, and we directed that funding be used to restore safety 
inspector staffing reductions that occurred during fiscal year 2005.
  Personally, I still question whether we should be doing more in this 
area since we have now had two more airlines in bankruptcy since we 
marked up that appropriations bill.
  But still, these actions on the part of the House and Senate 
committees indicate that Congress, on a bipartisan and a bicameral 
basis, is prepared to address this glaring safety vulnerability, even 
if the administration is not.
  With that said, we can't make any progress in tackling this problem 
if we do not call up and pass the Transportation-Treasury 
appropriations bill.
  Under the current continuing resolution, the agency can make no 
progress in restoring the necessary FAA inspectors to a level that 
could better protect us.
  As I said, this was just one of several reasons it is imperative for 
the Senate leadership to call up the Transportation-Treasury bill.
  I again implore the Senate Republican leadership to call up the 
Transportation-Treasury bill immediately upon the completion of this 
Defense appropriations bill.
  We have to have the opportunity to debate this bill, not just for the 
fairness of our colleagues and to maintain the integrity of the Senate, 
but we must debate this bill and pass it so we can ensure the safety of 
our citizens.


                          VAWA Reauthorization

  Mr. President, I rise today to speak about tbe Violence Against Women 
Act, which the Senate this week passed by unanimous consent.

[[Page 22454]]

  For the last few months, we have been talking about reauthorizing the 
Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, as it is better known.
  Back in 1994, through this historic legislation, we created a 
national strategy for dealing with domestic violence, establishing a 
community-wide response. Since we took that historical step, VAWA has 
been a great success in coordinating victims' advocates, social service 
providers, and law enforcement professionals to meet the immediate 
challenges of combating domestic violence. We can clearly see that VAWA 
has been tremendously effective.
  But there is still work to be done to protect victims of domestic 
violence--particularly when it comes to helping victims break the cycle 
of violence. And that is what I am here to talk about today--breaking 
the cycle of violence.
  Financial insecurity is a major factor in ongoing domestic violence.
  Too often, victims who are not economically self sufficient are 
forced to choose between protecting themselves and their children on 
one hand, and keeping a roof over their head on the other hand. It is 
critical that we help guarantee the economic security of victims of 
domestic or sexual violence who cannot pay the rent without their 
abusive partner, or who have been forced to leave their job because of 
abuse. Without our help, economic dependency will continue to force 
these victims to stay in abusive relationships.
  The purpose of the Violence Against Women Act is to reduce domestic 
violence. The reauthorization legislation addresses several new issues 
that will help prevent and reduce domestic violence. One such--way as I 
already mentioned--is a national health care strategy. But the 
legislation as introduced contained another important tool to helping 
reduce domestic violence--it contained provisions that would have 
allowed victims to take up to 10 days of unpaid leave per year to 
address domestic violence.
  Over 40 percent of American workers get no paid time off. They can't 
use vacation time to address their abuse, and missing work puts them in 
danger of losing their job.
  This provision would have allowed these victims, and many others, to 
take unpaid leave to get a protective order, see a doctor, or make a 
safety plan to address their abuse. But sadly, amidst opposition and 
complaints of jurisdictional issues, these provisions were stripped 
from the bill during consideration in the Judiciary Committee.
  The legislation that was reported out of committee--which the Senate 
just passed by unanimous consent--does not contain any economic 
protections for victims.
  I did not give up on these protections easily. After the leave 
provisions were dropped, I asked the managers of this bill to include 
another economic security provision, unemployment insurance. 
Specifically, I asked them to provide victims of domestic violence, 
dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking with unemployment 
insurance if they have to leave their job or are fired because of 
abuse.
  We know that a job is often the only way for victims to build up 
resources for themselves to eventually leave a violent relationship, 
but abuse and stalking can make it impossible for a victim to keep a 
job.
  We know of cases where abusers will deliberately sabotage a victim's 
ability to work, placing harassing phone calls, cutting off their 
transportation, showing up at the workplace and threatening employees.
  When a victim loses a job because of violence, that victim should 
have access to unemployment insurance compensation benefits.
  Are you aware that a woman is eligible for unemployment benefits if 
she has to leave her job because her husband had to relocate? But in 
many States, if a woman has to leave her job because she is fleeing a 
dangerous situation, she cannot receive the same benefits. That is 
unacceptable.
  Currently, 28 States plus the District of Columbia already provide 
some type of unemployment insurance assistance for victims of domestic 
violence. We can offer that same protection to victims in every State, 
and we have an obligation to do it. But, since this provision is not 
included in VAWA either, we need to do it here and now.
  It is important to recognize that this violence goes far beyond the 
home, too often following victims into the workplace, where it doesn't 
just hurt victims--it hurts their employers, too.
  In fact, from decreased workplace productivity to increased health 
insurance cost, the data shows that domestic violence is bad for 
business. It has real and painful costs on employers. So for those 
Members who want to weigh this measure against its economic merits, the 
facts are clear.
  Providing the tools that will allow abused women to escape abusive 
relationships can help offset billions of dollars in costs that 
domestic violence imposes on businesses.
  As many of my colleagues know, I have been working on the issue of 
economic security for victims for many years. I have spoken with 
victims and their advocates, and employers. In fact, just this past 
Tuesday in my State of Washington, I held a roundtable discussion to 
meet with stakeholders. I heard from an employer--and owner of a small 
business in Snohomish County--who talked about the importance of 
flexible schedules and leave policies that allow employees to address 
their abuse. He said that helping them address their situations helps 
his bottom line.
  I also heard from someone who works at the employment security 
department, who said that the numbers do not suggest that women are 
abusing unemployment insurance. And I heard from a survivor, who shared 
her story and talked about the crucial importance of these economic 
protections.
  These are the voices we must hear. And these are the stories we must 
learn from and let guide our work here in the Senate.
  I am going to keep coming to the Senate as many times as it takes, 
and I will tell these stories until my colleagues realize this is an 
issue that needs to be addressed. We need to provide these victims with 
the economic tools to help escape their dangerous situation.
  For a long time, violence against women was considered a private 
matter. That attitude hurt women. Today, stopping domestic violence is 
everyone's business. That is in large part due to the Violence Against 
Women Act which I was very proud to work on and help pass. For the 
first time, the Violence Against Women Act recognized domestic violence 
as a violent crime and a national public health crisis.
  Economic protections are the next logical step in the progress we 
have been making in fighting domestic violence. Unfortunately, many of 
my colleagues have not realized the critical importance of providing 
these economic protections. I brought this issue up last year when the 
Senate was considering the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I tried to 
amend that bill with my Security and Financial Empowerment, SAFE, Act, 
which contains all the economic protections I have talked about today. 
I was told then it wasn't the right time to address preventing violence 
against women. My amendment was defeated on a party-line vote. I am 
here again talking about how the Senate is failing to address this 
issue and failing to help prevent domestic violence by overlooking 
these economic provisions.
  I reiterate to my colleagues that I will continue to come to the 
Senate and talk about how critical this issue is in helping victims get 
out of abusive relationships. I will continue to introduce legislation 
and offer amendments providing economic protections to victims. I will 
continue to ask whether the Senators in this Chamber are serious about 
talking about the next crucial step to help victims of abuse. I urge 
the conferees on the Violence Against Women Act to send the powerful 
message to victims that they understand how important these economic 
protections are by including them in the conference report on VAWA.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page 22455]]

  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. 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. STEVENS. Mr. President, is the Coburn amendment the pending 
amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on 
the Coburn amendment commence at noon and prior thereto there be a 
period of 10 minutes equally divided with no second-degree amendments 
in order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, in the interim, if any Senator wishes to 
discuss an amendment, we are pleased to proceed. We will accommodate 
any Senator with regard to amendments they wish to discuss. We 
discussed this matter last night with Senator Coburn, and he agreed we 
could initiate a vote on his amendment sometime around noon. We would 
like to proceed on that basis.
  I once again urge Senators to present their amendments or work with 
us with regard to the package we are now discussing on amendments which 
will be accepted without debate.
  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. STEVENS. 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. STEVENS. I wish to announce to the Senate my intention to move to 
make a point of order against all amendments that have been indicated 
by the Parliamentarian to be not germane commencing at 2 o'clock. So if 
any Senator wishes to discuss that category of amendments, we would be 
pleased to discuss them either prior to this vote or after the vote. We 
would like to have a decision made, if possible, as to how many more 
amendments we will deal with today.
  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. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


          Amendments Nos. 1943, as Modified; and 1997, En Bloc

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send to the desk the first managers' 
package for the day. I will present it now. We offer, for Senator Reed 
of Rhode Island, amendment No. 1943, a sense of the Senate on increased 
personnel end strengths, and it has been modified; for Senator 
Mikulski, amendment No. 1997, for laser marksmanship training. I ask 
unanimous consent that these amendments be considered en bloc.
  Mr. INOUYE. No objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
amendments be agreed to en bloc.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
amendments are agreed to en bloc.
  The amendments were agreed to en bloc, as follows:


                    AMENDMENT NO. 1943, as modified

(Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate on the transfer of amounts 
  for increased personnel strengths for the Army and the Marine Corps 
      from Additional War-Related Appropriations to the recurring 
                  appropriations for fiscal year 2006)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. SENSE OF SENATE ON TRANSFER OF FUNDS FOR INCREASED 
                   PERSONNEL STRENGTHS FOR THE ARMY AND MARINE 
                   CORPS.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate makes the following findings:
       (1) A long-term increase in the personnel end strengths for 
     active duty personnel of the Army and the Marine Corps is 
     necessary in order to carry out the current missions of the 
     Army and the Marine Corps and to relieve current strains on 
     Army and Marine Corps forces.
       (2) The cost of the increase in such end strengths is 
     foreseeable and should be included in the annual budget of 
     the President for each fiscal year, as submitted to Congress 
     pursuant to section 1105 of title 31, United States Code, in 
     order to provide a full and honest accounting to the American 
     people of the personnel costs of the Army and the Marine 
     Corps.
       (3) The inclusion in the annual budget of the President for 
     each fiscal year of the costs of an increase in such end 
     strengths will permit the Army and Marine Corps to plan for 
     and accommodate the additional troops contemplated by such 
     increased end strengths without reducing other important 
     programs.
       (b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate that 
     the additional amounts to be required for increases in the 
     personnel end strengths for active duty personnel of the Army 
     and the Marine Corps for fiscal year 2006 should be 
     transferred from amounts appropriated by title IX for the 
     Military Personnel, Army, Military Personnel, Marine Corps, 
     Operation and Maintenance, Army, and Operation and 
     Maintenance, Marine Corps, and Operation and Maintenance, 
     Defense-Wide, accounts to the amounts appropriated for the 
     applicable accounts in titles I and II.


                           AMENDMENT NO. 1997

(Purpose: To provide that, of the amount made available under title III 
 for the Air Force for other procurement, up to $3,000,000 may be made 
         available for the Laser Marksmanship Training System)

       On page 220, after line 25, add the following:
       Sec. 8116. Of the amount appropriated by title III under 
     the heading ``Other Procurement, Air Force'', up to 
     $3,000,000 may be made available for the Laser Marksmanship 
     Training System.

  Mr. STEVENS. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. INOUYE. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WARNER. 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. 2005

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, Senator Levin and I are currently 
conducting a hearing of the Armed Services Committee. Both of us 
believed it was imperative to come to the Chamber and express to the 
Senate our strong objection to the amendment offered by our 
distinguished colleague, Senator Coburn. I give this by way of 
background.
  The Committee on Armed Services for some time has been, frankly, 
encouraging the Department to take steps to try to put in place a 
system that would revise the older means by which travel was 
accommodated for members of the Department and others. It is a very 
extensive number of individuals who are affected. The Department did 
put in place a program, albeit rather slowly. Nevertheless, it is now 
in place.
  Congress, through the years, has criticized the Department for not 
providing better business practices, specifically for the inadequate 
oversight of their travel programs. Criticism centered around a growing 
number of separate, nonintegrated travel systems which did not provide 
the information required for DOD or congressional oversight. Therefore, 
the Defense Travel System was created by the DOD to address these 
criticisms and the desperate need to make this system work more cost-
effectively.
  Comparing the Defense Travel System to the legacy systems is 
inappropriate because the Defense Travel System performs different 
functions. The legacy systems are travel reservation systems. The DTS, 
as it is known, reengineers these legacy systems into a travel and 
financial management system which links 30 defense data and financial 
processing systems with the consequent lower transaction and processing 
fees and lower personnel costs. DTS is saving both people and money. A 
return to the legacy systems will require additional people, which is 
not funded. As DTS is further implemented, additional savings will be 
achieved.
  Our joint plea is to allow DTS to remain in place and give it a 
reasonable chance to function and prove its goals.

[[Page 22456]]

According to the GAO, the ``continued use of the existing legacy travel 
systems results in underutilization of DTS and affects the savings that 
DTS was planned to achieve.'' This includes paying higher processing 
costs through the legacy systems' manual travel vouchers as opposed to 
the processing of the travel vouchers electronically through DTS.
  The GAO and the Department of Defense have briefed the Armed Services 
Committee staff that they believe DTS should be given a reasonable 
opportunity to continue to resolve the Department's travel programs.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia for his 
comments.
  This amendment does not eliminate DTS. It says that instead of 
continuing to pay $40 or $50 million a year for the 5.6 million 
travelers who travel, we will pay a fee based on DTS's operations. The 
Federal Government doesn't own this program. In fact, anybody who looks 
at the development of this program will say it is way too expensive to 
have been accomplished in the way it was accomplished. That is another 
issue. That is contracting within the DOD, and there are problems with 
that.
  I remind the most distinguished Senator from Virginia, this doesn't 
eliminate DTS. It allows it to continue to function. But what it says 
is we are not going to continue to pay money for a program we don't 
own, and we will start paying it on a per-travel basis.
  What are the facts around it? Three hundred and seventy-five thousand 
out of 5.6 million travel vouchers last year went through the DTS 
system. That is $1,500 per episode, not including the travel. So what 
we actually have is a system way more expensive than any system that 
has been developed in the private sector.
  I am not against using the DTS system. I am all for giving it a 
chance to save us money. We have invested in it. What this amendment 
says is that we don't eliminate DTS; we just start paying on a per-
travel basis and a per-utilization basis. That way, we don't continue 
to spend $50 million a year for a program we don't own. We should own 
it for what we pay for it, and there shouldn't be any cost.
  I would be happy to modify my amendment to what would meet with the 
needs of the Senator from Virginia, but I don't believe we should 
continue to spend, in the contracting sequence this has gone through, 
the same amount of money. If we allow DTS to continue to be out there 
and utilize the reporting capability of it but pay it on a per-ticket 
use rather than a blank check for a contract, the taxpayer will get 
much more benefit from it. If it performs, the contractor will make 
more money. If it doesn't perform, we will save a ton of money for the 
country. That is the purpose of the amendment.
  Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma has the floor.
  Mr. COBURN. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. STEVENS. We entered a time limit to have this vote occur at 12. 
In view of the exchange that is going on--and another Senator also 
wants to talk--I ask unanimous consent that the vote take place at 
12:10 and the time between now and then be divided between Senator 
Coburn and anyone who wishes to speak on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I must say, I am impressed with the 
thoroughness with which our colleague has researched this issue and the 
fervor with which he speaks. But I pose this question: The Department 
of Defense estimates it will cause a 3-year delay and cost some $65 
million to change the contract structure. I reiterate my strong 
opposition to the amendment because I don't think the Department has 
had the time operating DTS to adequately prove the principles and the 
goals they wished to achieve.
  I recognize other colleagues wish to speak. I thank my colleague for 
the opportunity to have a colloquy.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, 3 more years? We have spent 7 years and 
$500 million on this system. That is a half a billion dollars. That is 
$2 for every man, woman, and child in this country for a travel system 
that you could have bought off the shelf for $150 million in 2 or 3 
years. The contracting issue is a different issue. If it is going to 
take 3 more years at $50 million a year, that means we are going to be 
at $650 million for this travel system. That is unacceptable. I believe 
we ought to say perform or don't perform and put it at a per-unit cost. 
Why is it that only 370,000 out of 5.6 million travel episodes were 
used on this system at the end of 7 years?
  We have a structural problem in contracting through the Defense 
Department, as well as many other departments in our Government. What 
started out to be a $60 million project is now going to end up being 
$650 million. It is the same issue we face with FEMA today in terms of 
being efficient.
  I ask my colleagues to think about how this will still continue if we 
do it on a per-travel basis. First, it will increase the stimulus to 
get the job done and completed because there will be more revenue, the 
more people who use it. Two, it will limit the total amount of money 
the taxpayers are going to end up having to pay for this system. Three, 
it will send a message to the contract officers at the Pentagon that 
creep in terms of contracting is not acceptable. There are some real 
questions on whether this process violated the contracting laws at the 
Pentagon. I assure my fellow Senators, through the Federal Financial 
Oversight Committee, if this continues, we are going to have some 
hearings to look at the issue of violation of the contracting laws at 
the Pentagon. We should not have to do that.
  Let's limit the exposure of the American people to the cost. I am not 
upset at the contractor who is doing this. The problem is, it is a big 
task, but it has cost way too much. Let's provide some stimulus to 
finish the job and make sure the job is done well rather than continue 
to throw money at it.
  With that, I yield the floor at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I very much respect the Senator from 
Oklahoma. He is a man who is a watchdog on the taxpayers' money, and so 
am I. I know he is very conversant on a variety of issues. It is one of 
those occasions I must rise in opposition to the Senator's amendment.
  Congress, several years ago, authorized the Defense Travel System 
with the aim of saving taxpayers' dollars, and that makes a great deal 
of sense to make sure that travel administration by the Department of 
Defense has greater scrutiny. In fact, as I understand it, they have 
found by doing it this way--and it is only being field tested; it is 
not fully implemented--those who are traveling at first-class and 
tickets being paid for where travel wasn't used. This system is 
actually helping save the taxpayers money and also identifying when 
Government workers are flying at a higher cost than they ought to.
  I am told that it is now used at a little bit more than half of the 
Department of Defense 11,000 sites by nearly 700,000 uniformed and 
civilian personnel. It appears, from what I have looked at, that DTS 
has not only met but exceeded its original objectives. It is not fully 
put in place. It is being field tested. As a practical matter, we would 
like another year or so to see it fully implemented. I am told that it 
has handled more than a million transactions, and it is well on its way 
to saving the projected $56 million a year for the American taxpayers.
  As to efficiency and savings, any GSA solution will strip away what 
are planned savings and actually increase operations costs. This is the 
information I have been trying to gather on this since Senator Coburn 
offered the amendment. It would actually increase operation costs from 
$40 to $60 million annually. Senator Warner used the figure of $65 
million. Regardless, there would be an added cost.

[[Page 22457]]

  One thing the Senator from Oklahoma mentioned is that the Department 
of Defense does not actually own this software system and that what the 
Department of Defense, though, has done is it has appropriate license 
rights to the DTS software system in accordance with Federal 
acquisition regulations. While there are these allegations from outside 
parties that criticize the DTS program on the basis that the Government 
failed to obtain title to the DTS software, what is ignored is that the 
Federal acquisitions regulations provide that in the vast majority of 
Federal contracts, the Government does not take title, but instead it 
is given a license to the software. And the Department of Defense has 
secured appropriate license rights to all the developed software and 
third-party software products used by DTS.
  The Senator from Oklahoma stated that this contract may violate the 
very laws that were put on the books to try to maintain competition in 
contracting. I don't know whether it was an assertion or a conclusion.
  I respectfully disagree. The legality of the restructuring of the DTS 
contract has been challenged in court. From what our research has 
shown, no court has found that the entire restructured contract was 
illegal. It simply stated no part of the contract, as currently 
configured, has been found by any court to be illegal. Maybe it will be 
in the future, and we will see.
  Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. ALLEN. Let me finish and then the Senator can respond. I say to 
my friend from Oklahoma, I do have a great deal of respect for him. He 
is truly a steward of the taxpayers' money. I pride myself, also, in 
being a good steward of the taxpayers' dollars. I know there have been 
hearings on this DTS program. We need to continue to examine this issue 
and, in fact, a lot of others. To cut funding right now for this 
program would be a hasty action and, from all the information I have 
been able to glean, would actually increase the cost to the taxpayers.
  The Department of Defense does oppose this amendment. They called my 
office a short time ago expressing this opposition. They promised to 
review the GAO report as soon as possible. I do think the more prudent 
approach is to, of course, commend the Senator from Oklahoma for any 
kind of scrutiny. No spending should not be under the watchful eye of 
us as stewards of the taxpayers' dollars. But because of a lack of 
understanding on the part of the Senators on the floor and this 
amendment, this should continue to be studied.
  I will oppose this amendment and work, such as all of us, to study 
this issue further. I hope my colleagues will oppose the amendment.
  Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. I underestimated the amount of time needed. Senator 
Levin wishes to speak. I ask unanimous consent that the vote take place 
at 12:15 p.m. and that the additional time be divided between the 
Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, and the Senator from Michigan, Mr. 
Levin.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Graham). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALLEN. I yield the floor.
  Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. ALLEN. Yes, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. I don't have any problems in putting a lid on this 
contract, but let's have a little history. The reason the judge could 
not find a violation in the Competition in Contracting Act was because 
the Pentagon did not own the software. By design, they cannot have it 
if they do not own it.
  It was interesting, before the hearing last week, the contractor 
offered to give the property rights to the Pentagon. In the testimony 
last week, it was noted that DTS performs less effectively than almost 
every other civilian e-travel system.
  We are 7 years into it. We are going to spend another $150 million. 
Also, in the history of the contract, this is another no-bid contract 
that I know Senator Levin is very interested in. It is a cost plus--
$43.7 million in the first year, that was not in the contract, and we 
went on and paid it for anyway.
  Based on what is happening with the contracting and how we are 
getting around the Competition in Contracting Act, I believe we need 
some real sunshine on this.
  The fact is, we are going to spend another $150 million. If the 
Defense Department would guarantee me that we are not going to spend 
more than another $100 million to get a travel system that we own, not 
licensed, but we own, since we are going to pay $650 million for 
something that should have cost $150 million, then I would be happy to 
withdraw this amendment. But you cannot get an assurance out of the 
Pentagon what the cost is going to be because there is not any end in 
sight in the cost.
  We don't own it. They have offered to because of that, but once the 
Pentagon owns the contract and the rights to this, then the Competition 
in Contracting Act goes into force, and then there is a basis for the 
violation.
  So the reason the judge ruled the way he ruled was because we did not 
have ownership to the property. So, therefore, there was no basis for 
the claim. I understand that, but that is the reason that was not given 
to the Pentagon, that the Competition in Contracting Act could not be 
enforced.
  I am happy to drop this issue if somebody will stand up and say there 
is a limit to how much we are going to spend. We have already spent 
four times what the public should have spent on any system. No private 
business would have spent this amount of money for this system. Nobody 
would have.
  We ought to look at it very hard. Give me the assurance that there is 
an end to this and that it is more efficient than anything we could 
have done otherwise, and I will drop my look at it.
  I believe the way to stimulate responsibility in this contract is to 
put it on a per-issue basis now to make it work.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I reclaim my time and then I will yield. I 
also share with my colleagues that the judge who reviewed this case did 
not find a violation, for whatever technical reasons Senator Coburn may 
say, but the adjudication was there is no violation. The judge also 
said that to start over would be a mistake.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for one comment?
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The opposition has 6 minutes. The Senator from 
Oklahoma has 3 minutes 21 seconds.
  Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to claim my time.
  Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator is seeking recognition on his time, I have 
no objection.
  Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, are we going to have a judge decide on the 
basis of economics whether we start over? What does that have to do 
with adjudication? He is making an economic decision for us. That is 
our job. That is not the judge's job. It doesn't matter whether he says 
it will be more expensive; that is not his role. That is part of our 
problem in the judiciary today. That is not his role. That is our role.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment of 
the Senator from Oklahoma. I do so with some reluctance, actually, 
because I have great admiration for the Senator from Oklahoma and his 
efforts to curtail waste in the Government. I have joined him on a 
number of those efforts. As a matter of fact, I very much admire his 
efforts and the efforts of the subcommittee he chairs to go after 
waste. I think he is going too far in this particular case, and he is 
going after an effort to try to integrate the thousands--literally 
thousands--of financial management systems in the Department of 
Defense.

[[Page 22458]]

  We had a chart a few years back with a box for each financial 
management system in the Department of Defense, perhaps half the size 
of the curtain behind the Presiding Officer. There were thousands of 
boxes on that chart. We told the Department of Defense: You have to get 
your house in order; you have to get some financial management in the 
Department of Defense so that we can tell whether your expenditures--so 
that you can tell and then we, as oversight people, can tell--are those 
expenditures authorized; do your managers know how much you are 
spending on what; is the payment automatic when these expenditures are 
made?
  For instance, for travel, when a ticket is purchased, is that ticket 
paid for automatically the way it should be by a computer if it is 
authorized or is there going to have to be someone, as the status quo 
provides, cutting a check for the travel? That costs money. It may not 
appear in the cost of the ticket of the one transaction that may be the 
``cheapest'' transaction, according to some system, but there is a cost 
to pay for that transaction.
  We want the payment to be automatic when the transaction is 
authorized. We want the ability of managers to know what is being 
spent, is the travel authorized, can you go back and track the travel 
automatically?
  Now we have thousands of systems out there, with thousands of 
managers, not integrated into a system, where the kind of management 
that is so essential in the Pentagon can occur.
  That is the problem with the amendment. It goes back to a focus on 
individual transactions to purchase tickets rather than to make a 
system to buy the travel part of an integrated management system.
  Look, we put a lot of pressure on the Pentagon. We have put a huge 
amount of pressure on it to come up with some financial management 
capability. They have been a failure at it. Now they are trying to do 
it--they have not succeeded, by the way. This system has plenty of bugs 
in it. As the Senator from Oklahoma properly points out, there are bugs 
in this system. But we don't kill the effort to try to get integrated 
financial management so there is some accountability for the funds that 
are spent by the Pentagon.
  We do not want to go back to ground zero. We want to try to make this 
work. And the problem with this amendment is that it goes too far 
because it says:

       None of the funds appropriated by this Act may be obligated 
     or expended for further development, deployment, or operation 
     of any web-based, end-to-end travel management system, or 
     services under any contract for such travel services that 
     provides for payment by the Department of Defense to the 
     service provider--

  Except for a fixed-fee transaction payment.
  That puts us back to millions of individual transactions which are 
unaccountable and for which we cannot have proper oversight. That is 
the problem.
  I admire the Senator's goal in trying to come up with a system which 
is better than the one we are now proceeding to acquire. We are going 
to work out the bugs, hopefully, in that system. But I disagree to 
going back to ground zero because we have to get some integrated 
financial management at the Pentagon. That is the purpose of this DTS 
system.
  It has not yet been achieved. I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma, 
it has not been achieved, but I don't think we ought to blow up the 
effort and go back to ground zero.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan for his 
comments. This does not go back to ground zero. This leaves the DTS 
system intact. What it says is we are going to pay a fee for every 
transaction you do. We have spent $500 million on this and, as the 
Senator from Virginia said, we are up to $600,000 out of the 3.6 
million transactions.
  I can think of no better incentive to have the bugs worked out of it 
by the contractor than to get more of the 3.6 million transactions. It 
does not eliminate this. It does not take us back to ground zero. It 
leaves DTS intact. It says the way we are going to pay for it, from now 
on, is on a per-transaction basis, rather than a fixed amount or $50 
million plus cost that is going to run, which we see now is at least 3 
years, at least another $150 million.
  We have 3.6 million transactions per year that are going to go 
through there. It does not do what the Senator claims. It does not 
eliminate DTS. It does not cause any change in the implementation of 
the program, other than pay for it on a per-transaction basis. The 
taxpayers ought to be willing to say: Hey, if it is going to work, it 
is going to work, and we will pay for it as it works now. We have spent 
half a billion dollars.
  I reserve my time.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 1 minute 22 seconds remaining.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, again, I thank my friend from Oklahoma. 
This is a prohibition on spending any additional money to operate any 
Web-based, end-to-end management system. That is what is in the 
language. It says you cannot spend any more money. We can't get the 
bugs out, which is what we should do if you can't spend any more money 
to improve this system.
  The Senator from Oklahoma goes back to an individual transaction 
system which does not provide the ability to determine whether travel 
is authorized, does not permit the people who are responsible to pay 
for the travel to know whether it is authorized and to pay for it by 
computer automatically. We have millions of transactions that are going 
to have to be paid for individually instead of part of the end-to-end 
system.
  So if the Senator had allowed for the correction of this system to 
work out the bugs, that would be one thing. But it does not. This says 
you cannot spend any more money on a Web-based system, and that is the 
mistake of this amendment. That is why it goes too far, although it is 
well intended.
  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, will my colleague from Michigan yield 
time? I wish to speak on this issue in support of it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has no more time to yield. The 
Senator from Oklahoma has 1 minute 20 seconds.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I will speak for a short time and then 
give my colleague from Minnesota a chance to finish, even though he 
opposes my amendment.
  The Pentagon has the ability to set that transaction fee on a per 
basis. They will be able to still fund it. If there ends up being a 
million people this next year and they charge $30 per fund, they will 
get $30 million out of it.
  The point is, the Pentagon has the flexibility to do it that way.
  I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I support the intent of what my colleague 
from Oklahoma wants to do. He wants to clean up this system. We had a 
hearing on this issue last week. The Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations had a hearing on this issue, and we have questions out 
to the DOD, out to the GAO, and we have a commitment from the Under 
Secretary of Defense to work with us.
  I have said if we cannot get the right answers we should pull the 
plug, but now is not the time to pull the plug. We do oversight for a 
reason. We are in the process of oversight. Let us get answers to the 
questions, but clearly then we want to have the right kind of system. 
So I agree with the intent of what my colleague is trying to 
accomplish, but this is not the way to do it or the time to do it. Let 
us finish our investigative work. Let us get the answers, and then we 
can bring this issue up at another time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. STEVENS. On behalf of Senator Inouye and myself, I move to table 
the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma and ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.

[[Page 22459]]

  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The following Senators were necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Colorado (Mr. Allard), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Hatch).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Corzine) 
was necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 65, nays 32, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 253 Leg.]

                                YEAS--65

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allen
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bond
     Bunning
     Burns
     Carper
     Chafee
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeWine
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Frist
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hutchison
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Shelby
     Smith
     Specter
     Stevens
     Talent
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner

                                NAYS--32

     Bayh
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Brownback
     Burr
     Byrd
     Cantwell
     Coburn
     Dayton
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Durbin
     Feingold
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Inhofe
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lincoln
     McCain
     Nelson (FL)
     Obama
     Sessions
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Sununu
     Thomas
     Thune
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Allard
     Corzine
     Hatch
  The motion was agreed to.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. INOUYE. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 1896

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we now call 
up the Dayton amendment, No. 1896.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Dayton] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 1896.

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

 (Purpose: To appropriate, with an offset, an additional $120,000,000 
  for Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide, for certain child and 
      family assistance benefits for members of the Armed Forces)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:
       Sec. __. (a) Additional Amount for Operation and 
     Maintenance, Defense-Wide.--The amount appropriated by title 
     II under the heading ``Operation and Maintenance, Defense-
     Wide'' is hereby increased by $120,000,000.
       (b) Availability for Child and Family Assistance 
     Benefits.--Of the amount appropriated by title II under the 
     heading ``Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide'', as 
     increased by subsection (a), $120,000,000 may be available as 
     follows:
       (1) $100,000,000 may be available for childcare services 
     for families of members of the Armed Forces.
       (2) $20,000,000 may be available for family assistance 
     centers that primarily serve members of the Armed Forces and 
     their families.
       (c) Offset.--
       (1) In general.--Subject to paragraph (2), the amount 
     appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act for the 
     Missile Defense Agency is hereby reduced by $120,000,000.
       (2) Limitation.--The reduction in paragraph (1) shall not 
     be derived from amounts appropriated or otherwise made 
     available by this Act for the Missile Defense Agency and 
     available for missile defense programs and activities of the 
     Army.

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time 
between 2 p.m. and 2:15 be equally divided between the sponsor and the 
managers of the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. And that there be no second-degree amendments but any 
motion in relation to this amendment be in order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


             Amendments Nos. 1929, 2000, and 1924, En Bloc

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have a managers' package. I send it to 
the desk. In this package is an amendment for Senator Levin, No. 1929, 
for the medium tactical vehicle modifications; Senator Levin, No. 2000, 
pertaining to Indian tribes; and, Senator Kennedy, No. 1924, for humvee 
integrated starters.
  I ask unanimous consent that these three amendments be considered en 
bloc.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. I ask for consideration of those amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
  If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendments en bloc.
  The amendments were agreed to en bloc, as follows:


                           AMENDMENT NO. 1929

  (Purpose: To make available $5,000,000 from Research, Development, 
 Test, and Evaluation, Army, for Medium Tactical Vehicle Modifications)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:
       Sec. __. Of the amount appropriated by title IV under the 
     heading ``Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation, 
     Army'', up to $5,000,000 may be used for Medium Tactical 
     Vehicle Modifications.


                           AMENDMENT NO. 2000

 (Purpose: To provide that the governments of Indian tribes be treated 
as State and local governments for purposes of the disposition of real 
 property recommended for closure in the report to the President from 
    the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, July 1993)

       On page 220, after line 25, insert the following:
       Sec. 8116. Section 8013 of the Department of Defense 
     Appropriations Act, 1994 (Public Law 103-139; 107 Stat. 1440) 
     is amended by striking ``the report to the President from the 
     Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, July 1991'' 
     and inserting ``the reports to the President from the Defense 
     Base Closure and Realignment Commission, July 1991 and July 
     1993''.


                           AMENDMENT NO. 1924

  (Purpose: To make available $1,000,000 from Research, Development, 
 Test, and Evaluation, Army, for Integrated Starter/Alternator for Up-
             Armored High Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicles)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:
       Sec. __. Of the amount appropriated by title IV under the 
     heading ``Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation, 
     Army'', up to $1,000,000 may be used for Integrated Starter/
     Alternator for Up-Armored High Mobility Multi-Wheeled 
     Vehicles.

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. INOUYE. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we are going to try to work through this 
bill. The bill is open to debate. I will be pleased to take up any 
other amendments Senators might bring before us.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Martinez). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________