[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17082-17084]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            AN AMPLE AGENDA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I salute the Democratic leader for his 
opening remarks. This is the beginning of the September session of this 
Congress, as we roll toward the election. The majority leader has 
suggested we will be here for perhaps 3 or 4 weeks. I hope we can work 
together, as Senator Reid suggested, in a bipartisan fashion. There is 
certainly an ample agenda before us, a lot of things we should be 
considering.
  I spent most of August traveling up and down Illinois, in the city of 
Chicago and cities large and small. It is clear to me that there is 
much we need to do.
  Yesterday was Labor Day. Yesterday I noted in the State of Illinois 
that 330,000 workers are making less than what we are proposing as an 
increase in the minimum wage. That means 330,000 individuals got up 
this morning and went to work in Illinois, taking on some of the 
tougher jobs, some of the dirtier jobs, some of the jobs that demand 
more time away from your family, and they are faced with a wage which 
cannot sustain their families.
  Imagine living in a State governed by the Federal minimum wage of 
$5.15 an hour--the same wage, the same level of wage it was 9 years 
ago. For 9 straight years, the Republican Congress and the Republican 
President have refused to increase the minimum wage for the lowest paid 
workers in America. This breaks with tradition.
  Historically, this was a bipartisan issue. We didn't quarrel between 
Democrats and Republicans. We said: For goodness' sake, justice and 
fairness require that you give people who are working so hard for so 
little money an increase once in a while. The cost of living goes up; 
we know that. But for 9 years, the Republicans have said no, no 
increase in the minimum wage.
  But there is an interesting thing to note. During that same 9-year 
period, when we have said that the lowest paid workers in America 
should be stuck at making around $10,000 a year, Congress has voted 
itself an increase in pay of $31,000 a year. We say no to millions of 
American workers, some of them single moms trying to raise their kids 
as best they can. We say no to increasing their minimum wage, and we 
increase the salary of Members of Congress.
  We have taken a stand on the Democratic side. It is not going to 
happen this year. If the Republican majority refuses to increase the 
minimum wage for millions of these workers, there will be no increase 
in congressional pay. It is a small thing, maybe only symbolic, but it 
is an important symbol. Finally, Members of the Senate and Members of 
Congress have to realize there are consequences to their actions.
  Yesterday, on Labor Day, I went to Rock Island, IL--one of our better 
Labor Day parades. Former Senator John Edwards was there. My colleague 
Lane Evans, who is retiring from the House of Representatives, and a 
number of local people all came out to

[[Page 17083]]

speak to those who gathered to recognize the contributions of every 
working American. The No. 1 issue was the minimum wage. We are lucky 
our Governor, Rod Blagojevich, has raised the minimum wage in Illinois 
by State law. Some States have done that. They have given up on waiting 
for the Federal Government to do it.
  If we want to do something before we leave for the November election, 
wouldn't it be good to return to those days when there was bipartisan 
support for an increase in the minimum wage? Couldn't we pass even this 
week an increase in the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour phased in over a 
few years? Shouldn't we at least say to these hard-working Americans 
that we are going to give them a helping hand to raise their children 
and keep their families together, pay for daycare, pay for medicine, 
and food and clothing? That is something we could do.
  There is something else we could do. We have a Medicare prescription 
Part D which provides the possibility of lowering the cost of 
prescription drugs to millions of seniors across America. Before we 
leave, on a bipartisan basis, why don't we say that the Medicare 
Program can bargain with the pharmaceutical companies to get the best 
low prices for seniors across America? That was a glaring omission in 
the original bill. As a result, our seniors under this program are 
paying more today than they should. How do we know this? Because under 
the Veterans' Administration policies, they bargained with the drug 
companies, and for the 22 most frequently prescribed drugs for seniors, 
the VA price for those drugs is substantially lower than what seniors 
are paying today under the Medicare Program.
  So why don't we, on a bipartisan basis, say that we will give to 
seniors across America the same benefit, the same helping hand that we 
give to our veterans; that we will give them lower drug prices? Most of 
these people we are talking about are on fixed incomes. They are trying 
to get by, and the cost of prescription drugs is going up. A helping 
hand for these Americans is something we can achieve, something we can 
do. It is something we ought to focus on in a bipartisan effort in the 
closing days of this session to really help those Americans.
  There are so many other things we can do, and I sincerely hope that 
we do. When you consider the national energy situation, we have noticed 
in the Midwest the price of gasoline started coming down again. I don't 
know if other Members have noticed that. Interesting timing, isn't it? 
As the vacation season ends and Americans are no longer driving across 
the country with their families, burning up more gasoline, the price is 
starting to come down. I would like to believe that this is a trend 
that will continue and the prices will get much lower, but I am not 
confident because what we have seen is that the oil companies that are 
recording the highest profits in their history have the ability to 
raise these prices just as they raised them at gasoline stations around 
your hometown. And we don't have any control in Washington. The best we 
could get was a comment from the President and some of the Republican 
congressional leaders about how unhappy they were with gasoline prices 
but nothing more. There was no serious effort to penalize the oil 
companies that have run up these profits at the expense of families and 
businesses and farmers across America. We need a national energy 
policy.
  As I travel around my State and the country, it is very clear that 
elements of that policy are obvious to most people. We need to have 
more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. The fuel economy of the vehicles 
we drive will do more to lessen our dependence on foreign oil than 
anything else. Sixty percent of the oil we import goes right into the 
tank. So if we want to have a serious effort toward reducing our 
dependence on foreign oil, we need to have more fuel-efficient cars and 
trucks.
  I have tried three different times over the last 4 years to put in a 
new CAFE standard for America so that the makers of these cars and 
trucks will start building better cars and trucks with better 
technology that use less fuel. I can't get a majority, but I think the 
numbers are starting to change. For the first time I am noting that 
some of my Republican colleagues are seriously considering that 
possibility. We should do it. We could put in a new CAFE standard 
before we leave for the election and say to America: This is the 
important first step in moving us toward less dependence on foreign 
oil.
  Today, as we fill up our tanks, hand over our cash and credit cards 
to pay for it, understand that a portion of the money that we pay at 
the gas station ends up in the hands of foreign governments, some of 
which are not on the same wavelength or on the same agenda as the 
United States when it comes to foreign policy. Sadly, some of the 
countries that we are sending money to for oil are using the proceeds 
from that oil to support terrorism. That is unacceptable. We need to 
have an energy policy which reduces our dependence on foreign oil and, 
in fact, burns less fuel when we drive our cars and trucks, not only 
saving us money as individuals and families and businesses but also 
reducing pollution in the process and reducing the threat of global 
warming.
  A lot of families across Illinois come up to me and talk about the 
cost of health care. It has reached a point for some that is sad and 
painful and many times embarrassing. At one of my town meetings, a man 
came up afterwards and said: I am one of those families, those 
uninsured families. I have a sick child. I worry about him. Anyone 
would.
  To think that we have reached a point in America where it is 
acceptable that more and more people have no coverage, no health 
insurance, is something that is not consistent with the values of our 
Nation. We should be working on a bipartisan basis to extend health 
insurance--affordable, quality health insurance--to every American 
family. Estimates are that 48 million Americans are without health 
insurance today, which is roughly 1 out of 6 Americans. That doesn't 
count the millions who have health insurance that is worth little or 
nothing.
  Why are we not taking this on? Why isn't this an issue on which 
Congress focuses? It could be a good bipartisan issue for us to work 
on. When I think of what we have been considering over the last several 
months before the August recess, it is very clear to me that instead of 
a clarion call from Capitol Hill to unite behind an inspired program 
that really moves us forward as a nation, what we have heard is the 
death rattle of a Congress that is dominated by special interest groups 
and those who are looking for a political advantage as we approach the 
November 7 election.
  The first special interest domination is obvious by the trifecta 
bill. If you go to a racetrack--and I have been to a few in Illinois--
and you bet $2 on a trifecta, you know your odds of winning are very 
low. It is a high-stakes bet. It is a high-risk bet. Many more people 
will lose than will win. So it is the right name for the Republican 
program--the trifecta bill--that would give a tax break to the 
wealthiest families in America. Two-tenths of 1 percent--that is, 2 
families out of every 1,000--would get a tax break, and they are the 
wealthiest families in America.
  Senator Frist and his colleagues on the Republican side have said 
this is our highest priority. In the midst of a war when we are asking 
for sacrifice from our brave soldiers, in the midst of a war in Iraq 
when we are asking the families of those soldiers who pray every night 
for their safety to stand by our country, in the midst of a war in Iraq 
where we have spent over $300 billion, with no end in sight, as we 
fight a war that costs us up to $3 billion a week, which requires that 
we cut back on spending at home for education and health care, in the 
midst of this situation, this President and his Republican counterparts 
in Congress have identified as their highest priority cutting taxes for 
the wealthiest people in America.
  This is the first President in the recorded history of the United 
States of America to ever ask for a tax cut in a war, for obvious 
reasons. If you have a budget for the country and then a war on top of 
it, every other President in our history has understood that you

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cannot cut taxes. Most of them have raised taxes to try to pay for the 
war. But not this President, not this Congress; they are cutting taxes 
in the midst of a war, driving us deeper and deeper into deficit--a 
debt which our children and their children will carry for generations. 
That is not fiscally sound. It doesn't add up. To think that is a much 
higher priority to many in the leadership on the other side of the 
aisle is an indication of how far we have moved away from mainstream 
thinking in America.
  A lot of people are dissatisfied with this country's direction. A 
recent poll announced last week that two out of three people in America 
say our Nation is on the wrong track, that we need a new direction, 
that we can do better. We asked them: What is it you are thinking of 
when you speak of this? They say, No. 1, the war in Iraq. Something is 
wrong here. This is not what we were told we would get into. We were 
promised by this administration that removing Saddam Hussein would 
result in the Iraqi people greeting us with open arms, that we would 
see them move toward a democracy and set a standard for the rest of the 
world. Well, here we are in the fourth year of this war, having lost so 
many of our brave soldiers, and we are not close to that goal. There is 
no end in sight. The President's answer is a throwaway phrase: ``Just 
stay the course.''
  The President has said that there won't be a serious discussion of 
removing American troops under his watch. That is up to the next 
President, he said. That means waiting more than 2 years to really 
start bringing American troops home. Is it any wonder the American 
people are upset with that, that they think we need a new direction in 
Iraq?
  They understand that when it comes to the war on terrorism, we were 
attacked on 9/11 by al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and the al-Qaida 
terrorists. I served on the Senate Intelligence Committee at that time. 
The best estimates we had were that there were 20,000 of these willful 
killers around the world who launched that attack on the United States. 
Our intelligence agencies report today that they estimate there are 
50,000 members of al-Qaida around the world. We know that before our 
invasion of Iraq, there was virtually no evidence of al-Qaida in the 
nation of Iraq. Today, al-Qaida has become a potent force, sowing seeds 
of discord within Iraq and launching attacks against American soldiers. 
Al-Qaida's franchise has arrived in Iraq since we invaded.
  So we have a big job ahead of us to make America safe in a dangerous 
world, protect against terrorism. We should go back to where we 
started, when the overwhelming majority of the Senate voted to go after 
al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is a mission not yet 
accomplished. We need to do more to go after al-Qaida. Unfortunately, 
this administration has not focused the resources necessary. They have 
disbanded the effort to find Osama bin Laden in the CIA, a special 
group put together for that purpose. I believe it is time to renew that 
effort, that commitment toward removing al-Qaida to make America safe.
  Mr. President, as we see the agenda before us in the next few weeks, 
there are several things we can move forward with on a bipartisan 
basis: the minimum wage, doing something about Medicare prescription 
Part D, and making certain we move toward a nation with an energy 
policy that will sustain the growth of our economy and not destroy the 
environment in which we live. We can accomplish these things--and we 
should--in the days ahead.

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