[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2463-2467]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF PRIORITY


                                  Iraq

  Mr. DORGAN. This week or next week we will discuss once again the war 
in Iraq--a war that has now lasted longer than World War II. President 
Bush has indicated to the Congress and to the American people he has a 
new strategy. The new strategy he is proposing is to move an additional 
20,000 American troops into Iraq. This morning, the more recent polls 
suggest the President's approval is at 30 percent. Polls also suggest 
the American people do not support deepening our country's involvement 
in Iraq. It is quite clear that the Congress does not support it 
either.
  The decision by the President comes on the heels of the Baker-
Hamilton commission that had some of the best minds in this country--
Republicans and Democrats, old hands and younger people--who took a 
look at this, who understand foreign policy, understand military 
policy, and evaluated what are the potential choices, and decided that 
the deepening of our country's involvement in Iraq would be the wrong 
choice.
  The blue ribbon commission told the President it would be the wrong 
choice to deepen our involvement in Iraq. Yet, the President decided 
that is exactly what he is going to do.
  It is important, I think, as we discuss it this week and next week, 
to understand this Congress will always support the men and women whom 
we have asked to go to battle for our country. I would not support any 
effort by anyone to withdraw funds for our troops. If our troops are 
there, they must have everything they need to complete their mission 
and finish their jobs. But the fact is, in all of these discussions, I 
regret to say the President and Vice President do not have all that 
much credibility. Four years ago they presented to this Congress--much 
of it in top-secret briefings in this Capitol--intelligence that 
supposedly buttressed the Administration's request that Congress pass a 
resolution that would give them the authority to use force against 
Iraq. It turns out now that much of that intelligence was wrong. Much 
of it was just fundamentally wrong. Now we know that those who offered 
the intelligence assessment to Congress knew there were serious doubts 
about it even as they were offering it to Congress as fact. They are 
some of the highest officials in our Government. I wish I did not have 
to say that, but it is the truth.
  It was not good intelligence. For example, take the mobile chemical 
weapons labs that we were told existed for sure. We now understand that 
was the product of a single source of intelligence, a person named 
``Curveball,'' a person who was likely a drunk and a fabricator. On the 
basis of a single source, whom the Germans, who turned Curveball's 
information over to our country, thought not to be reliable or likely 
not to be reliable, we were told by this administration in briefings 
that this was a case that would justify going to war.
  The aluminum tubes. We now understand the aluminum tubes were not for 
the purpose of reconstituting a nuclear threat. We also understand 
there are those in the line of--well, I was going to say the chain of 
command--those at high positions in our Government today who knew there 
was substantial evidence and disagreement from other parts of our 
Government who did not believe the aluminum tubes were for the purpose 
of reconstituting a nuclear effort or nuclear capability in Iraq. Yet, 
that information was withheld from the Congress, probably and 
apparently deliberately withheld from the Congress.
  Yellowcake from Niger: Again, another case of almost exactly the same 
thing.
  It is the case that the Congress was misled by bad intelligence, and 
the American people were misled by that same intelligence. That is not 
me saying that. It is Colonel Wilkerson, who worked 17 years as a top 
assistant to Colin Powell, the Secretary of State,

[[Page 2464]]

who made the case at the United Nations. Colonel Wilkerson, who was 
involved in all that activity, spoke out publicly, and he said it was 
the ``perpetration of a hoax on the American people.'' That is not me. 
Those are the words of a top official who was involved, who was there. 
Yet, no one has had to answer for it, no one.
  Hearings. No oversight hearings by the majority party in the last 
Congress. No one has answered for it.
  Now we have a new Iraqi policy, new warnings about more danger in 
Iraq. But it comes at a time when there is precious little credibility. 
We now find ourselves in Iraq, longer than we were in the Second World 
War, in the middle of a civil war. Most of the violence in Iraq is 
sectarian violence: Sunnis and Shias killing each other; American 
soldiers placed in the middle of a civil war.
  The fact is, the leader of Iraq is now gone, dead. He was executed. 
Saddam Hussein does not exist. The Iraqi people were able to elect 
their own Government. They were able to vote for their own 
constitution. That is done. That is progress. But now Iraq is in the 
middle of a civil war. And to deepen America's involvement in the 
middle of a civil war in Iraq makes little sense to me.
  What does make sense to me is to say to the Iraqis: This is your 
Government, not ours. This belongs to you, not us. And you have a 
responsibility now to provide for your own security.
  Here is what General Abizaid, the head of Central Command, said 2 
months ago. He said:

       I met every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps 
     commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I 
     said, ``in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in 
     more American troops now, does it add considerably to our 
     ability to achieve success in Iraq?'' And they all said no.

  ``I met with every divisional commander.'' ``They said no.''
  Now, General Abizaid, also in testimony 2 months ago, said:

       And the reason [his commanders said no to additional 
     troops] is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy 
     for the Iraqis to rely upon us to do this work. I believe 
     that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, 
     from taking more responsibility for their own future.

  In other words, the Iraqi attitude is: if American troops can do the 
job, that is fine. Let the American troops do the job. Our 
responsibility, it seems to me, is to say to the Iraqi people: This is 
your country, not ours. Security is your responsibility. And if you 
cannot provide for security, the American soldiers cannot do that for 
any great length of time. You have to decide whether you want to take 
your country back.
  Now, as the President says, his change in strategy is to move more 
American troops to Iraq. I want to describe what John Negroponte, the 
head of our intelligence service, said in open testimony to the 
Congress 2 weeks ago:

       Al-Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the 
     greatest threat to U.S. interests, including to the homeland.

  That is testimony from the top intelligence chief in our country: Al-
Qaida is the greatest terrorist threat to U.S. interests, including to 
the homeland. Then let me show you what he says beyond that. He says: 
al-Qaida ``continues to plot attacks against our homeland and other 
targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties. And they 
continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate 
outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan. . . .''
  Understand this is who attacked America: al-Qaida. They described it. 
They boasted about it. They murdered thousands of Americans. They 
attacked America on 9/11. Their leadership is now, according to our top 
intelligence chief, in testimony before this Congress 2 weeks ago, in a 
``secure hideout in Pakistan.''
  It seems to me if there are 20,000 additional soldiers available, job 
one for this country is to eliminate the greatest terrorist threat--the 
greatest terrorist threat--described by the intelligence chief the week 
before last as al-Qaida. It ``poses the greatest threat to U.S. 
interests, including to the homeland.'' He also says they are in secure 
hideaways in Pakistan.
  I do not understand for a moment why the greatest priority for us is 
not to eliminate the most significant terrorist threat to our country 
and to eliminate the leadership of the organization that boasts about 
murdering Americans on 9/11. If that were part of the new strategy, I 
would be here saying: I am for it. But it is not.
  There is not, regrettably, an easy answer or a good answer with 
respect to Iraq. The President described, last fall, prior to the 
election, false choices. He said the choice is between stay the course 
and cut and run. That was always a false choice.
  We have to find a way to resolve this and be able to bring American 
troops home. It is just that simple. We have to say to the Iraqi 
people: This country belongs to you, and you have responsibilities. 
Meet those responsibilities.
  We have responsibilities here at home--plenty of them--and we need to 
turn inward to meet those responsibilities. That does not mean we 
should pay no attention to what is going on around the world. But we 
also need to begin taking care of things here at home.
  I was at a meeting in Minneapolis, a listening session with American 
tribes this weekend. Let me tell you what one fellow stood up and said. 
He was a tribal chair, a chairman of the tribe. He said: My two 
daughters are living in rehabilitated trailers that were brought to our 
reservation from Michigan. They heat those trailers with wooden stoves. 
The trailers have no plumbing. There is no running water and no indoor 
toilets. This is in South Dakota. Sound like something in a Third World 
country? He said: One of my daughters has eight children. The other has 
three. They live in donated trailers that came from Michigan, with no 
water and no toilet. And they heat it with a wood stove. Sound like the 
United States? No, it doesn't to me. It sounds like a Third World 
country. We have lots of people in this country living on Indian 
reservations in Third World conditions. We are told there is not enough 
money to respond to their housing, education, and health care needs. 
That is wrong.
  We are going to have presented to us in a couple weeks another 
proposal for as much as $120 billion in emergency spending to deal with 
Iraq and Afghanistan. That will bring to roughly $600 billion what we 
have provided for the war. But when we have needs here at home, it does 
not matter whether it is health care needs or housing or perhaps energy 
needs, the Administration tells us we cannot afford to spend for that.
  Well, we have afforded now what is going to be about $600 billion 
that the President has requested, all on an emergency basis, most of it 
for the war in Iraq. So we will debate and have great controversy, I 
assume, in the next couple weeks on the issue of a resolution dealing 
with Iraq. But controversy is not a stranger to the floor of the 
Senate.


                         Minimum Wage Increase

  Mr. President, we have a provision on the floor of the Senate today 
that should have been completed long ago dealing with the minimum wage. 
I mentioned the other day when I was talking about issues that come to 
the floor of the Senate that butter the bread of big interests, man, 
they float through here like greased lightning. We do not get it 
through fast enough, at least in the last Congress. Do you want to give 
a big tax break to the biggest interests in the country? Be my guest. 
We get it through here in 1, 2, 3 days.
  Do you want to help the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, 
the people who make the beds in hotel rooms for the minimum wage, the 
people across the country in convenience stores getting the minimum 
wage--often working two, three jobs a day, 60 percent of whom are 
women, one-third of whom are working at the minimum wage for the only 
income for their family--well, then, you have some trouble because then 
it is going to get stalled. That does not get through here quickly 
because that hallway is not clogged with people representing the folks 
who are making the minimum wage and working two jobs a day.
  It is just a fact, and it is a shame. We need to take care of some 
things here at home, and we need to do so soon.

[[Page 2465]]

This minimum wage bill is not rocket science, nor should it be heavy 
lifting for any of us here. It has been 10 years since those who worked 
at the bottom of the economic ladder have had any adjustment in the 
minimum wage--10 years.
  I mentioned the other day, what about a ``maximum wage''? I am not 
proposing one. But I can tell you that the head of one of the largest 
oil companies in our country, when he left his company, was making 
$150,000 a day in total income. Can you imagine that, $150,000 a day?
  Then when he left, the papers reported, in addition to having made 
$150,000 a day, he got a $400 million parachute on the way out. Anybody 
standing around here squawking about that? No, no complaints about 
that. It is the little guy, the person at the bottom. After 10 years, 
there is great complaint about trying to move a bill through the Senate 
that would give them some help, lift that minimum wage a bit. We are 
told: You can't do that without giving corporations a break. I guess I 
don't understand the priorities. Some of the suggestions that have been 
described, expensing for small business, I support that, but it has 
nothing to do with this bill. We will almost certainly do it in other 
circumstances. We have done it before. But why should we hold hostage a 
bill that deals with a whole lot of folks who work hard all day long 
and for very little money, not $150,000 a day but maybe $44 a day, 
because of those who have an appetite for additional tax breaks? I 
don't understand that.


                            Sweatshop Abuses

  My point is, there is so much to do. I wish to talk for a moment 
about a couple of other items that relate to this. I introduced a bill 
last week with some of my colleagues to try to stop sweatshop abuses 
overseas, products made overseas in sweatshop conditions and sent into 
this country to compete unfairly against American workers.
  The fact is, American workers are losing their jobs because there is 
so much outsourcing to foreign countries. American jobs are being 
shipped to foreign countries. The very people in this Chamber who are 
reluctant to increase the minimum wage and are holding us up are the 
same people who have voted when I have offered four times a simple 
amendment that says: Let's stop giving large tax breaks to U.S. 
companies that ship American jobs overseas.
  Can you think of anything more pernicious than deciding, let's figure 
out what we have to do in America; let's give a big, fat tax break to a 
company that would fire their workers, lock their manufacturing plant, 
shut the lights off and move the jobs overseas? They move the jobs 
overseas, manufacture a product in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and ship it 
back here and they get a big, fat tax break out of this Congress. That 
is unbelievable to me. We can't get that repealed. And we can't, on the 
other edge of the sword, get the minimum wage increased. Boy, that 
slices the wrong direction. There is something fundamentally wrong with 
that system.
  I introduced legislation called the Decent Working Conditions and 
Fair Competition Act that sets up a circumstance so that at least if 
companies are going overseas to find sweatshop conditions, hire a bunch 
of people who will work for 20 or 30 cents an hour and then produce a 
product and ship it back here, at least we could try to stop them. 
There is a lot of dispute about trade and the conditions of employment. 
I think we could all agree that American workers should not have to 
compete against the product of prison labor in China. I think we could 
all agree that if somebody is making socks in a Chinese prison, that is 
not fair competition for an American worker. So we don't have Chinese 
prison labor products come into this country. What about the product of 
sweatshop labor, where people are brought into sweatshops?
  I will cite an example: A sweatshop in northern Jordan, airplanes 
flying in the Chinese and Bangladeshis, with Chinese textiles, being 
put in sweatshops in northern Jordan to produce products to ship into 
this country. Some were working 40-hour shifts, not a 40-hour week, 40 
hours at a time. Some weren't paid for months. And then when they were 
paid, they were paid a pittance. Some were beaten.
  Do we want that kind of product coming into this country? Is that 
whom we want American workers to compete with? I don't think so. This 
legislation is a first baby step toward some sanity in trying to make 
sure that what we are purchasing on the store shelves in our country is 
not the product of sweatshop labor overseas. We define what sweatshop 
labor is, what sweatshop conditions are. We establish a provision by 
the Federal Trade Commission to enforce, and we also allow American 
companies who are forced to compete against this unfairness to take 
action in American courts to seek recompense for the damages.
  My hope is Congress will pass this. It is bipartisan. It relates to 
exactly the same thing we are talking about for people in this country 
who work on the minimum wage.
  Last week, I also introduced a piece of legislation that deals with 
this building. This is a picture of a little white building on Church 
Street in the Cayman Islands. It is called the Ugland House. It is five 
stories. According to some enterprising investigative reporting done by 
David Evans of Bloomberg, this building is actually home to 12,748 
corporations. It doesn't look like it could house 12,748 corporations. 
It is a five-story stucco building in the Cayman Islands, and it is 
what lawyers have allowed to become legal fiction so that companies 
could create a legal address in this little white building. It is their 
tax haven Cayman Island address so they can avoid paying taxes. Isn't 
that something? Twelve thousand seven hundred forty-eight companies 
call this place home. We ought to stop it.
  I have introduced legislation to stop it, to say this: When U.S. 
companies want to set up a subsidiary in a tax-haven country, if they 
are not doing substantial business activity in that country, then they 
have created a legal fiction, and it will not be considered legal for 
us.
  They will be taxed as if they never left our country. We can shut 
this down like that. If this Congress has the will, we can shut down 
these tax havens in a moment. And we should. Everybody else is paying 
taxes. It will be April 15th in a couple months. The American people 
work. They pay taxes and support the Government for the cost of roads 
and bridges and health care, all the things we do together, the 
National Institutes of Health, and our national defense. So they pay 
taxes. It is just that there are some in this country who decide they 
don't want to participate. They don't want to pay taxes.
  Here is a report from the Government Accountability Office. It was 
done at my request and, I believe, that of Senator Levin as well. The 
report showed the number of large Federal contractors who do business 
with the Federal Government--that is, they want to benefit from having 
contracts with the Federal Government--who set up offshore subsidiaries 
in tax-haven countries to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The very companies 
that benefit from doing business with the Federal Government in getting 
contracts are setting up offshore tax haven companies to avoid paying 
U.S. taxes. That is unbelievable. It ought to stop.
  I have introduced legislation--I should call it the Ugland House Act, 
now that I think about it--that shuts down that opportunity. This bill 
can shut down in a moment the opportunity for companies to decide they 
want all the benefits America has to offer them, but they don't want 
the responsibility of paying taxes. My hope is that this bill, which is 
cosponsored by Senators Levin and Feingold, will be dealt with by the 
Senate Finance Committee and the full Senate in the days and weeks 
ahead.


                          Fast Track Authority

  One final point, if I might. We are told this week that the President 
Bush will be asking the Congress for something called fast-track 
authority. Although the Constitution provides Congress the right to 
regulate foreign commerce--it is a constitutional responsibility of the 
Congress--the Congress

[[Page 2466]]

has, in the past, given the President something called fast track, 
which says: Mr. President, you go out and negotiate trade agreements in 
secret and then you bring them back and we will have an expedited 
procedure. And we will require that no Senator be allowed to offer any 
amendments, no matter what you have negotiated.
  I don't support fast-track authorization. I didn't support it for 
President Clinton. I don't support it for this President. This 
President has had it for 6 years over my objection. He is attempting to 
now get an extension of it by the end of June 30. I intend--and I am 
sure a number of my colleagues with whom I have spoken intend--to 
aggressively resist it. I am for trade and plenty of it. But I am for 
fair trade. I demand fair trade. This notion of a trade policy that has 
an $800 billion trade deficit is an unbelievable failure. No one can 
describe it as a success for this country.
  It is time to have a fair debate about trade, what strengthens 
America and what weakens it, what are the conditions under which we 
participate in the global economy? We have a right to participate the 
way we choose. We have been told in recent years that the way to 
participate in the global economy is to engage in a race to the bottom. 
If American workers can't compete with somebody making 36 cents an 
hour, that is tough luck.
  I have often told stories about the companies and the stories of 
struggle of the last 100 years. But James Fyler died of lead poisoning. 
He was shot 54 times. I suppose that is lead poisoning. Why was he shot 
54 times? Because it was 1914, and James Fyler was radical enough to 
believe that people who went underground to dig coal should be paid a 
fair wage and ought to be able to work in a safe workplace. For that, 
he was shot 54 times. Over a century, going back to the early 1900s, we 
have created the standards of work. We lifted America. We expanded the 
middle class. We said: We will put in place fair labor standards, child 
labor provisions, safe workplace rules. We are going to lift America 
up. We are going to expand the opportunity for health care. We will 
have good jobs that pay well. We will give people the right to 
organize. We did all of that. We created the broadest middle class in 
the world and an economic engine that is unparalleled.
  Now we are told it is a new day. We should compete. If there is a 
woman named ``Saditia'' in Indonesia making shoes and she makes 21 
cents an hour and we can't compete with that, that is tough luck. If we 
have people in China making 33 cents an hour producing Huffy bicycles 
that used to be produced here and we can't compete with that, tough 
luck. If the Radio Flyer little red wagon that used to be produced in 
Chicago went to China, it was because we can't compete with Chinese 
workers. If Pennsylvania House furniture left Pennsylvania and they now 
ship the wood to China and then ship the furniture back, those workers 
in Pennsylvania should not complain because they couldn't compete with 
Chinese workers. It doesn't matter to me whether it is Chinese workers 
or Sri Lanka or Bangladeshi. The fact is, we are seeing a diminished 
standard in which we are racing to the bottom.
  I read in the paper this weekend an op-ed piece. Somebody was asking: 
What is everybody complaining about? Things are great.
  Wages and salaries are the way most people get their income. They are 
the lowest percentage of gross domestic product since they started 
keeping score in 1947. We added 5 million people to the poverty rolls 
in the last 6 years. Everything is great. Probably for some. Maybe the 
guy who is making $100,000 a day running an oil company but not for the 
person working three jobs at a minimum wage who hasn't been boosted for 
10 years, not to Natasha Humphrey. She did everything. She went to 
Stanford, an African-American woman, got her degree, went to work for a 
technology company. Her last job was to train her replacement, an 
engineer from India who would work for one-fifth the cost of an 
engineer in the United States. So things aren't so great for everybody. 
When you have a $700 billion-a-year trade deficit, over $250 billion a 
year with China alone, I say you better pay attention. You better get 
it straight.


                             Energy Policy

  There is a lot to say and a lot to do. I was going to talk about 
energy policy briefly, but I will only say that one of the major 
challenges in our country is the challenge of energy. We are so 
unbelievably dependent on foreign sources of oil. The bulk of our oil 
comes from outside of our country, well over 60 percent. We are 
dependent on the Saudis and the Kuwaitis, the Iraqis, the Venezuelans, 
and others for oil. It is unhealthy.
  We need to make a major commitment to renewable energy. What we have 
done in energy is pretty much what we have done in too many areas. We 
put in place, in 1916, permanent robust tax incentives to incentivize 
the production of oil It has been in place for 90 years. In 1992, we 
said: You know what, let's boost the production of renewable energy, so 
we put in place a production tax credit--temporary and rather narrow. 
It has been extended short term five times and allowed to expire three 
times. There has been virtually no consistent commitment to renewable 
energy. It has been on again/off again, like a switch. That is not a 
commitment.
  If you are going to commit as a country to move in a direction on 
energy, whether it is renewable, biofuels, or hydrogen fuel cells, you 
should make a commitment and say: Here is where the country is headed, 
where we intend to be in 10 years, and we are going to give a tax 
incentive for 10 years for the production of these renewable fuels. You 
should have targets and timetables. That hasn't been the case. It has 
been a rather limited, tepid, miniature kind of provision that is 
turned off again and on again, a stutter-stop approach that tells 
investors: Don't rely on this because this Government isn't committed 
to it. We need to do better. I hope this year we can decide, as the 
President asked for in his State of the Union Address, on a much more 
robust commitment to renewable energy.
  Having said that, let me point out, under this President and previous 
Presidents, the amount of money we have committed to the renewable 
energy area. We have laboratories, renewable energy laboratories, whose 
funding dropped consistently. Again, it is one thing to say something 
and have a goal; it is another thing to decide you are going to take 
steps to meet the goal. We have not done that.
  So, Mr. President, I have said a lot about a lot of things because we 
are facing a lot of things that, in many ways, are related, including 
the war in Iraq, the international challenges. All of us want the same 
thing for our country. We all want this country to succeed and do well. 
I don't think there is a difference in goals. We will have sharp debate 
in the next 2 weeks, but I don't believe there is a difference in the 
goals we have. I suspect everybody in this Chamber wants very much for 
the Iraq war to be over, for our troops to be home, and for stability 
to exist in Iraq and in that region. I expect we share the goal on 
energy. Does anybody think that we as a country aspire to be 60, 65 
percent dependent upon oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and 
elsewhere? I don't think so. It seems to me that it would make some 
sense for us to find a way to get the best of what both sides have to 
offer in these discussions rather than the worst of each. I hope in the 
coming days we can at least clear away the bill on the floor so we can 
move to other issues.
  Last week, Senator Kennedy gave a pretty animated presentation about 
his frustration with the day after day after day digging in the heels 
of this Chamber to stop or delay the passage of a minimum wage. Again, 
I just walked through the halls coming over here. They are not filled 
with people representing the workers at the bottom. We should represent 
those workers. We have that responsibility. We have the responsibility 
to do the right thing, and after 10 long years, it is the right thing 
to pass this minimum wage bill and not hold it hostage for other issues 
and other agendas. We will have plenty of opportunity with amendments 
that have nothing to do with this bill; we

[[Page 2467]]

will have the opportunity to offer them. But not now. Don't hold a bill 
hostage that would help those working two and three jobs a day trying 
to take care of their families.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Arizona 
wanted to address the Senate. We also have, as I understand it, a 
request from the Senator from Alabama to speak from 4 to 5. So I would 
like to, if I could, speak and I will yield before 4 and request that 
the Senator from Alabama be delayed by a little. I think we were 
scheduled to come back to the minimum wage now. I don't mind starting 5 
minutes after that. I would be glad to go 5 minutes early and make a 
request that we delay Senator Sessions' 5 minutes, and then the Senator 
from Arizona would have 10 minutes. I see my other friend here. It is 
going to get complicated after this. Senator Sessions, I think, is to 
be recognized.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if I may respond to the Senator, I would like 
to get in, and I will ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning 
business for 10 minutes. I don't know where Senator Sessions is. I 
gather it would be fine if he is delayed for 5 minutes. I don't know 
what Senator Cornyn's intentions are.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized 
following Senator Kennedy and Senator Kyl for no more than 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I personally don't have any objection. As 
I understood it, as part of the general agreement on the minimum wage, 
Senator Sessions would be recognized at 4. I don't have any personal 
objection, and I will not object, and I will let those two Senators 
handle Senator Sessions.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Well, Mr. President, I intend to talk now.
  Mr. KYL. I am sorry. I thought I would be recognized now. Excuse me.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I intend to talk for about 15 to 18 minutes, and then we 
will be on the minimum wage bill. I plan to speak on that minimum wage 
bill. I said I would end 5 minutes early to try to accommodate the 
Senator. We are scheduled to deal with the bill at 3:30. So I have 
recognition.

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