Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I understand fully the situation of my friend from Indiana. As my colleague, Barry Goldwater--and we both served with him--used to say: In your heart you know we could have a better bill. But we have a time problem. We have a circumstance where the House had, frankly, thumbed its nose at us last time. We passed unanimously a bill which was much more significant than this bill, led by our majority leader and by my friend from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry. They put together a real robust, significant bill. This is a mere shadow of that bill in my view. But I end up almost the same place as my friend from Indiana, my chairman does. That is, you play the hand you are dealt. The House doesn't give a darn about this bill. Frankly, they are threatening if we add any amendments to just ditch it. So once again we are yielding to the lowest common denominator. The fact is, they have a whip hand right now. The fact is, I want the President to be able to have a bill when he goes to the G-8 because I believe he is committed to trying to get the rest of the world to do more than they are doing. He wants to be able, to use a phrase he likes to use, lay his cards on the table. He wants to be able to ante up and say: This is what I am ready to do. Now, what are you all going to do? I am willing to help him do that, even though this is not--this is not--the best bill. The best bill was the Kerry-Frist bill. That was the best bill we had, and we passed it. I think we voted it out unanimously last time. It was much more significant than the bill we have now. Then my friend and I, both faced with a similar dilemma, came along with what, a Lugar-Biden/Biden-Lugar bill, which was better than this bill. But I am not here to talk about that. I am here to say we need a bill. I want everyone to know we are trying our best. I hope the majority leader would attest to the fact I have been straight up with him. We want to add a couple of amendments. Frankly, we are going to have a rough road to hoe. I think we will get one--I hope so, because I think the House may accept it if it is added on--which I think is very important. Parochially, Senator Santorum and I, although he is not the one pushing it and I am--one is on the debt relief, which is something my friend from Indiana and I have worked on for years in various forums. And I think we should get the global AIDS fund up to that minimum threshold of $500 million. Last July, the Senate unanimously approved a bill initiated in the Committee on Foreign Relations by Senators Kerry, Frist, Helms and myself. It stalled in the other body. There was little interest expressed by the Bush administration, and the bill died. In January of this year, as one of the first orders of business, we began discussions in the Committee on Foreign Relations on moving forward on the Kerry-Frist-Helms-Biden bill. Unfortunately, each time we tried to proceed with the bill, the White House or the majority leader asked the chairman to delay, because the administration wanted more time to work on its proposal. We might have passed a very strong bill months ago. But we did not. Now we are told that time is up, that we must take up the House bill, and that we must not amend the House bill. I must say that I find it curious that we were asked to delay, and now we are told we cannot amend this bill. But I will return to that subject in a moment. HIV/AIDS is the worst epidemic that mankind has ever seen. It is a source of instability. It is highly damaging to economic development in some of the poorest countries of the world. It is a humanitarian disaster. It is, in short, a national security issue, and will be for the foreseeable future. It is right and proper that the Congress and the President work together to develop a comprehensive program of assistance. As the world's leading economic power, we have a responsibility to lead the world in fighting this plague. I commend the President for focusing attention on this important question. It has clearly helped us push this legislation toward the finish line. But now that we are nearing that finish line, I think we need to make a few modifications. The bill before us was passed by the House with, I am sure, the best of intentions. It does not, however, as the title suggests, provide leadership. I believe there is considerable room for improvement in the House-passed bill. I acknowledge that the bill does some useful things. First and foremost, it acknowledges the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and authorizes substantial funds over a 5 year period to address it--$15 billion over 5 years, to be exact. That's a heck of a lot of money, and well above the current budgets for these programs. It provides for a strategy, and a coordinator to pull together all the agencies working on this issue. These are all good things. Unfortunately, the House bill has several flaws. The bill gives no guidance on the amount of our contributions to the Global Fund. In Fiscal Year 2004, the bill authorizes ``up to'' $1 billion. So it could be $1 or $1 billion. Which one is it? What do we really expect the Committee on Appropriations to provide? The President's budget requests just $200 million for the fund, which is far from adequate. For the remaining 4 years the bill, there is no specific amount set forth. It merely authorizes ``such sums as may be necessary.'' This is an abdication of Congressional responsibility. It's like giving a contractor money to build a house without stating what you want the house to look like. Who would do something that unwise? I believe that it is our job to set priorities, and funding levels. The voice of Congress should be heard on this issue. There will be an amendment by one of our colleagues authorizing a responsible contribution of the fund. The House-passed bill does not deal with the issue of debt relief for countries suffering the burden of an AIDS epidemic. Last year the Senate-passed bill included a provision, authored by myself and Senator Santorum, extending increased debt relief to countries with a severe public health crisis such as AIDS. We should do no less this year. The House-passed bill contains language that I think is bad policy. It contains a requirement that one-third of all dollars devoted to prevention must be earmarked for abstinence-only until marriage programs. I am concerned that this limitation is impractical. I believe that the Agency for International Development and other agencies working on the ground are competent to decide how much money to spend on abstinence-only programs based on local conditions. We should not assign arbitrary percentages to one element of a comprehensive strategy to prevent the spread of AIDS without a rationale. How did the other body come to the conclusion that 33 percent was appropriate? I do not know. I doubt that anyone does. There are other problems with the bill. Some are more serious than others. We will try, with a few amendments, to fix them in an expeditious way. The majority leader has suggested that we must not amend this bill because there is no time for a conference or for consideration by the other body. With all respect to the leader, I believe he is mistaken. The reconciliation bill we just passed will not go to conference. The leadership of both bodies intends to bring back the conference report on that bill before the recess. I can assure the leader that any conference on this bill would be far simpler than the conference on the reconciliation bill. Morever, the bill need not even go to conference--it could go through the House again, containing the amendments by the Senate. That happens all the time around here. There's no reason that action cannot be scheduled promptly--if the House leadership wants it. What the leader is really saying is this: we must be a rubber-stamp for the other body. We cannot amend it, not even one word, or else the bill will be in trouble. I simply don't believe that. The Senate has a duty to debate and vote on amendments. If you oppose amendments, vote them down. But don't vote them down because you think an amendment will doom the bill. Let us have a debate. We will do it quickly. We have no intention of delaying passage of this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support a limited number of amendments. Then we can send it to the other body, and get it to the President by the end of next week. Frankly, I feel a little bit like I was misleading the public at large, as if I were the leader on this subject. The leader on this subject has been Senator John Kerry, on our side of the aisle. So I would like, with the permission of my colleagues, to yield to Senator Kerry to make the substantive opening statement on this bill, since I will have an opportunity to manage it. Again, I compliment him and Senator Frist, who, frankly, were the emotional, political, and intellectual engines getting this going. If there is no objection, I yield the floor to my friend from Massachusetts.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. It is true we did go see the President. The Senator from Indiana and I have a slightly different take on what we told the President. My view is the President has incredible leverage with the Republican House. And my point to the President was: Mr. President, what we had in the Biden-Lugar bill and, prior to that, the bill of the leader, Senator Kerry, and Senator Feingold, who have been the real leaders on this issue, you liked all of it; you said it was okay, and so, Mr. President, I do not know why you cannot pick up the phone, call Mr. DeLay and say, I, the most popular Republican in the Nation, want this. He said he cannot do that, he will not be able to get a bill. He also said he needs this bill. Why do we need this before the G-8? He says he needs this before the G-8 to demonstrate to the G-8 we are doing something and we expect them to do more. I take the President at his word that that is why he wants it, but the reason why the Durbin amendment is so important is everybody knows the House does not really care about this bill. The House bill says up to a billion dollars--up to, meaning zero to a billion. My argument to the President is, if we have $500 million at the front end, everybody in the G-8 will believe it and he will really have leverage. The problem I have is, I do not understand why the President of the United States is unwilling to exercise his leverage on the House leadership. So I really think we are helping him in spite of what he wants. Let's help him. Sometimes, as my dear mother used to say: This is for your own good, Joey. This is for his own good. We give him a bottom line of $500 million to go to the G-8. Then Chirac will look and say, they mean it. If you go with zero to a billion, knowing that Mr. Hastert, who does not like this bill, Mr. DeLay, who does not like this bill, the same House that killed this bill before, they will say, we do not have to do anything. We know those guys are not going to do anything. Their reputations are well earned and well known. I do not say that in a pejorative way. They do not like this bill. Everybody knows they do not like this bill. They do not even like their own bill. Because the President, to his credit, said in the State of the Union, I want one, they had to pass something. So let's help the President. Let's give him some leverage. I would be willing to bet that if this passes, I will be dumbfounded if the President does not pick up the phone and say, Denny, I need a little help--meaning Speaker Hastert--and, Mr. DeLay, we are both from Texas; me, President, you No. 2. Maybe we can get this done. I have confidence in the President's leadership. So let us help him out. Give him some leverage. Let him get the job done. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. How much time is remaining?

Mr. BIDEN. I ask unanimous consent that I have an additional 2 minutes--I will not ask that again tonight--to respond to or to reaffirm some of what the chairman said.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from Arizona. This amendment would retroactively breach the contracts entered into by States and their attorneys, and the settlement agreement reached in the tobacco-related Medicaid expenses litigation. Let me remind my colleagues of the context in which this historic tobacco settlement came about. There were over 40 years of law suits brought against tobacco companies, occurring over three different time periods. When these attorneys brought this litigation, cases against tobacco companies would go on for years and years, almost always with little or no favorable results. In order to catch the deception and subterfuge of these companies, these cases needed staying power. The attorneys bringing these cases needed the ability to withstand significant losses while they uncovered the facts needed to make the damning case that the tobacco companies had been hiding from the public. The plaintiffs' attorneys undertook this riskiest of cases against daunting odds, with a high likelihood of never getting paid at all. In the first phase of tobacco litigation, no one was able to muster the resources needed to bring these cases. Then a group of attorneys in the public interest pooled over $100 million of their own money in order to withstand the onslaught put up by tobacco companies bent on hiding the truth from the public. The tobacco companies spent approximately $700 million a year in legal fees to their lawyers during this period. Thanks to their tenacity, their legal skill, and the righteousness of their cause, in the end the attorneys who brought this action prevailed. They secured a settlement that returned $246 billion to the States. That is ``billion'' with a ``b.'' To put it in perspective, that is almost as large as our entire budget deficit. Let me say that again the tobacco settlements resulted in a huge windfall for the States and for the American people. I daresay that, in this day and age when State budgets are more squeezed than ever as a result of Federal cuts and unfunded mandates, if the States were offered this deal again, including the attorney's fees, they would take the deal in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. And the money collected by the States under this settlement is only the beginning. The settlement funds a new public education program to reduce youth tobacco use; it provides money every year for tobacco- related research; it dissolves the organizations that have historically served as the tobacco companies' propaganda machines; and it prohibits tobacco advertising aimed at children, such as the use of cartoon characters. Supporters of this amendment would have you believe that its provisions somehow make the existing system fairer. Nothing could be further from the truth. The American way is to reward those who take a risk and succeed. We grant patents that protect inventions for 17 years. We give copyright owners exclusive rights to their works for their entire life, plus another 70 years. More importantly, we don't punish people who come up with a great idea and turn it into a success. To the contrary we let them keep the fruits of their labor. But under the logic of this amendment, we would seek to penalize Bill Gates' $40 billion net worth, simply because he started with little more than a great idea and a vision to make it happen, took the risk, and prevailed. Just like these attorneys who brought the tobacco cases. Supporters of this bill would also have you believe that it is only the trial lawyers and their supporters who oppose this amendment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Among others, consumer advocates people who look out for the little guy strongly oppose this amendment. I also find it ironic that this amendment, which would abrogate a settlement entered into by the States, is being offered by some of the very same Senators who have made a career of advocating for States rights. This amendment, which would abrogate the contractual rights of private parties, is being offered by some of the very same Senators who have made a career of upholding the right to enter into contracts without undue regulation. Just to be clear my colleagues refuse to interfere in the right of States to send defendants to execution without competent counsel, but insist on interfering to undo an agreement where the States reap $246 billion from the tobacco companies. Quite simply, they have got their priorities backwards. I might also remind my colleagues of one other historical fact: Some of the Senators who are pushing this amendment today are the same folks who, just a few years ago, were doing everything in their power to defeat Federal attempts to force the tobacco companies to pay for the huge damages they have inflicted on the American people. Fortunately for the American people, and for the 50 States, they failed. Now, however, they are trying to undo this successful settlement after the fact. Ladies and gentlemen, this is America. We make deals and we stick to them. We do not go back on our word. I urge you to oppose this amendment. amendment no. 594

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, our economy is in a slump unlike any in recent memory. In fact, we are experiencing a downturn with features unseen since the days of the Great Depression. In the last 2 years, we have lost over 2.6 million jobs in the private sector. That is the longest continous decline in the number of jobs in over 50 years. It has almost doubled the number of Americans who are stuck in long-term unemployment--out of a job for over half a year. The unemployment rate has just risen to 6 percent, with 8.8 million Americans out of work. The stock market has lost value by more than ten percent each of the last 3 years. The last time that happened was, again, the Great Depression of the 1930's. A drop of almost 30 percent in the value of the stock market has decimated the retirement savings of millions of Americans, and drained over $5 trillion in wealth from their net worth. That is why we are here today, to debate how to respond to this crisis. This crisis is real, it is affecting millions of families directly and indirectly across this country. In addition to the thousands of jobs lost with every new report, millions more families are concerned about the security of their own jobs. In fact, the situation is so precarious that the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of Alan Greenspan, has shifted its historical concern about inflation to a worry we haven't seen since the 1930's-- deflation. Despite a series of 12 interest rate cuts in a row, that thave pushed interest rates to forty-year lows, the Federal Reserve's meetings are now focused on keeping us out of the kind of deflation trap that Japan has been stuck in for more than a decade. When the Fed is more worried about deflation than inflation, you know you have a probiem. And while we ended the last century with the Federal budget in balance for the first time in a generation, we now begin the new century facing deficits bigger that we have ever seen. The Congressional Budget Office has just raised its estimate of this year's deficit to $300 billion, and that doesn't even count this $350 billion tax cut before us today. Wall Street analysts expected the actual deficit to be closer to $400 billion or even more for this year--the biggest dollar figure ever. This kind of budget policy is the reason why we will soon be voting to raise the national debt ceiling--to allow us to borrow enough money to pay the bills we have already incurred. This will be the single largest increase in the national debt in our history, adding almost a trillion dollars to the debt limit, raising it to over $6.7 trillion. Just a few short years ago we were paying down the national debt. We have gone from a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion to a $1.8 trillion deficit. This is a record of economic bad news that has not been equaled in most American's lifetimes. Now we are piling up additional debt, and adding heavy new interest charges to the spiraling costs of this administration's irresponsible budget policy. Over the next 10 years, we will add an additional $1.7 trillion in interest costs on that Debt--$1.7 trillion that will not be available for homeland defense, for health care, for education, for law enforcement. How well I remember. How the men and women in the business community would come to me in the decades of deficit and tell me, ``Balance the budget, stop borrowing money like nobody else needs it. Get the government out of the credit markets so we can invest and grow.'' Where are those voices we used to hear on the Senate floor, imploring us to reverse decades of borrowing and return to the straight and narrow of balanced budgets? We need a strong dose of those principles now. We need an economic stimulus that works. And we need an economic policy that does not mortgage our future, that does not dump the bill on our children and grandchildren. We need a plan that we can afford, that treats the very real, specific problems that average families in Delaware and around the country are facing today. Unfortunately, the bill before us is the wrong plan, at the wrong time, at the wrong price. We need an economic policy that has an impact right now, in the very short term--an impact on consumer spending, on the demand side, to give employers a reason to bring those workers back. That means tax cuts for the vast majority of American families who need some relief, and who can be counted on to go out and spend that money--to create demand for more products, create more jobs. But in addition to the very real and very serious problems we are facing today, in the very near future, just around the corner, the retirement of the baby boom generation will stretch our Social Security system to the breaking point. Just a decade from now, surpluses in the Social Security system-- extra funds that help to cover some of our current deficits--those surpluses will disappear. Then the drain on our resources will accelerate until--according to the Social Security System's trustees-- by 2030 Social Security and Medicare will be a third of every Federal income tax dollar, and by 2040, almost half of every Federal income tax dollar. That is clearly an impossible situation that we cannot permit to occur. We must act now to makes sure that we have the resources to keep the promises we made to the millions of Americans who have paid their Social Security taxes over the years. But every dime of the $350 billion tax cut before us today is borrowed from Social Security--it breaks our promise to those who depend on Social Security, and sends the bill to our children and grandchildren. The solution we are seeking today, for the ongoing loss of millions of jobs, must not ignore the crisis in federal finances that is beginning now and crests just a decade away. It is not just that it is unfair and irresponsible to put the burden of our choices off on our children. That should be reason enough to reject this policy out of hand. But a moment's reflection tells us that if we borrow $350 billion, or $550 billion, or--if the President had his way, $726 billion--if we borrow that money from the same capital markets where our corporations and home buyers get their money, that policy is self-defeating. It raises the cost of money, and slows the economy down, while handing out windfall tax breaks that people will get without any change in the behavior. That policy is indeed unfair. It is irresponsible. And it is ineffective. But a kick-start that gets people spending and businesses hiring--and that has a reasonable cost--that kind of policy can work. First, we all know that the real price of this bill is not $350 billion. We have already heard that key members of the Republican leadership do not expect that the tax increases in this bill, that keep the cost of the tax cuts down, will survive a conference with the House. If those tax increases go, the cost of this bill goes up. And key provisions in the bill--like the dividend exemption--phase in slowly and then are supposed to expire after ten years. Even if you buy the idea--which I don't--that giving a tax break to the small percentage of Americans who receive dividends can somehow turn the economy around, how can you expect that change to happen if businessmen know they should wait a few years until the exclusion is phased in? And what kind of permanent change in corporate behavior can we expect when we know that the door is going to slam shut on this deal 10 years out? One answer is that they don't expect that door to close. They expect the dividend provision and others to be extended. Or more and more dividends could be excluded--that creeping expansion and acceleration has been the pattern since we passed the 2001 tax cuts. Full exemption of dividends, if it were in place at the end of this decade, would cost $750 billion over the next 10 years. For that and many other reasons, this tax cut, as big and irresponsible as it is, is just a place holder for even more reductions, and even more deficits, even more debt. But designed this way, to get ten pounds of tax cuts into a five pound bag, so to speak, has resulted in a tax cut that even a conservative economist who supports the administration has called, and I quote from yesterday's Washington Post, ``one of the most patently absurd tax policies every proposed.'' But maybe if this bill offered the average American family some real tax relief, maybe if we could expect a little help for the millions of jobless men and women stuck in long-term unemployment, some of the cost would be worth it. Tragically, there is no reason to expect this legislation to do anything to stimulate the economy this year or next. The way this tax cut is designed, there is no reason to expect any benefit to the economy, and every reason to believe that the deficits it creates will cause harm. Estimates by Congressman Henry Waxman, who examined corporate statements, show that the top three executives at Fortune's largest 100 companies would get a tax cut of $118 million if dividends were totally excluded from taxation, the goal that administration officials admit is the real aim of the partial exclusion in this bill. Under full exclusion, twenty one executives would get a tax cut of $1 million. That is for doing nothing. Just for doing what they already do. That is not corporate tax reform, it is simply a windfall. I trust that those men and women earn every dime they already make. But no one can argue that a $118 million personal windfall into the already large pay packages of those executives is going to create a single new job. I you really wanted to fix the problem of dividend taxation, even Republican economists--indeed, especially Republican economists--will tell you that you should eliminate the tax at the corporate level. That at least has the potential of changing the behavior of firms that now must choose between borrowing that is not taxed and dividends that are taxed. That could be part of an honest debate about tax reform and job creation. And when Alan Greenspan endorsed the idea of reforming dividend taxes, he said it should be done in a way that does not add to the national debt, and that it should be part of a bigger plan of reform. This proposal flunks all of those tests. Only 13 percent of the impact of this bill will be felt in this year, Mr. President--and less than half in its first 2 years. And the vast majority of the revenue losses come in the future, as the crisis in Social Security approaches. This plan turns economic logic on its head. This is not designed to stimulate the economy--if it were, it would provide a quick, short-term boost to family incomes, and would give businesses incentives to act right now to increase investment and create jobs. Under this bill, the one-tenth of one percent of Americans who have an income of over $1 million will receive an average tax cut of $64,000. But those Americans in the middle 20 percent of the income spectrum would get an average tax cut of $233. That's right, the average American gets a tax cut of $233, under this bill. That is not fair. But it is not good economic policy either. Those good men and women fortunate and hard-working enough to make over a million dollars a year are not going to change their behavior, they aren't going to create any new jobs, just because they get an additional $64,000. But getting money to the families who will go out tomorrow and spend it, getting money to those who are about to lose long-term unemployment benefits, getting money to the states to prevent further state tax increases or spending cuts--that has the best hope of giving the economy the stimulus it needs. The tax cut program that makes sense and that I supported would provide a tax cut for every American taxpayer--for example, $300 for every adult, $300 for the first two children. It increases the child tax credit to $700 this year and $800 next year. And for middle class and working families, this tax cut plan that I supported accelerates relief from the marriage penalty. Altogether, a middle class family of four would have gotten a tax cut of $1630 this year under the Democratic tax cut plan. And if you add to that my proposal to allow parents to deduct the cost of college tuition a family with kids in college could get an additional $3000 tax break. That is real help, for real families, to deal with a real problem, and frees up real money to stimulate the economy. Incredibly, this so-called ``Jobs'' bill makes no provision to extend the life of the long term unemployment program that expires in just two weeks. With the number of long-term unemployed at record levels and growing, this bill simply ignores their needs. Equally astounding, the bill provides almost nothing for the states whose fiscal crisis is dragging the economy down. State budget cuts in education, health care, law enforcement--even homeland security--slow the economy as workers lose jobs and businesses lose customers. While there appears to be $20 billion in aid to the states in this bill, in reality, the reductions in federal dividend and income taxation will cut as much as $11 billion from state taxes based on those sources. Under the tax cut plan I support, small businesses would get three times the tax write off for investments--$75,000 worth--this year, and a tax deduction for 50 percent of the cost of new equipment, along with help getting health insurance for their employees. The tax cut I support would get $20 billion in real help to the states to confront the fiscal crisis that is compounding the national economic slump. And the tax cut program I voted for would extend unemployment benefits to help those looking for work sustain that search in a time of record job losses. Finally, the plan I supported is affordable. Its effects take place immediately, and it would not leave a hole in our finances for our children to repair. That's the plan I supported, and it is the plan our country needs. I cannot vote for this bill that is now before us because it fails to do so.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. No, Mr. President, I will go last.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I, quite frankly, not only agree with every point the Senator has made, but, quite frankly, I have not heard a more compelling case, a more logical case, and a more--how can I say it?-- reasoned indictment of our failure to be willing to confront the House with what I cannot believe, particularly if the President said he supported this, that we would not be able to get it done. It is true that I believe the House is willing to accept some changes in this bill. The fact is, as the Senator knows, the bill we had did exactly what he is talking about providing for these folks. Even though everyone says there is no possibility of anything being accepted beyond this, I find it hard to believe, if this body, which passed this before, which unanimously said this made sense, and a President who says he is overwhelmingly concerned not only about AIDS worldwide but about our Latin American friends to our south--remember, he started his whole initiative in foreign policy; he was looking in this hemisphere south. I realize everyone thinks this would not happen, many think this would not occur, but it is clearly worth taking a chance. I am willing to bet, if it passes, it gets accepted. I cannot imagine it being turned down. I cannot imagine the President of the United States saying he would not accept this amendment. All these amendments have been important, but there is simply no logic whatever--none--to refuse this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, as we consider legislation today on the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS, I urge my colleagues to think about this: While the poorest nations of the world lack the resources to provide the most basic public health care and the most basic education, they still send money to the international financial institutions established by the wealthiest nations of the world. The 26 countries currently qualified to receive debt relief under the heavily indebted poor country--HIPC--program continue to pay more than $2 billion annually on debt service. That money goes to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund here in Washington, as well as other lenders, to pay the interest on loans they have received over the years. Unless we act now on this HIV/AIDS bill to reduce that debt burden, we run the real risk that the resources we are providing them today will find their way back, not only to Washington, but to other lenders, such as France, Germany, and Japan. Deeper debt relief for those poor countries is essential to make the work we are doing on this HIV/AIDS legislation as effective as possible, and to make sure that funds do not leak out through the mandatory spending these countries must do to service their debts every year. Money is money and the problem of these debt payments is very real for these poor countries. As long as they face these mandatory debt payments, the resources we are providing in this HIV/AIDS bill will be less effective. But deeper debt relief is also needed because the current HIPC Program is not working. In fact, last year the Bank and the fund honestly admitted that under the current formula, many countries will simply not reach a sustainable level of debt. The amendment I am offering tonight aims to make the HIPC Program itself more likely to succeed. It is essentially the legislation Senator Santorum and I introduced in the last congress, with the support of Senators Frist, Nickles, Chafee, DeWine, and Specter on the majority side, along with Senators Kerry and Sarbanes, Feingold, Murray, and others on this side of the aisle. Specifically, for the many countries facing a public health crisis-- such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic--we say that no more than 5 percent of their revenues should go to service their debt to other nations and international institutions. For those who do not face such a crisis, debt service should exceed no more than 10 percent of their budget. Some debate remains about the most appropriate way to measure a country's ability to pay its debt and still provide basic public goods in the areas of health, education, and infrastructure. So our amendment gives the administration the flexibility to find an alternative measure that would achieve an equivalent level of debt reduction--a level that these poor countries can sustain. Only countries that quality for the existing HIPC Program--that sets standards of economic reform and human rights--will participate. The bottom line is that unless the U.S. and our G-7 partners reduce debt service payment to manageable levels--no more than 10 percent of Government revenue, 5 percent if the country has a major health crisis--these nations will be unable to devote the necessary resources to the fight against HIV/AIDS. This amendment was part of the HIV/AIDS bill that passed the Senate last year. It belongs on this legislation, too. Although there is some confusion about how we got there, I believe in retrospect the chairman, quite frankly, unknown to me, was not brought into the loop on this. I assure him the reason I agreed to a voice vote is because we had every Democrat, and I believe from personal discussion we had at least four Republicans supporting the amendment. I understand, without getting into all the detail, the bottom line is the amendment has been signed off on by the White House in direct discussions with my staff this afternoon. I would move the adoption of the amendment. I ask for a voice vote.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2003, along with over a dozen Senators of both parties who are joining me on this legislation. This bill creates new temporary and permanent bankruptcy judgeships in districts that need them, and extends and converts other temporary judgeships. The substantial increase in bankruptcy case filings in recent years has created a dire need for additional bankruptcy judgeships. My bill would create 23 new permanent bankruptcy judgeships, 5 temporary judgeships, convert 2 temporary judgeships to permanent status and extend 2 other temporary judgeships. 17 States would receive new judgeships, as recommended by the Administrative Office for United States Courts. Among other things, the bill authorizes four new bankruptcy judgeships, and converts one from temporary to permanent status, for the District of Delaware, the Nation's most overloaded bankruptcy district. The most recent data show weighted filings for the district of Delaware surpassing 13,500 per judge, while the next busiest district faces only about 3,000. The bankruptcy bar in Delaware is among the most respected and accomplished in the country, as are our bankruptcy judges. But our judges are not superhuman. They must receive the assistance that this bill would grant them, and I intend to see that they get it. The Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2003 is long overdue and I urge my colleagues to support it. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2003, along with over a dozen Senators of both parties who are joining me on this legislation. This bill creates new temporary and permanent bankruptcy judgeships in districts that need them, and extends and converts other temporary judgeships. The substantial increase in bankruptcy case filings in recent years has created a dire need for additional bankruptcy judgeships. My bill would create 23 new permanent bankruptcy judgeships, 5 temporary judgeships, convert 2 temporary judgeships to permanent status and extend 2 other temporary judgeships. 17 States would receive new judgeships, as recommended by the Administrative Office for United States Courts. Among other things, the bill authorizes four new bankruptcy judgeships, and converts one from temporary to permanent status, for the District of Delaware, the Nation's most overloaded bankruptcy district. The most recent data show weighted filings for the district of Delaware surpassing 13,500 per judge, while the next busiest district faces only about 3,000. The bankruptcy bar in Delaware is among the most respected and accomplished in the country, as are our bankruptcy judges. But our judges are not superhuman. They must receive the assistance that this bill would grant them, and I intend to see that they get it. The Bankruptcy Judgeship Act of 2003 is long overdue and I urge my colleagues to support it. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to support final passage of S. 113, a bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, to provide needed tools to detect and combat terrorists bent on attacking this Nation and killing our citizens. First, let me commend my colleagues, Senators Kyl and Schumer, for their relentless efforts in bringing this important issue to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Since the tragic events of September 11, all of us have tried to turn a critical eye toward our laws and the workings of government to discern how we might avert such a dreadful attack in the future. That attempt to fix what may be wrong with our existing system of intelligence- gathering and law enforcement is perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer to the victims of that fateful day and their families. This bill, as amended, is a good example of how we can make basic, common-sense changes to existing law that will have a tremendous impact on our fight against terrorism. I was proud to be one of the authors of FISA in 1978. We worked long and hard to strike the right balance between protecting civil liberties on the one hand and deterring terrorist acts on the other. Since FISA permits the physical and electronic surveillance of suspected foreign agents, in some instances under a more generous standard than that allowed in Title III surveillances, an amendment to FISA should be carefully tailored to maintain its careful balance. I do not take lightly amending FISA, but believe that this bill does so in a manner that is both constitutional and narrowly tailored. I want to thank the sponsors of this legislation for their willingness to work with me to improve their original bill. I proposed two amendments, both of which were accepted by Senators Kyl and Schumer--and which the Judiciary Committee adopted without a dissenting vote on April 29, 2003. I believe my amendments improve S. 113 in three ways: First, the original legislation--which would have amended FISA to expand the definition of ``foreign power'' under 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1801(a)(4) to include non-U.S. persons who are engaged in international terrorism--would have allowed the government to extend the initial surveillance order for a period up to 1 year. The 1-year period constitutes the maximum period allowed under the statute and is only invoked under certain circumstances typically limited to groups and entities. More commonly, an order to conduct surveillance of individuals is only extended for a period up to 90 days. Instead, the amendment we offered on April 29, 2003, amended the definition for ``agent of a foreign power'' by creating a new 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1801(b)(1)(C). This amendment would apply the default 90-day period to this new category of surveillance targets, which is far more sensible and consistent with the way we treat other individual targets, as opposed to groups, under the statute. Second, by amending 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1801(a), the original legislation would have precluded individuals who are improperly subjected to surveillance or about whom surveillance information has been inappropriately disclosed from filing suit. My amendment, on the other hand, allowed aggrieved individuals who are improperly targeted under this new provision to seek redress in the courts and, where appropriate, recover damages. This modification to Senator Kyl's original bill is consistent with the typical and intended treatment of individuals under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1801(b). See H.R. Rep. No. 95-1283, at pt. 1, 98 (1978) (noting that the only aggrieved persons ``barred from the civil remedy will be primarily those persons who are themselves immune from criminal or civil liability because of their diplomatic status''). Third, my amendment added a sunset provision to the legislation, forcing Congress to re-visit this issue no later than December 31, 2005. The USA Patriot Act (which the Senate overwhelmingly passed a year and a half ago) includes a similar sunset provision for the FISA provisions contained therein. My amendment simply insures that this body will reevaluate the FISA measure on which we are voting today, in the context of its broader re-consideration of those other FISA provisions. Such a review is consistent with our oversight function and, plainly put, ensures that our actions are thoughtful and informed. Again, I am pleased that Senators Kyl and Schumer accepted these important revisions to the original text and, on that basis, am happy to support the amended bill that is before the Senate today. I also would like to commend my colleague, Senator Feinstein, for her efforts to engage this issue responsibly and thoughtfully. She has proposed an alternative, which makes an important contribution to the debate but with which I happen to disagree, for several reasons. First, my good friend from California asserts that criminal prosecutors will abuse the FISA process by securing FISA surveillance-- with its lower burdens of proof--against garden variety criminal targets, rather than pursuant to Title III. I am simply not persuaded that this will be the case. It should be noted that the new section created in this bill has a very high standard, higher indeed than that required by Title III. That is, the government must show probable cause that the FISA target has engaged in acts of ``international terrorism,'' which the statute defines as acts which (i) are a violation of the criminal law under the laws of the United States or any state; (ii) appear intended to influence our government or intimidate our citizens; and (iii) which occur outside the United States or transcend national boundaries. Thus, I doubt that a prosecutor would ever be able to seek a FISA warrant under this section where he would not also be able to obtain a Title III warrant. Morever, I am not convinced that a prosecutor would seek a FISA warrant where their real interest is, not obtaining foreign intelligence information, but rather the eventual prosecution of the FISA target. Given the strict exclusionary rules FISA imposes, prosecutors would be loathe to ever seek a FISA warrant for a target they seek to prosecute out of fear that the judge would suppress the surveillance in a criminal prosecution which was improperly ``boot-strapped'' from a FISA investigation. Second, the Feinstein amendment asserts that, under the Kyl-Schumer bill, a judge would be a mere ``rubber-stamp'' for a governmental request for a FISA warrant. The amendment presumes that judges do not now have discretion to refuse the government's request, which is not true. Under current law, the judge still must determine that probable cause exists that the individual is an agent of a foreign power engaged in, or in preparation for, acts of international terrorism. S. 113 does nothing to alter that existing requirement. Rather, it makes it clear that any non-U.S. citizen who engages in terrorism or is preparing to engage in terrorism would fall within the definition of an ``agent of a foreign power.'' Nothing in this bill would curtail a judge's ability to second-guess, or look behind, the assertions advanced by the government in its application for a warrant. If there is no basis to believe that probable cause exists, the application would be properly denied. Indeed, we rely on judges for this very purpose--namely, to ascertain the veracity of the facts presented by the government. As opposed to clarifying the definition of ``agent of a foreign power,'' as the Kyl-Schumer bill does, the Feinstein amendment would allow--but not require--a judge to ``presume'' that an individual is such an agent, which in my view creates a difference without a real distinction. Rather than afford individual targets any added protections, the Feinstein amendment would inject a considerable amount of murkiness into an otherwise certain process and may result in inconsistent rulings by different judges. Likewise, FISA judges may simply decline to apply the presumption in cases where the government cannot show much, if any, link between the non-U.S. citizen and a foreign power. There has been considerable disagreement over whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation had sufficient evidence to show that Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called ``20th Hijacker,'' was an agent of a foreign power. Yet, I am concerned that a FISA judge might decline to exercise the ``permissive presumption'' in Senator Feinstein's amendment, and hence deny a FISA warrant, in the case of a true ``lone- wolf'' terrorist who cannot be shown to have any links to a foreign power. As such, the FISA ``loophole'' S. 113 seeks to close would be left open. On that basis, I am forced to vote against the amendment. That is not to say, however, that there is not much more work to be done in this area. We must search for creative ways to give investigators the tools they need to gather information and seek out terrorists living among us, while at the same time vigilantly protect important civil rights and liberties. Toward that end, I welcome the oversight hearings that my friend Senator Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has pledged to convene on the implementation of FISA and offer my continued service. It is my hope that the Senate's action today will assist our government in its effort to detect and root out foreign terrorists bent on violent acts against this great country. I support this bill and urge my colleagues to vote for it.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, it is fitting on this day, which is the 58th anniversary of VE Day, the victory over Nazi tyranny in Europe, that the Senate is about to vote to admit seven countries that suffered under that tyranny and the tyranny of Communism--Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia--all of which have their Ambassadors present today and are very welcome. His Holiness Pope John Paul the II and President Reagan should be thanked for having hastened the fall of Communism in Europe. President George H.W. Bush should be thanked for the unification of Germany, and our President Bush for having widened the circle of the current round of NATO enlargement, and President Clinton, who skillfully led the way to the pathbreaking last round of enlargement which moved NATO into formerly Communist Central Europe. Today is a culmination of the work of a number of great men and women. I am just happy to be able to play a little tiny part. I urge everyone to vote, which I am confident they will, for accession.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Kate Byrnes, a State Department Pearson Fellow on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, be granted privileges of the floor during consideration of the resolution of ratification of the protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will proceed with an opening statement relative to the matter before us, and that is expansion of NATO. Mr. President, today we begin consideration of an amendment to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 to admit to NATO seven new members-- Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. If we approve this legislation, as I hope we will, it will mark an important step in the strategic transformation of the Alliance to respond to a new security environment. I would like to discuss the history of this strategic transformation and then to examine the qualifications of each of the seven candidate countries. The process of transforming the Alliance actually began shortly after the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. The first major change in the post-Cold War NATO was an absolutely critical event that is all-but-forgotten today: the accession to NATO, without fanfare, of the former East Germany when it reunited with the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990. We talk about the expansion of NATO and we never really mention that. Again, the first significant thing that happened in transforming the alliance in the new security environment was that East Germany, a former Warsaw Pact member, was accepted and subsumed into and became part of Germany again, but also became part of NATO as a consequence of that. The following year, in June 1991, the Warsaw Pact disbanded, and in December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. At the Madrid Summit in July 1997, NATO invited three countries from the former Warsaw Pact--Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary--to enter into final accession negotiations with the Alliance. I might say a word about the care with which this body scrutinized that round of NATO enlargement. The Committee on Foreign Relations alone held a dozen detailed hearings and published a 550-page book containing hearing transcripts, policy analyses, a detailed trip report, and other documents. Other committees also held hearings on enlargement. Then, during March and April of 1998, came seven full days of intense debate on ratification here on the floor. I had the privilege of being floor manager for the ratification, which was approved by a 80-19 vote on the evening of April 30, 1998. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic formally joined NATO on March 12, 1999. Less than 2 weeks later, the Allied air war was launched against Serbian aggression in Kosovo. The events of the 1990s, and the increasing instability in the Middle East and Central Asia, led my farsighted colleagues--Senator Lugar and former Senator Nunn, to the memorable conclusion that the NATO Alliance had to ``go out of area, or out of business.'' Still, most analysts remained skeptical. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, dispatched any remaining doubts about the nature of the threats we now face. The unanimous decision on the following day by the NATO Allies to invoke Article 5 for the first time in NATO's history confirmed the vitality of NATO's collective defense principle. At the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavik in May 2002, the Allies agreed that in order to meet security threats, NATO needed forces that could be deployed quickly to wherever they are needed and sustained over time to complete their mission. This agreement effectively settled, at least conceptually, the ``out-of-area'' debate. Meanwhile, in Brussels and among NATO members a discussion had begun on the merits of a so-called ``Big Bang'' next round of enlargement to give meaning and force to the new missions ahead. Recognizing that potential members in Central and Eastern Europe would individually require years to reach all of the military standards of NATO, members began to view their entrance as a regional grouping as politically and geographically strategic. Initially, I personally had some skepticism of this perspective and was concerned about the abilities of these countries to contribute to the alliance. But the determined response of these countries to the war against terrorism, their participation in SFOR and KFOR peacekeeping in the Balkans, their participation in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and the progress they have made on their NATO membership action plans, so-called MAPs, convinced me all seven of these countries would serve us well as formal allies. I declared my support for all seven of these countries in an article I wrote for the Los Angeles Times of September 1, 2002. The critical turning point in defining new tasks for NATO occurred at Prague in November 2002, at NATO's so-called ``Transformation Summit.'' Prague crystallized the debate over NATO's new missions, new capabilities, and new members, and it afforded members opportunity to set forth a strategic agenda for a revitalized NATO. Among the accomplishments at Prague, the alliance agreed to the Prague Capabilities Commitment. NATO, because it is a military organization--I think it is beyond that and is a political organization as well--loves all these acronyms. It takes a while; I apologize for my colleagues who do not follow this closely. The PCC, the Prague Capabilities Commitment, replaced the overly ambitious and broad Defense Capabilities Initiative of 1999 with a more concrete framework for force modernization and adaptation, including acquisition of equipment and technology through consortia of members and the development by individual countries of so-called niche capabilities, which I will describe later. That is a new term that is formally being used. NATO also adopted an American proposal to develop a NATO response force, NRF, a high-readiness, mobile combat unit that would allow NATO to go out of area to meet threats where they arise. Finally, the alliance invited the seven countries whose qualifications we are considering today to begin final negotiations with the alliance on joining as full members. NATO issued the invitation knowing that the militaries in most of the seven countries would not greatly enhance the war-fighting ability of the alliance, at least in the short term. Taken together, however, they will measurably increase NATO's potential. The seven invited countries will add 220,000 active-duty troops to the alliance immediately, or about 175,000 by the end of the decade, once current reform and restructuring of forces are completed in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. This represents a 6 percent overall increase in NATO military forces. This round of enlargement will also yield strategic infrastructure benefits. The membership of the seven countries will increase the number of airfields with long runways available to the alliance by 6 percent and the number available in Europe by 13 percent. Airfields and ports in these countries also factor in to the Pentagon's initial plans to reshuffle its forces in Europe, including the possibility of building U.S. bases and airfields in Bulgaria and the nearby Black Sea port of Burgas, as well as at a Romania airbase and a Black Sea port of Constanta. In addition, Romania has unmanned aerial vehicles and a C-130 lift capability, while Slovakia has air-to-ground training ranges. Moreover, the enlargement will add so-called niche capabilities to NATO's array of professional forces, several of which could be directly applicable to future out-of-area missions. These specialized capabilities include Bulgarian and Slovak antinuclear, biological, and chemical weapons teams; Slovenian demining units; Romanian elite force and mountain troops; Lithuanian special forces and medics; Estonian explosive detection teams; Latvian explosive ordinance destruction specialists, including underwater demolition teams; and a joint Baltic Sea air surveillance network. While their forces may be small in number, the seven invited countries have shown no hesitancy in deploying their uniformed men and women in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and, in some cases, in the Middle East, as coalition operations have required. In February of this year, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO candidates Albania, Croatia, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as the so-called Vilnius Ten in bravely standing with the United States and its coalition partners. They declared the importance of the transatlantic alliance and called for action by the international community in response to the clear and growing danger posed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Mr. President, a short excerpt from their declaration demonstrates the vigorous spirit these nations I believe will bring to NATO: Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values. The trans-Atlantic community, of which we are a part, must stand together to face the threats posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction. In word and in deed, these countries have already demonstrated their value as partners and de facto allies, and it is in the interest of the United States, in my view, to see this partnership be made formal by their acceptance into NATO. The governments of the seven involved countries have also taken tremendous steps and, in some cases, faced considerable political risk to align their institutions and policies in accordance with NATO's standards and values. Let me summarize their individual qualifications for NATO membership. Bulgaria: Bulgaria has committed to spend around 2.8 percent of GDP on defense in 2003, a higher percentage than that of several of our current allies, and to continue to downsize its armed forces by the thousands. On October 31, 2002, Bulgaria announced that it had destroyed all of its FROG, SCUD and SS-23 missiles, remnants of the old Soviet arsenal. To shut down any further proliferation of gray arms, Sofia has adopted a supplemental export control legislation, drafted a new border security act, and adopted new regulations on border checkpoints. Moreover, it took immediate and decisive action against those involved in the illegal shipment that occurred last year from the Terem military complex. Bulgaria, a rare country that protected its Jewish citizens during World War II, has generally been tolerant of all its religious, ethnic, and political minorities. An exception was the anti-Turkish campaign in the late eighties, the dying spasms of a discredited Communist regime. Today a largely ethnic Turkish party is a member of the governing coalition. Bulgaria is now moving to complete the process of property restitution to its Jewish community with only one property still under legal procedure. Estonia: Estonia leads the Baltic region in free market reforms, increased defense spending last year of 2 percent of GDP, and is developing a light infantry brigade, the first battalion of which should be equipped and trained by the end of this month. The organization, Transparency International, has rated Estonia the least corrupt country in central and Eastern Europe. Building on an already good record, last year, they adopted an action plan to improve the administration and judicial capacity in their country. Estonia has amended minimum language requirements in its laws on citizenship and employment to address needs particularly of its large Russian ethnic community. As a result, in the most recent national elections, the ethnic Russian parties failed to clear the 5 percent hurdle necessary to enter Parliament. In other words, the majority of Estonia's ethnic Russian citizens cast their vote for multinational parties on the basis of substantive issues, not ethnicity. I think that is remarkable. In August 2002, overcoming a few voices of intolerance, the Estonian Parliament voted to recognize January 27 as a day of remembrance for the Holocaust. I know the Presiding Officer is a student of that era, as well as my colleague from Indiana, the chairman. That is also a fairly remarkable undertaking. People in this country think it would be automatic, but that is a pretty big deal. Latvia has enacted a law to require 2 percent of its GDP to be spent on defense beginning this year. By the end of 2003, Latvia's first professional infantry battalion will be ready to participate in NATO- led operations, with three additional mobile reserve battalions ready in 2004. Riga's economic reform efforts have been well funded and generally successful, and Latvia is now assisting other post-Communist countries such as Georgia and Ukraine with their own reform efforts. After a somewhat contentious start in the early 1990s, Latvia has had considerable success in integrating its large Russian-speaking minority by dismantling citizenship and bureaucratic restrictions to full social and political participation within Latvia. Lithuania has increased its spending on defense to 2 percent of GDP in 2002. By the end of 2004, Lithuania will be able to deploy and sustain a mobile, professional infantry battalion, and by 2006 a rapid reaction brigade. A small, elite unit of Lithuanian special operations forces is currently serving in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Recently, this unit was involved in ground combat against al-Qaida forces during a strategic reconnaissance mission and together, with allied reinforcements, captured several of the enemy. Lithuania signed a border treaty with Russia in 1997, which the Russian Duma is expected to ratify later this month, and has reached an agreement to permit Russian military traffic to transit Lithuania on its way to Kaliningrad. In 2002, Vilnius launched a Program for Control and Prevention of Trafficking in Human Beings and Prostitution. The Government has established a public center for the Roma in Vilnius, launched a program to integrate Roma into Lithuanian society, and developed information campaigns to promote this tolerance. Conscripts in Lithuania's armed forces have a unit in their training on the history of World War II and the Holocaust in Lithuania, and the Government is working with international nongovernment organizations to establish legal procedures for Jewish communal property restitution. Quite frankly, in a sense, as I go through this, if we did nothing other than accomplish these changes in the countries I have mentioned so far, unrelated to the military, in order to get them to move toward NATO--not to get them to make it clear what they had to accommodate to move toward NATO--I would argue it would be a significant success, a singular success, but the story goes on. Romania, by far the largest of the seven candidate countries, spends $1 billion, or 2.38 percent of its GDP, on defense. Moreover, Romania is committed to being a net contributor to NATO and is upgrading its 21 MiG-29 fighter aircraft, its navy ships, and its missile launching systems. An elite Romanian infantry battalion, the Red Scorpions, served in Afghanistan--that is how they are referred to, the ``Red Scorpions''-- and was replaced by the Carpathian Hawks that are currently there. I love these names. It is sort of part of the history of Romania, which is another question. I might add that Romania flew these units to Afghanistan on their own C-130s, a feat which many of our current NATO allies are unable to duplicate. The Romanian economy has grown substantially over the past 3 years, by 4 percent in 2002, and inflation, although it remains high, has been brought under the IMF target rate of 22 percent. Romania opened a National Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office in September 2002 and has begun a judicial reform effort that includes prosecuting judges for bribery and corruption, an act called ``unprecedented in the region.'' Romania's relations with Hungary have improved following the 2001 agreement on Hungarian ``status law'' for ethnic Hungarians outside Hungary's border. I might add, one of the major changes that took place when Hungary wished to come in was Hungary made similar reforms. These changes are consequential. As a student of European history, some of this is centuries in coming. The animosities and antagonisms have been real. This is a big deal. The reason I bother to point that out is that it all has a ripple effect, in my view. Hungary's admission to NATO began Hungary forming their policies that related to ethnicity. That, in turn, I believe, has made it easier for Romania--and necessary, by the way, to become part of NATO--to act in a similar way. Slovakia has made great progress in democratic reforms and is the first country to reelect a center-right reform government in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of the cold war. Under Prime Minister Dzurinda, Bratislava committed to raise its defense spending and maintain it at 2 percent of GDP in 2003 and beyond. A sweeping defense reform plan, known as the Slovak Republic Force 2010, will establish by 2010 a small, well-equipped interoperable armed force integrated into NATO military structures. In February 2003, Slovakia opened a new department to fight corruption, which is overseen by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. Bratislava is preparing new laws to create an Office of the Special Prosecutor and to prevent corruption in public administration and the judiciary. I remember, after the Prague Spring was crushed back several decades ago, I went to Bratislava to meet the fellow who was responsible for the Prague Spring. To think that today this is all happening is, to me, amazing, just within the time that I have been in the Senate. Alone among the seven candidates, Slovenia comes out of a tradition of nonalignment as a part of the former Yugoslavia. It is the exception. Also alone among the candidates, it won its independence by force of arms in a short, successful war against the Federal Yugoslav forces in June of 1991. I might add, I pushed very hard in the first round for Slovenia to be added. I thought they were qualified then. Moreover, Slovenia has won widespread acclaim for aspects of peacekeeping activities. Its International Trust for Demining and War Victims Assistance is currently responsible for two-thirds of all the demining operations in southeastern Europe. Although the wealthiest in per capita terms of the candidate countries, Slovenia has lagged behind the other six in terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Ljubljana has committed to reach 2 percent GDP by 2008. Slovenia has focused on creating two battalions of rapid reaction forces for combat and peacekeeping operations. Freedom House gave Slovenia the highest rating of all the candidate countries with respect to rule of law and preventing and combating corruption. Slovenia is the only country among the seven candidates to have held a referendum on NATO membership. On March 23 of this year, 66 percent of those participating voted in favor of membership, a considerable achievement during the first week of the highly televised military operations in Iraq, which I need not tell my colleagues was not particularly politic or popular among most European voters. No society anywhere is perfect, and despite their outstanding record of accomplishment, significant challenges remain for each of the seven candidate countries. They include: permanently curtailing all gray arms sales in Bulgaria; implementing strict control over classified information in Bulgaria and Latvia; eliminating discrimination against ethnic minorities, especially Roma, in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia; abolishing the remaining restrictions on the freedom of the news media in Romania; completing the restitution of religious and communal properties that had been seized by the Communists or by the Fascists during the Holocaust in all of the seven countries; educating the publics of all of these countries about the Holocaust and the poison of anti-Semitism; and fully implementing legislation designed to eradicate corruption in all seven countries. Membership in NATO, however, in my view, will reinforce the process of democratic and economic reforms ongoing in these countries. That is why I mentioned Hungary before. I think this is a process. I think they have all met the minimum standards required, both in terms of their militaries, at this point, and in terms of reforms necessary. I truly believe were we unwilling--and I don't believe we will be--to admit them, we would turn this progress in the wrong direction. As a member of NATO, what we have seen is that these countries will get better and better and better. At least that is my hope and expectation. Each country has worked with NATO under the Membership Action Plan process and has developed a subsequent Timetable for the Completion of Reforms to identify strategies to conclude and build on the steps necessary to assume the full responsibilities and obligations of NATO membership. As Ambassador Nick Burns, the United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council, recently told the Foreign Relations Committee, ``We have pushed these countries hard to be ready,'' and ``they will be among our most committed allies when they walk through NATO's doors as full members.'' The Resolution of Ratification before the Senate today is similar to the resolution approved during the last round of NATO enlargement. Let me briefly summarize it. The text reflects bipartisan agreement, in accord with the view of the administration, that U.S. membership in NATO remains a vital national security interest of the United States. The Resolution of Ratification makes clear that any threat to the stability of Europe would jeopardize vital U.S. interests. It reaffirms that the security and prosperity of the United States is enhanced by NATO's collective defense against aggression that may threaten the territory of NATO members. It affirms that all seven countries have democratic governments, have demonstrated a willingness to meet all requirements of membership, and are in a position to further the principles of the North Atlantic Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area. The resolution underscores the importance of European integration, mentioning the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-- OSCE--and the European Union in that regard. The resolution also contains positive declarations on the alliance's ``Open Door'' policy toward potential future members, on the alliance's successful Partnership for Peace program, on the NATO-Russia Council created last year, and on compensation for victims of the Holocaust and of communism. The resolution contains three substantive and sensible conditions relating to costs and burden-sharing, on intelligence matters, and on full cooperation with efforts to obtain full accounting of captured and missing U.S. personnel from past military conflicts or cold war incidents. In summary, I believe the Resolution of Ratification accomplishes the objective of providing the strategic rationale for the accession of these seven new members and preserving U.S. interests with respect to future enlargement. This round of enlargement isn't the end of the road. Rather, it is a historic milestone in a process that began with the end of the cold war. Thus, it is essential that the door to membership remain open for candidates states Albania, Croatia, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as down the road for potential candidates like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, and perhaps other countries. By endorsing NATO enlargement, we recognize the soundness and relevance of the vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace. We acknowledge that a larger, stronger transatlantic relationship anchored in NATO will better serve us in confronting the transnational terrorist threats of the twenty-first century. We affirm that the United States will continue to play a leadership role in the security of the North Atlantic area, which I think is critical for us to reaffirm. I urge my Senate colleagues to vote in favor of the Resolution of Ratification and endorse the accession of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia as full members of the NATO Alliance. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I will respond briefly. Anyone who is a C-SPAN watcher will be a bit confused. We have Senator Warner talking about his 25- year relationship with Senator Levin and I am about to talk about my 28-year relationship with my friend, Senator Lugar. This is proof there is bipartisanship in this operation. We have a Democrat and a Republican opposing a Democrat and Republican on the principle here but not on whether or not this should be included and considered. This is basically a procedural judgment we are making. I have a few points notwithstanding the very well intended effort on the part of Senator Levin who has, for a number of years, been concerned about this issue and is concerned that, as he said, who knows, maybe some day we will end up with one of these member states no longer being a democracy. It is possible. What do we do? Let me suggest what Secretary Powell said before our committee when there was consideration, not by Senator Levin or Senator Warner, but there was discussion about having a condition attached to this treaty--which is not the case now. He said: NATO is not a committee; it's not a council; it is not a group. It is an alliance. When you call something an alliance, I think it means that everybody has to be together for the alliance to take action. I am skipping ahead to make this short. Secretary-General Lord Robertson told the members of the Foreign Relations Committee: Even when times have been difficult, NATO has never failed to get consensus or to find a way to work around the problem. No country has ever used its national veto. As Secretary General Lord Robertson also said, ``NATO is an infinitely adaptable organization'' and has proven itself equal to all organizational challenges. Let me be more precise. When France pulled out of NATO's integrated command in 1967, the alliance decided it had a problem. Ordinarily, that would be enough to cripple NATO because it would effectively veto everything. What did we do? Then NATO came up with a Defense Planning Committee, the so-called DPC, which for years has done the bulk of NATO's work. When France refused to go along on the Turkey article 4 request last winter, saying the decision in the NAC would be counterproductive to diplomatic discussions of the United Nations, what did we do? We went over to the DPC effortlessly. We did not have a great crisis in NATO. If that had not worked, Lord Robertson could have ordered the SACEUR to make the Patriots and AWACs available to Turkey, or he could have done what former Secretary General Luns once did. He could have simply declared his own decision was final unless there was unanimous opposition. I will not take more time, although there is much more to say. The reason I bring these things up, we have, in fact, dealt with very difficult crises in NATO, including member states not meeting the criteria of a democratic free market, respecting human rights, et cetera. We have had different countries who have been the odd man out on different occasions. Every time, instead of having to go through the process of a period of expulsion, we were able to weather the storm by dealing with it through other mechanisms. Here is the larger point I wish to make. I do not want to take too much time, but it is a very important point to make, in my view. Especially troubling is the opinion of Lord Robertson that alternatives to the consensus principle would create more problems than they are intended to solve. Majority rule or a UN Security Council-type system would send members scurrying for votes in support of their positions, merely delaying action and reinforcing divisions among allies. The consensus rule is a fundamental part of NATO, an essential second element in the article 5 defense clause of NATO, requiring that any NATO action taken as a result of an attack on a NATO member be decided by consensus. My colleagues should note that this Article was crafted back in 1949, on American insistence, to prevent the U.S. from being pulled into wars by European countries. As Lord Robertson asked us, ``does the U.S. now really want to open the door to the possibility of being dragged into a war it does not want to participate in?'' I might quote from a thoughtful letter to Senator Lugar and myself written by Bruce Jackson, president of the U.S. Committee on NATO: At present, the United States is the only country that can consistently produce unanimous outcomes at the level of the North Atlantic Council or, failing in that, at the Defense Planning Committee. The process of achieving unanimity is uniquely and, perhaps intentionally, to the advantage of the United States. The countries whose ratification is before the Senate are aghast that the Senate might consider weakening U.S. leadership in NATO, which is the aspect of NATO they most admire, just as their democracies reach the threshold of membership. We share their concern. Five years ago when this was brought up in the last expansion, I said, ``Why would we indulge in unilateral disarmament and give up our veto over a NATO decision?'' People wondered later, and asked me: What are you talking about? How is this giving up any veto? With regard to the mechanism to suspend a member that strays from NATO's principles, that too is unnecessary. Here are two examples: During the authoritarian rule of the Greek colonels from 1967 to 1973, Greece was frozen out of the key NATO decisions. When it appeared Portugal might go Communist in the summer of 1975, it, too, was frozen out. There would also be the temptation to play domestic politics with a suspension mechanism. We would not want NATO to be torn apart the way the European Union was three years ago when other countries isolated Austria because Mr. Haider's distasteful party had joined the governing coalition after a free election. For example one might envision a future scenario in which Turkey were threatened with military attack and some members would argue that Ankara's imperfect human rights record obviated the obligation of the NATO allies to honor their Article 5 commitments. This isn't far-fetched. In January 1991, Mr. Lambsdorff, then the leader of the Free Democrats in Germany's Bundestag, voiced similar sentiments. The reality is that once a suspension clause was introduced into the North Atlantic Treaty no country could fully rely upon Article 5. Lord Robertson's summary judgment on creating a suspension mechanism speaks volumes: The worst possible thing would be to legislate in advance for all possible occasions and then be locked in. Our debate will be watched closely in the seven invited countries and throughout the rest of Europe. Attaching this declaration to the Senate's ratification would send an unsettling message through the Alliance. Lord Robertson gave us his bottom-line on Monday: Putting these issues on the agenda of the NAC would be ``deeply unhelpful'' to him and would ``open a can of worms.'' The bottom line here, Madam President, is that I really think we should understand what is intended. The objective here to get NATO itself to adopt such a rule would be the single most serious thing we could do to U.S. leadership and U.S. de facto control of NATO. I urge my colleagues to vote down this amendment, which is both unnecessary and potentially disruptive to NATO as it is about to welcome seven new members. I thank my friend from Michigan and my friend from Virginia for being willing not to go with the original resolution they had, and seek this report from NATO within 18 months after the request being submitted by the Secretary of State. I think that is a more prudent way to proceed. But I hope when that is done, the NATO membership will uniformly reject any change in the process. But again I thank my colleagues and yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill, along with Senators McCain, Feinstein, Dodd, and Kerry, to make women and children a priority of our assistance of programs, women and children who are suffering the ravages of war and natural disasters, suffering from food shortages and a lack of basic necessities, suffering from the degradation of complex humanitarian emergencies. War has been the major cause. Over the past fifty years the nature of war has changed dramatically. Increasingly, sadly, women and children seem to bear the brunt of it. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, since 1990, more than 2 million children have been killed and 6 million maimed or injured as a result of war. Today, 90 percent of the casualities in any war are civilians. They are mostly women and children. It is incomprehensible to me that rape has been used as a weapon of war all over the world from Burma to Bosnia to Sierra Leone. It is equally incomprehensible that forced displacement of civilians, rather than being one of the unfortunate results of war, has actually become a deliberate tactic. Under these circumstances, what choice do people have but to leave their homes? They leave out of fear for their lives and their children's lives. Some find their way into camps where instead of safety, they suffer extraordinary violence and abuse. Allegations of sexual exploitation by camp residents and humanitarian workers in refugee camps in west Africa and Nepal are all-too-real examples of the sad fact that women and children remain vulnerable even in the very places they flee to find safety. This bill seeks to do something about this. It seeks to enhance the U.S. Government's ability to ensure that women and children's protection needs are addressed before, during, and after a complex humanitarian emergency. It does this in several ways. First, it directs the Secretary of State to designate a special coordinator for protection issues. That person will be changed with making sure that our embassies and consular posts are made aware of the earliest warning signs that a complex humanitarian emergency is imminent. The Coordinator is to compile a watch list of such countries and regions so that our aid missions can plan to meet potential need. Second, the bill specifies basic measures that will improve our ability to help these women and children, help the refugees, help internally displaced people cope during an actual complex humanitarian crisis. It requires that relief organizations funded by the United States Government review their procedures to ensure adequate measures have been taken to provide adequate physical security for refugees and internationally displaced people, especially the women and children. The legislation prohibits U.S. funding for relief agencies that do not sign a code of conduct that prohibits improper relationships between humanitarian aid workers and aid recipients, and encourages the Secretary to pressure the U.N. refugee agency to implement a ``whistle- blower'' system under which aid workers, refugees and internally displaced persons can report instances of gender-based violence and exploitation. Because women have unique health needs that are often unmet when they are forced to flee their homes, the bill includes a provision mandating health services for women within 30 days of the onset of a complex humanitarian emergency. Additionally, the bill amends the Micro-Enterprise Development Act to expand the availability of micro-loans to refugees and internally displaced women. When women are given access to income generating activities, they are less vulnerable to coercion from those who would demand sexual favors in return for food or other basic necessities. Finally, the bill deals with rehabilitation and recovery. The bill requires the Secretary of State and the Administrator for the Agency for International Development to develop and implement economic development programs to assist female heads of households, to help women increase access to ownership of land and other productive assets, to ensure that education and training programs are integrated with economic development programs to encourage reintegration of women who were displaced during war, and programs to politically empower women. It calls upon the United States Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to work on ensuring that World Bank demobilization, disarmament and reintegration programs extend the same benefits that ex-combatants receive to women and children who were formally or informally associated with them. As it now stands, women and children who were used as cooks, porters, and so called ``wives''--a euphemism for women who were kidnaped to serve as sexual slaves--are given nothing with which to rebuild their lives, despite the fact that they rarely served with armed groups by choice. And yet the very people who forced them into such conditions are assisted with no qualms or reservations. Finally, the bill calls upon the Secretary of State to report to Congress all the programs that they are funding that are aimed at improving the awareness of foreign law enforcement officials of women's human rights and the ability of foreign law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute crimes of rape and sexual violence. This bill is not a panacea. It does not cure all the ills that war and displacement create for women and children. It seeks to provide some relief for those who are entirely reliant--through no fault of their own--on the largess of the international community. I believe this legislation will improve the way we respond to the needs facing women and children trying to survive in the most dire of circumstances, and I hope my colleagues will join me by supporting it. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill, along with Senators McCain, Feinstein, Dodd, and Kerry, to make women and children a priority of our assistance of programs, women and children who are suffering the ravages of war and natural disasters, suffering from food shortages and a lack of basic necessities, suffering from the degradation of complex humanitarian emergencies. War has been the major cause. Over the past fifty years the nature of war has changed dramatically. Increasingly, sadly, women and children seem to bear the brunt of it. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, since 1990, more than 2 million children have been killed and 6 million maimed or injured as a result of war. Today, 90 percent of the casualities in any war are civilians. They are mostly women and children. It is incomprehensible to me that rape has been used as a weapon of war all over the world from Burma to Bosnia to Sierra Leone. It is equally incomprehensible that forced displacement of civilians, rather than being one of the unfortunate results of war, has actually become a deliberate tactic. Under these circumstances, what choice do people have but to leave their homes? They leave out of fear for their lives and their children's lives. Some find their way into camps where instead of safety, they suffer extraordinary violence and abuse. Allegations of sexual exploitation by camp residents and humanitarian workers in refugee camps in west Africa and Nepal are all-too-real examples of the sad fact that women and children remain vulnerable even in the very places they flee to find safety. This bill seeks to do something about this. It seeks to enhance the U.S. Government's ability to ensure that women and children's protection needs are addressed before, during, and after a complex humanitarian emergency. It does this in several ways. First, it directs the Secretary of State to designate a special coordinator for protection issues. That person will be changed with making sure that our embassies and consular posts are made aware of the earliest warning signs that a complex humanitarian emergency is imminent. The Coordinator is to compile a watch list of such countries and regions so that our aid missions can plan to meet potential need. Second, the bill specifies basic measures that will improve our ability to help these women and children, help the refugees, help internally displaced people cope during an actual complex humanitarian crisis. It requires that relief organizations funded by the United States Government review their procedures to ensure adequate measures have been taken to provide adequate physical security for refugees and internationally displaced people, especially the women and children. The legislation prohibits U.S. funding for relief agencies that do not sign a code of conduct that prohibits improper relationships between humanitarian aid workers and aid recipients, and encourages the Secretary to pressure the U.N. refugee agency to implement a ``whistle- blower'' system under which aid workers, refugees and internally displaced persons can report instances of gender-based violence and exploitation. Because women have unique health needs that are often unmet when they are forced to flee their homes, the bill includes a provision mandating health services for women within 30 days of the onset of a complex humanitarian emergency. Additionally, the bill amends the Micro-Enterprise Development Act to expand the availability of micro-loans to refugees and internally displaced women. When women are given access to income generating activities, they are less vulnerable to coercion from those who would demand sexual favors in return for food or other basic necessities. Finally, the bill deals with rehabilitation and recovery. The bill requires the Secretary of State and the Administrator for the Agency for International Development to develop and implement economic development programs to assist female heads of households, to help women increase access to ownership of land and other productive assets, to ensure that education and training programs are integrated with economic development programs to encourage reintegration of women who were displaced during war, and programs to politically empower women. It calls upon the United States Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to work on ensuring that World Bank demobilization, disarmament and reintegration programs extend the same benefits that ex-combatants receive to women and children who were formally or informally associated with them. As it now stands, women and children who were used as cooks, porters, and so called ``wives''--a euphemism for women who were kidnaped to serve as sexual slaves--are given nothing with which to rebuild their lives, despite the fact that they rarely served with armed groups by choice. And yet the very people who forced them into such conditions are assisted with no qualms or reservations. Finally, the bill calls upon the Secretary of State to report to Congress all the programs that they are funding that are aimed at improving the awareness of foreign law enforcement officials of women's human rights and the ability of foreign law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute crimes of rape and sexual violence. This bill is not a panacea. It does not cure all the ills that war and displacement create for women and children. It seeks to provide some relief for those who are entirely reliant--through no fault of their own--on the largess of the international community. I believe this legislation will improve the way we respond to the needs facing women and children trying to survive in the most dire of circumstances, and I hope my colleagues will join me by supporting it. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, on April 11, 2003, I submitted for inclusion in the official Record of the Senate a section-by-section discussion and analysis of title IX of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, P.L. 107-204. At the end of that statement, the full text of a letter to me from the United States Department of Justice, dated December 26, 2002, should have appeared. In that letter, Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant confirms my view that the Department may use existing criminal provisions to prosecute corporate executives who fail to file a certification attesting to the accuracy of a company's financial reports, pursuant to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Unfortunately, the letter was inadvertently excluded from the Record, so I now resubmit it and ask unanimous consent that its text be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to commend the Republic of Cyprus on its April 16 signing of an accession agreement with the European Union, and also to bemoan the failure to reach an agreement to end the nearly three-decade-old division of the island. The achievement of accession to the European Union marks the last phase of a 30-year enterprise by the Government and people of the Republic of Cyprus, which began with an Association Agreement in 1973 and will culminate in May 2004 with full membership. Celebration of this historic success, however, is tempered by the absence of a settlement that would have allowed the island as a whole to join the EU. The failure of the parties to reach an agreement through the United Nations process was both regrettable and avoidable. Although the Cyprus problem has been on the United Nations agenda for almost 40 years, it was the Clinton administration's decision in 1999 to make finding a solution in Cyprus a high priority that brought the two sides of the island back to proximity talks under the good offices of the United Nations Secretary General. Since 1999, Secretary General Kofi Annan and his special representative Alvaro de Soto have engaged interested parties in an intensive peace effort with international support, including that of U.S. Special Coordinator for Cyprus Ambassador Tom Weston. They worked feverishly with leaders in Nicosia, Athens, Ankara, and Brussels to try to persuade the parties to agree to a draft plan prior to the European Union summit in Copenhagen last December, at which the EU invited Cyprus and nine other countries to join the Union. While that effort did not produce an equitable end to the tragic division of Cyprus, it did produce a realistic framework and concrete text on which to continue discussions to resolve the remaining issues. After years of frustration and disappointment, the people of Cyprus saw a fragile but real possibility for settlement, and the overwhelming majority of the population in both communities embraced the process. In the first months of 2003, with the clock running out to reach an agreement before the date for Cyprus to sign the EU accession agreement, the UN Secretary General asked Tassos Papadopoulos, the newly-elected President of the Republic of Cyprus, and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to submit the plan to a public referendum. On March 10, Mr. Papadopoulos in good faith conditionally agreed to do so. Mr. Denktash refused. In response, tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots took to the streets to express their support for the UN plan and to entreat Mr. Denktash to participate in the process. But Mr. Denktash did not respond to these calls from the citizens whom he nominally represents. In denying his own people a democratic vote, he bears the primary responsibility for quashing the peace talks. Since then, Mr. Denktash has chosen to discredit the UN process though overheated rhetoric, calling the UN plan ``full of tricks'' and alleging that it did not take into account the non-negotiable requirements and ``realities'' of the Turkish Cypriot people. He did for the first time allow day-visits across the ``Green Line'' that divides the island, but this welcome conciliatory gesture appears to be more of a diversionary tactic than a return to the negotiating table. The Turkish Cypriots do have genuine concerns about their status and security, and these concerns must be reflected in any settlement decision. The Greek Cypriots need to acknowledge that before 1974 there was a Cyprus Problem and that members of both communities committed unpardonable violence and murder. Similarly, the Turkish Cypriots need to acknowledge that there has been a Cyprus Problem ever since the Turkish invasion of 1974, with mass human suffering. Both sides must recognize that this is 2003, not 1974 or 1964, and that only a reunited Cyprus as a member of the European Union would have ironclad, international security guarantees for all its citizens. Yet Mr. Denktash seems incapable of seizing the moment by recognizing that a negotiated settlement requires compromise. As Secretary General Annan stated in his report to the UN Security Council, however, ``except for a very few instances, Mr. Denktash by and large declined to engage in negotiation on the basis of give and take,'' thereby complicating efforts ``to accommodate not only the legitimate concerns of principle, but also the concrete and practical interests of the Turkish Cypriots.'' The window for achieving a settlement is not closed. Secretary General Annan's plan remains on the table as a basis for negotiation. The European Union has affirmed that there is a place in the EU for Turkish Cypriots. Upon the signing of the accession treaty, Cypriot President Papadopoulos restated his commitment to working toward a settlement. Greek Prime Minister and EU Council Term President Simitis invited Mr. Denktash and other Turkish Cypriot political leaders to Nicosia to continue discussions toward a settlement, an invitation which Mr. Denktash to date has rejected. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, with an eye toward his own country's future EU membership once Ankara has met the Copenhagen criteria, endorsed on April 17 the continuation of talks based on the UN plan. I hope that Prime Minister Erdogan, Foreign Minister Gul, and other distinguished leaders in Turkey will prevail on Mr. Denktash to do what is right for all in the region. EU leaders at the April 16 accession ceremony in Athens declared that the expanded EU represents a ``common determination to put an end to centuries of conflict and transcend former divisions.'' The people in northern Cyprus should not be barred from ``the closer ties of neighborhood'' described by European Commission President Prodi. Nor should they be excluded from the opportunity, now extended to their fellow-citizens in the south, to join the world's most powerful economic association. A lasting settlement would allow the Turkish Cypriot people to emerge from their isolation and become fully a part of Europe. It would bring opportunities for economic growth, for expanded trade, for travel and for broader educational and cross-cultural exchanges. And it would end the second-class citizenship of the Turkish Cypriot people in which their standard of living is at best one-third that of the people in the south. If Mr. Denktash does indeed have the interests of the people of northern Cyprus at heart, he should step aside and allow the Turkish Cypriot people to choose their own future. There is too much at stake to allow another opportunity to expire.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, James Bryant Conant once said that ``each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy, based on excellence of performance.'' I rise today to pay tribute to a man who is a member of the law enforcement elite, John B. Brown III, the Acting Director of the Drug Enforcement Administration. John Brown has spent more than three decades as a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Last year he capped his law enforcement career when he was appointed deputy administrator of the agency. And when former Administrator Asa Hutchinson was appointed as under secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, John Brown was tapped to be Acting Director of the DEA. John Brown is a dedicated, hard-working government leader. He is known at the DEA and in the larger law enforcement community as a thoughtful, personable administrator and a man of great humility. His career at the DEA has been a distinguished one. As a young agent he worked in Mexico where he was deeply involved in the investigation into the murder of Kiki Camarena, the brave DEA agent who was tortured and killed by Mexican drug traffickers. During that time as in the rest of his career--whether it was in Miami, the Dallas field division, the El Paso intelligence center or at DEA Headquarters--John Brown rose to the challenge and excelled at each assignment. But it was John Brown's first job as a teacher that really shaped him as an agent. John is known by the people who worked for him at DEA as a great teacher, someone who took the time to coach them, to motivate them, to counsel them. For that reason, he is one of the most popular administrators at DEA, and one of the most respected. As a school teacher, John quickly found that many of the problems he saw among students in his classroom involved learning the skills and attitudes and character to cope with life. Drug use was becoming widespread in the early 1970s and prompted John to decide to join DEA as a special agent. In truth, he never left the classroom. He has said many times that one of his proudest moments at DEA came when a former student--someone who as a young student had listened to one of his talks about the perils of drug use came up to him in an airport years later. He introduced himself, said that he had a great job and a wonderful family--both of which he said would have been impossible had he joined his many friends who used drugs in high school. He credited John Brown's talk on drugs with keeping away from a life of substance abuse. I would be remiss if I did not mention John's wife, Christine Brown, who has been a source of tremendous support and strength to John and their family. I know that she and their two children P.J. and Michael are incredibly proud of John and the superior and important work that he has done over the course of his career. John Brown is a leader of integrity and total dedication. He has served his country well and I wish him all the best.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Up to 15 minutes.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, the country is truly well served by having the Senator from North Dakota as ranking member. I don't know anyone who knows more about facts relating to our budget this year, last year, or in the last decade than the Senator from North Dakota. I am not being solicitous. A good friend of ours from the State that was much closer to North Dakota than Delaware--from Wyoming, Senator Simpson--used to say in the Senate repeatedly, in his colloquial way: You know, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not entitled to their own facts. It seems as though some in the Senate think they are entitled to their own facts. I will repeat some things that have been said here. They are so consequential I don't know how they cannot be repeated because they have not seemed to have broken through the ether, not here necessarily, but even in the country. To state the obvious, these are very serious times, just as they were at the dawn of the atomic age when Einstein observed ``that everything had changed except our way of thinking.'' We face mortal threats to our Nation from terrorists from rogue nations, expanding international commitments, a looming and gigantic democratic transition--a fancy word for saying there is going to be a bulge in the retirement-age people, myself included, and part of this baby boom generation--and our thinking must now change, not just about how we secure our safety in this dangerous new world but how we maintain our economic security, as well. And we are here today with yet another budget resolution that calls for more than $1 trillion in new taxes. One definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This budget meets that definition. Thanks to the people of Delaware, I have been here now for three decades and I have shared this floor with many of my colleagues--well, not that many, actually--who are still here today. How many of my colleagues came to this Chamber back in the 1980s and talked about the need to balance the Federal budget? It was a fervor at the time. The President of the United States of America, and many on this floor, the most ardent supporters of this outrageous budget deficit, were insisting on--and I remind everybody--a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Does everybody remember that? A constitutional amendment to balance the budget. When some of us voted for an exception to that amendment for war, our Republican friends, by and large, overwhelmingly our conservative Republican friends, voted it down and said that is a loophole we cannot sustain. The President, this President of the United States, indicated that. When we said that when there are exceptional economic circumstances requiring us to deficit-spend as an exception to the constitutional amendment, our Republican friends said no, no, we want to enshrine it in the Constitution of the United States of America. I think the leader of the Budget Committee was probably for a constitutional amendment-- without exceptions, we tried to put in. Now what are we doing? Here we are. Back in the 1980s we were told that Government needs to run more like a business and like a family; that business and families are under the danger of extending beyond their means and they should stop. I know it is kind of trite to say it, but I guess we are modeling this after Enron businesses, instead of what we used to know as businesses back in the 1980s. It took some time, but we eventually took that sound advice and we did balance the budget. As the old political saw goes, ``I have the scars on my back to prove it.'' It took discipline. It took some hard choices that made my constituents angry and my most ardent supporters angry--because we cut their programs. Here we are again. But this time the Nation is at war--in case someone on this floor hasn't noticed. We are at war. We face ballooning deficits, far larger than anyone could have imaged, especially, I might add, in the wake of our jubilation just 2 years ago about a projected $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years. This year alone, counting the costs of the war, our deficit, if we pass this budget, will reach, in the unified budget, which means counting the surplus in Social Security, a $350 billion deficit. If you take out Social Security like we all promised you we would do, and don't count the surplus in Social Security, it is a $587 billion deficit this year. In the face of this $587 billion deficit, or what everybody likes to talk about now, the unified budget, which takes the Social Security surplus and spends it, the $350 billion deficit that this budget resolution calls for in the face of this more than a third of a trillion dollar deficit, for 1 year we are adding another $1.3 trillion tax cut. In my 30 years in the Senate I can honestly say, from my perspective, I cannot recall a more reckless or irresponsible proposal to come before this Senate. Where are the deficit hawks now? Where are those who were demanding for decades that we balance the budget; those who said we couldn't sustain our economy in the face of massive deficits? Where are those who were telling me we cannot let our children and grandchildren foot the bill for our excesses? Where are they now? Where have all--not the flowers--where have all the balanced budgeters gone? What happened to them? They all died and were reincarnated as kings. All my conservative Republican friends--where are they? Where have they gone? Instead of a careful, conservative approach to our finances, instead of caution and a sense of responsibility in these dangerous times, this budget throws caution to the wind and simply dumps the bill for our choices today on our children and our grandchildren. A lot of people around this place, since I got here--it is a dangerous habit we tend to--and I hope I don't do it--question one another's motives, not just their judgment. I am not questioning the motive of my Republican colleagues here. I believe that, notwithstanding that the rich benefit the most from this--I don't think that is their purpose. It is a result of what they do. I think their purpose is they truly believe somehow, if they go along with this budget, somehow it will cause the economy to grow so significantly that everybody is going to be all right. We are going to be able to pay for everything and balance the budget. They even went so far--I will do this in a separate speech since I don't have time--they even went so far as to get someone from the President's Council of Economic Advisers and place him, hire him with the Congressional Budget Office to make a case that this could be done. As I understand it from my Ph.D. economist on my staff, he ran, I don't know how many--two, three, five, a half dozen econometric models, a fancy term for seeing how this would work out under dynamic scoring, and still could not come up with a balanced budget. Even the Republicans can't, through this new voodoo, come up with a balanced budget--not this year but long term. We are now in a position where we ask, when we are fully engaged on the ground in Iraq in a war that is not truly over and will not be over until the reconstruction and nationbuilding the President rightly calls for is accomplished, where are they now? Where are my deficit hawk friends now when the $75 billion the President has requested is just the first downpayment on the war? Let me be clear about the numbers at the outset, before we find ourselves under the weight of deficits that will begin to crush us, before we have to have our old ``cut the deficit'' conversation again, because I promise you it is coming up. We are going to have our ``we have to cut the deficit'' conversation when reality finally sinks in, unfortunately probably too late. In the face of all the new, massive domestic and international commitments that are staring us in the face, this resolution calls for a $1.3 trillion tax cut. The additional interest charges we will pay on the increased national debt as a consequence of the tax cut and the budget deficit will total over $1.5 trillion. It will bring the amount up to $1.5 trillion, the cost of the tax cut; over $1.5 trillion in dollars that will not be available to meet the new commitments we face. These funds will not be available, to take one example close to home, to give the Adjutant General of the Delaware National Guard, General Vavala, the medivac helicopters he needs or the civil support he needs in case of biological or chemical attacks. Sadly, there are countless more examples of tax cuts shortchanging vital programs such as the hundreds of thousands of eligible veterans still waiting 6 months to enroll in a health care system, not to mention 400,000 claims by disabled vets that are still backlogged, not to mention no money for the COPS Program, or underfunding nearly $10 billion in the President's own No Child Left Behind education law, signed just last year and heralding the President as the President of Education. Forget about Social Security. Virtually all of these tax cuts are borrowed straight from the Social Security system on the very threshold of the time when that system will need not just the borrowed surpluses, but even hundreds of billions of dollars more to meet the commitments to a retiring generation of baby boomers. Let's be clear now at the outset what we are about to do and the choices we are about to make. I remember clearly those conversations with many of my colleagues. You can be sure as I am standing here today we will be having them again soon. Mark Twain said a lot of things, but one of the things he said is very appropriate today, in my view. He once said: History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Boy, am I hearing a rhyme here today. It does rhyme. It rhymes with all the nonsense of the supply-siders of the 1980s. It rhymes. It rhymes: massive tax cuts and deficits as far as the eye can see. They rhyme. Mr. President, at its core, a nation's budget reflects its basic values. More than any speech, more than any campaign promise, our budget reveals who we are, what we believe in, what we think is important, what we think is not. It reveals our real values, our real priorities. I do not say this as a criticism, but my value system and that of the Senator from Oklahoma are fundamentally different. My value system and the value system of my friends who are supporting this massive deficit are very different. And that is legitimate. I am in no way casting an aspersion but stating the obvious. Budgets reflect our values. In these historic times, in my view, our budget policy should reflect two of our most fundamental American values. The first is facing up to our responsibility. I love all my friends, Democrats and Republicans, who talk about that we have to have more individual responsibility in this Nation. I just ask the average person listening to this debate: Tell me how responsible you think we are being individually. It means putting together a responsible budget that makes hard but necessary choices, just like they are making in their families right now, as I speak. It means doing what is right. And by that I am not saying my Republican friends are doing what is wrong. They mean well, but I think it is wrong.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 5 more minutes.