Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, we are facing a filibuster on an amendment I offered with Senator Kennedy, with great support across the board. I thank Senator Reed for his support of this very simple amendment. We are facing a filibuster on whether we can vote on raising the minimum wage. I cannot think of a more cruel filibuster in my life. Why on Earth would anyone, Republican or Democrat, try to block a vote on this very important matter? I hear all about compassionate conservatism. Fine. Show it to me. Where is it? People at the minimum wage have been stuck there for 7 years. That is how long it has been since we raised it. Give us a chance to have an up-or-down vote on raising the minimum wage. I ask my colleagues to try and live on $10,800 a year. Think about your rent or your mortgage payment. If it is $800 a month, that is it. You use up all of your money. Some Members say we are trying to raise it way out of proportion. We are not. It is a rather modest increase, from $5.15 to $7 an hour. I will show a few charts that tell the story better. People who work at the minimum wage are working well below the poverty line. This red line on this chart is the poverty line for a family of three. A family of three is way below the poverty line. They are headed straight down, as shown on this chart. I do not understand why we want to keep people below the poverty line. Nearly three-quarters of minimum wage workers are adults. We are not talking about kids. When I was a kid, I used to work at the minimum wage. Fine. It was great. I made 50 cents an hour. That gives away my age. Imagine if those Members of the Senator were still in the Senate. We would still have a minimum wage of 50 cents an hour. My goodness, we need to raise the minimum wage. Seventy-two percent are adults. How can we look at these people and tell them they do not deserve an increase? By the way, they will still be below poverty even after we raise them to $7. Every day we delay, minimum wage workers fall further behind. All the gains of the 1996 minimum wage increase have been lost already. The time is long overdue that we raise the minimum wage. People are working hard but losing ground. The real value of the minimum wage: Today it is worth $4.98. That is what hard-working people are getting, $10,800 a year for a family of three. With our minimum wage increase, there would be a $3,800 yearly increase in wages. That would pay far more than 2 years of childcare. We talk about how important this welfare bill is. As a matter of fact, my friend from Pennsylvania had a chart showing how wonderful it has been that children have been lifted out of poverty. Of course, we are seeing now an increase in poverty. During the Clinton years, that was true. There were so many jobs, 22 million jobs created, compared to 3 million jobs lost under Bush. Kids were lifted out of poverty. This minimum wage increase would give children more childcare. That is important. It provides 2 years of health care; provides full tuition for a community college degree; provides a year and a half of heat and electricity; provides more than a year of groceries; provides more than 9 months of rent. When we give to people at the lower echelon an increase in the minimum wage, they will spend it, and that will fuel our economic recovery. I ask our friends on the other side, Why are you opposing us? We will look at which Presidents have signed minimum wage increases into law: FDR, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Republican; John Kennedy, Democrat; Lyndon Johnson, Democrat; Gerald Ford, Republican; James Carter, Democrat; George H.W. Bush, Republican; William Clinton, Democrat. The people who are trying to stop an increase in the minimum wage are going against a whole array of Democratic and Republican Presidents. Our increase is quite modest as shown by my chart. American families are suffering since the Bush administration took hold. Look what has happened: 13 million children hungry; 8 million Americans unemployed; 8 million workers losing overtime. That is what they want to do. There are 7 million low-wage workers, some waiting 7 years for a minimum wage increase. All we want is an up-or-down vote. They are filibustering it. There are 3 million more Americans in poverty since President Bush took office and 90,000 workers a week losing unemployment benefits. I hope compassionate Senators on both sides of the aisle, I hope savvy Senators on both sides of the aisle, will definitely allow a vote on this very simple proposition. Seven years ago we raised the minimum wage. It is time to do it again. Take it to the people in your States. Ask them how they feel. The polls are overwhelming. More than 70 percent of the people want to see an increase in the minimum wage. Yet in this Chamber, one would think we are asking for something that makes no sense. We want to get people off of welfare. That is the point of the underlying bill. Let's get them into work that pays.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, we have heard all these glowing figures from the other side of the aisle about this economy. I want to give a little dose of reality. Today the unemployment insurance extension runs out. This Senate refused to act. I don't know how many times Senator Cantwell has made that unanimous consent request. In my State, it is estimated if unemployment benefits are not extended, 314,344 workers will lose benefits in the first 6 months of the year. This is outrageous. This is the first time I can ever remember where a political party in charge could care less about people who are unemployed. Look at the record here. This is real. Let's go back to the Hoover administration, when there was a decrease in job creation. During every other administration--Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton--private sector employment increased. Not now. Here we are at a moment when people are running out of their unemployment extension. I will read you a letter written by Kathleen Fontana of Scotts Valley, CA: Dear Members of Congress: I am a single parent of two teenage boys and unemployed and unable to apply for the extension of UI. I was laid off July 2, 2004 . . . after 38 years with TWA. Needless to say, I am 60 years old, having been forced to live off my home equity loan in order to make ends meet. The unemployment extension needs to be passed and reinstated for us American citizens that are having these financial difficulties in the career area. More jobs are leaving the U.S. and more money is leaving here, too. Iraq is only one example. Things need to change and people at home need help too. . . . We need your votes to change this and have the extension of UI benefits. As I go around my State--and I have been doing that a lot--the basic theme I am hearing is this: Senator, it is time for this country; it is time for America; it is time to think about our people and our workers. I could not even believe it. I went into farm country and the rice farmers there who are sending their sons and daughters off to war--the contracts for rice are for the people of Iraq; they went out of the country. This is taxpayer dollars, American taxpayer dollars. Instead of saying, OK, we are going to rebuild Iraq and do it with American business and farmers, oh, no, we could not do that. Our State Department would not like that. I am here to tell you there is something brewing in the countryside. People are angry about the fact that they seem to be last in line. Let's look at some of these job loss numbers since this President came into power. Under Ronald Reagan, we had 165,000 jobs created per month. That was terrific. He was a beloved President. Under George H.W. Bush, 47,604 jobs were created a month. That was not very good. Under Bill Clinton, there was an extraordinary leap, to 236,625 jobs created per month. That is why kids got lifted out of poverty. I saw a chart Senator Santorum had and it is beautiful. It shows how the African-American children are seeing poverty decline--up until last year. It is because during the Clinton administration we did welfare reform and we had a great economy. Then under George W. Bush, 58,815 jobs have been lost per month. It is a pathetic situation. If you translate that to my State, what we see in this situation is, again what has happened here and why we have to at least, A, be compassionate to the people who need extended unemployment benefits; B, we need to raise the minimum wage; C, we need to kill this administration's crazy idea to take overtime away from hard-working people. Let's get this country back on track. It should be time for America. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I am pleased to offer this amendment with my colleague from Massachusetts who is the true leader on the issue of trying to raise the minimum wage so that people who are trying to get into the workforce, get off of welfare and subsidy, will be able to actually support their families so that we actually reward work, and it is going to make a huge difference. Before I go into my remarks, I do want to, however, respond to my friend who spoke about how important it is to call your Senators and ask them to pass that Energy bill that we killed. I hope when you call us, you will tell us not to pass that one. That one was a travesty of justice for consumers. It was a terrible bill if you care about the environment. And it was a terrible bill if you believe that there is already too much corporate welfare because there were huge subsidies to the nuclear industry. There were huge subsidies by way of giving a liability waiver to those companies that made MTBE, which destroyed drinking water supplies all over the country. The Senate was sending this bill over to a conference committee, and it comes back with this liability waiver. It is a terrible bill. Yes, there are places we could drill in this country, where the folks want it there and the oil is there. Off the Gulf of Mexico, near Louisiana, certain places in Alaska, it makes sense. But it does not make sense to pass an Energy bill that is back to the future because it doesn't understand that times have changed and just a couple of extra miles of fuel economy and fuel efficiency in our automobiles can mean that we will have fields and fields of energy in the future. The last point I want to make--and then I want to talk about this amendment which is important to this bill--is that on April 25 or thereabouts, taxpayers are funding a court case where Dick Cheney, the Vice President, is refusing to reveal who came into his office when he put together an energy report and worked on an Energy bill. It is outrageous that taxpayers have to go all the way to the Supreme Court, essentially, because they are paying for the defense of Dick Cheney, and he refuses to reveal who met with him about the Energy bill, what they talked about, and what their interests were. We know Enron was in that meeting. That much we know. But I don't know who else was there. So I just wanted to answer the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Craig, because in my view, we did a great service to the people by not passing that particular Energy bill. Let's pass an Energy bill that is a good Energy bill. Now, I want to get to the amendment I sent to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Kennedy and lay the groundwork for why it is so important to this welfare reform bill. The last time the Federal minimum wage was raised it was $4.25 an hour. In 1996, it was raised to $5.15. It was over a 2-year period. So that is 8 years ago; 8 years ago we raised the Federal minimum wage. Those people at the bottom of the economic ladder are living on $10,700 a year. I don't know if my colleagues are aware of what it costs to rent an apartment, if you have a family, and you are trying to raise a family on this amount of money. I guess you might be lucky, in my neck of the woods, to try and get some sort of an apartment for $800 a month or $850, if you could even find one. You can't find it around here, a decent size place. That would use up the entire salary of someone living on the minimum wage. I say to my colleagues, please support this. How can we expect people to live on this amount of money, to be able to afford rent, food, the minimum requirements for raising a family?

Mrs. BOXER. We are charged with giving pay increases to the Federal workforce. We do it every year, do we not?

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, will my friend yield for another question?

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Kennedy and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?

Mrs. BOXER. I am sure the Senator would be happy to agree to a 5- minute limit. The Senator from Iowa gets up and says this is a noble thing to raise the minimum wage, but you are holding up the welfare bill. We will vote on this in 60 seconds from now. The American people are for this. Does my friend agree the American people are fairminded and for this?

Mrs. BOXER. Our colleagues accept it. I do not know of anyone who does not accept the automatic adjustment in their pay.

Mrs. BOXER. I am happy to yield.

Mrs. BOXER. The Senator is correct.

Mrs. BOXER. My friend is accurate.

Mrs. BOXER. That is absolutely true. In my State we have a minimum wage that is higher than the Federal minimum wage, but there is no question that the Federal minimum wage is a benchmark number. A poverty rate for a family of three in our country today is $15,607. And for a family of four, it is $18,850. So, yes, if you are a single mom or a single dad and you are working at a minimum-wage job, you are making less than people who are considered to be in poverty. What a travesty. And even if you have two workers working at the minimum wage, you would barely get out of the poverty range. So we are talking about a severe deficiency in compassion. These days, we hear a lot about compassionate conservatives. I have seen a conservative side. I want to see the compassionate side on this particular vote. How can anyone believe it is fair to keep the minimum wage where it has been for 8 years? It is not fair. We are talking about a bill that seeks to lift people out of the darkest, deepest economic hole. We want to start them on their way to being able to take care of themselves and their families. You cannot lift yourself out of a deep economic hole on a minimum-wage job. As my friend from Nevada points out, we used to think of the minimum wage--when I was a kid it was 50 cents an hour, and the kids took the minimum-wage jobs. What I used to work at when I was a kid was 50 cents an hour. I am showing my age. Maybe I shouldn't do that. But we didn't look at families who were surviving on that. Today we are looking at families who are surviving on the minimum wage. We can be sure of one thing: If we don't lift the minimum wage, people may move off of welfare into the workforce, but they will not move out of poverty. Studies have shown that between half and three-quarters of those who are leaving welfare remain poor for up to 3 years. The courage that it takes to train yourself for work, to get up every day and not even to be able to afford to pay the rent--this isn't right. Some may say: Senator, these minimum-wage jobs are just starter jobs. They are just a few months. Studies prove that you may be stuck in that job for 3 years, and that is just average. You may be stuck in that job for 6 years. With the economic circumstances of the last 3 years, where we have seen a loss of 3 million private sector jobs, it isn't as if you have a tremendous array of jobs out there. What will our amendment do? Our amendment will increase the Federal minimum wage to $7 an hour in three steps over 2 years and 2 months. It would raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour today to $5.85 an hour in 2 months, after enactment of this act, then to $6.45 in another year, and then to $7 a year after that. Even at that rate of $7, you are barely able to survive. But at least we are moving the minimum wage toward a more livable wage. Let me talk about California. My State stepped out and looked at the Federal minimum wage and said: This cannot be. This will not work in our State, where the rental costs are so high; where the food costs, even though we are the breadbasket of the world, are high; where the cost of transit is high. So in my State, the minimum wage today is $6.75. The States cannot do it alone. The Federal Government has to set the standard of compassion and fairness and make work an honorable endeavor. The best social program is a job. I agree with that. I would much prefer that people work than not. But work has to be rewarded. You may ask: Senator Boxer, why does this bill matter since your State has a higher minimum wage of $6.75? It is very clear. The Federal Government sets the floor for workers everywhere, and it is a guide to all States, including my State. Even a small increase to $7 will help 393,000 workers in California, if California keeps the minimum wage at $6.75. Raising the minimum wage helps many more low-wage workers than just those earning the minimum wage because it does set the standard. You have heard that many cities and counties all over the country are casting what they call ``livable wages,'' because they are looking at a minimum wage and realizing that it is really a sub-minimum wage; it isn't going to really work. Why not have a minimum wage that we can be proud of here? That is what Senator Kennedy and I are trying to do today. Let's look at what has happened in the area of poverty in our country. The poverty rate rose to 12.1 percent in America in 2002, from 11.7 percent in 2001. So this administration's economic policies, which caused the loss of so many private sector jobs, has seen an increase in poverty. And 1.7 million people have been added to the ranks of the poor, including many women and many children. You can be a compassionate conservative, a compassionate progressive, or a compassionate liberal, or anything you want to call yourself. Compassion is the name of the game. It will help our country. I will talk about that in a minute. Let's look at what else has happened. First, you have 12.1 million children living in poverty today. In 2002, 34.6 million Americans were living in poverty. Think about that. I have 35 million people in my State, and 34 million Americans were in poverty in 2002. The whole State of California equals the number of people who were in poverty. That is an enormous number. My State, if it were a nation, would be the fifth largest in terms of its GDP. Imagine if every person in my State were in poverty. That is what we have. So we have 12 million children in poverty. Let's look at something else. For the first time in many years, working Americans' wage growth is almost stagnant, while during the last term of the Clinton administration those wages grew. So what am I saying to you? We have seen an increase in poverty among women and children and families, we have seen an increase in the poverty rate, and we see wage growth that is almost stagnant. From the end of 1996 to the end of 2000, full-time workers saw their usual weekly earnings grow faster than inflation, and those gains in real wages were evident for both higher and lower wage workers. In fact, the lowest earning 10 percent of the workers saw their wages increase 2 percent greater than inflation. So before the Bush administration, we saw this wonderful real wage growth--wages that were going up faster than inflation. In contrast, from the end of 2000 until the end of 2003, real weekly earnings for working-class Americans stagnated. The lowest 10 percent of American workers have seen their wages go up by 0.2 percent; whereas, before, they went up 2.1 percent. Now it is 0.2 percent. So people are working harder and they are just not getting ahead at all. Again, whether we call ourselves conservatives, moderates, or liberals, that doesn't matter to me. I just think the word ``compassion'' comes into it. Also, a word that has to come into this-- or two words--are ``smart policy.'' Why is it smart policy? I will get into that. One of the arguments you hear against raising the minimum wage--and you hear it every time--is don't raise the minimum wage because it is going to hurt employers. We have heard that since the very first day I was working in a minimum-wage job at 50 cents an hour. What if Congress in the past decided to just hold firm at 50 cents an hour? I am sure Senator Kennedy heard the same arguments all those years ago, when people came to the floor and said 50 cents an hour is enough, and don't raise the minimum wage because it will be a burden to employers. The truth is that we have seen in the history of the greatest country in the world, when you raise the minimum wage, everyone does better. Workers perform better. They are more productive. Business does better. They are more productive. Their profit margins go up. So let us not hear the same old, same old, same old words from the past that, oh, it is a burden on everyone. No, it has proven to be an economic stimulus. There is another theory I would like to test with my colleagues who have supported tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. If you are a millionaire, you are going to get back $120,000 a year. Think about that, folks. If you are a millionaire, under the Bush tax cut, you will get a cut in taxes of $120,000 a year. A minimum-wage earner today, working full time, 8 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, earns $10,800 a year. So my calculation is that this year's tax cut for millionaires is 11 times the yearly income of a full-time minimum-wage worker. What are we doing? Why are we here? I admire the folks in the upper income brackets, and I happen to know a lot of them in California. Do you know what they say to me? They say: Senator, you make sure everyone is brought along. When everybody is brought along, we do better. First, we feel better about ourselves and our country, but we do better. Why do we do better? Because the people who will get this increase--the $7 an hour--are going to spend that money in the economy. It is a no- brainer. My colleagues can make every argument about how giving back $120,000 a year to the wealthiest among us will stimulate the economy. They call it ``trickle down.'' They love trickle down when it applies to the wealthy. Oh, give it to the wealthy; they will go out and spend it. The fact is, the wealthiest people already have the refrigerator or two; they already have the two homes or three; they already have the yachts. They already have what they need. They are not going to go out and spend it. They probably will sock it away. The bottom line is, when a worker gets another couple of bucks in his pocket and has to support his or her family, they will go to the store on the corner and spend the money, and it is going to give a boost to this economy. So let us not say that trickle down only works when you give to the rich. Let's also admit that the fact is, when you give to the middle class--and that is what I support, middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts to the working poor--you are really going to drive consumer spending. We know that low-income workers and moderate-income workers put their earnings right back into this economy, and they don't even have time to think about it because they have to buy clothes for the kids and food for the table. They will spend 100 percent of that increase; whereas, the wealthier taxpayers are unlikely to put that windfall back into the consumer-driven economy. To just sum up my remarks--and I know the Senator from Massachusetts is going to add mightily to these arguments--let me say this. We are doing a welfare bill. Everybody wants to see people get off welfare and go to work. Every one of us should also want to make sure that when people get into the workforce and they work hard, their work is rewarded, their work means something, and they won't be stuck in poverty forever if they are stuck in a minimum-wage job. Let us show not only our compassion, let us show our respect for work; let us show our understanding of economics. I have a degree in economics. Granted, it was a long time ago. I was a stockbroker and it was a long time ago. I know when you put money in the hands of people who need to spend it, it is going right back into the economy. This particular amendment has all the attributes we should all want to see. It will be a stimulus to the economy. It will get people out of poverty. It will set a standard for the rest of the States. It is fair, it is overdue, and the time is now. I commend my colleague from Massachusetts. This is his initiative. He knows how much I care about this issue and is willing to share it with me. I am so honored to have my name associated with this amendment. I am very hopeful we can come together today and adopt it. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. Does the Senator not think it is an outrage? We work hard and we make a decent living. We get an automatic cost-of-living adjustment unless we stop it. Yet the same people who take a cost-of- living adjustment for themselves won't give a small increase to the people at the bottom of the ladder who are trying so hard to make something of themselves and rise above problems, illness, and poverty-- sometimes for generations--and want to be able to get into the workforce. My colleague says Tommy Thompson says it is important that these be good jobs. I wonder if any of our colleagues could live on $10,800 a year. I do not think they could. I do not think so.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, according to the experts, creating a separate offense for a child in utero would make it less likely that someone who harms or terminates a pregnancy would be convicted of a separate offense. So I find it stunning that, rather than back Senator Feinstein's substitute, which is very clear--you harm a pregnant woman, you are going to do double the time, you are going to get double the punishment, and it avoids all question of Roe v. Wade--it shocks me my colleagues on the other side would rather have a weaker bill, soft on the criminal, soft on crime, in order to undermine Roe v. Wade. It is an injection of a political agenda into the criminal justice system which I think harms the integrity of the system. Again, I am at a loss for words. That is hard for me to believe. But if you look at domestic violence groups, they will tell you how they feel about it. They say they don't support the legislation. They feel it would actually be harmful to battered women. Again, as someone who coauthored the Violence Against Women Act with Senator Biden, here we have a piece of legislation that is going to be harmful to battered women. Yet the other side will not support Senator Feinstein's amendment, which absolutely avoids this problem. Juley Fulcher, public policy director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who testified before the House subcommittee in July 2003, said in her written statement: The bill is not designed to protect women and does not help victims of domestic violence. Instead, the focus often will be shifted to the impact of the crime on the unborn embryo or fetus, once again diverting the attention of the legal system away from domestic violence or other forms of violence against women. I commend to my colleagues the July 8, 2003 testimony of Juley Fulcher before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Committee on the Judiciary. We also have a letter from Lynn Rosenthal, the executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the letter of Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund. I ask unanimous consent to have them printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank my colleague. I ask unanimous consent the letter from George Fisher be printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes from my colleague.

Mrs. BOXER. Then you have Jon Jennings who in 1999 was the Acting Assistant Attorney General. He submitted a letter to Representative Henry Hyde on behalf of the Justice Department. He also wrote the law would be hard to prosecute because of the difficulty in gathering evidence. I ask unanimous consent to have Jon Jennings' letter printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. Then there is a recent letter of George Fisher, a tenured professor at Stanford, former prosecutor and expert on the criminal justice system. He, too, believes it makes things worse in terms of convicting a criminal.

Mrs. BOXER. Here we have it. I am going to finish with this. We have a bill before us Senator Feinstein has improved greatly. We have a bill before us that, instead of concentrating on punishing the violent criminal, concentrates instead on trying to set the stage to reverse Roe v. Wade, which the vast majority of people in this country think is a good law that balances the rights of the woman and the rights of the fetus. Yet they are so interested in doing this that they have a bill that is going to make it difficult to convict the criminal who commits the heinous crime against the pregnant woman. It shows you how far the other side will go. When we reach out our hand, as we have done many times with them, they will not take our hand. They push it away, because they are much more interested in the political agenda of taking away a woman's right to choose. My heart goes out to Laci Peterson's family and to all the other families that have experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one to a violent crime and, on top of that, losing the joy I and Senator Feinstein have of having grandchildren. But we need to pass laws here that will make matters better, not make matters worse. We need to pass laws here that are clean, that will make the law clear and not murky. I think Senator Feinstein's substitute-- she wrote it with the Laci Peterson family in her heart. She wants to make sure criminals who would attack a pregnant woman are brought to justice and we don't get diverted to some other issues. I am proud to stand with my colleague on this one. I know how hard this is. I know how hard she has worked. I will support her substitute very proudly, knowing it is the right thing to do, to crack down against these heinous crimes and to protect pregnant women. I thank her very much, and I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of Senator Feinstein's time.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah because he promised me he would keep within the 15 minutes so that I could get the floor at this time, and I appreciate his cooperation. I also thank my colleague, the senior Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, for her great leadership on this issue. I also have to express a little bit of dismay that she was not able to modify her amendment. It kind of gives one a clue that the people on the other side have a different agenda when they say they are not going to allow a colleague they respect and admire to send a modification to the desk. So I thought I would want to place that on the record because we remember. These things we will remember because it is not right to not allow a colleague to modify an amendment that she has written. So the next time the other side wants to do it, we will have to think a bit. It is just sad. It is not the way the Senate should work. Senator Feinstein has yielded me 10 minutes of her time, so if the Chair would tell me when I have used 9 minutes, I would appreciate it.

Mrs. BOXER. I am very much in favor of enhanced penalties for those offenders, those criminals, who harm pregnant women. I think Senator Feinstein's substitute amendment is one that does exactly that. What I do not support are the efforts of some Members of this body who clearly are the leaders of the anti-choice movement in the Senate. We have heard from them seriatim. They have just come right down and spoken. I do not support what they are trying to do, which is to undermine pro- choice laws, particularly Roe v. Wade. Now, one can dress up a bill to make it look like anything one wants, but the so-called Unborn Victims of Violence Act, although they try to dress it up as a criminal statute designed to deter violence, I think has tremendous weakness in the way it is written and in the way it would prosecute a violent criminal who harms a pregnant woman. It is another effort to undermine Roe v. Wade, which as we know, has given women in this country the right to choose, and it is a very important right of privacy. How do I know this is the supporters' motivation? It is easy for me because if they wanted to create a law that says we believe that a pregnant woman should be protected and we want to punish someone who harms a pregnant woman, it is a pretty easy thing to just support Senator Feinstein's amendment. It is clean; it is clear; she doubles the penalties just as they do in their bill. She avoids the issue, however, of a woman's right to choose, which this is not about. There is nothing about that in this bill. The substitute that Senator Feinstein has offered to us, which is like H.R. 1997, creates a separate offense when someone harms a pregnancy or terminates a pregnancy while in the commission of a violent Federal crime. That is very important to do because these crimes are heinous and all the more heinous if a woman is pregnant. As the author of the Violence Against Women Act in the House and working with Senator Biden for 10 years to get it through the Senate and the House and get it signed into law, Senator Feinstein's bill is in tune with that point that we will not stand by and allow violence against women. Particularly if a woman is pregnant, it makes the crime more vicious and it doubles the penalty for such a crime. It creates the same separate penalty for this separate crime, a maximum of 20 years for harm and a maximum of life in the event a pregnancy is terminated. It does not require proof that the offender had knowledge of the woman's pregnancy. The sole difference between the substitute that Senator Feinstein is offering and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act is that they want to bring in the issue of a woman's right to choose, and they want to make this bill about a woman's right to choose. What on Earth does this have to do with a woman's right to choose? Nothing, not a thing. Senator Feinstein's substitute focuses on the pregnant woman. That is the issue, the pregnant woman. So one wonders why the other side cannot accept it. The answer is simple. Again, they are trying to make this about abortion, not about convicting a criminal. I want to correct something. When I referenced the House bill, I meant to reference the Zoe Lofgren bill--and I am not sure of that number--not the House bill that is identical to Senator DeWine's bill. Zoe Lofgren in the House had a similar bill to Senator Feinstein's bill. That bill got a lot of support but not enough support. Again, it is very simple why people over there who are anti-choice did not support the Lofgren bill, and they do not support the Feinstein bill, because they want to make this about abortion and they want to undermine Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose. I am a little bit shocked because the experts who have written to us have told us that the bill that the anti-choice Senators are supporting would make it harder to convict a criminal. For example, Peter Rubin, visiting associate professor at Georgetown Law Center, when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee, said: The phrase ``child in utero'' is ambiguous and would actually aid an offender in avoiding prosecution. Imagine. It seems to me the other side is so anxious to undermine Roe and to confuse the subject and to make this bill about abortion, they are willing to pass an ambiguous bill which would actually aid the offender, the criminal, and would actually allow some heinous criminal to go free. I ask unanimous consent that Peter Rubin's letter be printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, at the end of 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act became law. I was a member of the conference committee on that bill, and I think it was a good first step in improving security at our nation's ports. It had many good provisions, such as the creation of national and regional maritime transportation/port security plans to be approved by the Coast Guard; better coordination of federal, state, local, and private enforcement agencies; and the establishment of a grant program for port authorities, waterfront facilities operators, and state and local agencies to provide security infrastructure improvements. The problem was that the bill had no guaranteed funding mechanism. As a result, we are underfunding port security. Since the passage of the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the Department of Homeland Security has released $517 million in port security grants. This is not enough. According to the Coast Guard, it is estimated that the ports directly need $1.4 billion this year and $6 billion over the next ten years. Yet, the Administration only requested $46 million in its fiscal year 2005 budget. Last year, I visited many of California's ports including Crescent City in the north down through Stockton to Los Angeles/Long Beach in the south. I have seen what the ports are confronting. They need more funding for homeland security. And, with over 40 percent of the nation's goods imported through California's ports, freight rail is extremely important to the nation's commerce. A terrorist attack at a California port would not only be tragic but would be devastating for our nation's economy. So, today, I am introducing the Senate version of a bill introduced by Representative Millender-McDonald. This legislation will provide more funding to the ports. Specifically, it will: create a Port Security Grant Program in the Department of Homeland Security; provide $800 million per year for five years in grant funding; and--this is very important to California's ports--allow the federal government to make multiyear grants to help finance larger projects similar to what is done with many of our airports for aviation security. I hope that the Senate will act on this bill. Now is not the time to slow down or delay our efforts to increase and improve transportation security. The job is not done, and it must be done.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, at the end of 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act became law. I was a member of the conference committee on that bill, and I think it was a good first step in improving security at our nation's ports. It had many good provisions, such as the creation of national and regional maritime transportation/port security plans to be approved by the Coast Guard; better coordination of federal, state, local, and private enforcement agencies; and the establishment of a grant program for port authorities, waterfront facilities operators, and state and local agencies to provide security infrastructure improvements. The problem was that the bill had no guaranteed funding mechanism. As a result, we are underfunding port security. Since the passage of the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the Department of Homeland Security has released $517 million in port security grants. This is not enough. According to the Coast Guard, it is estimated that the ports directly need $1.4 billion this year and $6 billion over the next ten years. Yet, the Administration only requested $46 million in its fiscal year 2005 budget. Last year, I visited many of California's ports including Crescent City in the north down through Stockton to Los Angeles/Long Beach in the south. I have seen what the ports are confronting. They need more funding for homeland security. And, with over 40 percent of the nation's goods imported through California's ports, freight rail is extremely important to the nation's commerce. A terrorist attack at a California port would not only be tragic but would be devastating for our nation's economy. So, today, I am introducing the Senate version of a bill introduced by Representative Millender-McDonald. This legislation will provide more funding to the ports. Specifically, it will: create a Port Security Grant Program in the Department of Homeland Security; provide $800 million per year for five years in grant funding; and--this is very important to California's ports--allow the federal government to make multiyear grants to help finance larger projects similar to what is done with many of our airports for aviation security. I hope that the Senate will act on this bill. Now is not the time to slow down or delay our efforts to increase and improve transportation security. The job is not done, and it must be done.