Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, en bloc.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 210 and S. Res. 336, en bloc.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10:30 a.m., Friday, September 28; that on Friday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of H.R. 1585.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that when the Committee on Homeland Security reports the nomination of Julie Myers, PN 93, to be Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, it be sequentially referred to the Judiciary Committee for up to 30 calendar days; further, that if the nomination is not reported by the completion of that time, the nomination be automatically discharged and placed on the Executive Calendar.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 2693 has been received from the House and is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record, without intervening action or debate.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3668, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. BROWN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, our Nation's haphazard trade policy has done plenty of damage to Ohio's economy, to our workers--from Steubenville to Cambridge, from Portsmouth to Wauseon--to our manufacturers--in Bryan and Cleveland and Akron, and Lorain--and to our small businesses in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Springfield. Recent news reports of tainted foods and toxic toys reveal another hazard of ill-conceived and unenforced trade rules. They subject American families, American children, to products that can harm them-- that in some cases can actually kill them. Our trade rules encourage unsafe imports. Our gap-ridden food and product inspection system lets those imports into our country. Our lax requirements for importers let those products stay on the shelves. And our foot dragging on requiring country-of-origin labeling leaves consumers in the dark. It is a lethal--all too lethal, all too often-- combination. With a total lack of protections in our trade policy, we do not just import goods from another country, we import the lax safety standards of other countries. If we relax basic health and safety rules to accommodate Bush-style, NAFTA-modeled trade deals, of course, we are going to find lead paint on our toys and toxins in our toothpaste. Just think of it this way: When we trade with a country, when we buy $288 billion of products from China, for instance--a country that puts little emphasis on safe drinking water, on clean air, on protections for their own workers, on consumer protection, and then they sell those products to the United States, why would they care about products, consumer products, toys that are safe or food products that are safe, when they do not care about that in their own country for their own workers and for their own consumers? Add to the fact that U.S. companies put tremendous pressure on their Chinese subcontractors to cut the cost of production to cut their own costs, and the Chinese are going to use lead paint because it is cheaper. They are going to cut corners on safety because it is cheaper. At the same time, the Bush administration has weakened our Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, and Consumer Product Safety Commission rules, and that is compounded even further because they have cut the number of inspectors. So why should we be surprised when we see toys in our children's bedrooms that are dangerous, or when we see vitamins in our drugstores and food in our grocery stores that are contaminated? Due to trade agreements, there are now more than 230 countries and more than 200,000 foreign manufacturers exporting FDA-related goods-- FDA-regulated goods--to American consumers. Before NAFTA, we imported 1 million lines of food. Now we import 18 million lines of food. One million lines of food in 1993; today it is 18 million lines of food. Unfortunately, trade deals put limits on the safety standards we can require for imports and even how much we can inspect imports. I will say that again. We pass a trade agreement with another country. It puts limits on our own safety standards, and it puts limits on how much we can inspect those imports. Our trade policy should prevent these problems--not bring them on. Now the President, though, wants new trade agreements with Peru, Panama, South Korea, and Colombia--all based on the same failed trade model that brought us China, that has brought us NAFTA, that has brought us the Central American Free Trade Agreement. This Chamber will soon consider--maybe even next week--a trade agreement with Peru. Some may wonder why we are entering into new trade agreements right now considering we have had five straight years of record annual trade deficits. When I first ran for Congress in 1992, on the other side of the Capitol, to be a Member of the House of Representatives, our trade deficit was $38 billion. Today, it exceeds $800 billion. Our trade deficit with China was barely double digits 15 years ago. Today, it exceeds $250 billion. The NAFTA/CAFTA trade model has driven down wages and working conditions for workers in Marion and Mansfield and Bucyrus and Canton and all across the United States and abroad. This kind of trade has torn apart families' health care and pension benefits. It undermines our capacity even to produce equipment vital to our national security. Contrary to promoting stability in Peru and the Andean region, as this trade agreement's supporters would say, these trade agreements are actually more likely to increase poverty and inequality. This month, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a report warning developing countries--poorer nations that are doing trade agreements with us--to be wary of bilateral and regional free trade deals. The U.N. Report cited the North American Free Trade Agreement as an example of a trade agreement that may have short-term benefits for poor countries but has long-term harm. We know what NAFTA did to Mexico's middle class. We know what NAFTA did to its rural farmers. Well over 1.3 million farmers were displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico. Let's look at Peru for a moment. Nearly one-third of Peru's population depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The development group Oxfam estimates that 1.7 million Peruvian farmers will be immediately affected by this trade agreement. When those farmers can't get a fair price for wheat or for barley or for corn, they are forced to produce other crops--almost inevitably, including coca. That means more cocaine production, it means more illegal drugs in the United States. We have been there before. We have seen that before. We have seen the rural dislocation in Mexico, after NAFTA, and there is nothing to suggest the Peru trade agreement will be any different. Scholars, including former World Bank Director Joseph Stiglitz, note that rural upheaval from trade deals means more violence, more U.S. money spent on drug eradication. An archbishop in Peru said: We are certain this trade agreement will increase the cultivation of coca, which brings drug trafficking, terrorism, and violence. So if we are talking about combating terrorism around the world, the exactly 180-degree wrong thing to do is a trade agreement with Peru because it will mean, as the archbishop said, the increased cultivation of coca because we will put some of their corn farmers, their barley farmers, their wheat farmers out of business. More coca, more drug trafficking, more terrorism, more violence, more instability. We need a new trade approach in our policy, one that benefits workers here and promotes sustainable development with our trading partners. This Peru agreement has some improvements in labor and the environment. It is important to note that this change in the administration's view toward labor and environmental rules of trade agreements would not have happened without voters' demand for change last year. But the demand for change in trade policy runs deep. We have heard workers in Ohio and around the country call for big changes in trade policy, and we are hearing consumers in Avon Lake and in Kettering demand accountability for the unsafe imports that are on our shelves. Passing a trade agreement with Peru is not the change we need. We want trade. We want more trade. We want trade under different rules and, most importantly, our responsibility is to protect our family's health and protect our children. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I would like to follow on the comments of my colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, in support of the Children's Health Insurance Program bill. This week, the House of Representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly, 265 to 159. Of my 18 Ohio House colleagues, about two- thirds of them voted for this bill. It is clearly something we know works in my State. The Children's Health Insurance Program was passed 10 years ago in the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was established. President Clinton, a Democrat, with a Republican House and a Republican Senate, supported that issue, and it has clearly worked. We have some 6 million children in this country now who benefit from the Children's Health Insurance Program. In my State, it is around 200,000 children. We also know this legislation will mean about 4 million more children in the United States will benefit from this health care program. These are sons and daughters of working families. These are not people living in the lap of luxury. They are families making $20,000, $30,000, and $40,000 a year. They are families where they are working hard, playing by the rules, but they are not making enough money to buy insurance. Their employers do not offer insurance. So this is what we need to do. Now, the President says he plans to veto this bill for two reasons that I can understand. One of them, he said, is the cost. This is $35 billion over 5 years; $7 billion a year. But just make the contrast: We are spending $2.5 billion a week--$2.5 billion a week--on the war in Iraq. Yet the President does not want to spend $7 billion a year to insure 4 million children. That is his first reason--the cost. The second reason, the President says: I want private insurance to take care of these children. Well, so do I. So does Senator Grassley, who has been a major leader on this issue in the Senate on the other side of the aisle. We all do. But the fact is, private insurance is not taking care of these children. Again, they are sons and daughters of people with jobs paying $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, people without insurance and without the financial wherewithal to be able to take care of these children. The President came to Cleveland a few months ago and said everybody has health care in this country. They can get it at the emergency room. I want children in this country to get preventive care in their family doctor's office, not acute care in the emergency room. Before the President makes his decision, I would like him to meet three families in Ohio, people who really speak to this whole issue. I want him to know about Dawn and Glenn Snyder and their son Cody, living in Bloomingdale, near Steubenville, near the Ohio River in eastern Ohio. Dawn works in a doctor's office, and Glenn works temporary jobs. Cody is 3 years old and has cerebral palsy. Until he was a year old, Cody had bleeding in his brain and seizures. Sometimes Glenn has insurance and sometimes he doesn't. It depends on where he is working. Dawn is going to lose the coverage for her family that she has gotten because they can no longer afford to buy it. So even though Cody needs regular medical care from a neurologist and an eye doctor, as well as routine preventive care that all children need, he is in danger of having no access to health insurance. However, the Snyders will have coverage if this bill is signed into law. If this bill passes, Cody will likely qualify for care under Ohio's new Children's Health Insurance Program. I would add also, on a bipartisan note, Governor Strickland, the new Governor of Ohio, with a resounding bipartisan vote out of the legislature, moved the eligibility to 300 percent of poverty so families making up to about $50,000 or $55,000 a year will have coverage. If this bill passes, it means the Snyders will have a safety net for Cody's coverage and will be able to live with the security of knowing their son will receive the care he needs. Then there is the story of Evan Brannon. Evan is a 1-year-old from Dayton in southwest Ohio. His dad Kenneth is currently not working, after losing his job as a repairman for a telephone company. Angela, Evan's mother, stays at home with him and has a baby on the way. Evan was diagnosed with a congenital hernia of his diaphragm and is on a feeding tube, and he also receives medicine through a tube. He receives physical, occupational, and speech therapy. His parents looked into private coverage and learned they would never qualify for it because of Evan's preexisting condition. The family is faced with $5,000 to $6,000 a month in medical expenses. Angela can't go back to work. Kenneth is looking for a job but can't get a position over a certain income level or Evan will lose medical coverage. How is this family ever supposed to get ahead if they have to make sure not to make too much money out of fear of losing health insurance for their children? What kind of incentive is that to build into the system? Passing this bill will fix that. This is just one way in which America's families' opportunities are limited by our country's inability to provide the insurance the children's health insurance will provide. One more story. David Kelley is a 13-year-old living in Erie County, right next door to where I live. He lives with his mother Heather and his stepfather Timothy. David has been diagnosed as bipolar, mildly autistic, and suffers from Asperger's syndrome. He also has a rare form of asthma. David was born 2 months premature. His doctors believe that a lack of oxygen and other complications may have caused the conditions he has coped with daily for 13 years, although the causes are not completely known. David's health conditions require him to regularly visit a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a primary care physician. His medications cost $2,000 each month, and Medicaid covers it. His mother Heather has said her greatest fear in life is of David losing his medical coverage. She herself has multiple sclerosis and is unable to work. No private insurance plan will ever cover David because of those preexisting conditions. Heather has made navigating the Medicaid and social service systems a nearly full-time job just to maintain David's benefits. Here is another family in need of help from the Senate. I hope our President will not leave the Kelleys, the Brannons, or the Snyders behind, without the health coverage their children so desperately need. I hope he can have compassion for those families struggling so hard to make ends meet and whose greatest wish is to provide the most basic of needs for their children: housing, food, and health care. I hope the President can see what a sound investment this is. This isn't spending $7 billion a year; this is investing $7 billion a year in the future of our families, the future of our children, and the future of our country. Four million American children will receive health insurance if the President signs this bill. He must sign it into law. Too many people are counting on it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, although we are in morning business, I wish to add some comments to what Senator Mikulski said about privatization because what we have seen throughout our Government--whether it is Medicare, the efforts to privatize, which, unfortunately, have been partially successful at privatizing but not so successful in serving the public, serving seniors, and the totally unsuccessful effort to privatize Social Security--what we have seen in public education, what we have seen in the prison system in my State of Ohio, what we seen in several kinds of efforts to privatize have often resulted in more taxpayer dollars being spent, a reduction in service, to be sure, less efficiency, and less accountability. So her amendment is right on the mark. Her efforts in privatization generally are very important. I thank the senior Senator from Maryland on that.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 327 and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record, without intervening action or debate.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3625, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I echo the words of the Senator from Oregon and thank him for his leadership on health care issues and especially his urging the President of the United States to sign the children's health insurance bill. We are hoping for a strong vote in the Senate tomorrow in passing that very important legislation.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise this evening in support of the Kennedy amendment, the hate crimes amendment. Our Nation's strength lies in its diversity, its tolerance, its respect for the individual. Hate crimes borne of prejudice and ignorance, of fear and cowardice, contravene these core principles which our Nation for more than two centuries has held dear. They are perpetuated by individuals who fear, in some sense, individuality. Terrorism is a hate crime. The amendment offered by my colleague, Mr. Kennedy, ensures that hate crimes be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It enables Federal investigations of what are clearly Federal crimes. Hate crimes target individuals because they are part of a community. In the national community, all of us have a stake in fighting back against these crimes. My colleague's amendment sends a strong message. The message is this: Our Nation will not turn the other way when individuals try to divide us. We will not tread softly when individuals use violence to perpetuate hatred. We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law crimes that reflect a vicious disregard for individual rights and our Nation's core central values. Our Nation is a community of people who care about one another. Hate crimes destroy our cohesiveness and our mutual respect and replace those values with paranoia, with divisiveness, and with destruction. Hate crimes weaken our Nation. This amendment strengthens it. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in July, I introduced S. 1792, the FOREWARN Act of 2007, a direct outgrowth of legislation that one of my predecessors, two predecessors ago, Senator Metzenbaum from Ohio, introduced called the WARN Act, legislation he got through the Congress in the 1980s, but legislation that now needs an update. It is about plant closings and job loss. Job loss, whether it is in Ohio or whether it is in Seattle, does not just affect a worker or a worker's family. Job loss devastates entire communities and local economies. While notice of a layoff is no substitute for a job, the WARN Act of 20 years ago was supposed to give employees time to find a new job and for help to be provided. Under current law, however, fair notice has proven to be the exception, not the rule, because too many have gamed the old WARN Act. Employers have laid off workers in phases to avoid the threshold level of the WARN Act, used subsidiaries to evade liability, and pressured workers in too many cases, in too many places around Ohio to waive their rights. Whether one lives in Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Cincinnati, or Lebanon, it is absolutely critical that in these situations, workers and groups have sufficient notice to begin working to attempt to limit the damage this causes a community. The new legislation which I introduced in July, with Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and Senator Stabenow, S. 1792, will close these loopholes and provide the tools necessary for the enforcement of the rules. The legislation gives the Labor Department the authority to take civil action for violations, as well as giving authority to State attorneys general if the Labor Secretary fails to act within 6 months. So if the Labor Secretary today refuses to act, if this happens in Zanesville or Lima, Attorney General Marc Dann of Ohio may take action. The legislation reduces the closing plant threshold from the current number 50, which is gamed all too often, to 25 employees. It recalculates the mass layoff figure. The current mass layoff figure is calculated from at least one-third of the employees, or 50. FOREWARN sets the number at 100 in all events, or one-third of employees if there are between 50 and 100 employees. Our legislation, S. 1792, reduces the employer size to 50 employees and lengthens the notification period from 60 calendar days to 90 calendar days. It requires employers to provide written notification to the Labor Secretary, as well as local stakeholders, including early warning networks and mayors. It increases penalties for violations of the WARN Act from back pay to double back pay. Mr. President, I know you have had this problem in the State of Pennsylvania, the problem of lost manufacturing, and you know that the worst thing a community can face is a major plant closing or major reduction of workforce in a plant. And you know that as bad as that is, there are some things employers can do to make it better, and many do. But you also know that the law passed 20 years ago has not always made sure that the transition from losing their job to going back into the community and getting work, getting their family through the hardest times, getting the community through the hardest times--the law has not always addressed the best way to do that, and I think this legislation, S. 1792, does that very well. I ask my colleagues to consider this legislation. It is time to update the 20-year law, the WARN Act, which passed and was approved by President Reagan. I think this legislation will help ease the lost-job problems. We need to do much more. We need to train differently, we need new trade law, different tax laws, and all the different kinds of things the Presiding Officer and I have worked on already in our time in the Senate, but the FOREWARN Act will matter for communities such as Steubenville, Portsmouth, and Chillicothe, and it will matter for families who have suffered the indignities and the tragedies and the hardship of lost jobs and plant closings. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, our Nation's haphazard trade policy has done plenty of damage to Ohio's economy, to our workers, to our manufacturers, and to our small businesses. Recent news reports of tainted foods and toxic toys reveal another hazard of ill-conceived and unenforced trade rules. They subject American families and children to products that can harm them, that in some cases have even killed them. From pet food to toothpaste, from tires to toys, news stories almost every day highlight the consequences of our Nation's failed trade policy. Countries such as China lack basic protections we have come to take for granted. Given the well-known dangers of lead, particularly for young children, our Government banned it from products such as gasoline and paint in the 1970s. Yet our trade policy is turning back the clock on the hard-fought safety standards that keep our families and our children safe. What happens should come as no surprise. When we trade the way we do, when we bought $288 billion of products from the People's Republic of China last year and $288 billion this year--it will probably exceed $300 billion--and we are trading with a country that doesn't have close to the same safety standards for its own workers or safe air or drinking water standards for its own water, why would we expect them to sell safe products to our country? It is compounded by the fact that companies, such as Mattel say to the Chinese contractors: We want you to cut costs. Lead paint? Use it; it is cheaper. Cut corners so we can save money. It is no surprise because American corporations have pushed the Chinese to cut costs, and at the same time China doesn't have fair labor standards, clean air, and safe drinking water standards for their own people. Of course they are going to sell products back to our country such as contaminated toothpaste and pet food and dangerous toys with lead-based paint on those products. Our trade policy should prevent these problems, not invite them. Despite the real and present danger from Chinese imports, we must not focus solely on consumer threats from China. The real threat is our failed trade policy that allows recall after recall. The real threat is our failure to change course and craft a new, very different trade policy. The real threat is this administration's insistence on more of the same--more trade pacts that send U.S. jobs overseas, more trade pacts that allow companies and countries to ignore the rules of fair trade, more trade pacts that will mean more tainted products in our homes, more dangerous toys for our children, and more recalls for our businesses. The administration and its free-trade supporters in Congress are gearing up for another trade fight. They want to force on our Nation--a nation that in November, in Montana, Ohio, and across the country, demanded change--more job-killing trade agreements with unreliable standards. Free-trade agreements with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea currently being debated in Congress are based on the same failed trade model. This week, the Peru trade agreement is at the forefront of the debate between fundamentally flawed trade models--more of the same--and the fight for fair trade. We want more trade, plenty of trade; we just want fair trade, different rules. The Peru free-trade agreement, like NAFTA, while it has some improvements over that, puts limits on the safety standards we can require for imports. FDA inspectors have rejected seafood imports from Peru and Panama--major seafood suppliers to the United States. Yet the current trade agreement, as proposed--the Bush administration's Peru and Panama agreements--limits food safety standards and border inspections. What has happened already is where, frankly, we have bought too many contaminated products, contaminated seafood imports, and whatever problems we have, this trade agreement will make it worse because this agreement will limit our own food safety standards and border inspections. Adding insult to injury, the agreements would force the United States to rely on foreign inspectors to ensure our safety. We have seen how well that worked with China. It is time for a new direction in trade policy. It is time for a trade policy that ensures the safety of food on our kitchen tables and toys in our children's bedrooms. It is time for a trade policy that creates new businesses and good-paying jobs at home instead of a trade policy that encourages companies to outsource and move overseas. It is time for a trade policy that puts an end to the global exploitation of cheap labor. The voters in November shouted from the ballot box, demanding a new trade policy. Their resounding call for a new trade policy put Members of Congress on notice that their trade votes in Washington matter to voters back home. With Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, voters in my State of Ohio and across the Nation are watching these trade debates. Everyone agrees on one thing: We want more trade with countries around the world, but first we must protect the safety and the health of our families and our children.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Stabenow, my friend from Michigan, for the comments about children's health. She is right-on about that. Look at the choice. We are going to spend $2.5 billion a week in Iraq. Yet we are unwilling per year to spend $7 billion to insure 4 million additional children--some 75,000 in my State and 50,000 or 60,000 in the State of Michigan next door. We are spending $2.5 billion a week in Iraq. Yet the President says he is going to say no and veto this bill on children's health.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the Children's Health Insurance Program is a sound investment. It protects our children. It fosters their development. It helps them thrive. Children without health insurance are children taken to emergency rooms instead of doctors' offices. They are children whose care is delayed and delayed, until simple sickness becomes serious illness. They are children who need our attention, our compassion, our help. The President has said he opposes this legislation because philosophically he thinks children should be covered by private insurance, not by the Children's Health Insurance Program. It does not matter whether these children in reality should be covered by private insurance. What matters is that these children are not covered by private insurance. Simply, they are not covered at all. By lodging a veto threat against this bill, the President is saying that if private insurers have not made room for low-income children, then we should not make room for them either. That is not just faulty logic, it is faulty ethics. At the same time, the President argues that the Children's Health Insurance Program is too expensive. We are suggesting--bipartisanly, in both Houses, with a program that started 10 years ago, with a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, a Republican House, a Republican Senate; a bipartisan initiative from 10 years ago--we are suggesting an increase of $7 billion a year over the next 5 years--$35 billion. Contrast that with the war in Iraq. Mr. President, $7 billion a year, to cover 4 million uninsured children in this country, 75,000 in my State of Ohio--$7 billion a year--contrast that with $2.5 billion a week on the war in Iraq. Mr. President, $7 billion a year; $2.5 billion a week. Yet the President says that is too much to take care of 4 million children. Uninsured children do not have the luxury of time. They cannot will themselves to remain healthy until individual insurance becomes more affordable or employer-sponsored coverage stops eroding or the President becomes more pragmatic. It is up to this body, this week, to take action. In Ohio, the Demko family can tell you why they value the Children's Health Insurance Program. Emily Demko, 3 years old, has Down Syndrome. Because of her condition, she is automatically denied private health coverage because Down Syndrome is considered a preexisting condition. Emily was covered by the Children's Health Insurance Program until March 31 of this year. Under the Children's Health Insurance Program, Emily was able to receive the therapy she needed to reach all of her developmental milestones in an age-appropriate way. But in March, Emily was cut off from this program because her father made $113 too much per month for the family to qualify. Her father is self-employed. Her mother stays at home to care for her. Without health insurance, the bills for Emily's care total $3,700 per month, which, of course, is impossible for the Demkos to pay. The Demkos' family income falls within the range of 250 and 300 percent of poverty. Emily has now been without health insurance for 6 months. Governor Strickland and the Republican legislature, bipartisanly, raised the threshold for the Children's Health Insurance Program in Ohio if the Feds go along, if the President signs our bill, to 300 percent of poverty--not for families living in the lap of luxury, but families such as the Demkos who have seen their daughter cut off from her health insurance because of a preexisting condition and falling out of eligibility because her father makes $100 too much per month. So far, Emily is not regressing, but there is that possibility with Down Syndrome. Her parents cannot afford the insurance for themselves either. But more than anything, they want to see 3-year-old Emily covered. They worry about what will happen to her without the therapy she needs. She does not qualify for any other programs despite her disability. I wish President Bush would talk to the Demko family, would keep them in mind as he considers whether to sign the Children's Health Insurance Program. I hope he wants to make life better, not harder, for this hard-working family and help Emily to thrive. The Children's Health Insurance Program will expire September 30 unless the President signs this bill. The House and Senate have found a compromise that works for both parties. The version we passed in the Senate passed with 68 votes, more than enough to override a veto. The compromise version is very much like the Senate version, even though some of us would like to see us do a bit more. The compromise would cover 4 million American children, as I said, 75,000 of them living in my State of Ohio. These children did not choose to be uninsured. They are not uninsured because their families walked away from private insurance. Understand, most of the children in the Children's Health Insurance Program are sons and daughters of working parents, parents who are working hard, playing by the rules, simply not making enough money to buy private insurance, and their employers are not providing that insurance. The fact is, private insurance too often steers clear of too many working families in Akron and Toledo and Zanesville and Marion and Lima and Marietta. These families are uninsured because they have no choice. Their children have no choice. But we have a choice. We can choose to help them. Let's do it. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Feingold and echo the words of the Democratic leader, the majority leader, Harry Reid, and his comments about this war and about the future of our country and what we need to do. I rise in support of the Feingold amendment. General Petraeus confirmed that our troops, operating under horrific conditions, are displaying the courage and the skill that define this whole engagement. Our troops have been courageous. Our troops have been skillful. Our troops have been effective. Our troops have been selfless. Our troops have done everything we have asked them to. But the civilians at the Pentagon and the politicians at the White House have bungled this war. The administration is selling one war and fighting another. They are selling a war where they are saying with a little more patience, we can truly say ``mission accomplished,'' as if we didn't hear that last year and the year before and the year before that. The President's fighting of the war is one step forward, two steps back, and one that will require perhaps a decade-long engagement. More than anything, Americans deserve the truth. We are losing men and women, without a clear idea of whether or when we can bring our troops home. We are refraining from redeploying troops based on possibilities--possibilities that are no worse than the realities we are facing now. Especially and mostly, we have lost our focus. We have lost our focus on Afghanistan, on rooting out al-Qaida, finding Osama bin Laden, and protecting our borders. Instead, we spend $2.5 billion a week on a war--$2.5 billion a week on a war that even General Petraeus, by not answering Senator Warner's question, acknowledges this war is making us no safer. So we spend $2.5 billion a week and the war is not making us safer and we are not doing what we should be in Afghanistan, what we should be doing in rooting out al-Qaida, what we should be doing in finding Osama bin Laden, and what we should be doing in protecting our borders. Instead, we are mired in a civil war, with no end in sight. As long as the Iraqis, as Senator Feingold said, and so many of us who have wanted to have a plan to redeploy our troops out of Iraq for 2 or 3 years now--as long as our commitment looks open-ended, as long as there is no end in sight to this civil war, there is no incentive for the Iraqis to do what they need to do; there is no incentive for a political settlement, where Sunnis and Shia and Kurds work together on a political settlement with a political compromise, and there is no incentive for the Iraqis because they think we are always going to be there in this open-ended commitment to the civil war. There is no incentive for them to do what they need to do to build a military security and police security force until the Iraqis know that, yes, there is an end date. We need to pass the Feingold amendment and the message will be that U.S. troops are going to redeploy out of Iraq, so it is now incumbent upon the Iraqis to do what they need to do through political compromise and through building their military and police security forces, and then Iraq can move forward. As long as we stay mired in a civil war and they think it is an open-ended commitment, we will continue to see this lack of progress. Military victories we can win, and have, and our soldiers and marines have waged and won those battles. But until we have a political victory, a compromise, a settlement, and the Iraqis build up their own security forces, the war goes on and on. It is time to bring our troops home in the safest and most orderly way we can, as Iraq accomplishes other urgent goals, such as border security, and we address the issues in Afghanistan and with al-Qaida. I support the Feingold amendment. It makes sense that we finally change course in Iraq and do the right thing for the Iraqi people and for our country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank the Chair, and I thank Senator Webb for his leadership on this important issue as I rise in support of the Webb amendment. This amendment, first and foremost, is about supporting our troops. It is about supporting the military families. Every Member of this body, some even more than others, talk about their support for our troops. Many put the yellow ribbon magnets on their cars, many wear other kinds of clothing to show their support for the troops. They talk about it at home, they talk about it here. This vote will put that support for our troops into action. This amendment ensures that our military gets the rest at home they deserve; that our military readiness gets the support it needs. This amendment will ensure that our National Guardsmen will stay at home for at least 3 years after returning from deployment, the men and women of the Guard who leave businesses, jobs, and families on hold while bravely serving our Nation. The current Iraq policy is overextending our troops and placing unacceptable burdens on families back home, with spouses often acting as single parents, doing their very best, in sometimes worse economic times, to keep their families together. I have met with these families for 4 years, going back as early as 2003, soon after tens of thousands of American troops were deployed in Iraq. They would talk frequently about the shortage of body armor. They talked frequently about the shortage of bottled water, about hygiene products, and all kinds of things our troops needed as our Government rushed into war in 2003 without adequately supplying them. Families would raise money at events to provide the body armor and to send bottled water and hygiene products or whatever their loved ones needed in Iraq. Our Government didn't do what it should have done back then because of the poor civilian leadership and its lack of preparation for this war in Iraq. I heard comments over and over about the difficulty of adjusting, as those troops came back home, due to the lack of foresight and the lack of planning on the part of the civilian leadership of our military. Our Armed Forces have served bravely and honorably again and again, deployment after deployment, often without, as I said, the proper body armor, proper vehicle protection, proper training, and dwell time between deployments. We fought in this body and in the House for more body armor, we fought for more MRAPS, the triangular-bottomed vehicles. We shouldn't have to fight to allow our soldiers the proper amount of time between deployments. The requirement in this amendment for dwell time is something the military has voluntarily done for decades because they know that serves the troops well, they know it serves the families well, and they know principally it serves the military well to have that dwell time between deployments. The 1-to-1 standard in the Webb amendment is actually below the historic standard of the Department of Defense for dwell time. We could do even better than this. We can debate about our role in Iraq's civil war, we can debate timelines for ending our involvement, we can debate how much money we should spend in Iraq, but we shouldn't need to debate how much rest, preparation, and training our troops get before they go back off to war. Everyone in this Chamber talks about supporting our troops, even as our President failed to provide body armor and MRAPs, failed to provide support and supplies, and even as our President has failed to provide enough money for medical care for the Veterans' Administration for when our troops return home. Everyone in this Chamber talks about supporting our troops, but this amendment puts the soldiers and their families first. They have done their job. It is time we do ours. I yield the floor.