Robert Byrd

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the name of Senator Bingaman be added as a cosponsor of the amendment just agreed to.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the very distinguished Senator from Arizona for his characteristic courtesy. I call up amendment No. 516 and ask that it be stated and temporarily laid aside.

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

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask that the amendment be temporarily laid aside.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Arizona.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the amendment I am offering today is technical in nature in that it will provide for the transfer of previously appropriated funds from one ongoing Natural Resources Conservation Service, NRCS, project in West Virginia to another. The two projects involved are the Upper Tygart Valley Watershed project and the Lost River Watershed project. The Upper Tygart project will, once completed, provide water service to at least 16,000 residents in Randolph County, WV. The Lost River project is a series of dams that were designed to provide flood control, water supply, and recreation in Hardy County, WV. The Upper Tygart Valley Watershed project requires a final $4 million in funding to initiate construction. The additional funds are necessary due to the fact that the project design was not yet completed when cost estimates for the project were formed. There has also been a dramatic rise in the cost of building materials for the project. Funding in the amount of $4.2 million was provided to the Lost River Watershed project in the fiscal year 2005 Agriculture Appropriations bill. However, the project cannot proceed to construction in the current fiscal year due to a change in the project purpose requested by the project sponsor and subsequent requirements for the NRCS to reevaluate the project. Due to these circumstances, I am offering this amendment which will provide the Natural Resources Conservation Service authority to transfer the previously appropriated construction funds from the Lost River Watershed project to the Upper Tygart Valley Watershed project. This action will enable the NRCS to initiate construction of the Upper Tygart project during the coming months. Again, I would like to reemphasize to my colleagues that this amendment does not appropriate new funds but instead transfers previously appropriated funds between two existing Natural Resources Conservation Service projects in West Virginia. I thank my colleagues for their support of my amendment.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, from the moment our military first attacked Osama bin Laden's hideouts in Afghanistan, through the time that our first soldiers set foot inside Iraq, continuing right up until the present day, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have been entirely funded by what the American people might call a series of stopgap spending measures. These measures, which are called emergency supplemental appropriation bills in the parlance of our Nation's capitol, take the form of last-minute requests by the White House for Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars on an accelerated timetable. From September 11, 2001, until today, Congress has approved $201 billion in these appropriations bills, the great majority of which the President has applied to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this bill on the Senate floor is approved, it will add another $79.3 billion to that staggering total. With the cost of the two wars approaching $280 billion--that is a lot of money; that is your money, Mr. and Mrs. American Citizen--the American people are beginning to ask how much more will these two wars cost our country? The Congressional Budget Office estimated, in February 2005, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the American people $458 billion over the next 10 years. The $74.4 billion in military spending contained in this supplemental appropriations bill is but a small downpayment on that staggering sum. How accurate is this estimate of nearly half a trillion dollars more in war costs? How accurate is it? Amazingly, the administration has flatout refused to provide any estimates for the cost of the war in its annual budget request. That means, then, under the administration's budget policies, our troops are forced to continue to rely on the stopgap spending measures that are known as emergency supplemental appropriations bills. I know the terms ``supplemental request'' or ``emergency appropriations'' mean almost nothing to the average American. But each time the White House sends a supplemental request to Congress for more funds that have never appeared in the President's budget, it reminds me of the way so many Americans pull a credit card out of their wallet when faced with unexpected costs. Like a credit card, emergency supplemental appropriations requests can be responsibly used to cover costs that could not have been foreseen. But most Americans know, if someone starts using a credit card for everyday expenses, watch out, because that person is on the path to financial ruin. Mr. President, I have never had a credit card in my life. I don't use one. My wife doesn't use one. Using that little piece of plastic means avoiding the tough choices and tradeoffs that are necessary for fiscal responsibility, while reckless spending and increasing interest payments cause a family's debt to spiral out of control. That, in a nutshell, is exactly what is happening in Washington, DC. Just like the slick advertising slogan for credit cards, the administration's repeated requests for supplemental appropriations for the war exemplify the phrase ``buy now, pay later.'' Over the last 3\1/2\ years, at a time when the Government is swimming in red ink, the White House has charged an additional $280 billion-- that is right, $280 billion--on the national credit card, without proposing a single dime of that spending in its annual budget proposal; not one thin dime is seen or shown in the administration's annual budget proposal. This is a reckless course the administration has plotted. It is fiscal irresponsibility at the highest level. This ``take it as it comes'' approach to paying for the cost of the war in Iraq ignores sound budgetary principles, and it is a grave disservice to our troops who are serving in Iraq. By separating the regular budget of the Defense Department and other Federal agencies from the wartime costs of military operations, the White House has effectively denied Congress the ability to get the whole picture of the needs of our troops and the other needs of our Nation, such as education, highways, and veterans medical care. Instead, Congress receives only piecemeal information about, on the one hand, what funds are required to fight the war--this unnecessary war, I say, in Iraq--and on the other, what funds are required for the regular operations of the Defense Department and other Federal agencies. This is a misguided approach, and the net effect of this misguided approach is a thoroughly disjointed and discombobulated Federal budget. This hand-me-down process does not serve our troops well. A unified, coherent budget for our military would allow Congress and the administration, as well as the American people, to focus on the future to evaluate what our troops might need to fight two wars--the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq--in the next 6, 12, or 18 months. I am fully supportive of the war in Afghanistan because in that case our country was attacked, our country was invaded by an enemy. We fought back. I fully supported President Bush in that war, and I do today. I support the troops in both wars, but I do not support the policy that sent our troops into Iraq. Instead of looking forward, however, the abuse of the supplemental appropriations process means the Congress and the administration are constantly--constantly--looking backward over our shoulder to fix the problems that might have been addressed had the cost of the wars been included in the President's budget. Congress has had to add money to prior supplementals to buy more body armor, to buy more ammunition, to buy more armored humvees. All of these costs should have been included in earlier administration regular unified budget requests for the entire Federal Government. What is more, this disjointed manner of paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has a tremendous effect on the entire Federal budget. By refusing to budget for the cost of the war, the President is submitting annual budgets to Congress that are downright inaccurate. These budget requests are inaccurate. They understate the actual amount of our annual deficits by scores of billions of dollars. If the President's emergency request for 2005 is approved, the Congress will have approved over $210 billion just for the war in Iraq. While the budget deficit grows to record levels, the President tells us we have to cut domestic programs by $192 billion over the next 5 years. The President tells us we have to charge veterans for their medical care, that we have to cut grants for firefighters and first responders, that we cannot adequately fund the No Child Left Behind Act, and that we should cut funding for the National Institutes of Health. The list goes on and on. Since the President took office, he has taken a Federal budget that was in surplus for 4 straight years and produced deficits as far as the human eye can see. For 2006, the President is projecting a deficit of $390 billion, but that deficit estimate does not--does not, does not-- include new spending for the war in Iraq. We are not fighting that war on the cheap. It is costing you money, you citizens out there. It is your money; it is costing you money. That deficit estimate does not include new spending, I say, for the war in Iraq. Why? Why does it not? Why does that deficit estimate not include new spending for the war in Iraq? Because the President pretends he cannot project what the war will cost in 2006. Well, Mr. President, I assure you the costs will not be zero. The President will not tell the American people what the war in Iraq will cost. By understating the deficits, the American people are being led down a primrose path. That is dishonesty. Neither the White House nor Congress is making any tough choices about how to pay for the cost of the war because the administration is not telling Congress how much it thinks the war might cost in the next year. And as a result, there is no talk of raising taxes or cutting spending in order to pay for the costs of the wars. The United States is sinking deeper and deeper into debt, and the administration's failure to budget for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is sending our country even deeper into red ink. For as brilliantly as our troops have performed on the battlefield, as brilliantly as they have fought and died on the battlefield, the administration's budgeteers are creating a budgetary catastrophe. But the executive branch has not always been so neglectful of the need to include in its budget the cost of ongoing wars. According to the Congressional Research Service, there is a long history of Presidents moving the cost of ongoing military operations into their annual budget requests rather than relying completely on supplemental appropriations bills. For example, the Congressional Research Service reports President Franklin D. Roosevelt included funds for World War II in his fiscal year 1943 budget request. President Lyndon B. Johnson included funds for the Vietnam war in his fiscal year 1966 request. Military operations in Bosnia and the U.S. operations to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq were initially funded through supplemental appropriations. But in 1995, Congress forced President Bill Clinton to include those costs in his fiscal year 1997 budget, which he did. Upon assuming the Presidency, George W. Bush began to include the cost of the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo in his fiscal year 2001 budget request. I supported President Bush on that initiative because it made good fiscal sense. Twice I have offered amendments to the Defense appropriations bills to urge the President to add the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to his budget. These amendments were approved by strong bipartisan majorities of the Senate. The first time I offered the amendment on July 17, 2003, it was approved 81 to 15. The second time I offered the amendment on June 24, 2004, it received even broader support and was approved 89 to 9. Each time, this sense-of-the-Senate provision was included in the Defense Appropriations Act and signed into law by the President. Today, I offer an amendment that follows up on the Senate's call for the President to budget for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us just have truth in accounting. This is honest accounting. We are letting the American people know how much they are paying for these wars. This amendment builds on the sense-of-the-Senate language that has been approved by strong bipartisan majorities of the Senate in each of the last 2 years. Once again, this provision urges the President to budget for the cost of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. However, my amendment today goes further and urges the President to submit an amended budget request for the cost of the wars to Congress no later than September 1, 2005. Although the White House should have budgeted for this war long ago, this provision ratchets up the pressure on the administration to submit to Congress an estimate of the cost of the war for fiscal year 2006. Hopefully, this will be the first step in restoring some sanity to the President's budget request that has so far ignored the enormous costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This amendment also contains a section of findings that illustrate many of the points I have already made in urging the President to budget for the war. These findings emphasize the legislative history of the Senate urging the President to budget for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The findings also present some of the conclusions reached by the Congressional Research Service about the funding of previous military operations through the regular appropriations process. Finally, this amendment includes a reporting requirement that would help keep Congress informed--help keep us informed. We are elected by ``we the people,'' the first three words in the preamble of the Constitution. We are hearing a lot about the Constitution these days, and we are going to hear more. I am going to have a few things to say about it before it is over. As I said, this amendment includes a reporting requirement that would help to keep Congress informed about the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This provision would require the Department of Defense to provide Congress with the specific amounts that have been spent to date--what is wrong with that?--for each of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, the Pentagon prefers to report only a single figure that combines the cost of these two wars, but Congress and the American people ought to know the exact cost of the war in Afghanistan. They ought to know the exact cost of the war that was forced upon our country in Afghanistan, and they need to know the cost of the war in Iraq, the war that the administration chose to begin, the invasion that the administration chose to set forth. These wars should not be confused one with the other. They are two different wars, and we should say so right up front. We should know the amount of money we spend in each. In addition, this report would require the Pentagon to keep the Congress continually informed of estimates of military operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan for the next year so that Congress can have the better lens with which to look upon future budgets for our military. This is nothing but right. The elected representatives of the people sitting in this body ought to know these things. We are representing the American people in our States and throughout the country. What is wrong with our telling them right up front? We need to know these things. I have a responsibility to my people back home. Not only that, but I have a responsibility to my children, my grandchildren, and to their children. Each of us has that responsibility, and we ought to ask for this information. We ought to insist on it. Once again, the Senate should send a message to the administration that it ought to budget for the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. My amendment sends that message in clear terms. I urge my colleagues to join me in approving this sense-of-the-Senate amendment with another strong bipartisan vote. I call up my amendment No. 464.

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

Mr. BYRD. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so I might call up the amendment at the desk, No. 463.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, with this supplemental appropriations bill, Congress will have appropriated $300 billion for military operations and reconstruction activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is an enormous sum of money. We say it is for the troops in the field, for armor, weapons, equipment, and other mechanisms necessary to wage a war. But a significant portion does not make it to the troops. Much of it goes to defense contractors, corporate giants such as Halliburton that profit from the military operations and defense expenditures of the U.S. Government. Halliburton reportedly has been awarded $11 billion in Iraq contracts. The war in Iraq may symbolize a time of sacrifice for American families, but for some--not all but for some--defense contractors, the cold, hard truth is that Iraq has become an opportunity to reap an enormous profit from American's decision to send America's sons and daughters into war. It is incumbent upon the Congress to be diligent in how these moneys are allocated to defense contractors. It is incumbent upon the Congress to be thorough in its oversight and to be meticulous in its accounting. The administration has submitted five emergency supplemental spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan. The size of these supplemental requests is massive, exceeding $80 billion this year, $25 million last year, and $160 billion the year before that. Most of these costs are being considered outside the checks and oversight of the regular budget and appropriations process. It is a confusing and, at times, a beguiling process that results in enormous sums of money flowing to contractors in Iraq, oftentimes without adequate oversight. Such a process invites waste, abuse, and fraud. I don't belittle the role of defense contractors in Iraq. I belittle the circumstances that the administration has fostered. I belittle the suspicion that this administration has created by veiling its contractor negotiations in secrecy, and the whirlwind of allegations of misconduct and fraud that the administration has invited by not sharing information with the people of the United States, the American public. The American people have good reason to question the costs emanating from contractors in Iraqi oil fields and Iraqi communities. Three separate Government auditors have criticized contractor waste in Iraq. Government investigators point to unsubstantiated costs and to sloppy accounting. Fortune magazine's analysis of Government reports found $2 billion of unjustified or undocumented charges. The Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency has cited inadequacies and deficiencies in contractor billing systems, along with unreasonable and illogical cost justification. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pentagon auditors are investigating whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers by $212 million for delivering fuel to Iraq. Questions have arisen in the House of Representatives about why these costs had been concealed from international auditors. The Government Accountability Office has cited the risks of inadequate cost controls for contractors in Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general cited millions of dollars in overcharges from Halliburton employees indulging themselves at the Kuwait Hilton. Imagine U.S. soldiers in the field forced to survive on military rations and suffering the unbearable heat of the desert while Halliburton employees enjoy the breakfast buffet in an air-conditioned Hilton. The House Government Reform Committee reported hundreds of millions of dollars in waste by some contractors. A glance at the committee Web site reveals tens of millions of dollars in questionable charges--task order after task order showing $86 million in unexplained charges, $34 million in unsupported costs, $36 million in unjustified expenditures, and so on and so on. Incredibly, the Defense Department--your Defense Department, my Defense Department--is paying these charges, even though their own auditors are telling them that the charges are unjustified. One example reported in the Wall Street Journal: Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root charged taxpayers for dining facility services in Iraq and Kuwait. Pentagon auditors flagged $200 million of unsupported costs--that is a lot of money--$200 million of unsupported costs, but the Defense Department released $145 million in compensation to Kellogg, Brown & Root despite auditors' reservations and despite Halliburton's inability to justify the charge. It is the taxpayers--you people out there watching through those lenses, those electronic lenses, watching the Senate floor, I am talking about you--it is the taxpayers, your constituents, Mr. President, my constituents, who are being charged for this tripe. It is they who must bear the costs of such rip-offs. It is your money. Our constituents read in the newspapers how lucrative contracts are awarded without competition, how enormous rewards are handed to campaign donors. Mention the name Halliburton, and, as Fortune magazine quips, an image flashes in the public's mind of ``a giant corporation engaged in shameless war profiteering--charging outrageous prices to provide fuel for Iraqis and meals for American troops.'' Our constituencies, the people who send us here, are crying out for Congress to assume a stronger oversight role and to assure them, the people, that their moneys are being spent wisely. The amendment I have offered today does exactly that. My amendment requires the Defense Secretary to provide the Committee on Appropriations and the Armed Services Committee with a quarterly report that lists and describes questionable and unsupported contractor charges identified by Pentagon auditors for Iraq and Afghanistan. The amendment requires the Defense Secretary to withhold 100 percent of the payment for these charges and to assess a penalty by withholding an additional amount equal to 15 percent of the unsupported charge. If Pentagon auditors can verify the charges assessed by the contractor, that they are justifiable, then the Defense Secretary can release the payment. My amendment is common sense. We ought not to be paying for services that have not been rendered. The American people ought not be paying for services that have not been rendered. The American people ought not be paying more than a fair market price. The American people ought not allow contractors to think they can hoodwink the American citizen and get away with it. The American public is being asked to sacrifice to pay for this war. The President's budget cuts investments in education, in health care, in domestic priorities that impact every State of the Union in order to pay for these military and reconstruction activities. Congress ought to ensure--that is us--we ought to ensure that sacrifice is not wasted. We ought to slap the knuckles--and slap them hard--of any contractor, whether because of sloppy accounting or because of outright fraud, that results in the American taxpayer being bilked. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. I urge its adoption. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. I have no objection. Amendment No. 499

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Well, I thank the distinguished Senator for his statement. I thank him for his attention to my remarks. I was here then. I am here now. I am concerned about the amnesty we are talking about, the AgJOBS amnesty. I have stated my feelings about it. I am going to leave it at that. I thank the distinguished Senator.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, today, I oppose the AgJOBS amnesty. I oppose it. I oppose it unequivocally. I oppose it absolutely. The Senate has already heard a great number of euphemisms about the AgJOBS bill, but let's be clear from the start about what we are discussing. AgJOBS is an amnesty for 3 million illegal aliens. It is amnesty for aliens employed unlawfully in the agricultural sector, and it is amnesty for the businesses that hire and exploit them as cheap labor. AgJOBS is legislation that embodies the darkest and most disturbing elements of our immigration system; namely, illegal aliens being smuggled across our borders; unscrupulous employers taking advantage of undocumented workers; uncontrolled migration, black markets, and fraudulent documents used by terrorists to circumvent our border security. The AgJOBS bill tarnishes the magnanimous promise of a better life enshrined on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It cheapens the struggle of those immigrants who arrived on Ellis Island 100 years ago, and all of those who have come to this country and followed the rules to earn citizenship in this great Republic. Amnesties beget more illegal immigration--hurtful, destructive, illegal immigration. Look at the statistics. After President Ronald Reagan signed his amnesty into law in 1986, 2.5 million illegal immigrants flooded into this country. Since the 1986 amnesty, the Congress has passed 6 additional amnesties, resulting in an explosion in the illegal immigrant population, with an estimated 900,000 new illegal aliens settling in the United States each year, hoping to be similarly rewarded. The last thing we need is another amnesty masquerading as immigration reform. Amnesties cheat--amnesties cheat-- immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. Our immigration system is already plagued with funding and staffing problems. It is overwhelmed on the borders, in the interior, and in its processing of immigration applications. Senators need only go to the emergency rooms of the hospitals in this city and in the environs of this city. Go, see for yourselves. The infrastructure is already greatly overburdened. The infrastructure cannot handle the problems that are coming upon us. I go to the emergency rooms. I have been to them many times, taking my own wife of almost 68 years of marriage, taking her. I see the emergency rooms. I see how they are overcrowded. I see how there are people waiting. I see how there are people out in the corridors, in the halls, lying on cots awaiting attention. The schools are overburdened. Health services, health facilities, just take a look at what is happening. It is too much for the infrastructure. Now we are going to increase the problem. If the AgJOBS amnesty is enacted into law, it is going to get worse. My forebears were immigrants, too. They came to this country a long time ago. It is going to get worse for employers, worse for immigrants, worse for the security of the American people. Following the passage of the 1986 amnesty for 2.7 million illegal aliens, the INS had to open temporary offices, hire new workers, divert resources from enforcement areas. The result was chaos that produced rampant fraud, with many aliens, almost 20 years later, still disputing their amnesty claims in the courts. Today's backlog of immigration applications is even larger, with the stack of pending applications at 4 million and rising. The AgJOBS amnesty would dump countless more applications on an already overtasked immigration system. With resources so scarce, the process would literally break down, background checks would be missed, document verification would be ignored, and backlogs would grow, encouraging more and more fraud. It only took 19 temporary visa holders to slip through the system to unleash the horror of the September 11 attacks. The AgJOBS proposal would shove 3 million illegal aliens, many of whom have never gone through a background check, through our border security system, in effect flooding a bureaucracy that is already drowning. It is a recipe for disaster. It is not mere speculation to suggest that a terrorist would exploit an amnesty. It has already happened. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was legalized--legalized, I say--under the 1986 amnesty. Only after he was legalized was he able to travel outside of the country to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where he received the terrorist training he used in the bombing. A closer look at the details of the AgJOBS amnesty raises even more concern. The only way to secure amnesty under the AgJOBS proposal is to seek U.S. employment. That puts U.S. citizens in direct competition with illegal aliens. Even if U.S. workers are not displaced, illegal immigration depresses wages. It depresses benefits for American jobs. Under the AgJOBS amnesty, an illegal alien, once achieving temporary status, becomes eligible to apply for permanent residency or even citizenship, which puts that alien ahead of every immigrant waiting to immigrate legally to the United States. That is not fair. When amnesty advocates evoke the image of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, imagine those law-abiding immigrants being told to get back on the ship because an illegal alien had taken their spot. Is that right? Is that fair? I hope Senators will take a close look at this proposal. I want to aid hard-working immigrants, but this is amnesty for illegal aliens. It is amnesty for the unscrupulous employers who exploit them. It is amnesty for potential terrorists seeking to circumvent our border defenses. The AgJOBS bill is a sweeping, extreme proposal that will undermine our immigration system. It has no place on this wartime supplemental appropriations bill, and the Senate ought to reject it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, for his kind and overly charitable comments concerning me.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in every year since 1951, Congress has included a provision in the General Government Appropriations Act which states the following: No part of any appropriation contained in this or in any other act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress. I am quoting from section 624 of Public Law 108-447. This is the law of the land, and yet despite the law, the Congress and the American people continue to hear about propaganda efforts by executive branch agencies. On more than one occasion, this administration has provided tax dollars to well-known conservative talk show hosts to promote its agenda. One was paid a hefty fee to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. Another talk show host was paid to promote the administration's welfare and family policies. If those examples are not bad enough, in an effort to blur the line between independent media and administration propaganda, some agencies have produced prepackaged news stories designed to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by free market news outlets. According to the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which is an arm of the Congress, in an opinion dated February 17, 2005, the administration has violated the prohibition on publicity and propaganda. In a memorandum sent to executive branch agencies, the GAO stated: During the past year, we found that several prepackaged news stories produced and distributed by certain Government agencies violated this provision. So very simply, according to the GAO, the administration broke the law. The GAO specifically cited the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services for violating the antipropaganda law. But these are not the only agencies pretending to be a credible news outlet. On March 13, 2005, the New York Times wrote about the administration's approach in an article entitled ``Under Bush a New Age of Prepackaged TV News.'' I ask unanimous consent that the entire article be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. BYRD. The Times article spotlighted three new segments that each looked the same as any other 90-second segment on the local news. But these are not new. The Federal Government produced all three of these. The Times told of a news segment produced by the State Department featuring a jubilant Iraqi American telling a news crew in Kansas City: ``Thank you, Bush. Thank you, USA.'' The Department of Homeland Security apparently produced a so-called news report on the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. The reporter called the establishment of TSA ``one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.'' But what the American people, the viewers, did not know was that the so-called reporter was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. How about that? A third segment broadcast in January was based on a news report produced by the Department of Agriculture. The Agriculture Department apparently employs two full-time people to act--listen now--to act as reporters. They travel the country and create their own so-called news, distributing their work via satellite and mail, always pushing the White House line. What are things coming to? In the January report, these U.S. Department of Agriculture employees, claiming to be independent journalists, called President Bush ``the best envoy in the world.'' I am not here to argue whether George W. Bush is America's best envoy to the world, but I would rather leave that discussion to independent analysts, not to administration employees or on-the-payroll journalists pushing the White House line. Yes, the administration should explain its ideas and positions to the American people. No one argues that fact. Educating the public about issues affecting their lives is an essential role of the Government. But the administration should not engage in a blatant manipulation of the news media. Leave the work of manipulation to the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Keep the job of Government focused on the people. Manufacturing propaganda is a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars, and it is your money, your money, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. The administration has disputed GAO's views. The administration takes the view that it is OK to mask the source as long as the ads are ``purely informational.'' The White House Office of Management and Budget, with the support of the Justice Department, went so far as to issue a memorandum to agency heads dated March 11, 2005, specifically contradicting the conclusions of the Government Accountability Office. The Justice Department concluded that the Government Accountability Office's: . . . conclusion fails to recognize the distinction between covert propaganda and purely informational Video News Reports, which do not constitute propaganda within the common meaning of the term and therefore are not subject to the appropriations restriction. If paying national columnists and talk show hosts, faking news segments, hiring actors to pretend to be reporters ``do not constitute propaganda,'' what does? What does constitute propaganda? It is time for the administration to back off. We, the American people, trust the media to provide us with independent sources of information, not biased news stories produced by the administration at the taxpayers' expense. It is time for the White House to be upfront with the American people: no propaganda, no manipulation of the press. The administration should tell the people its position on issues, yes, but should do so honorably and without such deliberate manipulation of the free press. Propaganda efforts such as these are not the stuff for a Republic such as ours. The American people must be able to rely on the independence of the news media. The constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press is not for sale. The country must know that reporters--real reporters--are presenting facts honestly, presenting facts fairly, presenting facts without bias. Democracy should not be built on deception. Just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission, on a unanimous vote--on a unanimous vote of 4 to 0--approved a public notice that directs--that directs, hear me--that directs television broadcasters to disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the Government or corporations when the material runs on the public airwaves. The Commission acknowledged the critical role that broadcast licensees and cable operators play in providing information to the audiences they serve. This information is an important component of a well-functioning democracy. Along with this role comes a responsibility, the responsibility that licensees and operators make the sponsorship announcements required by the foregoing rule and obtain the information from all pertinent individuals necessary for them to do so. The public notice goes on to stress that the Commission may impose sanctions, including fines, including imprisonment, for failure to comply with the ruling. You better watch out. So the FCC, by a unanimous vote, I say, made clear, crystal clear, as clear as the noonday Sun in a cloudless sky, what their rules are. They made clear to the broadcasters what their rules are. Now Congress should make clear what the rules are for Federal agencies. Just yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission, on a unanimous vote, 4 to 0, approved this public notice, I am saying it again, that directs television broadcasters to disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the Government or corporations--I will say this a third time--when the material runs on the public airwaves. So this is a warning. We, in the Congress, ought to do our best in support of the ruling and to enforce it. Let me say now that my amendment prevents any agency from using taxpayer dollars to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed, intended to be heard, intended to be read, which do not clearly identify the so-called news was created by a Federal agency or funded with taxpayer dollars. That is plain common sense. I urge Senators to back the law that we, Congress, have passed each year since 1951: No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress. Back it up. My amendment simply makes it clear, I say again, that Congress does mean what Congress says. I urge adoption of the amendment. I will yield the floor, but I want to send my amendment to the desk. Exhibit 1 [From the New York Times, Mar. 13, 2005] Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News (By David Barstow and Robin Stein) It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets. ``Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,'' a jubilant Iraqi- American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of ``another success'' in the Bush administration's ``drive to strengthen aviation security''; the reporter called it ``one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.'' A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers. To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The ``reporter'' covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications. Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source. Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the ``reporters'' are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news- making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration. Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature ``interviews'' with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy. Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with ``suggested'' lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as ``independent'' journalism. It is also a world where all participants benefit. Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting. The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration, is continuing despite President Bush's recent call for a clearer demarcation between journalism and government publicity efforts. ``There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press,'' Mr. Bush told reporters in January, explaining why his administration would no longer pay pundits to support his policies. In interviews, though, press officers for several federal agencies said the president's prohibition did not apply to government-made television news segments, also known as video news releases. They described the segments as factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers. They insisted that there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a conservative columnist who promoted the administration's chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education Department. What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact written by the government. ``Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution,'' said William A. Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. ``This is not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their actions.'' Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government made news segments may constitute improper ``covert propaganda'' even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports ``that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials.'' It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and ``purely informational'' news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers. Even if agencies do disclose their role, those efforts can easily be undone in a broadcaster's editing room. Some news organizations, for example, simply identify the government's ``reporter'' as one of their own and then edit out any phrase suggesting the segment was not of their making. So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture Department, the agency's narrator ended the report by saying ``In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.'' Yet AgDay, a syndicated farm news program that is shown on some 160 stations, simply introduced the segment as being by ``AgDay's Pat O'Leary.'' The final sentence was then trimmed to ``In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting.'' Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended the changes. ``We can clip `Department of Agriculture' at our choosing,'' he said. ``The material we get from the U.S.D.A., if we choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our choice.'' Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One Woman's Role Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase ``covert propaganda.'' These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs. Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after ``reporter'' for news segments produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the accountability office's recent inquiries. The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies ``designed and executed'' their segments ``to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector television news organizations.'' A significant part of that execution, the office found, was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off--``In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting''--delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to television reporters everywhere. Last March, when The New York Times first described her role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. In Cleveland, The Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline ``Karen Ryan, You're a Phony,'' and she was the object of late-night jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail. ``I'm like the Marlboro man,'' she said in a recent interview. In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video news release. ``I just don't feel I did anything wrong,'' she said. ``I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing.'' It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London. It produces and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even gives an award, the Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release. Several major television networks play crucial intermediary roles in the business. Fox, for example, has an arrangement with Medialink to distribute video news releases to 130 affiliates through its video feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN distributes releases to 750 stations in the United States and Canada through a similar feed service, CNN Newsource. Associated Press Television News does the same thing worldwide with its Global Video Wire. ``We look at them and determine whether we want them to be on the feed,'' David M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge, said of video news releases. ``If got one that said tobacco cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it.'' In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters. ``No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story,'' one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding that ``90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on video news releases.'' Federal agencies have been commissioning video news releases since at least the first Clinton administration. An increasing number of state agencies are producing television news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department alone has produced some 500 video news releases since 1993. Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to be producing more releases, and on a broader array of topics. A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way to determine what has been broadcast, and when and where. Still, several large agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet appeared in such segments. A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent. Karen Ryan was part of this push--a ``paid shill for the Bush administration,'' as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title. Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news--too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts. In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. ``It's almost the same thing,'' she said. There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits. Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments. The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: ``In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare.'' In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that ``all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending.'' The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was ``not strictly factual,'' that it contained ``notable omissions'' and that it amounted to ``a favorable report'' about a controversial program. And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets. Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its reporters repeat the script almost word for word. The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e- mail message, ``Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video.'' In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the government. Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations willing to run her government segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when asked if she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she were a local news director. ``Absolutely not.'' Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain Weight ``Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders.'' Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio- Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for broadcast news directors in the United States. Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any outside material, especially entire reports. And spurred by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the news directors association is close to proposing a stricter rule, said its executive director, Barbara Cochran. Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the association has no enforcement powers. The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said. Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated, ``Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded.'' In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence. But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government. ``They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow-up questions--or any questions at all,'' said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky. Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers. Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the air. ``It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?'' he said. Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments. ``I thought we were pretty solid,'' Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take more precautions. Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some said they were unable to find archive tapes that would help answer the qustion. Others promised to look into it, then stopped returning telephone messages. A few removed the segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in the future or pleaded ignorance. Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on the Air On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan. Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women. In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends. What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes. As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones in the dark. Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. ``If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that,'' she said. How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came to narrate a segment by the State Department reveals much about the extent to which government-produced news accounts have seeped into the broader news media landscape. The explanation begins inside the White House, where the president's communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so editors and technicians whose typical duties include distributing video from news conferences. But in early 2002, with close editorial direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the United States and around the world for use by local television stations. In all, the State Department has produced 59 such segments. United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast progovernment news to foreign audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event, said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman: ``Our goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a propaganda agency.'' Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard such ``good news'' segments as ``powerful strategic tools'' for influencing public opinion. And a review of the department's segments reveals a body of work in sync with the political objectives set forth by the White House communications team after 9/11. In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the people of southern Iraq. ``After living for decades in fear, they are now receiving assistance--and building trust--with their coalition liberators,'' the unidentified narrator concluded. Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women, which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a ``prime example'' of how ``White House-led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror.'' Tracking precisely how a ``good news'' report on Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State Department is far from easy. The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates. ``Once these products leave our hands, we have no control,'' Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an interview. The department, he said, never intended its segments to be shown unedited and without attribution by local news programs. ``We do our utmost to identify them as State Department-produced products.'' Representatives for the networks insist that government- produced reports are clearly labeled when they are distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion. Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated Press Television News acknowledged that they might have distributed at least one segment about Afghanistan to the major United States networks without identifying it as the product of the State Department. A spokesman said it could have ``slipped through our net because of a sourcing error.'' Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president for news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not explain how his station came to broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women. ``It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it,'' he said in an interview, insisting that it would not happen again. Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one done first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It is not unusual, she said, for a local station to take network reports and then give them a hometown look. ``I didn't actually go to Afghanistan,'' she said. ``I took that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how it all started as far as women covering their faces and everything.'' At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting office is moving away from producing narrated feature segments. Instead, the department is increasingly supplying only the ingredients for reports--sound bites and raw video. Since the shift, he said, even more State Department material is making its way into news broadcasts. meeting a need: rising budget pressures, ready-to-run segments WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois. Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from 39. ``We are doing more with the same,'' said Jim P. Gee, the news director. Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many demands, he said, ``It is hard for us to justify having a reporter just focusing on agriculture.'' To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department, which has assembled one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government. The department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some 90 ``mission messages'' for local stations--mostly feature segments about the good works of the Agriculture Department. ``I don't want to use the word `filler,' per se, but they meet a need we have,'' Mr. Gee said. The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports, which are vetted by the department's office of communications before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage. ``They cover the secretary just like any other reporter,'' she said. Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help Florida clean up after several hurricanes. ``They've done a fantastic job,'' a grateful local official said in the segment. More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the new agriculture secretary, and the White House were determined to reopen Japan to American beef products. Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, ``He called Bush the best envoy in the world.'' WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by the Agriculture Department over the past three months alone. Or put another way, WCIA has run 26 reports that did not cost it anything to produce. Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he added: ``We don't think they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're informative. They're balanced.'' More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture Department to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are the work of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of closing his report with ``I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the U.S.D.A.,'' Mr. Ellison says, ``With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for `The Morning Show.' '' Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise ``awareness of the name of our station.'' Could it give viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? ``We think viewers can make up their own minds,'' Mr. Gee said. Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary, said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy, she said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter works for the department. In any event, she added, she did not think there was much potential for viewer confusion. ``It's pretty clear to me,'' she said. the `good news' people: a menu of reports from military hot spots The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States. The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net., browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed. Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members. ``We're the `good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director. Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50 stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching 41 million households in the United States. The news service makes it easy for local stations to run its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never identified by their military titles. ``We know if we put a rank on there they're not going to put it on their air,'' Mr. Gilliam said. Each account is also specially tailored for local broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would include an interview with a service member from there. If the same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for one from Oklahoma City. ``We try to make the individual soldier a star in their hometown,'' Mr. Gilliam said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and cities selected by the service members interviewed. Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the segments. ``Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and it looks just like they went out and did the story,'' Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any particular political or policy agenda, he said. ``We don't editorialize at all,'' he said. Yet sometimes the ``good news'' approach carries political meaning, intended or not. Such was the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of military police officers. A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where some of the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had been trained. ``One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat prisoners strictly but fairly,'' the reporter said in the segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police officers were taught to ``treat others as they would want to be treated.'' The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or how the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort Leonard Wood. According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command failure. ``Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said, `We need some good publicity?' '' he asked. ``No, not at all.''

Mr. BYRD. I have no objection to that.

Mr. BYRD. I thank the very distinguished Senator for his support and for his statement. It is a very pertinent statement. In the FCC Public Notice 05-84, dated April 13, 2005, on page 2, it says: This Public Notice is confined to the disclosure obligations required under Section 317 and our rules thereunder, and does not address the recent controversy over when or whether the government is permitted to sponsor VNRs, which is an issue beyond the Commission's jurisdiction. My amendment is simple and clear. Here is what it says: None of the funds provided in this Act or any other Act may be used by a Federal agency to produce any prepackaged news story unless the story includes a clear notification to the audience that the story was prepared or funded by that Federal agency. Mr. President, it does not create confusion, as a Senator said a moment ago. It creates clarity.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from New Jersey for his comments and support. I thank him profusely.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator for his willingness to not move to table at this point. I hope we can take a little time and see if we might reach a meeting of the minds on language that might accomplish the purposes that we hoped to accomplish. For that reason, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have no objection. We can reach an understanding if I am unable to come up with language that is capable of being a workable and effective compromise that we might go ahead and have a vote on the Byrd amendment. Might we have a time limit on the Senator's proposal?