Robert Byrd

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair. The distinguished chairman has alluded to the sometimes ill will that exists increasingly within our own premises. That ill will is often engendered by the meddling of the White House. The White House should not meddle in the business of the Congress. Congress should pass bills and the President can decide whether to sign or to veto them. Last year, the President stepped in late in the debate on the Omnibus appropriations bill and forced the conferees to drop protection for workers to earn overtime. He forced us to change the media ownership rules in order to protect large corporate interests. We should not allow the President to force the Congress to consider legislation through reconciliation. Moreover, I say to my friend from Oklahoma, this amendment is not about tax cuts. It is about paying for tax cuts. This budget resolution assumes that our gross debt will grow to $10.6 trillion by 2009. This resolution does nothing to address the staggering debt. In fact, it assumes $144 billion of additional tax cuts with $81 billion of tax cuts cloaked within the protection of reconciliation. We should insist on a full debate on whether these tax cuts should be paid for. We do not need reconciliation to get things done. In 1981, we passed President Reagan's tax cuts without reconciliation. Reconciliation was designed to pass difficult legislation that would help to reduce the deficit. It was not designed to pass tax cuts. We are facing huge deficits. We should have an opportunity to actually debate whether additional tax cuts should be paid for. May I say to my chairman, I respect him greatly. I am sorry he has voluntarily elected to leave the Senate and not chair the committee. I have tremendous admiration for him. I have always enjoyed his friendship and my associations with him, and I shall long miss him. I hope, on the note on which we have been playing, Senators will support my amendment. Does my chairman wish any further time?

Mr. BYRD. I yield that time to my chairman.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I wanted to inquire if I might find a way to speak for not to exceed 2 minutes in opposition to the amendment that is offered by Senators Warner and Stevens.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the debate about budget deficits is taking place all across this country. Ironically, the one place where debate is discouraged on this matter is right here in the world's greatest deliberative body. My amendment would strike the tax reconciliation instructions to the Finance Committee that would shield tax cut legislation that worsens the deficit from a thorough debate in the Senate. To use reconciliation to increase the deficit is an abuse of the budget process. It doesn't matter whether it is an $81 billion tax cut, a $350 billion tax cut, or a $1.35 trillion tax cut, the Budget Act framers--and I was one of them--did not contemplate all this difficulty, did not contemplate reconciliation would ever be used to worsen the deficit. Not until 1999, after 25 years of restraint, was this abuse of the process first perpetrated. If this budget resolution passes with these reconciliation instructions included, the Senate will be denied the opportunity to forge a consensus that would allow it to extend these tax cuts and pay for them. That is the issue on which we vote today. A vote to strike the reconciliation instructions is a vote to allow the Senate to work its will and to permit the further worsening of the deficit. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I thank the Chair.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have the utmost respect for the two authors of this amendment. They know that. The Defense Department is plagued with accounting problems so severe that the Secretary of Defense cannot account for billions of taxpayer dollars. The General Accounting Office estimates the very earliest the Defense Department could possibly pass an audit would be 2007, and that is optimistic. The administration does not even know how much time and how much money it will take to fix the accounting problems. It is absurd that the administration is proposing to cut vital domestic investments while billions and billions of dollars are lost every year in the Pentagon's broken accounting system. Such waste would not be tolerated from any other Department. I suggest the Pentagon would be more careful with its money if it had less of it to waste. The Defense Department's budget is already bloated at $414 billion. I cannot support this amendment to add another $6.9 billion to the budget resolution for the Pentagon when it cannot explain to the American taxpayers how their hard-earned money is being spent. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. BYRD. Right.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BYRD. How much time was consumed on the last rollcall?

Mr. BYRD. Nineteen minutes. I thank the Chair.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, on January 3, 1963, Daniel Inouye became a U.S. Senator. Today, 15,036 days later, he has become the fifth longest serving Senator in American history. This is yet another accomplishment in the life and career of a remarkable man and outstanding American. I must point out, however, that his has not been an easy or comfortable life. It has involved overcoming the trials and tribulations of immigration and discrimination. Still, his has been a life of service to our country. During World War II, he served our country in the famed 442d Infantry Regimental Combat Team of World War II, the most decorated Army unit in U.S. history. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Congressional Medal of Honor, making him one of only seven Senators to have been awarded our Nation's highest military honor. His war-time heroics have now been documented in the film, ``Daniel K. Inouye: An American Story.'' His service to our country continued in the U.S. Senate where he became the first Japanese American ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, and served on the Senate Watergate Committee, the Congressional Iran Contra Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and as Secretary of the Democratic Conference. I am pleased to point out that Senator Inouye will soon cast his 14,000th vote. Personally, I have always appreciated and respected his deep loyalty to the Senate and everything for which it stands. I will never forget his loyalty to me when I was the Senate Democratic leader. Whenever I needed his assistance, he was there. Whenever I needed his vote, he was there. Whenever I needed his friendship, he was there. In an address to the Senate last July, I referred to Senator Inouye as ``my hero in the Senate.'' I am confident that he always will be. Senator Inouye is a dear colleague and a remarkable man. Therefore, I take great delight in congratulating him on achieving this momentous occasion. I congratulate the Senator. His colleagues are proud of him as are the people of Hawaii.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Democratic whip and I thank the distinguished chairman of the committee for his courtesy. Independent Commissions on National Security Issues Most of us are familiar with the Aesop's fables, having read some of them at one or more times during our lives. Aesop once told the story of a jaybird that ventured into a yard where peacocks used to walk. There the jay found a number of feathers fallen from the majestic birds when they had last molted. He tied them all to his tail and strutted toward the peacocks. His cheat was quickly discovered, and the peacocks harassed the imposter until all his borrowed plumes had fallen away. When the jay could do no more than return to his own kind, having watched him from afar, they were equally affronted by the jay's actions. The moral of the story, said Aesop, is that it takes more than just fine feathers to make fine birds. It is an age-old lesson that the Congress should hold in its mind as we consider how best to investigate the distorted and misleading intelligence that the administration used to build its case for war in Iraq. On February 6, the President announced the creation of his own commission to investigate our intelligence agencies to find out, in the words of Dr. David Kay, why we were almost all wrong about the administration's prewar claims of huge Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. If Congress is serious about getting to the bottom of this apparent intelligence failure and the administration's rush to war, we must realize that once stripped of its dazzling plumage, the White House proposal for its own so-called independent commission is a real, honest to goodness turkey. It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. The President has described the panel that he created as being an independent commission. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. This commission is 100 percent under the thumb of the White House. Who created the panel's charter? The President. Who chooses the panel members? The President. To whom does the panel report? The President. Whom shall the panel advise and assist? The President. Who is in charge of determining what classified reports the panel may see? The President. Who gets to decide whether the Congress may see the panel's report? The President. To describe this commission as independent is to turn that word's definition on its head. In fact, the deeper one delves into the text of the Executive order that creates the President's so-called independent commission, the more one finds that the commission is ill-equipped to discover just what went wrong with the prewar intelligence on Iraq. At first glance, the charter of the President's commission appears very broad. It is to assess whether the intelligence community of the United States is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and resourced to tackle the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. As part of that goal, the commission is to compare prewar intelligence on Iraq with what has so far been discovered. That mission sounds like a mouthful, but it really misses the point of why the American people are calling for a commission to investigate in this matter. The public has a right to know why our intelligence on Iraq was so wrong, how the administration may have misrepresented its intelligence, who is going to be held accountable for misleading our country into war, and what will be done to fix the problems with our intelligence. Those are exactly the questions an independent intelligence panel should be investigating, and yet the President's commission only skirts those key issues. What is more, even though the President promised that his commission will investigate current intelligence on North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, his Executive order, in fact, does not bother to direct the commission to review intelligence on those countries. Instead, the President's Executive order directs the commission to focus its energies on Libya and Afghanistan. Libya and Afghanistan are not countries that the President has labeled as part of his axis of evil. A real independent intelligence commission would shine new light on how we assess the threats of North Korea and Iran, not be distracted by sideshows that will keep the commission busy until March 31, 2005. The President has carefully drafted this Executive order to allow himself to serve as the gatekeeper on what information the so-called independent commission might have access to. While the President directs Federal agencies to cooperate with this commission, he also has created a giant loophole that would prevent the most important intelligence products from being read by his commission. The Executive order reads as follows: The President may at any time modify the security rules or procedures of the commission to provide the necessary protection to classified information. I was born at night but not last night. All of America knows that the White House is in a dispute with the September 11 Commission over intelligence reports that were read by the President. The commission wants them. The White House will not give them. The Executive order drafted by the President to create an intelligence commission makes sure that his own commission will never see documents that the President does not want them to see. At least the 9/11 Commission has the power to issue subpoenas for critical information. The President's intelligence commission does not even have that power. The deck is being stacked against a full and open inquiry on the prewar intelligence on Iraq. Congress is not even assured of having access to the commission's report. The President has required that the commission send its report to him in March 2005 and then within 90 days the President will consult with the Congress concerning the commission's report and recommendations. Why can the Congress not simply read the commission's report? Why should the White House be given the opportunity to reword, reshape, redact, or even flat out censor the so-called independent commission's report before Congress can get their hands on it? It is quite possible that if this so-called independent commission is allowed to proceed as the President has directed, Congress will never have the chance to review the commission's work. Tucked away in the President's Executive order is a provision that intends to exempt this commission from judicial review. Let us not forget that the Office of the Vice President fought tooth and nail in Federal courts, and is still doing so, to keep the General Accounting Office, an arm of the Congress, from learning about the meetings of the Vice President's energy task force. Could this provision be an attempt to hide the work of the President's intelligence commission from Congress? I would not put such a scheme beyond the White House, which has already demonstrated its zeal for secrecy. The administration's case for war in Iraq appears to have been built upon cherry-picked intelligence, produced and massaged to hype the American people into going along with a war of choice. The President's so-called independent commission would allow the White House to do the exact same number on the commission's report as it did on prewar intelligence and analysis; namely, pick out only the parts that it wants the public to see and bury the rest. It is bitter irony that a report on whether the administration covered up evidence that contradicted a rush to war might itself be covered up under the terms of the President's Executive order. So what is next? An independent commission to investigate the President's own commission? Is that so? I wonder. Let us not make the mistake of ignoring the shortcomings of the White House's version of an intelligence commission on Iraq, only to be haunted by those problems later. The revelation by Dr. Kay that he does not believe any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq has dealt a blow to the President's case for war. It has shaken the American people's faith in their Government. We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of what went wrong with our intelligence agencies and whether the administration misused the intelligence that it was provided. The President has simultaneously promised a commission to investigate these matters and stacked the deck against the independence of his very own panel. That is not the right way to gain the confidence of the American people in their Government. It is yet another in a string of attempts by this White House to mislead the American people on issues of national security. Congress must step in and correct the grievous error that the President has made in creating a commission that is not equipped properly to do its job. Congress should use the independent 9/11 Commission, a commission that has shown itself to be fair, independent, and bipartisan, as a starting point for how to create an independent panel to investigate the Iraq intelligence failures. If the administration is serious about getting to the bottom of this debacle, this new commission might even be created in just a matter of days. The American people deserve answers on why the administration relied on faulty intelligence to take this country to war without presence of an imminent threat. A commission that is designed to keep the inquiry under the thumb of the same White House that misled Congress and the public about the nature of the threat from Saddam Hussein will never be able to operate independently. So Congress should not allow the President to get away with posting a fox at the door to the hen house. The structure of the 9/11 Commission is a solid foundation upon which to conduct an inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence claims. The 9/11 Commission has been doing yeoman's work in digging into all of the events that led up to those catastrophic attacks on New York and Washington. In fact, the only real problem that the 9/11 Commission has faced is the lack of cooperation from the White House. After refusing to meet with the full membership of the 9/11 Commission, the President and Vice President have reluctantly proposed to meet only with the chairman and vice chairman of the panel. And for how long? Just 1 hour. The National Security Adviser has flatly refused to participate in any public discussions with the Commission. The White House position on dealing with the 9/11 Commission is so unreasonable that the administration is drawing criticism from both sides of that panel. There is even talk that former Senator Bob Kerrey, who once served as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, could resign because of the administration's refusal to let the Commission do its work. What could possibly be the reason for this stonewalling by the White House? It is as if a whole swath of the Washington establishment has completely forgotten the horror of the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people. But the American people have not forgotten. The American people have their priorities straight. They place getting at the truth of how that tragedy was carried out above election year politics. Enough with the stonewalling. Enough with the foot dragging. Enough with the election year politics. The Senate acted correctly a few days ago to extend the life of the 9/11 Commission so that it can get its work done, and the House should promptly follow suit. Now Congress should act quickly to create an independent Iraq intelligence commission. The confidence of the American people in their Government, the people's government, hangs in the balance. Madam President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, with the release of the President's budget for the fiscal year 2005, and the upcoming markup of the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution, it is now clear the promises made by this administration during the 2000 election have not been kept. Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to ensure the Social Security benefits promised to our Nation's workers, our retirement and disability system has become more vulnerable. Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to make health care more affordable, drug prices continue to rise and health insurance remains unobtainable for too many Americans. Contrary to the promise made 4 years ago to protect our Nation's vital industry, this administration's tax and trade policies have been an unmitigated disaster with an alarming number of jobs being lost overseas. Contrary to those assurances that it could be trusted to act as a prudent and responsible manager of our Nation's fiscal policies, the Bush administration has demonstrated neither prudence nor fiscal responsibility. In his February 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, the President promised to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. He said that is ``more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.'' The President has not kept that promise. Since President Bush submitted his fiscal year 2002 budget, our gross national debt has increased from $5.6 trillion to $7 trillion, and deficits have risen to $521 billion in fiscal year 2004. With the deficit projections mounting, the cries of alarm are growing steadily louder. The IMF--an international organization normally concerned with the debt problems of third world nations--has issued an alarming critique of the United States, pleading with the Bush administration to rein in its massive budget and trade deficits. Similar warnings have emanated from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and the U.S. Comptroller General, David Walker. Even the administration's own political allies, ranging from the conservative Heritage Foundation to private sector economists who endorsed the President's tax cuts, have pleaded with this administration to get its fiscal act together. Yet these warnings fall on deaf ears in this administration. After spending $1.7 billion to finance three enormous tax cuts in the last 3 years, the President's budget proposes an additional $1.24 trillion--in other words, that is one and a quarter trillion dollars-- for more tax cuts. President Bush's assertion that his budget will cut the deficit in half by 2009 is one more in a litany of promises that will go unfulfilled. The Bush administration's own budget documents show that if none of its proposals were enacted into law, the deficit would still be cut in half. The President's budget actually makes the deficit worse in 2009 than if the Congress took no action at all. For the fiscal years 2001 through 2010, this administration's policies have transformed a 10-year, $5.6 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit--and it just keeps getting worse. The President's budget includes record deficit projections that will push our national debt to extreme limits never before seen in our Nation's history, or any other nation's history for that matter. President Bush's budget is a wake-up call for working Americans. Under the guise of inviting middle class workers to sit at the table and share in the tax cut, this administration ran up a tab that won't be paid for by those with golden parachutes. It will be the working man--the man who works with his hands, in many instances, or most. It will be the working man who gets stuck with the bill--the working man, the forgotten man in this administration. In this administration's tenure, the working man is the forgotten man. Instead of ensuring the Social Security benefits promised to workers--here me out there--the President's budget would spend the entire Social Security surplus over the next 5 years--all $1.1 trillion of it--to pay for the administration's tax cuts for the affluent and for the corporate elite. Not one thin dime would be allocated to save your Social Security. I remember life in the coalfields life in southern West Virginia when there was no Social Security. We had the old Raleigh County poor farm. Raleigh County is in south-central West Virginia, a great coal- producing county over the years. I remember the old county poor farm out at Shady Springs. It used to be when folks became old--and there in those coalfields they became old early--when they became old, they could no longer get a job. A person who was 60 years old, I can remember when I was a boy, was an old man. Sixty years old, that was old. Fifty-five years of age or 60 years of age was considered old. There was no Social Security when they became old. Those men and women who had given their best years in the toil and labor had given their best years. And they could no longer get work. The only thing they could do would be to go to the gates of their children with their hats in their hand and hope their children could take them in. Many of them went to that old county poor farm. No Social Security. Then like the rays of hope breaking away the shadows in those West Virginia mountains, a new President, a crippled President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, came to the helm of this shipless state. He and a Democratic Congress enacted a law bringing to the country and to the old folks Social Security. I remember when those first Social Security checks came. A check came to my house where my old coal miner father--he was not my father, he was my foster father--received a check. And my mom, who was my aunt, had taken me to raise when my mother died in the great influenza in 1918. So the Byrds took me in and raised me and they drew a Social Security check. So I know what it meant for those who had to depend upon Social Security, and those out in the plains, mountains, the prairies, and the valleys of America, who still depend upon Social Security. But even the enormous surpluses in the Social Security accounts cannot cover the colossal cost of the administration's tax cuts. President Bush's budget would also cut the funding for those Federal programs that most benefit working families: Federal student aid, unemployment and job training programs, health care initiative for veterans and the poor and the elderly by a whooping $50 billion to pay for the administration's tax cuts. Hear me, out there. And still it is not enough. After Draconian spending cuts on the loss of the entire Social Security surplus, the President's budget proposes to borrow an additional $1.4 trillion. How long does it take to count $1 trillion? At the rate of $1 per second, how long would it take to count $1 trillion? A thousand years? Two thousand years? Thirty-six thousand years. The President's budget proposes to borrow an additional $1.4 trillion, much of it from countries such as China and entities like OPEC, to pay for what? To pay for its tax cuts, tax cuts for the well- to-do, tax cuts for the wealthy. I say to the people from West Virginia who may be watching, there are not many of you included in that group. When you look at the promises of this administration on the one hand versus the performance on the other hand and the massive increases in the national debt necessary to finance their ill-conceived fiscal policies, our Nation would be left with a Bush debt gap of $4.5 trillion. The administration is forcing working class Americans not only to shoulder a massive debt burden but also to give up those Federal programs and services from which they most benefit. The President's tax cuts are squeezing State revenue, forcing increases in tuition rates. The cost of attendance at a 4-year public college or university has gone up 26 percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of $8,418 in the year 2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Let me say that again: The cost of attending a 4-year public college or university has gone up 26 percent since Mr. Bush became President, from an average of $8,418 in 2000 to $10,636 in 2003. Interest rates on student loans will increase, while Pell grant moneys and Federal student aid programs are rolled back. Drug prices will continue to increase and veterans and senior citizens--the old folks; I can call them senior citizens; I can call them old folks because I am one of them, thank God--veterans and seniors will continue to see their savings depleted while cuts are made in those programs that help to provide them with basic health care. Workers' pensions will remain underfunded and vulnerable while this administration stands passively mute. Social Security's financing problems will continue to worsen as money that should be saved to ensure the benefits promised to workers is wasted on an ideological fiscal policy that advocates tax cuts above all else. The financial perils underlying the Social Security Program were brought to light this week when Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan forced the President to confront the fact that his administration has been for 3 years hiding from the facts. Namely, if we continue on the fiscal course set by this administration, we will lose the only opportunity that we will have left to save Social Security. Congress has a responsibility to better educate the public about their Social Security system. The panic--have you ever heard panic in the voice of someone? The panic in the voices of my constituents as they called my office yesterday made it clear that more must be done to keep the public informed. What is regrettable is that the real problems confronting future Social Security retirees have only recently surfaced in the Presidential debates--how about that--only recently surfaced in the Presidential debates. What is unforgivable, however, is if it were not for Chairman Greenspan's comments, this administration may not have even raised it as an issue this year. The President's evasive remarks have been to assure the American people that he will not cut the benefits of retirees or those near retirement. But what does that mean for 59-year- olds? What does that mean for 60-year-olds? Oh, I wish I could say I was 60 again. Maybe not. Maybe not. What does that mean for 59-year-olds or 60-year-olds? Will the President try to cut their Social Security benefits or not? To cut Social Security benefits, without first engaging the public about its intentions, should tell us a great deal about the fiscal priorities and methods of this administration. In the face of this dismal reality, the administration does not offer solutions, it offers excuses--just excuses. This administration can only argue that their budgetary decisions are not their fault. The recession and out-of-control spending is to blame for massive deficits. Corporate accounting scandals are to blame for weak pension funds. The September 11 terrorists are to blame for the shoddy economy. All of these arguments are belied by the facts. Our investments in education, health care, transportation, and other domestic discretionary programs are not the source of this administration's deficit problems. Domestic discretionary comprises only 9 percent of the increase in spending over the last 3 years, and it represents only 17 percent of all Federal spending. President Bush's budget does not even look at mandatory expenditures for savings even though they comprise two-thirds of the Federal budget. While the President's proposed spending cuts would significantly undermine our education and health care investments, it would barely make a dent in the administration's deficit projections. Meanwhile, the Defense Department is plagued with accounting problems so severe that the Secretary of Defense cannot account for billions of taxpayers' dollars. The General Accounting Office estimates that the very earliest that the Defense Department could possibly pass an audit would be the year 2007, and that is optimistic. The administration does not even know how much time and how much money it will take to fix the accounting problems. It is absurd that the administration is proposing to cut vital domestic investments while billions and billions and billions of dollars are lost every year in the Pentagon's broken accounting system. The administration's deficits have exploded, and they have exploded in large measure because revenues as a percentage of our gross domestic product have declined to their lowest levels since 1950--1950. According to the House Budget Committee, the three Bush tax cuts have increased the deficit by nearly $2.6 trillion from 2001 to 2013. The notion that the administration's deficits were created by a poor economy and increased spending is pure fantasy. It is made all the worse by this administration's efforts to hide these facts from the public--from you, you. They say it is your money. The administration is touting the tough choices it is making to cut the deficit in half over 5 years. Yet its budget is full of ``magic asterisks'' that assume an initiative will be offset, such as the $65 billion health care tax credit but provides no information on from where that savings will come. Contrary to the Bush administration's past budgets, with surplus projections extending out 10 years to justify their tax cuts, this year President Bush proposed a 5-year budget--a 5-year budget. It hides from the public the alarming long-term deficits projected by the Congressional Budget Office. It hides the real cost of the administration's proposals, such as the $1.1 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts. Further, President Bush's budget includes no additional funds for Iraq, even though the administration reportedly will submit another supplemental request for Iraq--when? After the November elections. Not many of you, perhaps, are old enough to remember the old vaudeville shows, where they would tell you, ``Watch this hand,'' while they were doing something they did not tell you about with the other hand, or, ``Now you see it; now you don't.'' So they do not tell us how much money they need for Iraq, but they reportedly will submit another supplemental for Iraq after the November elections. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, is where the budget deficit is the most deceptive. To date, contrary to the modern tradition of an administration funding large-scale, ongoing wars, at least in part, through the regular appropriations process, the Bush administration has refused to request funds for the war in Iraq in its annual budget. Why? They do not want you to know. They want the American people to be fooled. The administration waits until funds for the troops are almost exhausted before requesting additional funds through a supplemental--through a supplemental. The Bush administration's purpose is clear. What is it? To limit debate, to limit discussion, to limit having to explain to those people out there who are watching the Senate through those electronic lenses--to limit having to explain to the American people how much this war will cost. This unnecessary war, how much will it cost, this war which the American people should never have fought, never. They were fooled, then, into believing there were weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq and that we were in danger of seeing a mushroom cloud. But to date there have been none found. This administration, which will argue until they are blue in the face that black is white and white is black, will still say: Oh, there are still weapons of mass destruction there; we just have not found them yet. They are there. Well, who knows? Maybe they will be. But that is not the way it was when the administration proposed our invasion of Iraq early last year. How much will it cost, to say nothing of how many lives will be lost before it is over? How many lives? On how many doors will that knock fall before the war ends? See, we have two wars. We have the war in Afghanistan, which resulted from the attacks upon us on the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon--the attacks by al-Qaida, by the 19 hijackers, not one of whom was an Iraqi. Not one was from Iraq. That is the war that is still going on in Afghanistan. That is the war I support. That is the war I have supported from the beginning. But I have never supported the other war, the Bush war, the war still going on in Iraq, the war that comes under the rubric of the doctrine of preemptive strikes. That is another war. That is the Bush war in Iraq. That is the war in which the American people should never have had to spill a drop of blood. The American people should never have had to send one of their sons or daughters to fight. That is the Bush war, and nobody knows how many more lives will be lost before that war is over. This year, the political posturing has gotten worse. Not only did the President not include any funds in his budget for the ongoing operations in Iraq, the administration has announced no supplemental will be sent to the Congress until after the November election, depriving the American voters of any opportunity to judge the President based on his promises about the cost of a war in Iraq. This is a budget of gimmicks, false promises, unrealistic expectations. It is a budget of misdirection, canards, speciousness, spuriousness, sophistry, equivocation, fallacies, prevarications, and flatout fantasy. Worse, under the guise of reining in budget deficits, this administration is continuing its assault on the values of the working class. This is an administration of corporate CEOs and Texas oil men. The corporate elite of this administration did not grow up wondering if their parents could afford to send them to college. Their parents did not have to choose between paying for groceries and paying for health care. Their parents did not have to stay up late at night worried about whether they would lose their pension benefits or whether Social Security would be enough to provide for their retirement. When the administration proposes to cut these programs or fails to provide adequate resources for them, it is because it has no personal understanding of the plight of American workers and how much the President's budget cuts affect middle-class Americans. Only a President who never had to apply for unemployment benefits would oppose extending them when so many workers are without a job. Only a President who never needed overtime pay would advocate taking it away from those workers who rely on it to make ends meet. Only a President who never needed Federal aid to attend college would advocate cutting it back for those students who cannot attend college without it. When this administration leaves office--and I hope it won't be long-- its legacy will be an enormous debt, an enormous debt burden that will weigh heavily on the middle class. In the process, it will have severely weakened their safety net and will have left little means for fixing it. But it won't matter to this President. At that point, he will just move back to Texas, back to good old Crawford, TX, knowing that his pension and his health care benefits are secure, and that corporate CEOs and Texas oil men are wealthier and more comfortable than ever before. He will never have to rely on the safety net his administration has worked so hard to dismantle. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, will the distinguished Democratic whip yield?

Mr. BYRD. About what time would it be possible for me to get the floor?

Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. If the Senator will yield, I apologize for interrupting his remarks. I thank the Senator for his words. I thank him, however, far more for his wisdom and for his courage, and for his insight, and for his constructive contributions that are made so often to the debates in the Senate. I marvel at his talent. He is not one who has hidden his talents. He is out front, outspoken, and I listen always with great admiration. May he long continue to serve the people of the United States in this Senate in the capacity which he now serves, in which capacity he would have no peer; I have not seen a peer yet. I thank him again.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. I share the concern of my chairman, Senator Stevens, on this matter and join with him in insisting that the Senate attend to this matter on a legislative vehicle that will be enacted into law very soon. This matter is of the utmost urgency, if we are not to create confusion at the Federal Highway Administration as to how this program is to be implemented.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I am concerned about the increasing costs of malpractice insurance and a lack of access to medical providers in West Virginia and other States. The current challenges facing the medical malpractice system are complex and require a multifaceted solution. Unfortunately, this issue has become highly politicized with powerful interests pitted against each other. Patients and their doctors are being squeezed in the middle. It is long past time to give some peace of mind to patients and doctors alike who are caught in this political tug of war. We ought to have a wide-ranging debate in the Senate on how to best reform the medical liability and insurance system and also prevent medical errors. I am disappointed that the administration and the Senate leadership have adopted a take-it-or-leave-it and one-size-fits-all approach to this issue. Especially in more rural areas of this country, there is a serious shortage of doctors and a lack of access to quality medical care close to home. Too often, families must travel long distances to see a physician, and even farther if specialized care is required. I hope that, by proceeding to the medical malpractice bill, the Senate can have a constructive debate and reach a commonsense concensus on this important issue.

Mr. BYRD

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, is time controlled?

Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair. Is the distinguished senior Senator from Massachusetts a manager of the bill?

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator. I always like to be on God's side, and then I like to be on Senator Kennedy's side. If there is a choice between the two, why, I think I will pass for the moment. Mr. President, it is not hyperbole to suggest that the sky is falling for too many American workers. You could also say that the ship is sinking. You could say that the mine wall is collapsing, that the dam is giving way, or use any number of metaphors for a looming disaster to describe the current state of America's private pension system. The entire system is wobbling under assaults from every direction. On the one side, the stock market plunge has left the pensions for over 44 million workers underfunded by an estimated $350 billion. Last year, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation had to assume the pension obligations for scores of bankrupt companies, ranging from airlines to steelmakers, pushing the PBGC's balance sheet into the red by an alarming $11.2 billion. On the other side, the assault is coming from historically low interest rates that have triggered painful new funding requirements for employers. Even companies that want to provide for their employees find themselves unable to compete in a global marketplace against competitors unencumbered by the legacy costs of pension and health care benefits. U.S. employers are warning they will be forced to freeze their pension plans or terminate them unless the Congress provides them with relief from their pension obligations. Yet, with $350 billion in underfunded pensions and a growing deficit, the Federal pension insurer is warning that unless those pension obligations are funded, a massive taxpayer bailout, akin to the 1980s savings and loan crisis, is just over the horizon. At a time when working families are looking for assurances that their pensions will be protected and their retirement will be secure, the Congress is offering neither assurances nor security. This legislation provides funding relief to employers, but it does little to ensure that the pension benefits promised to workers will be there when they retire. While this short-term patch may be necessary to keep the ship afloat for a while longer, it does not change the fact that the ship is sinking, and the Congress has not yet readied the lifeboats. The Congress is telling workers that once the needs of business have been addressed, then it can act to ensure their pensions are fully funded. The Congress is wagering that the pension system will stay afloat that long. It is a theme I have noticed repeatedly during the tenure of this administration. While the top of the economic pyramid receives immediate relief, the hard-working middle class is given only vague promises, uncertain promises of uncertain relief and delayed benefits. I have seen it over and over and over. The corporate elite receives immediate tax cuts, while America's working-class families, the people who work with their hands, the people who get their hands dirty, the people who are soiled in grime when it is time to go home and have supper, are told to wait, wait for the economy to survive. The pharmaceutical industry receives billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while middle-class families wait endlessly for lower drug prices. Corporate profits continue to increase while middle-class families wait for those profits to trickle down to them. In asking middle-class Americans to wait for the economy to improve, wait for health care costs to go down, wait for their wages to rise, it confirms that this administration of corporate CEOs and Texas oilmen do not have the slightest comprehension of the plight of American workers, the people who work with their hands, who get their hands dirty, who get their fingernails dirty, whose shirt sleeves are dirty. They are the American worker. It is a grim, bleak time for working Americans. Two and a half million jobs have disappeared under this administration's economic stewardship. Most of them are in our once powerful manufacturing sector, which has lost jobs for 41 consecutive months. Just come to West Virginia and see what has happened. The glass plants have gone. The pottery works have gone. The steel mills, to a large degree, have gone. The coal industry, which used to employ 125,000 men when I first came to Congress, today employs perhaps 15,000, 16,000, 18,000 workers who mine just as much coal as in the days when there were 125,000 men working in the mines. Yes, 1 million jobs have been lost. Where have they gone? They have gone overseas. Eight million workers are unemployed, without hope for tomorrow, listening to their children, listening to their spouses, saying: Where will we go? What will we do? What will happen to us? Eight million workers are unemployed. Half a million discouraged workers have dropped out of the labor pool saying there is no hope; hope is gone; the hope to which I held for these many days, these many weeks, these many months is gone. Three and a half million workers are collecting unemployment benefits, with an average 350,000 workers signing up for benefits each week. At the same time, 80,000 jobless workers are exhausting their unemployment benefits each week, forcing them to cut back on health care, forcing them to cut back on food purchases. Workers are losing their health insurance. Two and a half million more people joined the ranks of the uninsured last year, the largest single increase in a decade. Think of that. Put yourself in the shoes of these who go to bed hungry, who go to bed with heavy burdens, the burdens of forlorn hopes. With health care costs spiraling out of control, 44 million people must do without health insurance. Retired workers are forced to do without lifesaving drugs, without digoxin, without Coumadin, without Singulair. For those workers with health insurance, the out-of-pocket costs are soaring, more than doubling for employees of large companies since 1998. Costs are up sharply and going up more, too, for workers who pay monthly premiums but rarely see a doctor. Worker pensions are in danger, with the Federal pension insurer taking over 122 plans last year, slashing the pension benefit promised to over 200,000 workers. Two million additional Americans fell into poverty in 2002. Yes, we can afford to rebuild the oil pipeline, the oil wells in Iraq. Yes, we can afford to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq. What about our own people? What about our own workers, who with their sweat and their toil have built this country and made it the wonder of the world? Not coincidentally, almost 2 million workers earn wages at the statutory minimum, $5.15 per hour. These are real people. It may be hard to comprehend that there are people who are working for that minimum wage, and that that minimum wage is the only thing that stands between them and their children and starvation. These are real people. These are real stories about working people in this land of the free, this home of the brave. These people earn their wages at the statutory minimum of $5.15 per hour. Think of it. Their wages are eroded every year by inflation, with the real value of the minimum wage dropping. While the wealthiest taxpayers receive tens of thousands of dollars in tax cuts, the administration denies a meager $1.50 per hour raise to our most impoverished workers. These administration people who oppose an increase in the minimum wage come from the other side of the tracks. To quote President Franklin Roosevelt, the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. After three colossal tax cuts, this administration has denied much to those who have little in order to provide more to those who have much. The American worker--have you ever been a worker? The American worker has once again become the forgotten man. While the administration is offering only vague promises of hope, the American workforce is forced to endure the most hostile assault in decades. The Bush administration has tried to repeal the 40-hour workweek and strip workers of their right to overtime pay. Think of that. It has attacked the civil service system. It has repealed the safety rules necessary for the protection of America's workers. It has neglected their health and safety in the workplace. Now the administration is blocking an increase in the Federal minimum wage. It is blocking efforts to provide unemployment benefits to jobless workers. It is trying to push through a rule to strip 8 million workers of their hard-earned overtime pay. And it does so always with the promise that these benefits for businesses and the corporate elite will one day trickle down to the middle class. This is not the record of an administration that understands the needs of working families.

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the very able Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, has led this fight to increase the minimum wage time and time and time again. I admire him for it. Yes, this administration has joined in the maiming and the raping of the Constitution and the rules of the Senate and in doing as it did with respect to the items that were changed in conference, the items that were added in conference, the items that passed each of the two Houses and were deleted in conference. What a shame. What a disgrace. I have been a Member of Congress 51 years, going into 52 years, and I have never seen such a disgraceful act as that which was done while you, the American working people out there, were asleep--were asleep. These changes were being made behind closed doors. The minority was not present. What would John Taber, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee when I came to the House--what would he think of this underhanded method of operating? What would Joe Martin, Speaker of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts in that day--what would he think? The Republicans of that day would not have stood for it. They believed in the American system. They believed in the Constitution. This is a disgrace. It is a shame, the way this Congress has acted, the way the Republican leadership in both Houses, and the White House, has acted in dealing with the taxpayers' money, the working people, the common people. You know, I say to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, I came into this world and was an orphan after 1 year. I grew up in a coal miner's home. I married a coal miner's daughter. Some leaders of this administration ought to know what it is to have to buy a stick of pepperoni, a piece of longhorn cheese and a box of crackers, sit down on railroad rails and eat that humble fare, and what is left put into a paper bag to eat the next morning for breakfast. This crowd down here in the White House doesn't know what it is. They come from the other side of the tracks. They do not know what it is to get their hands dirty working long hours at night, working to scratch out a living for their spouses and their children. They do not know what it is to walk into a coal miner's home and go to the cupboard and look and see what that family has left to eat. No. They grew up in the corporate boardrooms of this country. They do not know what it is. When God turned man out of the Garden of Eden and told him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, that has been the lot of the workingman. Then to see that workingman further trampled by the policies and programs of this thoughtless administration is a story in itself. This is not the record of an administration that understands the needs of working families. American workers are sinking on the Titanic and this administration can only promise workers to send back the lifeboats once the first-class passengers have been taken to safety. I recall the great Titanic. It went down I believe on April 15, 1912. I believe 1,517 passengers and workers on that great Titanic went to their deaths in the depths of the deep blue ocean. Now this administration promises workers to send back the lifeboats, but only after the first-class passengers have been taken to safety. Americans would have to look back to the Hoover administration during the nadir of the Great Depression to find an administration that has treated workers more shabbily. I grew up in that Hoover administration. The first 20 years I was in politics, I campaigned against the Hoover administration. It was gone but not forgotten. I have seen those window shades, those boarded-up windows on the store buildings and business places and homes of people in southern West Virginia. They were called ``Hoover window shades.'' In 1932, Presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt blasted the Hoover administration and blasted the Republican-controlled Congress for ignoring the plight of American workers, workers who Roosevelt claimed had become the ``forgotten man'' under the Hoover administration's top- down economic policies. I am glad I lived in the Great Depression. I am sorry we had to have one, but since we had one, I am glad I lived in the Great Depression. I am glad that there are a few people still alive in this country who remember the Great Depression. The ``present condition of our Nation's affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes,'' the future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charged. ``These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans . . . that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.'' The forgotten man. I urge Senators to heed those words and to offer workers more than just ideologically based promises that would have us view the plight of America's workers from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. This year, the Congress must extend unemployment benefits. It must protect workers' pensions. It must increase the minimum wage. It must protect the overtime pay of our Nation's workforce. The administration has invested its energies, its resources, its political fortunes in those at the top of the economic pyramid, and this administration has abandoned--abandoned--the workers at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The elected representatives of the people in this Chamber must not do the same. I close with Edwin Markham's poem. The Right To Labor in Joy Out on the roads they have gathered, A hundred-thousand men, To ask for a hold on life as sure As the wolf's hold in his den. Their need lies close to the quick of life As rain to the furrow sown: It is as meat to the slender rib, As marrow to the bone. They ask but the leave to labor For a taste of life's delight, For a little salt to savor their bread, For houses water-tight. They ask but the right to labor, And to live by the strength of their hands-- They who have bodies like knotted oaks, And sinews like iron bands. And the right of a man to labor, And his right to labor in joy-- Not all your laws can strangle that right, Nor the gates of hell destroy. For it came with the making of man, And was kneaded into his bones, And it will stand at the last of things On the dust of crumbled thrones. I yield the floor.