Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2008. At first glance, a bill with a name like that might not seem too exciting. But I can assure my colleagues that it addresses a serious, largely unknown problem that is a real threat to our fiscal well being. Each year, agencies are required to look at all of their programs and activities and determine which are susceptible to significant improper payments. For those that are deemed at risk, agencies must produce estimated error rates that are included in their year-end financial statements. They must also come up with action plans for reducing their errors. In fiscal year 2007, agencies are estimated to have made nearly $55 billion in improper payments. That is an astounding number, Mr. President. We spend so much time around here throwing around numbers like $55 billion that they begin to lose their meaning. So I want to take a minute or so to put that number in perspective. I was surprised to learn that $55 billion is more than the total budget for the Department of Homeland Security. It is also twice as much as we're projected to spend to protect the vehicles our soldiers are using in Iraq against roadside bombs. To illustrate further the amount of money we are talking about, $55 billion is just a little bit less than the total GDP of Vietnam. It is a little bit more than the GDPs of Croatia and Slovakia. Most astoundingly, $55 billion equals the combined GDPs of 44 of the smaller countries in the world. So our Federal Government is likely wasting more money than the total populations of many countries produce in a given year. But $55 billion is not even a real number. It is likely just the tip of the iceberg. It includes no error estimates for massive programs like TANF, SCHIP, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program. So I expect that we will see more than $55 billion in improper payments next year and the year after. My colleagues and I on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management have held six hearings focused on this issue now, including one this afternoon. What we have learned is that, in some cases, agencies are just not taking their responsibility to deal with and address their problems with improper payments and the management weaknesses that can cause them. The bill I am bringing forward today addresses just about all of the failures and deficiencies we've learned about through our oversight. My bill starts by improving transparency. OMB right now has set the reporting threshold for improper payments too low, meaning millions of errors go unreported--and potentially unaddressed--each year. I want to lower the reporting threshold so that Congress and the general public have a better picture of the problem we face. My bill would also help to prevent improper payments from happening in the first place by requiring that agencies come up with stronger corrective action plans and aggressive error reduction targets. It would also implement a recent recommendation from GAO that called on OMB to develop a process whereby agencies would receive regular audited opinions on the financial controls used to prevent improper payments before they happen. My bill would also force agencies to be more aggressive in recovering improper payments they make. Some agencies--and most private sector firms--regularly go over their books to identify payment errors and get back overpayments made to contractors and others they do business with. We haven't done that enough in the Federal Government. Even as the agencies are reporting more and more improper payments, the amount recovered remains miniscule. I want to change this by requiring that all agencies with outlays of $1 million or more perform recovery audits on all of their programs and activities if doing so is cost effective. Finally--and perhaps most importantly--my bill would hold agencies accountable. Today, as I mentioned, some agencies do not appear to be taking improper payments very seriously. I want to force agencies to hold top managers accountable for their progress--or lack of progress-- in doing something to take better care of the tax dollars we entrust them with. I look forward to working with my colleagues to get these important reforms enacted. I am sure we can all agree that allowing this level of waste to continue unchecked is reckless and unacceptable. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2008. At first glance, a bill with a name like that might not seem too exciting. But I can assure my colleagues that it addresses a serious, largely unknown problem that is a real threat to our fiscal well being. Each year, agencies are required to look at all of their programs and activities and determine which are susceptible to significant improper payments. For those that are deemed at risk, agencies must produce estimated error rates that are included in their year-end financial statements. They must also come up with action plans for reducing their errors. In fiscal year 2007, agencies are estimated to have made nearly $55 billion in improper payments. That is an astounding number, Mr. President. We spend so much time around here throwing around numbers like $55 billion that they begin to lose their meaning. So I want to take a minute or so to put that number in perspective. I was surprised to learn that $55 billion is more than the total budget for the Department of Homeland Security. It is also twice as much as we're projected to spend to protect the vehicles our soldiers are using in Iraq against roadside bombs. To illustrate further the amount of money we are talking about, $55 billion is just a little bit less than the total GDP of Vietnam. It is a little bit more than the GDPs of Croatia and Slovakia. Most astoundingly, $55 billion equals the combined GDPs of 44 of the smaller countries in the world. So our Federal Government is likely wasting more money than the total populations of many countries produce in a given year. But $55 billion is not even a real number. It is likely just the tip of the iceberg. It includes no error estimates for massive programs like TANF, SCHIP, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program. So I expect that we will see more than $55 billion in improper payments next year and the year after. My colleagues and I on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management have held six hearings focused on this issue now, including one this afternoon. What we have learned is that, in some cases, agencies are just not taking their responsibility to deal with and address their problems with improper payments and the management weaknesses that can cause them. The bill I am bringing forward today addresses just about all of the failures and deficiencies we've learned about through our oversight. My bill starts by improving transparency. OMB right now has set the reporting threshold for improper payments too low, meaning millions of errors go unreported--and potentially unaddressed--each year. I want to lower the reporting threshold so that Congress and the general public have a better picture of the problem we face. My bill would also help to prevent improper payments from happening in the first place by requiring that agencies come up with stronger corrective action plans and aggressive error reduction targets. It would also implement a recent recommendation from GAO that called on OMB to develop a process whereby agencies would receive regular audited opinions on the financial controls used to prevent improper payments before they happen. My bill would also force agencies to be more aggressive in recovering improper payments they make. Some agencies--and most private sector firms--regularly go over their books to identify payment errors and get back overpayments made to contractors and others they do business with. We haven't done that enough in the Federal Government. Even as the agencies are reporting more and more improper payments, the amount recovered remains miniscule. I want to change this by requiring that all agencies with outlays of $1 million or more perform recovery audits on all of their programs and activities if doing so is cost effective. Finally--and perhaps most importantly--my bill would hold agencies accountable. Today, as I mentioned, some agencies do not appear to be taking improper payments very seriously. I want to force agencies to hold top managers accountable for their progress--or lack of progress-- in doing something to take better care of the tax dollars we entrust them with. I look forward to working with my colleagues to get these important reforms enacted. I am sure we can all agree that allowing this level of waste to continue unchecked is reckless and unacceptable. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is almost 2 o'clock. This afternoon, as I understand it, the Senate Finance Committee is beginning to convene and to gather to debate the economic stimulus package which has come over to us from the House and to see what changes, if any, we might want to make in the Senate. I wish them good luck and Godspeed. If you look at the history of stimulus packages in this country--I came to the House in 1982, was here for a while, went off to be Governor of my State, and came back at the beginning of this decade. But the history of stimulus packages is, sometimes we seem to pass them, and we have passed them after some delay. We have passed them actually after we have not only gotten into a recession, but we were actually coming out of a recession. And rather than being helpful as you go into a recession, turning things around, the stimulus package can be inflationary, an after-the-fact thought, and not all that timely, not all that helpful. When we hear advice from economists and others on putting together a stimulus package, we hear the three Ts. The first of those is ``timely.'' And the House has acted in a very timely way, working with the administration, to put together a package, not a bad package. I commend Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Paulson for the work they have done. It is not a perfect package, but I do not know that any of us could draw up a package that would be. It is timely. It has come to us expeditiously. It has come to us on a day on which I believe the Federal Reserve is meeting to discuss whether they might want to lower the Federal funds rate by another quarter or half a percent on top of the three-quarters of a point reduction they adopted actually a week and a half ago. A second piece of advice we have always gotten from economists and policy wonks on recession stimulus packages is, not only should it be timely, but it should be targeted; that is, the money should go to those places where the money will not simply be taken by whoever receives the benefit of a stimulus package and save more money, but would actually take the money and put it back into the economy to help get the economy moving. I heard earlier today some discussions going on in the Budget Committee. One of the witnesses was saying he was rather skeptical and dubious of a stimulus package and said it is like the Federal Government borrowing money and taking that money out of one pocket and putting it in the other. If we simply take the money from a stimulus package that the Federal Government might try to infuse into the economy, we give it to people who put it into their pockets who are just going to save the money, I do not know that we do a whole lot of good in stimulating the economy. That is not to say we do not need to save more money in this country of ours; we do. But I am not sure in the near term that is going to help move the economy. So the idea behind this stimulus package is, it ought to go to folks who need the money, who will spend the money. In some cases people are desperate for the money, people who might be desperate to feed their families, desperate to pay their heating bills in the winter. But they are going to take that money, whatever it might be, and infuse it, put it back into the economy quickly. The third T that we have heard a whole lot about is the T for ``temporary,'' the notion here being that we face a significant budget deficit. We do not want to prolong that or make it worse long term. We do not want to dig an even deeper hole than we are in as a result. We want the stimulus package to be of a temporary nature, to help us avoid a dip, avoid a recession if we can. And if we are going to have one, to make it shorter than would otherwise be the case. The package that has come to us from the House has a good deal recommended. I have never been wild about tax rebates, but I think I supported one back in the earlier part of this decade about 3, 4, 5 years ago. But the package that we have on tax rebates from the House actually is pretty well targeted. As I recall, there is maybe a $1,200 rebate that would go to folks, to a family, if you have two bread winners in the family. For an individual, it would be $600. There is a cap if your income is above a certain level, maybe $150,000 for a family, about half that or so for an individual. If your income is above those levels, you don't receive the rebate. We can quarrel whether $150,000 is too high or too low. It is what it is. It is better than having no cap at all. There are some who believe we should simply send out a rebate to everybody, $1,200 for a family and $600 for an individual. The problem with doing that is, it is little bit akin to taking money from the Federal Government out of one pocket and putting it into the pocket of another family who is not going to spend the money. They are not going to put the money back into the economy. They may save it. That is all well and good, but it is not going to do much to stimulate the economy. My hope is the Finance Committee will decide we will have a rebate and make sure it is targeted to those folks who are the most in need of some financial help and that any tax rebate we do reflects that. We had economists in recent weeks who have said to us, in testimony and other public forums, we can actually gauge what bang for the buck we get out of Federal stimulus dollars. We are told that if we actually put money into extending unemployment benefits, we get about a buck 75 for every dollar of stimulus we provide. If we put that money toward folks to increase slightly their food stamps, it is about the same. For every dollar we put into that, we get about a buck 75. We don't get quite that kind of return on a tax rebate, particularly if there is no cap. If there is a cap and the money is directed toward lower income folks, it is a better bang for the buck than would otherwise be the case. My hope is that as the Finance Committee considers what kind of package to put together, they will make sure there is some kind of reasonable cap on any tax rebate we send out. With respect to unemployment benefits, it makes a lot of sense to extend unemployment benefits, but I would target them. I would especially target them to States where levels of unemployment are high. I think about Ohio. My heart is still with the Buckeyes. They are going through a tough time. As to the folks up in Michigan, I am a huge Detroit Tigers fan, but I also care about the people there and other places where unemployment rates are 8, 10 percent and where people are in some desperate straits. I hope we would target the unemployment benefits that we will extend, whether it is 13 weeks or 26 weeks, to particular places such as those States. For States that are enjoying economic good times, where the rate of unemployment might be 2 or 3 or 4 percent, we ought to be careful about extending unemployment benefits. Certainly, 26 weeks doesn't make a lot of sense to me in those cases. Under current law, people are already eligible for 26 weeks of benefits, and in places of low unemployment, I don't think it makes sense to add another 26 weeks on top of that. If we had unlimited dollars, that would be well and good. But we have a deficit. It is getting bigger. The idea would be to target it accordingly. The same thing with food stamps. In a perfect world, I would actually not argue for having food stamps as part of a stimulus package, even though we know it is actually a pretty good stimulus, and there is a need out there. Last fall, we debated in the Senate, as they did in the House, a farm bill. A big part of the farm bill is not just aid to farmers or conservation funding for farmers to conserve open spaces. It is not just helping commodity crops or specialty crops. A big part is nutrition funding, which includes food stamps. I would not say we are close to reaching a compromise between the House and Senate on the farm bill, but my hope is we will get there within a couple months. If we are going to end up including in the stimulus package some provisions dealing with food stamps, I hope we would not make it a long time. I think you could argue for maybe a 3 months' provision. We could come back and extend that if we wanted to, maybe at most 6 months. But I would urge us not to go much beyond that. What we should do is finish our work on the farm bill, work out a compromise between the House and Senate, something the President will sign, and address nutritional needs as part of the stimulus package we are talking about. With respect to food stamps, do that in the farm bill, not in the stimulus package. If we are going to do it in the stimulus, do it for several months, not a year or more. The Federal Reserve has already done us a big favor in cutting the Fed funds rate, the rate of interest banks charge when they lend money to one another overnight. They dropped it down by three-quarters of a percentage point. That has an immediate effect, a significant effect. It sends a very hopeful signal not just to markets but to households and all kinds of folks who are in businesses needing credit. I commend the Federal Reserve. My hope is they take it a little further today and lop off another quarter percent. I don't know that they will do more than that, but that would be welcome. In a way, we overestimate the importance of a stimulus package that we adopt. We spend a lot of time wringing our hands and trying to get it right, working out a compromise between all the different sides. In the end, the impact of our package from the Congress and the White House is actually modest compared to the impact you get from a cut in the Fed funds rate by the Federal Reserve of a full percentage point. I close with maybe two or three points to keep in mind. One, in putting together a stimulus package, make it targeted, timely, temporary. Two, to do no harm, for us not to do something that is foolish. I would suggest that a tax rebate that goes to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and the wealthiest people doesn't make a whole lot of sense in an age when the budget deficit is approaching $250 billion. Let's not do anything foolish, do no harm. And three, maybe one of the best things that can come out of a stimulus is to convey to the folks who are struggling or having a tough time making ends meet, maybe aren't very hopeful, that we can work together. Even in an election year, a lot of politics in the air, we can set differences aside and come together on a package which makes sense, which will be helpful to a lot of folks and to either help us avoid a recession or maybe make it more shallow and of shorter duration. Among the pieces of the House package that I thought were most meritorious was some stuff people don't think about very much. One of them deals with something called GSEs, government-sponsored enterprises. There are about three that I think a fair amount about. One is Fannie Mae. The other is Freddie Mac. The other is the Federal Home Loan Bank system which raises money for lending for home ownership. There is a proposal that would allow the government- sponsored enterprises, the big financial behemoths of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to have larger mortgages in their portfolio than they are currently allowed. I think they are currently allowed roughly $400,000, and there is a suggestion that they be able to take on loans to $700,000 or so. That is fine to do for a short period. I don't think we should make it permanent. I don't think we should do it even for a year. The reason is, we need to come back and provide a strong independent regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If we simply make this change to allow them to put larger mortgages in their portfolio, it is a little bit like saying you, eat your dessert, but you don't have to eat your vegetables. That is all well and good. They would like to be able to buy larger home mortgages and put them in their portfolios, high-cost places such as California and some places in the Northeast, but at the same time they need to eat their vegetables, and they need to have a strong, independent regulator who will be there to set the right kind of capital standards and to ride herd on these entities to make sure they don't get into trouble and, by doing so, get the rest of us in trouble. The other thing we need to do--and I don't think it is part of the bill the House has sent us, but it might be--deals with FHA, the Federal Housing Administration. FHA is 75 years old this year. Sometimes people wonder, where did we ever get this 30-year fixed rate mortgage that people could prepay. Where did it come from? It came from the FHA. It has been around a long time. FHA was the birthplace of what we think of as the traditional mortgage. The FHA, as recently as a dozen or so years ago, was involved in mortgages that went to maybe 20 percent of the homes being bought and sold. Twenty percent used FHA. Today it is about 5 percent. The difference between that 20 percent and that 5 percent for the most part is people have gone into the subprime market, and they have gotten these adjustable ARM mortgages. People have been lured by teaser rates. Now these adjustable ARMs are resetting. It might have been a teaser rate of 2, 3, 4 percent. They are now going at 7, 8, 9 percent. The folks who got into these exotic mortgages are finding they can't refinance, and they are stuck with some kind of significant penalty or maybe being stuck altogether. What we need to do is bring the FHA of the 20th century into the 21st century and make it relevant for folks looking to buy a house today. We passed legislation in the Senate. They are actually not that far apart. We reduced the amount of downpayment from 3 percent to 1.5 percent for an FHA loan on a home mortgage. And we do some things. We require folks to get the kind of counseling they need. We do a better job on reverse mortgages. When people are old and their houses are basically paid for, they can actually live on the equity of their home for the rest of their lives. The idea would be to make those more readily available to people who could use that kind of help later in their lives. There are a variety of other changes in the FHA that need to be made to make it relevant for today. Those are examples of some. As much as anything that we would do in the stimulus package that is being debated right now in the Finance Committee, we need to come to closure on reauthorizing the FHA and bringing it into the 21st century. While we are doing that, we need to go ahead and raise the cap on the amount of loans, the size of the loans and mortgages that can be bought and put into the portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but only for 6 months, with the idea that between now and 6 months from now, the House and Senate will hammer out a compromise, signed by the President, that will provide for a strong, independent regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for Federal Home Loan Banks. If we do all that, we will convey not just a sense of hope, but we will do something that goes beyond a mere stimulus for a couple months. We will address the underlying problem that got us into this mess, the subprime lending mess in the first place because what we will do is say to the folks who have marginal credit, who otherwise would maybe have to rely on these exotic mortgages, these adjustable ARMs, instead of having to rely on something such as that, they can rely on the FHA, as people have done for a generation, because we have made it relevant for your lives and for your needs. That is the view from Delaware today. My hope is some of that will be prevailing later today in the Senate Finance Committee, and we will have an opportunity to take it up and debate it tonight and tomorrow. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I wish to recognize and congratulate Leon N. Weiner & Associates for their success with the Village of Eastlake in Wilmington, DE. For almost 60 years, Leon N. Weiner & Associates has been doing outstanding work for the housing industry in Delaware and surrounding areas. Their work on the Village of Eastlake has made such a positive impact that the readers of Affordable Housing Finance Magazine recently named it the Nation's best affordable home ownership development. The Eastlake neighborhood, which was built in 1943, was locally known as ``the Bucket,'' meaning if people lived in Eastlake, they had hit the bottom of the bucket. The 267-unit public housing development, one of many in a crime-ridden neighborhood, became dilapidated despite the best efforts of the Wilmington Housing Authority. Violent crime and drug abuse grew to proportions exceeding some of the worst per capita crime rates in the Nation. In 1997 alone, Wilmington police were called to Eastlake over 5,000 times. After a decade of work, Leon N. Weiner & Associates transformed the site, which is about the size of three city blocks, into the Village of Eastlake, an affordable housing project consisting of 70 rental and 90 home ownership units. Furthermore, their work here has helped jumpstart additional affordable housing projects in the city of Wilmington. A nonprofit and a for-profit firm have teamed up to build 72 town homes in the neighborhood, as well. All 90 units--62 town homes and 28 duplexes--at Eastlake consist of three bedrooms. The homes are reserved for households with widely varying incomes--as low as 26 percent of the area median income up to a high of 115 percent. Fifty-nine homes are reserved for households earning between 26 percent and 80 percent of the area median income. The success of Eastlake could not have been reached without the added help and efforts of many other entities, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, PNC Bank, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, and the State of Delaware, which provided much needed funds. Once again, I wish to recognize Leon N. Weiner & Associates. Their work in the Eastlake community is commendable and most deserving of Affordable Housing Finance Magazine's Reader's Choice Award. They are an invaluable asset to our community, and I wish them all the best. On a point of personal privilege, Leon Weiner, who passed away in 2002, was a personal friend of mine for over three decades. In fact, he was one of the first people I met after enrolling in the University of Delaware's MBA program in 1973. More importantly, throughout his life he was one of the strongest voices in this country calling for the creation of affordable housing for all Americans. He fervently believed that all families need and deserve a decent place to live, and he worked tirelessly to ensure that government, the private sector, and nonprofits work together in pursuit of this goal. Unfortunately, he did not live to see one of his last dreams Eastlake become a reality, but it serves as a fitting memorable to him and to the team of dedicated men and women he led at Leon N. Weiner & Associates. Together, they demonstrated and continue to demonstrate that it is possible to do good and do well at the same time.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his leadership on this issue to bring us to this day and my friend from Oklahoma who offered the amendment before us. He raises a good point, and it is one that should be addressed in the conference to follow. My hope is that some of the concerns he raised will be addressed. I don't know that his amendment will be approved today, but the points he made are not without value. We have had FHA for 70 years. The reason we have it is because in the Great Depression, we realized we needed to encourage home ownership in this country, and we still do. For many years, FHA was the go-to guy, if you will, for folks who had marginal credit, maybe were not homeowners, were first-time homeowners and they needed help to get them in position to qualify for loans and become homeowners. There are all kinds of virtues that flow from home ownership. I will not get into them all. They are many and valid. In recent years, we have seen people who normally would have gone to the FHA, first-time home buyers or people with marginal credit, to get a guaranteed home loan--in recent years, instead of 15 percent of American loans being purchased through FHA mortgage, we see the trend down. Today, it is roughly 5 percent. That difference is 10 percent of the people. A lot of people have gone to subprime lenders. A lot have gone to mortgages that, frankly, in the long run don't make sense. They might get a teaser rate the first couple of years of 3 or 4 percent and then see the rate go up to 7 percent, 8 percent, or 10 percent and find themselves in a mortgage vehicle they cannot get out of because there is no ability to escape. We need to get that 5 percent of loans, home mortgages guaranteed by FHA, back up closer to 15 percent. We are not going to do it with the FHA of the 20th century. We have to bring the FHA into the 21st century. That is what we do with this legislation. We bring it into the era in which we live today. I wish to mention a couple of the changes that are made possible with this legislation. Among them is loan limits. Today, it is about $365,000. They are going to go up to roughly $415,000 to reflect the change in the marketplace. The downpayment FHA required of home buyers for years is 3 percent. If you buy a home for $200,000, the downpayment is $6,000. We cut that in half to 1.5 percent. So the downpayment for a $200,000 house will be about $3,000 to make home ownership within reach. Also, the legislation removes the caps on reversible mortgages from currently $150,000 to really to no cap. We are going to consider that and we should consider that in conference, I hope with the input from the GAO. Finally, the bill creates--and I think this is important and speaks to the concern raised by Senator McCaskill--it creates a prepurchasing counseling program. I am convinced it is not strong enough. Senator McCaskill authored legislation--and I suppose some of us will join her in sponsoring that legislation--to strengthen this provision to make sure, if you or I qualify through FHA, we want to make sure the folks going to the FHA making that loan are getting the kind of counseling they need and not somebody who is there to set them up and take advantage of them. This is not the only step we need to take to get us through the subprime lending morass for home mortgages. The Paulson freeze announced last week is a good idea. Interest rates would be frozen for 5 years for folks in these adjustable rate mortgages that are about to reset and raise the rates. That is a good first step. This is a good second step. A good third step is to ban predatory lending practices. Legislation passed the House and is about to be considered in the Senate. Last point. This is what Senator Schumer and I are interested in: GSA reform. That is the last piece. It would include a low-income affordable home program too.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I thank the chairman for yielding. I commend him and the young man sitting next to him, David Strickland, who has done great work, as has a member of my staff, Beth Osborne, seated behind me. We can talk about what might have been and how this legislation could have been better, more comprehensive. Six months ago I stood here and said, there are three things we need to accomplish with respect to fuel efficiency for cars, trucks, and vans. No. 1, we ought to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. No. 2, we should reduce the emissions of harmful stuff up into the air. No. 3, we should accomplish goals 1 and 2 without undermining the competitiveness of the domestic auto industry. Tonight as we are on the verge of passing this legislation, we will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we will reduce harmful emissions, and we will not undermine the competitive advantage of our domestic auto industry. It is not enough for us as a Congress to say to the auto industry, raise fuel efficiency standards, eat your spinach. We have a responsibility to help them. In this legislation we do any number of things to help the industry--major investments in R&D, new battery technology--just as we had invested previously Federal dollars in fuel cell technology for cars, trucks, and vans. Secondly, using the Government's purchasing power to help commercialize the new technology both on the civilian side and on the defense side to make a market for these new products. Three, to use tax incentives for hybrids, for low- emission diesel in order to encourage people to buy these vehicles. We can lament what might have been. Let me say in graphic terms what this legislation means. Today we import about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. By 2020, this legislation will save that much oil or more. Today we emit huge amounts of CO2 into the air. We warm our globe and imperil our future. This legislation will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 20 percent, essentially taking 60 million cars off the road by 2020. Finally, we are going to say this is based on $3-a-gallon gasoline. But we are going to save consumers close to $100 billion at the pump in the year 2020. Those are huge savings. They are tangible savings. We, as Democrats in the majority, have an obligation to lead. We have led. We have worked with the auto industry, the UAW. We have worked with our Republican brethren. The American people want us to get things done. They want us to find a way to set aside partisan politics and work together. I think in this instance we have done that. I commend Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens, and I commend Senators Boxer, Bingaman, and Domenici, our staffs who have worked so hard. I thank the auto industry, the UAW, our friends over in the House, including John Dingell, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. This a victory not just for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and not just for the Congress, this is a victory for America. We can be proud of this, and I am.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I celebrate the tenure of Wesley College president Dr. Scott D. Miller. After 10 years as president, Dr. Miller will step down to assume leadership of Bethany College in my home State of West Virginia in January 2008. Founded in 1873, Wesley College is located on 50 acres in historic Dover, DE. Delaware's oldest private college, the school offers 30 bachelors and 4 associates degrees, and master's degrees in nursing, education, business administration and environmental science. I first met Dr. Miller in 1997 when I was Governor of Delaware, and he was appointed as the 15th president of Wesley College. During his tenure, the college proudly reported record applications, a climbing enrollment, increased alumni participation and a greater minority presence. For these and other accomplishments, Dr. Miller has been nationally acclaimed for his contributions to higher education. Under Dr. Miller's leadership, Wesley experienced substantial growth, including total enrollment increases from 1,052 to 3,210 and $67 million raised in the Campaign for Wesley fund, with more than $40 million earmarked for capital renovations and new construction. Dr. Miller oversaw the creation of four graduate programs and the establishment of a New Castle County campus for Adult Studies. In addition, he established an undergraduate nursing program and five other new undergraduate majors. Beyond academics, Wesley College has also been granted membership in the selective Capital Athletic Conference and enjoys the addition of new varsity sports programs. Congratulations to the Wolverines who are again in the quarterfinals this year for the NCAA Division III South Region collegiate football championship. To maintain Wesley's support of the local community, Dr. Miller was also instrumental in building an alliance with Delaware State University and the Friends of the Capital Theater to maximize the usage of the historic Capital Theater, positioning it as the premiere performing arts center in southern Delaware. The relationship was formalized in January 2007 with the three organizations becoming equal partners in the operation, management and programming of the theater. In addition to all the accolades already mentioned, Scott and his family have become valued friends of mine and of many others in Delaware over the past decade. Dr. Miller's wife Ann is an educator in her own right and has been a full partner with her husband in supporting his efforts to lead Wesley to new heights. We were also lucky to have their daughter Ashlee serve as an intern in my Wilmington office this past summer. Scott and Wesley College have also supported my charter school initiative in Delaware by being one of the first colleges in America to charter and provide space for a public charter school. Additionally, Wesley College was one of the first institutions to sign on as a partner of a homeownership initiative that I started in Dover by supporting the effort to increase homeownership rates in the capital city. Our new homeowners include employees of the Aramark company which provides food services to Wesley College. Prior to joining the Wesley community, Dr. Miller served as president, executive vice president, and vice president for development of Lincoln Memorial University; an interim public information officer at West Virginia Wesleyan College; and director of University Relations and Alumni Affairs at the University of Rio Grande. Dr. Miller earned his bachelor's degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College, master's degree from the University of Dayton, education specialist from Vanderbilt University, and doctorate in higher education administration from the Union Institute and University. He has also completed postgraduate studies at Ohio University and Harvard University. Outside of the college, Dr. Miller was an active community participant during his time in Delaware. He served on the board of numerous local and national groups including the National Association of Schools and Colleges of the United Methodist Church, the United Way of Delaware and the Greater Dover Commission. Dr. Miller was also an honorary commander of the Dover Air Force Base for 2 years and was selected to serve on the Joint Civilian Orientation Council by the Secretary of Defense. I would like to personally acknowledge and sincerely thank Dr. Miller for the outstanding contribution he has made to Wesley College and the surrounding community over the past 10 years. The Millers have been good for Wesley, for Dover, for Kent County, and for Delaware. We will miss them a great deal.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I further ask unanimous consent that Senator Alexander and I be allowed to participate in a colloquy for 10 minutes apiece, up to 10 minutes apiece for a total of up to 20 minutes. I think what I would like to do initially is yield, if I could, to Senator Alexander for his comments and whatever he would like to say. While he comes to his feet to speak first, let me say, I think the people in the country want us to work together. We have Democrats, we have Republicans, we have Independents in this country, and we realize we are not going to agree on everything. People realize that, but when we can agree, they want us to do that. They want us to use common sense, take the opportunity to work across the aisle and make sure that common sense is reflected, whether it is passenger rail service or the interest or noninterest in providing people protection from having their Internet access taxed, their e-mail traffic taxed, their instant messaging taxed. I have had the great privilege of working with Senator Alexander for 3 or 4 years--in some cases maybe longer than we would like to remember--on the issue of tax moratorium, but he has been a great partner, and I especially want to thank him for letting me be his partner and say to Senator Enzi of Wyoming and Senator Voinovich of Ohio, both former mayors, Senator Feinstein--a former mayor herself-- Senator Dorgan, former revenue director for the State of North Dakota, and Senator Rockefeller, a former Governor of West Virginia, all of whom worked together as a team to try to bring us to this day, to where we are today, the House has adopted legislation we passed last year, providing for a 7-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium. Let me say to Senator Alexander what a real privilege it is for me to have an chance to work with you on all kinds of issues, including this one. I thank you for that opportunity.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, if I could reply to the comments of my friend, he mentioned the fact that we do things over the Internet today that frankly we didn't think of about 10 years ago. Initially, we would do dial-up. Eventually, later on, we would have other ways to access the Internet to send our e-mail or instant messaging. I never imagined 6 years ago we would ever be able to do telephone calls over the Internet. In my State and other States as well, those States and local government depend on revenues they raise from telephone services to help pay for schools, to help pay for police, paramedics, fire service. Now we have moved along. Folks are actually able to send TV, apparently, over the Internet. In a bunch of jurisdictions, not so much States but local governments, they actually derived some of their revenues, not inconsiderable, over the years from cable services and a tax on cable services they collect. My dad used to say different things. Probably everybody can remember much of what your mom and dad said in your lifetime. One of the main things I remember my dad saying to my sister and me is there are two things certain in life: One of them is death, the other is taxes. One of the other things that is certain in life is change, particularly change with respect to technology and change with respect to how we use the Internet. One of the beauties of the compromise we have hammered out here with a lot of hard work and support from Senator Alexander and his staff member sitting right beside him, Lindsey, and on our side I especially thank Bill Ghent and Chris Prendergast for all their hard work and particularly our committee staffs who did a great job--but one of the beauties of the compromise we worked out is we have to come back and revisit this issue somewhere down the line 7 years from now. The reason why that is important is because this is going to change. This technology is going to change. Our ability to use the technology and what we do with the Internet will change. It will be different 7 years from now. It is important for us to have the ability to come back. I certainly lend a strong ``amen'' to what Senator Alexander said. As Governor, he was Chairman of the National Governors Association--so was Senator Voinovich. We have three Members of the Senate who previously were Governors and led the National Governors Association. We fought hard as Governors in order to convince the Congress to pass the law that President Clinton signed in 1995: No unfunded mandates. We worked hard in 1998 to make sure that as the Federal Government came in, we kind of stepped on that 1995 law, and said: Well, we want to change it a little bit, what you can collect in terms of revenues. We passed the 1998 legislation, the moratorium on Internet tax access. They grandfathered in about nine States and said: If you are already collecting, you can continue to collect, but watch yourself there, and we said to the other 41 States, the other jurisdictions, if you are not collecting, you cannot start. But the thing I like about the legislation, we are respectful of the grandfathers, the nine States; they can continue to collect taxes as they have in the last 8 or 9 years. But they can not do something new or different. By the same token, if they are collecting tax revenues on traditional services such as telephone and cable, they are going to be able to continue to do that. I do not know about the rest of you, but I was reminded of this--my boys have grown up in public schools in Delaware. It is important that my State have the ability to collect taxes to help educate our children in my State and other States, every other State. We have paramedic service in our State, statewide paramedics. We have fire and police. It is important to me that the city of Wilmington, in which I live, has revenues that they need to make sure we are safe; that if we pick up the phone for 911, somebody is going to come if we need them; if we have a fire in our house or in our neighborhood, that someone is going to come and put it out. I want to make sure our city and other communities have the revenue they need to do that. The last thing I would say here--and this goes back to something my dad used to say to my sister and me, when we would pull some boneheaded stunt. I must have done it a lot, because he used to say: Use some common sense. He must have said that 1,000 times during the time I was a little boy to the time I left and went off to college: Use some common sense. I think what we have here, as my colleague said last week, a victory, a victory for common sense, a victory for bipartisanship, a victory that protects the rights and interests and obligations of State and local governments, a victory for those of us who want to have access to the Internet and not be encumbered by additional taxes. It is a victory in all of those areas. It has been a pleasure working with Senator Alexander and our colleagues on this one. We can set this one aside for a while--I am sure we are both pleased to do that--and go on and maybe work on clean air issues, try to figure out how to protect the health of folks who are breathing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and try to figure out how to do something with respect to climate change and maybe figure out how to use nuclear energy more effectively, to make all of that possible. This has been a good--not a day's work but many months' work. I am delighted with the outcome. I thank my colleague and our colleagues who have worked with us and our staffs for getting us to this point. The House of Representatives voted this afternoon. They took this up under suspension of the rules, the legislation we passed here last week. They passed the 7-year extension of the moratorium on Internet access unanimously, over 400-some votes to none. So we can feel good about that when we go home today. Think about it. We have passed a good Amtrak bill, good passenger rail bill, worked across the aisle, thought outside the box. We did the same kind of thing with respect to protecting the rights of consumers, without stepping on the rights of State and local governments. I think we can be proud of that. I am, and I know my friend Senator Alexander is as well. I yield to him for any last comments he wants to make.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator Lautenberg is still on the floor, I wish to express my thanks and the thanks of my constituents in Delaware to him and Senator Lott for the partnership they forged in bringing us to the reauthorization victory we celebrate this afternoon. Stephen Gardner is still on the floor. Stephen was a member of my personal staff when I was first elected to the Senate. He is succeeded by Beth Osborne. We have a great working relationship with him. He has great talent. He is someone who has not just been in Washington and the Senate, but he worked for railroads in the past, including Amtrak. Given his experience, he was invaluable in providing guidance and support in this process. I wish to speak briefly, and then I am going to make a unanimous consent request that we go into morning business so that Senator Alexander and I may engage in a colloquy on another matter. Let me say this: I have come from a meeting at the other end of the Capitol, that may still be going on, that started around 2 o'clock. I stayed for almost an hour and a half. The meeting involved members of organized labor and several leaders in the House of Representatives who have jurisdiction, Democrat and Republican, over infrastructure and passenger rail. The meeting was driven in part because of the threat of a potential work stoppage on our passenger rail system. It turns out that most Amtrak employees, hourly workers who work in the shops and work on the trains, have not had a pay raise in about 7 or 8 years. That is not a good situation. In fact, I think it is a grossly unfair situation and very much a sad situation for them and for their families. My hope, and part of my encouragement and support for this legislation, is that I think it provides a roadmap for going forward with passenger rail service in this country in the 21st century. We need a roadmap. Senator Lautenberg and others have spoken as to why we need to do things differently--congestion on our highways and in our airports, in the skies, enormous reliance on foreign oil, too much bad stuff going into our air. There are all kinds of reasons people are beginning to ride trains more and more and why we need to provide supporting leadership at the Federal level, at the same time entering into partnership with State and local governments. The beauty behind this legislation is that the Federal Government says we are going to take charge and upgrade the Northeast corridor, bring it to a state of good repair. In doing that, we unleash the potential in the Northeast corridor, including bringing in the more expensive high-speed Acela train which I helped create as a member of the Amtrak board when I was Governor of Delaware, to the extent we can just let them run at 100 miles an hour, 110, maybe something close to 150 miles an hour. Their ontime performance is up to 90 percent, and we would like to make it higher so we can fill up the seats on the Acela. We are close to doing that. They can be a cash cow in generating revenues we need to support other passenger rail service in the Northeast corridor and in other parts of the country. One of the good provisions in this legislation is bringing the Northeast corridor into a state of good repair and authorizing money to be spent for that purpose, for capital improvement. Amtrak for years has been starved for capital. Along with providing pay raises for the employees, that is first and foremost what we need to do. A second major change in this legislation, for areas outside the corridor, whether it is Tennessee or Colorado, in places where we have densely populated corridors, where the State and local governments would actually like to have high-speed or higher speed rail and run trains, maybe just for 200 miles or 300 miles, and provide better service such as they are doing out of Chicago and out of the west coast where ridership is up 10, 20, 30, even 40 percent--States are involved in that partnership with the Federal Government. This legislation says if a Governor of a State--Senator Alexander and I are former Governors. When we were Governors, if we wanted to enter into an agreement with the Federal Government to build a new road or highway, the Federal Government would provide 80 percent. If we wanted to get improvements to our airports, the Federal Government provided 80 percent of the money and the State provide 20 percent. If we wanted improvements with respect to transit service, the Federal Government would provide 50 percent, and the State would provide half. But a better solution, a more cost-effective solution, happens to be intercity passenger rail, and the Federal Government provided zero and the State had to provide all the money. Even if intercity passenger rail was a smarter solution, it received no support from the Federal Government. This bill changes that situation. It puts passenger rail funding on the same level as airports and the same level as roads, highways, and bridges. It makes a whole lot of sense. If States believe they would rather spend their 20 percent on airports, roads, highways, or bridges, they can do that. But if they think rail makes sense as part of the solution, they can do that as well with the same kind of incentive. That is good. There are a bunch of long-distance trains that don't make money; they lose money, quite a bit of money. We have 16 long-distance trains in this country. We direct the Federal Railroad Administration to take five of those long-distance trains next year, five the year after that, and five the year after that and scrub them, look at them, look at what they are doing well and what they are doing badly and what we need to do to reduce the amount of money we are spending to provide passenger rail service in those areas. I don't want to run trains if people don't want to ride them. That is not what we should be about. The real secret to doing well with passenger rail in this country and, frankly, other countries is to find those densely populated corridors. There are a lot of them. A lot are along the coast. Over half the people in our country live within 50 miles of one of our coasts. We have corridors up and down the east coast from Maine to Florida, the gulf coast, the west coast from San Diego up to the Canadian border, up to Vancouver, in fact. Passenger rail can do a lot to help us there, particularly 300-, 400- mile routes. People would just as soon ride a train on the Northeast corridor than to drive or take an airplane. Another thing that makes sense is these corridors in our country, such as Chicago to St. Louis--that is a great corridor and there are others like that corridor in other parts of the country where passenger rail can be part of the solution. Those are the kinds of things we wanted to work on, to build. Finally, some are interested in competition for freight rail. If they want to come in and run passenger rail service, under this legislation they can compete if they want to. They are not barred from competing. They have the opportunity to do that as well, and the legislation encourages that kind of competition. I will close with this comment. My hope is that the reauthorizing legislation we passed today will be warmly received in the House. I think it will be. I am encouraged that it will be. Second, I hope it demonstrates to our colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, that we are not going to be business as usual at Amtrak. There is a new day and, frankly, a better business strategy going forward. My hope is that confidence will be reflected in greater appropriations bills, in the House and in the Senate, so Amtrak cannot only make the kinds of investments in infrastructure for Amtrak--rail, overhead wires, signaling systems, rolling stock--but also to say to these folks who haven't had a pay raise in the last 7 years or so: We are going to address that inequity too. My hope is we can do all those, and the passage of this legislation will help us in that direction, plus reduce a little bit of our dependence on foreign oil, plus reduce the emission of bad stuff into our air, reduce congestion at our airports and in our skies and on our highways. If we do all that we ought to declare victory. The thing I love most about what happened here this week and last week on this bill is Democrats and Republicans did it together; we actually worked together and I applaud the efforts of Senator Lautenberg and Senator Lott and I especially wish to say thanks to our leader, Senator Reid, for making time on the schedule for us to have this debate, to follow through on it; and my colleagues on both sides who participated in the debate and offered reasonable amendments, some of which were adopted. This place actually functioned the way I think people of this country expect us to.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, today I wish to celebrate the Quilts of Valor Foundation. In a time when thousands of American families are sending their loved ones around the world to fight for the safety and security of all of us here at home, the Quilts of Valor Foundation has stepped forward to give something back to our wounded heroes. This foundation has pledged to sew and donate a Quilt of Valor to every servicemember wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Their mission is to offer comfort and support to our wounded heroes. An organization not about politics, but about people, the Quilts of Valor Foundation was established in November 2003 by Catherine Roberts of Seaford, DE, Since that time, thousands of volunteers from all over the United States have created over 13,000 quilts for our injured service men and women. With the help of military chaplains at medical centers throughout the United States, Europe and in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Quilts of Valor Foundation locates wounded soldiers and presents them with a hand-made quilt. That quilt is a symbol of the respect and honor that we as a country hold for them and their sacrifice. The organization has two main missions which frame their important service to our country. First and foremost, the Quilts of Valor Foundation is dedicated to honoring those men and women who have been wounded, whether physically or psychologically, in Iraq and Afghanistan with a Quilt of Valor. Second, the Quilts of Valor Foundation hopes that by teaching young people to quilt and by spreading a culture of volunteerism, a new generation of Americans will become more civically involved and dedicated to bettering our Nation in whatever way they can. I would like to acknowledge and sincerely thank Catherine Roberts, the Quilts of Valor Foundation, and all the volunteers, especially those in Delaware, who put so much time, money, effort, and love into every quilt to comfort our servicemembers and let them know how much we at home value their sacrifices.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator Sununu is still on the floor, if I could add one other comment. Senator Lott said at the beginning of the debate on this bill that folks are welcome, Democrats and Republicans, to come and offer their amendments, nongermane, if they are. But when we get to conference, he said: I will warn you right from the get-go, nongermane amendments that are offered to this bill might be attached to this bill when we get to conference, but they will not be in this bill when we come out. So I would suggest to Senator Sununu that we consider the approach I just outlined; that next week, maybe in the middle of next week, he would have the opportunity, with time for debate, to offer his proposal to make permanent the moratorium on taxing Internet access, and we would have the opportunity to offer an alternative, which would be a 6- year extension of the moratorium. I will tell you why we think it is important. Five years ago, I never heard of VOIT, voice over Internet protocol. I had no idea what it was. I don't think anybody around here did. That is the ability to send telecommunications, telephone messages, over the Internet. It is a major change in the way we communicate on the telephone. The problem with making permanent this legislation is we assume there are not going to be any more technological changes. We are learning how to send cable TV, movies, and all kinds of stuff over the Internet. Traditionally, State and local governments have had the right to raise revenues as they see fit. In fact, we have an unfunded mandates law that says State and local governments have protection from us in Congress telling them how to spend their money or telling them how to raise their money. We passed a law that says we can't do that. I was Governor, actually, in 1995. I was Governor when we pushed for that sort of protection. Who are we in the Federal Government to tell States how they have to spend their money or how they can raise it? That is what was adopted in the unfunded mandates legislation in 1995. We turned around in Congress 3 years later and said: By the way, we don't want folks to tax access to the Internet, and if you are already doing that in the United States, we are going to grandfather you in for a while, but we put in place, starting in 1998, this 3-year moratorium on other States beginning to tax access to the Internet--really trying to tax people's AOL bills. The concern as we go forward, as we learn to do other things over the Internet other than sending e-mails and instant messaging and stuff, if we allow the bundling of services, including telephone services, including cable services, television services, the sort of thing that State and local governments have traditionally used to pay for education, pay for schools, pay for fire, pay for police, or pay for paramedics, if we aren't careful, we are going to basically preclude or reduce their ability to raise the revenue they need for the problems in their States. So we are not smart enough--I am not smart enough, and I don't think any of us here are smart enough--to know for certainty what the technology is going to be in 5 years, 4 years, or 10 years. That is why we want the extension of the moratorium, to make sure people's access to the Internet is not going to be taxed, but what we don't want to do is to do something permanently because of the changing nature of technology. So I think it makes sense next week for us to have the opportunity for Senator Sununu to come to the floor, offer his permanent moratorium amendment, and have the same opportunity for Senator Alexander and myself, and Senator Dorgan, Senator Feinstein, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Enzi, and Senator Voinovich, and others who believe that a 6- year moratorium may be the better alternative for now. I hope we will have that opportunity. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. I would invite the Senator from New Hampshire to engage in a brief colloquy. I have been listening to his comments. I think we have a couple of options, and there may be a better path for it than the one we are assuming today. We are talking about an amendment that the Senator had offered to the Amtrak bill, bringing the Internet tax issues to the reauthorization of Amtrak, and others of us would offer a second-degree amendment to that. There will be a cloture vote that will proceed either of those two amendments. I think there is another alternative that I would ask my friend to consider, and that would be the chance--I think all along the Senator from New Hampshire has wanted an up-or-down vote on his proposal, which is fair game. I think our own leadership, and I think in consultation with your leadership, including with Senator Lott, has suggested maybe one day next week we have an up-or-down vote--your proposal and the alternative of our proposal that Senator Alexander and I and others would offer, which would provide for a 6-year extension for a moratorium on Internet taxation. For another 6 years we would provide for a 6-year extension of the grandfather--

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I used to serve on the Amtrak board of directors. We have a lot of trains running up and down the Northeast corridor. I have ridden on them since I was a little boy. The trains run about every hour. You can catch a train in Boston to come to DC pretty much every hour; between New York and DC, the frequency is even more. They run from 5 in the morning and go well into the night. The reason a lot of people don't ride trains across the country is there are 15 different long-distance trains, which only run 2 or 3 days in a lot of cases. It may come in at 1, 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning, and it is not very convenient. It is hard to build ridership. I agree with Senator Sununu. I am not interested in spending $200 or $150 per passenger to subsidize long-distance trains. We don't do it in the Northeast corridor. We have addressed this in a more thoughtful way, and I want to share that. I commend Senator Lautenberg and Senator Lott and our staffs for working on it for years. The legislation calls for the Federal Railroad Administration to actually study every year, for the next 3 years, five long-distance train routes to figure out why they lose money and what can we do to reduce the cost of the train routes. I think they will find this in places in the Midwest. These numbers are out of the Midwest. There is a lot of investment, particularly in the Illinois area. Ridership is up on the Chicago-St Louis corridor in the last year. Ridership between Chicago and Carbondale is up 46 percent. For the Chicago-Galesburg-Quincy route, ridership has increased 33 percent. They have actually added frequency and provided better service and more on-time service, and they have worked with the freight railroads that control the tracks to get better support so that they let the passenger trains run on time. I think there is a better way to skin this cat than our friend, Senator Sununu, has proposed. I believe the answer is in the legislation. If you look at the country as a whole, today we have probably over 50 percent of the population living within 50 miles of one of our coasts. Think about that. What that means is we have these densely populated corridors up and down the east coast, the gulf coast, and on the west coast. They are perfectly suited for high-passenger corridor rail service. Think about the other places around the country, and there is an example of the St. Louis-to-Chicago route. That part of America is where densely populated corridors also exist. My suspicion is if we provide them the kind of service we are providing on these coastal corridors, we would see the increase in ridership that we are seeing in Illinois and also in Missouri. Again, to my friends who want to make sure we take some affirmative action to provide better train service but reduce the kind of subsidies now being paid for folks riding trains that run every 2 or 3 days, coming through communities at all hours of the night, as well as the day, there is a smarter way to do this, and it is in the legislation. I encourage my colleagues to oppose this particular amendment, however well intended it is. I think there is a better way to get to the legitimate issue raised. It is the language Senators Lott and Lautenberg and our staffs and I have crafted and included. The first year, we would take five long-distance train routes and scrub their performance and find out a smarter way to provide the service. The second year, we would do five more, and the third year, five more. So over 3 years we would scrub 15 of these. A lot of people are starting to ride trains who would not have thought about it before. That is because of congestion on the roads and highways, in airports, bad pollution in the air, and our dependence on foreign oil. The passenger rail service can address all those issues. Amtrak is not the whole answer, but it begins to get at the answer. The language in the underlying bill answers the question Senator Sununu raises. I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and support for the underlying legislation.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request, all en bloc.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I understand there are four bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading, en bloc.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, let me add a couple comments with respect to the legislation we just passed by unanimous consent. The adoption of this legislation comes after a very tough negotiation that goes back not just a couple days or a couple weeks or a couple months but literally years, almost a decade. In tough negotiations, not everyone is happy. But I think the American people basically want us to figure out how to get work done. The American people look for us to set aside partisan differences, and they want to see some results. My hope is, for the most part, they come to understand what we have done here tonight and realize the House still has to speak on this matter. The American people will, if not applaud the actual results, some of which are not easily understood, at least say: Well, on this matter, at least, the U.S. Senate figured out how to work together. A couple guys from small States got together, along with the help of a bunch of others, including Senators Alexander and Enzi and Voinovich. I am grateful to them for all their good work on this too. I think among the most important results that flow from the adoption of this legislation are, No. 1, we preserve the intent in the 1998 initial Internet moratorium legislation. What we wanted to do in 1998 was not to allow additional States and additional local governments to place a tax on access to the Internet, if you will, a tax on our AOL bills. That was part of the 1998 legislation that said for a handful of States--nine or so--that were already doing that, they were allowed to continue to do so but nobody else could pile on. This legislation today makes sure we are not going to be allowing additional access taxes or additional taxes by State and local governments for access to the Internet. That protects the consumers, but it also does it in a way that I think is fair to the States. Because 3 years before the 1998 legislation was passed--3 years prior-- in 1995, this same Congress passed legislation saying that the unfunded mandates were a bad idea, and that the Federal Government was not going to tell State and local governments how to spend their money without providing that money, the Federal Government was not going to take away the ability of State and local governments to raise money without providing for funds to make up for the shortfall. What we have done is we have protected the States that are already deriving revenues from access taxes on the Internet. We said we are not going to allow, as we go forward with new innovations--for, if you will, telecom companies, telephone companies--we are not going to allow them to bundle services and begin to offer those bundled services-- traditionally taxed by State and local governments, in some cases--and ship them over on the Internet to avoid all State and local taxes. So the States have spoken loudly: Do not take away our revenue base. We have been responsive to that. As a Governor for 8 years in my State, and as, at one time, the chairman of the National Governors Association, I never liked it when the Federal Government came in and said: Spend your money this way or that way, without giving us the money. I never liked it when the Federal Government came in and said: We are going to take your ability to raise money away without providing for the shortfall. I think we are consistent here and true to the concerns that have been raised by State and local governments on that score. The third thing we have done--I sort of alluded to it--the technology in this area continues to change dramatically. I like to kid, but I say 5 years ago I could not even spell VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol, which basically means sending telephone services over the Internet. Actually, 5 years ago, the idea of being able to do that was, I think, a gleam in somebody's eye. Today it is common practice. Not only that, we have the ability to send something called IPTV, Internet Protocol TV, to send television signals over the Internet. In my State, we do not necessarily raise our revenues this way. But some places do. They raise some of the revenues for educational purposes, for paramedics, for fire services, for police services. They raise their revenues by taxing telephone services and cable services. It is inappropriate for us to come and say: You cannot do that, even as those services are somehow transferred and transmitted over the Internet. So what we have done, by not making the moratorium permanent, is we have made sure we are going to come back and revisit this issue somewhere down the line. We say 7 years. The House says 4 years. We will have the opportunity and the requirement to come back and revisit this issue. If the technology changes--and it will. I can tell you one thing for sure, the technology that is in place today is not going to be same in 4, 5, 6, 7 years, just as it was not 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. It has continued to change. By virtue of this legislation, we will be better prepared for that change. Again, I close with this: When I talk to people in our State, and in other States as well, when I hear about the low regard people have for the Congress and, frankly, for the administration--but we will stick with us right now--one of the things that people are most unhappy about is our seeming inability to work together, to hang in there, until we have been able to carve out, find a middle ground that is responsive to the concerns of most people. We have done that. It has not been easy, but we have been persistent, and I think ultimately--at least tonight, today--successful. I am pleased to have been a part of this effort and to have had a chance to work with our Senators Alexander, Stevens, Inouye, McCain, and Senator Sununu. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Friday, October 26; that on Friday, following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of Calendar No. 158, S. 294, Amtrak authorization; that at 10 a.m., the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; that during morning business, Senator Dodd be recognized for up to 20 minutes, Senator Dorgan up to 30 minutes, and Senator Inhofe up to 2 hours.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today with my mend from Maine to introduce the Volunteer Firefighter and EMS Personnel Job Protection Act. Current law offers volunteer firefighters and emergency medical services personnel no protection against punishment by their employers should they miss work when called on to respond to a national emergency. This means that firefighters or EMS personnel volunteering their time, even during major disasters like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or even the current wildfires in California, can be disciplined or even fired for putting their lives at risk to save others. We put forward this legislation today out of concern that volunteers faced with the prospect of losing their jobs and not responding to a call will choose the latter. Its passage would protect volunteers from having to make that choice when the call is to a Presidentially- declared disaster or emergency. In order to receive the protections offered under the bill, a first responder would need to provide reasonable notice to their employer before missing time and would need to provide regular updates during the course of their absence. The bill also allows volunteer firefighters or EMS personnel to take legal action against businesses that fire or discipline an individual who gives appropriate notice before missing work due to a legitimate emergency situation. In order to prevent abuse, the bill places a 14-day limit on the amount of time volunteer firefighters or EMS workers could take off from their jobs before being subject to disciplinary action. The bill also does not require employers to compensate volunteers for time away from work. Communities across the country depend on volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel to respond to major disasters. My State is among them. In fact, most communities in Delaware rely almost exclusively on the work and sacrifice of volunteers to protect their citizens from fires to major disasters. This bill seeks to ensure that Delawareans can continue to rely on them. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, if there is no further business, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.