Kent Conrad

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. Chairman, I think it would be useful to do that. This has a bit of a complexity.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, might I recommend, in terms of the order on this side, if we are putting aside Landrieu, with the hopes of perhaps working that out, that we go to Senator Levin. He is next on our side. If the chairman would want to go to your side?

Mr. CONRAD. We don't have the amendment in our hands. We are seeking to get it. We will share it with the Senator as soon as we have it.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask that we recognize Senator Graham to discuss his amendment on Pell grants. I give him 2 minutes off of the resolution.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, this is where we stand at this moment on this side. We are down to about 10 amendments that would require votes if we are not able to work them out. Let me list, on our side, the amendments and the rough order. Please do not hold me to this specific order, other than the first five, because it is really the first five that we have made commitments on: Senator Landrieu, the amendment she has already offered; Senator Levin, on homeland security; Senator Durbin, on global AIDS; Senator Lautenberg, on debt limit; Senator Schumer, an amendment that relates to the Energy bill; and then, in addition to that, Senator Dayton, on IDEA; Senator Graham, on Pell grants; Senator Byrd, on bioshield; Senator Lincoln, with respect to the childcare tax credit; and Senator Kennedy, on Medicare. Those are the remaining major amendments on this side. I think that gets them all. There is also an amendment that is cosponsored by a number of people on our side as well as people on the other side. We also have a Reed amendment on higher education; and Pryor on IRA, that was not agreed to. We also have an amendment that is in negotiation, I might say, from Senator Leahy, on nutrition. On the other side, there is an amendment from Senator Dole on nutrition. There are amendments on the other side that maybe the chairman could review.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Clinton, we have an amendment that establishes a reserve fund for addressing minority health disparities, an agreement on both sides. I ask for approval of our colleagues.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, might I inquire of the Senator how long it will take to describe this amendment?

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

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Maryland off the resolution.

Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator withhold? Amendment No. 2725

Mr. CONRAD. I am happy to yield 5 minutes off the resolution to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. CONRAD. I yield to the Senator from Iowa 15 minutes off the resolution.

Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I thank the Senator from California for this very important amendment. It is becoming increasingly clear jobs are very much an endangered species in this economy. It is the No. 1 subject. When I go home and go from town to town, the No. 1 subject is economic opportunities, jobs, economic growth, and a deepening concern that we are not seeing the kind of economic growth and job opportunities all of us would like. We saw yesterday in the very steep selloff in the stock market an increasing concern that economic growth is already stalling out. We have seen in the jobs reports that job growth is badly lagging behind what all of us would like to see, and badly lagging behind what we have seen in other recessions. On March 9 in the New York Times, Paul Krugman, the noted economist, had this headlined article: ``Promises, Promises.'' The subheadline was ``Wishful Thinking on Jobs.'' He went back and looked at the job history from 1999 to 2004 and then looked at the forecasts of the administration. He pointed out that back in 2002, the administration said by this time, or January of 2005, we would have 138 million jobs. Obviously we do not have 138 million jobs. We are at 130 million jobs now. Then in 2003 they refined that estimate and lowered it substantially and said, Well, no, we will not have 138 million jobs; we will have 135 million jobs. Now this year they revised the estimate again and said, Whoops, we were wrong again. We are not going to have 135 million jobs; we are going to have 132.7 million jobs. As of the end of February, we are nowhere close to that. We are at 130.2 million jobs. I will go to this chart that shows what has happened in every recession since World War II. In every one of these recessions, we have seen on average, 17 months after the business cycle peaked, the job recovery really took off. That has been the pattern of the nine recessions since World War II. Let's compare it to what is happening this time. That is the black line. Here we are 36 months since the business cycle peaked and we still see almost no jobs recovery. Something is wrong and it is seriously wrong. We are now 5.4 million jobs short of the typical recovery going all the way back to World War II. Look at nine previous recessions. In those other recessions, the job market was soaring by this time. Not now. Something is wrong. Even when the administration dramatically altered and lowered their projection of jobs by January of next year, they still said there would be 2.6 million more jobs by the end of 2004 than 2003. If that forecast is to come true, they will have to generate 520,000 jobs a month between now and the end of the year. The most recent month was not 520,000 jobs; it was not 420,000 jobs; it was not 120,000 jobs; it was 21,000 jobs and every one of them was a Government job. There was no growth in the private sector. Something is wrong.

Mr. CONRAD. I would say in response to the inquiry of the Senator, in terms of what I found at home, North Dakota has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the Nation. We have a very low rate of unemployment in our State. Yet job anxiety is growing there. Why? It is not because the unemployment rate is high; it is because good jobs are not available. It is because people who are more highly educated, more highly trained, are not able to get jobs commensurate with their training and education, and this is creating a whole level of people who are what we would call underemployed--underemployed based on their previous job experiences, underemployed in terms of their education and training. I say to my colleagues, there was a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine that my wife drew to my attention the other day. The cartoon was two guys who kind of looked like deadbeat guys. One guy says to the other: You know, you are out of work, aren't you? He said to the gentleman: I have quit looking. I understand that's good for the economy. No, it is not good for the economy. That I think is what is increasingly of concern to people. These are middle-class people, people with good education, with good training, who had good jobs. I have a relative who was very advanced in a major corporation and his entire division was laid off. These are very highly skilled people, very highly trained, very highly paid. They found all of their jobs were being shipped to India. To add insult to injury, they were asked to go to India to train the people to take their jobs.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have not seen the amendment and we cannot agree to any amendments going to the desk that have not been presented to the ranking member and chairman, those managing the bill. I am constrained to object until we see the amendment.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am advised that we have eight more votes still on this list. There may be some variance between us.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. The firefighters amendment.

Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator withhold for one moment? I apologize.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, can the Chair advise me what the time situation is on both sides?

Mr. CONRAD. Yes.

Mr. CONRAD. We did, actually. I spoke.

Mr. CONRAD. One of the things we discussed, if I can say, is there was a slight amount of time used here in discussion on the amendment. One of the things that was discussed was the possibility, perhaps, of charging that time to the amendment once we got on the amendment so we could hold to the schedule of being as close to 6 o'clock as we could be. Would that be agreeable?

Mr. CONRAD. Will the Senator yield for just a moment?

Mr. CONRAD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I might ask the Chair as well, could we agree that we would start on the Boxer amendment tomorrow morning?