Susan Collins

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I do not.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for working with me on this issue. I think it is a modest approach that can make a real difference to the thousands of teachers across this country who dig deep into their own pockets in order to enrich the classroom experience for their students. It is a modest but appropriate way for us to recognize their financial sacrifice. I hope the two managers of the bill will be able to clear the amendment.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Olympia Snowe, in introducing legislation that will expand the borders of the Aroostook County Empowerment Zone to include the entire County so that the benefits of Empowerment Zone designation can be fully realized in northern Maine. The Department of Agriculture's Empowerment Zone program addresses a comprehensive range of community challenges, including many that have traditionally received little federal assistance, reflecting the fact that rural problems do not come in standardized packages but can vary widely from one place to another. The Empowerment Zone program represents a long-term partnership between the federal government and rural communities so that communities have enough time to implement projects to build the capacity to sustain their development beyond the term of the partnership. An Empowerment Zone designation gives designated regions potential access to federal grants for social services and community redevelopment as well as tax incentives to encourage economic growth. Aroostook County is the largest county east of the Mississippi River. Yet, despite the impressive character and work ethic of its citizens, the County has fallen on hard times. The 2000 Census indicated a 15 percent loss in population since 1990. Loring Air Force Base, which was closed in 1994, also caused an immediate out-migration of 8,500 people and a further out-migration of families and businesses that depended on Loring for their customer base. In response to these developments, the Northern Maine Development Commission and other economic development organizations, the private business sector, and community leaders in Aroostook have joined forces to stabilize, diversify, and grow the area's economy. They have attracted some new industries and jobs. As a native of Aroostook County, I can attest to the strong community support that will ensure a continued successful partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Designating this region of the United States as an Empowerment Zone will help build its future economic prosperity. However, the restriction that the Empowerment Zone be limited to 1,000 square miles prevents all of Aroostook's small rural communities from benefitting from this program. Aroostook covers some 6,672 square miles but has a population of only 74,000. Including all of the County in the Empowerment Zone will guarantee that parts of the County will not be left behind in the quest for economic prosperity. It does little good to have a company move from one community to another within the County simply to take advantage of Empowerment Zone benefits. Senator Snowe and I introduced this legislation in both the 108th and 109th Congresses. In fact, we were successful in getting this legislation passed in the Senate by attaching it to the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations bill. Unfortunately, this language was removed during conference negotiations with the House. Senator Snowe and I remain committed to bringing the benefits of the Empowerment Zone designation to all of Aroostook County's residents and will work to pass this legislation in both chambers during this Congress.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Olympia Snowe, in introducing legislation that will expand the borders of the Aroostook County Empowerment Zone to include the entire County so that the benefits of Empowerment Zone designation can be fully realized in northern Maine. The Department of Agriculture's Empowerment Zone program addresses a comprehensive range of community challenges, including many that have traditionally received little federal assistance, reflecting the fact that rural problems do not come in standardized packages but can vary widely from one place to another. The Empowerment Zone program represents a long-term partnership between the federal government and rural communities so that communities have enough time to implement projects to build the capacity to sustain their development beyond the term of the partnership. An Empowerment Zone designation gives designated regions potential access to federal grants for social services and community redevelopment as well as tax incentives to encourage economic growth. Aroostook County is the largest county east of the Mississippi River. Yet, despite the impressive character and work ethic of its citizens, the County has fallen on hard times. The 2000 Census indicated a 15 percent loss in population since 1990. Loring Air Force Base, which was closed in 1994, also caused an immediate out-migration of 8,500 people and a further out-migration of families and businesses that depended on Loring for their customer base. In response to these developments, the Northern Maine Development Commission and other economic development organizations, the private business sector, and community leaders in Aroostook have joined forces to stabilize, diversify, and grow the area's economy. They have attracted some new industries and jobs. As a native of Aroostook County, I can attest to the strong community support that will ensure a continued successful partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Designating this region of the United States as an Empowerment Zone will help build its future economic prosperity. However, the restriction that the Empowerment Zone be limited to 1,000 square miles prevents all of Aroostook's small rural communities from benefitting from this program. Aroostook covers some 6,672 square miles but has a population of only 74,000. Including all of the County in the Empowerment Zone will guarantee that parts of the County will not be left behind in the quest for economic prosperity. It does little good to have a company move from one community to another within the County simply to take advantage of Empowerment Zone benefits. Senator Snowe and I introduced this legislation in both the 108th and 109th Congresses. In fact, we were successful in getting this legislation passed in the Senate by attaching it to the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations bill. Unfortunately, this language was removed during conference negotiations with the House. Senator Snowe and I remain committed to bringing the benefits of the Empowerment Zone designation to all of Aroostook County's residents and will work to pass this legislation in both chambers during this Congress.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. I also wish to add my voice in thanks to the families of the victims of 9/11. They have truly been the committee's inspiration as we worked on these issues for the last 4 years. I yield the floor.

Ms. COLLINS. I ask unanimous consent that a list of the homeland security staffers on the Republican side who worked so hard on this bill be printed in the Record at this point.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I do expect additional Members on my side of the aisle to come and debate this issue. I wish to clarify that the language, as I read it, in the Senator's amendment, is not discretionary, it is mandatory. It does allow for some certain significant exceptions for the Department to make findings on, but it clearly says: The regulations issued under this section shall-- (1) except as provided in-- The subsections part-- provide that any rail shipment containing high hazard materials be rerouted around any high threat corridor. So I don't see it as giving the Department great discretion if that determination is made because of the word ``shall,'' which is not permissive, it is mandatory. There are some exceptions later which the Senator has referred to, such as the origination point or point of destination being within the high-threat corridor. But as I read the amendment, it pretty clearly calls for rerouting. I wanted to clarify that issue. Maybe I misunderstood the Senator from Delaware, but I thought he was saying it did not require rerouting.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, these amendments have been cleared on this side of the aisle, and I do not object.

Ms. COLLINS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Ms. COLLINS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Delaware is actually more under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee than the Homeland Security Committee. Nevertheless, in the absence of a member of the Commerce Committee on the Senate floor, I want to express my concern about the amendment. As I understand it, the effect of the amendment would be to require that hazardous materials on rail cars be routed around high-threat areas, with some exceptions. The problem is that the Commerce Committee title on rail security already has a section that addresses hazardous materials by requiring a mitigation plan that can include rerouting but only when the homeland security advisory system is at a high or severe level of threat or when specific intelligence indicates that there is a specific or imminent threat. I think this amendment, while well-intentioned, creates all sorts of practical problems. The Chamber of Commerce, which is rating this as a key vote, lists some of those that I want to read from a letter that we received from the Chamber today. The letter reads: The Biden amendment, which would require mandatory rerouting of shipments of hazardous materials around high threat corridors, would not reduce risk to homeland security. It would only reallocate risk among population centers. In fact, the amendment would actually increase risk by either eliminating routes that provide optimal overall safety and security, or by adding hundreds of miles and additional days to the journeys of shipments of hazardous materials via less direct routes. In other words, if we are causing this hazardous material to be on its journey far longer because it is not going by the more direct route, that could in fact increase the problems or the chances of the hazardous material being attacked. The letter goes on to point out that the railroads have been working with the Federal Government, with chemical manufacturers, and with consumers to explore the use of coordinated routing arrangements to reduce mileage and time in the transit of highly hazardous materials. This amendment seems to be going in the opposite direction. Another one of my colleagues has raised the issue of chlorine shipments to wastewater treatment plants. Those shipments need to be made. It raises a lot of practical questions about how to move this material. Another colleague raised the issue to me of whether this would result in more trucks on our highways carrying hazardous materials. So I think that while I agree with the overall intent of the amendment, I am much more comfortable with the approach taken by the Commerce Committee--a committee which, unfortunately, I don't serve on, so I don't have the level of expertise that its members have in talking about this issue. I do expect some members of the Commerce Committee to come to the floor and debate this issue. I do want my colleagues to know that the distinguished Senator's amendment is controversial, that it may have unintended consequences. Based on my knowledge of the issue, I hope it will be defeated. Thank you.

Ms. COLLINS. Reserving the right to object, I may have missed the complete unanimous-consent request because I did not have that final page of the agreement. Will the Senator inform me whether there is a vote ordered on the Biden amendment.

Ms. COLLINS. I have no objection.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I move to table the Biden amendment.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I move to table the Biden amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I first want to thank our colleagues for their cooperation in moving forward this very important piece of legislation. When the 9/11 Commission completed its report and made its findings to Congress, the Homeland Security Committee, which I chaired at the time, worked very hard to produce a major overhaul of our intelligence community--in fact, the most sweeping changes in more than 50 years. That legislation, for example, created the Director of National Intelligence and also established the National Counterterrorism Center, which brings together analysts from the 15 agencies involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. We took a major step forward. Now we are on the verge of finishing the job. I salute the chairman of the committee, Senator Lieberman, for making this legislation the top priority of our committee under his chairmanship. The legislation is going to help implement the unfinished recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. As I said, most of the recommendations were included in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. But there were some significant ones that were not completed. Thus, this legislation improves intelligence and information sharing, and it authorizes the Homeland Security Grant Program, which has been so important in improving the capabilities of our communities and States which are, after all, our partners in improving homeland security. We worked very hard, the chairman and I and the rest of the committee members, to devise a formula that would be fair to all States, that would allocate the majority of the funding based on an analysis of risk, vulnerability, and consequences but also ensure that each and every State receive a predictable, steady level of funding so that each State can be improved and have a basic preparedness level. I think we struck the right balance in that area. This bill would authorize a bit over $3 billion for each of the next 3 years for this new Homeland Security Grant Program. Included in that program is an emphasis on prevention. We all are very focused on recovery and response in the event of a terrorist attack, but we believe it is very important to also focus on preventing attacks from happening in the first place. Our legislation would do that by providing that at least 25 percent of the overall funding for the urban areas and State Homeland Security Grant Programs must be used for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities. Another important section of this bill creates a program to deal with communications equipment interoperability. We know that lives were lost on 9/11 because the various first responders could not communicate with one another. As a result, firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical personnel lost their lives and suffered injuries. Much to our dismay, we also found as part of our investigation into the failed response to Hurricane Katrina that exactly those same interoperability problems were occurring in Louisiana, in particular. We simply must tackle this problem. It is too big a problem and too expensive a problem for States and communities to do on their own. That is why we have a partnership, a grant program that would be administered by FEMA and dedicated to improving the survivability and the interoperability of communications equipment used by our courageous first responders and emergency managers. Again, that program would authorize $3.3 billion over the next 5 years. The bill also makes a number of important improvements to prevent terrorists from traveling to our country; to strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; to improve private sector preparedness, since we know that 85 percent of critical infrastructure is in the private sector; and to improve transportation security planning and overall security of our transportation system. It has been a great pleasure to work with the chairman and the members of our committee, as well as the Commerce Committee and other Members who have been interested, to bring this bill to the floor, and I believe it will help make our Nation safer.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I think we have votes that are scheduled at 11:45.

Ms. COLLINS. Perhaps the Presiding Officer could review----

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am very sympathetic to the frustration expressed by the Senator from Oklahoma. Our committee, last year, had extensive hearings looking at waste, fraud, and abuse in the spending of funds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We documented over a billion dollars of waste or fraudulent spending. So the Senator has put his finger on a very important problem. I am very concerned about the practical impact of the Senator's amendment. The Senator, at one point, had a second-degree amendment, which he has decided not to offer, which addressed part of my concern. The Senator has said this morning that the Department would have 18 months to comply with the provisions of the Improper Payments Act. But, in fact, the plain language of his amendment says the Secretary shall not award any grants or distribute any grant funds under any grant program under this act until the certification, risk assessment, and estimates that his amendment calls for have been completed. The result of that, because our legislation includes some grant money for interoperability under the Commerce Committee provisions in the bill, for this year, is that it halts those funding programs, those grant programs. The result is to penalize first responders, State and local governments, for the faults that are largely from the Department of Homeland Security. I don't think that is fair. That is why the National Governors Association and the National Emergency Managers Association strongly oppose this amendment. In addition, the Department has expressed great concern about this amendment. In fact, the Department's Office of General Counsel has written to me that they ``strongly oppose the amendment prohibiting the Secretary from awarding any grant, or distributing any grant funds, until the Secretary has submitted the certifications and other analyses in response to Senator Coburn's amendment.'' So it is not just the Governors and the emergency managers. It is also the Department of Homeland Security that strongly opposes the Coburn amendment.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this is a very important bill. Many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission were enacted as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which the distinguished Senator from Connecticut and I have worked so hard to author. But there is some unfinished business, and this bill will help make our country safer and it will strengthen our protections against terrorist attacks. As always, it has been a great pleasure to work with the Senator from Connecticut, whose leadership I so admire. I am optimistic we have now finally put this important bill on a path to completion, and I look forward to working to accomplish that goal on Tuesday. I thank the Chair.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I think this is a fair agreement that will allow us to finish the bill on Tuesday, and I have no objection.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, if the Senator from Louisiana will yield so I may respond to her question.

Ms. COLLINS. The Senator from Louisiana has been tireless in her advocacy for both of these amendments. The junior Senator from Louisiana has also talked to me about these amendments, as has the Senator from Florida, Mr. Martinez. I have been working hard with the chairman to try to address the concerns of the Senators from Louisiana. As the chairman has indicated, there is good news on one of the Senator's amendments. The amendment that proposes the loan forgiveness authority for the President is on the list of amendments we are optimistic about clearing on Tuesday. The other amendment, with the 10- percent match eliminated, is more problematic because there are some outstanding objections to it. I know the Senator from Louisiana has indicated a willingness to amend her amendment and put a 2-year sunset on that provision. That helps a great deal with one of the objections we have on our side of the aisle. I don't know whether we are going to be able to clear the other objections, but I certainly pledge to keep working with the Senator from Louisiana and the committee's chairman to accomplish that goal.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, although it appears nothing has been happening today, in fact, there have been extensive negotiations going on behind the scenes with a list of amendments from our side and from the Senator's side. I know for a fact the Senator's amendment is on that list and is part of the discussions that are underway. But the system of trying to clear these amendments is a very time- consuming one. There are Senators on the Democratic side who have objected to clearing the list and there are Senators on my side of the aisle who have objected to clearing the list. But I can tell the Senator I personally did ask for the Senator's amendment, as did the manager of the bill, to be added to the list for those where we would try to either clear them through unanimous consent or we would try to get a rollcall vote. I personally have no objection to having a rollcall vote on the Senator's amendment or accepting the Senator's amendment, but we have not yet completed the clearance process. The reason I have remained on the floor is in the hope that clearance will occur. But I will tell the Senator there are problems clearing the joint list on both sides of the aisle.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I, too, want to commend the Senator from Mississippi for putting forth a commonsense solution to the impasse in which we find ourselves. The Senator from Connecticut and I have been on the floor all day long. We have worked with our colleagues. We have come up with a group of amendments which we believe could be cleared by unanimous consent because they are not controversial. Yet can we clear that package? No. We cannot because even though there is no objection to the specific amendments in that package, they are being held up by Senators who want other amendments or are trying to ensure or block votes on other proposals. We also came up with a set of amendments tonight--two Democratic amendments, two Republican amendments--that warrant rollcall votes. Two on each side, what could be fairer? Yet we cannot get rollcall votes. If Members are opposed to amendments, come to the floor, debate them, and vote no, but do not prevent us from moving forward on a very important bill.