Hillary Clinton

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing The Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2005 with my colleague Senator Sununu, a bill to improve the child safety features in new vehicles. This bill is named after a 2 year old Long Island boy who was killed when his father accidentally backed over him. Although this effort is too late to save little Cameron, it is named in his honor and aimed at preventing other families from suffering the same fate. I also want to thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Peter King for championing this issue in the House of Representatives. While we hear a great deal about automobile accidents, we don't hear nearly as much about non-traffic automobile accidents, which can be just as tragic. Since 1999, close to 975 children have died in non-traffic, non-crash incidents. This translates into a death almost every other day. The average age of victims in these cases is just 1 year old. And in 70 percent of backover cases, a parent, relative or close friend is behind the wheel. As of October 15th of this year, there have been 317 non-traffic incidents resulting in ER treatment--tragically, 188 resulted in fatalities. New York State alone has suffered over 60 non-traffic incidents, 15 of them fatalities. These tragedies are heart-wrenching, not only due to the unimaginable suffering these families endure, but also because they are preventable. The Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act makes all passenger motor vehicles safer in three important ways. First, it requires a detection system to alert drivers to the presence of a child behind the vehicle. This system will prevent backing up incidents involving death and injury, especially to small children and the disabled. Second, it will ensure that power windows automatically reverse direction when they detect an obstruction--preventing children from being trapped, injured or killed when playing with power car windows. And finally, the bill will require the vehicle service break to be engaged in order to prevent vehicles from unintentionally rolling away. Just as important, this bill will help parents by making them more aware of the dangers their vehicles pose to kids. Our legislation establishes a child safety information program to collect non-traffic, non-crash incident data and to disseminate vital information to parents about ways to mitigate the dangers cars pose. This bill proves that with modest, cost-effective steps, we can prevent many tragic car-related accidents from occurring. The technology exists that can save children's lives at relatively low cost and new innovations are being developed all the time. Power window sensors, for example, cost only $8-12 a window. Brakeshift interlocks are already standard in most passenger vehicles, but where they aren't, they cost only $5 a car. Backover warning systems cost approximately $300 a car, but they are still far cheaper than the DVD systems that can run up to $2000 and stereo systems that go for up to $800--costs that are commonly absorbed into the cost of new cars. There is no reason that we are not using these new technologies to save lives. This kind of modest regulatory response to a safety problem has many precedents. Back in 1956, in response to a slew of tragic child suffocations, Congress passed the Refrigerator Safety Act to ensure that refrigerators could be opened from the inside and no child could again be trapped inside. When 156 kids died from airbags, the Federal Government regulated a design change. The government even changed the design of garage doors after 56 children were killed by them. This is a comparable situation--this inexpensive technology could save thousands of children's lives. So, I am proud to be introducing the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2005 today and I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill. Together, we can make cars and kids safer in this great country.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing The Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2005 with my colleague Senator Sununu, a bill to improve the child safety features in new vehicles. This bill is named after a 2 year old Long Island boy who was killed when his father accidentally backed over him. Although this effort is too late to save little Cameron, it is named in his honor and aimed at preventing other families from suffering the same fate. I also want to thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Peter King for championing this issue in the House of Representatives. While we hear a great deal about automobile accidents, we don't hear nearly as much about non-traffic automobile accidents, which can be just as tragic. Since 1999, close to 975 children have died in non-traffic, non-crash incidents. This translates into a death almost every other day. The average age of victims in these cases is just 1 year old. And in 70 percent of backover cases, a parent, relative or close friend is behind the wheel. As of October 15th of this year, there have been 317 non-traffic incidents resulting in ER treatment--tragically, 188 resulted in fatalities. New York State alone has suffered over 60 non-traffic incidents, 15 of them fatalities. These tragedies are heart-wrenching, not only due to the unimaginable suffering these families endure, but also because they are preventable. The Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act makes all passenger motor vehicles safer in three important ways. First, it requires a detection system to alert drivers to the presence of a child behind the vehicle. This system will prevent backing up incidents involving death and injury, especially to small children and the disabled. Second, it will ensure that power windows automatically reverse direction when they detect an obstruction--preventing children from being trapped, injured or killed when playing with power car windows. And finally, the bill will require the vehicle service break to be engaged in order to prevent vehicles from unintentionally rolling away. Just as important, this bill will help parents by making them more aware of the dangers their vehicles pose to kids. Our legislation establishes a child safety information program to collect non-traffic, non-crash incident data and to disseminate vital information to parents about ways to mitigate the dangers cars pose. This bill proves that with modest, cost-effective steps, we can prevent many tragic car-related accidents from occurring. The technology exists that can save children's lives at relatively low cost and new innovations are being developed all the time. Power window sensors, for example, cost only $8-12 a window. Brakeshift interlocks are already standard in most passenger vehicles, but where they aren't, they cost only $5 a car. Backover warning systems cost approximately $300 a car, but they are still far cheaper than the DVD systems that can run up to $2000 and stereo systems that go for up to $800--costs that are commonly absorbed into the cost of new cars. There is no reason that we are not using these new technologies to save lives. This kind of modest regulatory response to a safety problem has many precedents. Back in 1956, in response to a slew of tragic child suffocations, Congress passed the Refrigerator Safety Act to ensure that refrigerators could be opened from the inside and no child could again be trapped inside. When 156 kids died from airbags, the Federal Government regulated a design change. The government even changed the design of garage doors after 56 children were killed by them. This is a comparable situation--this inexpensive technology could save thousands of children's lives. So, I am proud to be introducing the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2005 today and I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill. Together, we can make cars and kids safer in this great country.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, today I rise to discuss an important flu amendment that Senator Harkin and I and several of our colleagues are offering to increase the amount of funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and their efforts to help our Nation prepare for both pandemic and seasonal influenza. Since December 2004, 77 cases of avian influenza have been confirmed in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, and 30 of these cases have been fatal. In countries across Asia and Europe, farmers have been culling their poultry stocks because of fears of infection. We need to prepare for the moment when--not if, but when--avian influenza hits our shores. What is particularly worrisome to me, when thinking about our Nation's ability to face the threat posed by pandemic or avian influenza, is the fact that we aren't even prepared to deal with the seasonal influenza epidemic that we face every year. Our efforts to prepare for pandemic influenza should be linked to efforts to reform and rebuild our Nation's seasonal flu vaccine infrastructure. Approximately 36,000 Americans die of the flu each year, with another 200,000 people requiring hospitalization because of the flu. These deaths are largely preventable. We could stop them if we had a secure vaccine market, if we could improve our communications between the Government and our State and local public health partners, if we could better distribute and track vaccines, and if we made sure that everyone understood the importance of getting their annual flu shot. Since 2000, our Nation has had three shortages of flu vaccine, which resulted in senior citizens lining up for hours to obtain flu vaccine, unscrupulous distributors attempting to sell scarce vaccine to the highest bidder, and millions of Americans delaying or deferring necessary flu shots. In order to address these issues, we need to increase the resources that we are committing to our public health infrastructure. The amendment Senator Harkin is proposing will provide nearly $8 billion to the CDC, allowing us to respond to the threat posed by avian influenza and our seasonal flu outbreaks. It will increase funding for stockpiling of vaccine and antivirals, and improve our domestic production capacity to produce these items. It will allow us to upgrade our public health infrastructure with additional funding for hospital surge capacity and grants enabling State and local health departments to prepare for public health emergencies like vaccine shortages and pandemic outbreaks. And it will provide funding so that we can increase our global and domestic surveillance around pandemic and seasonal flu, including improvements to our health information technology infrastructure. Yet while this amendment provides the CDC with much needed resources for our public health infrastructure, it does not diminish the need for legislation to reform our Nation's vaccine production and delivery infrastructure. In response to the delays in distribution of this year's vaccine, CDC director Julie Gerberding has indicated that the agency is unable to obtain real-time data on vaccine shipments and delivery, citing concerns over disclosure of proprietary information. Having an adequate supply of vaccine does us no good if it can't get to the people who need it. In last season's epidemic, we had problems matching existing stocks of vaccine to the high priority populations, like senior citizens, who were in need of vaccine. It took weeks before we could determine how much vaccine was actually in communities, and where it was needed. We wasted lots of time and resources, valuable public health resources, in trying to track this vaccine. Earlier this month, Senator Roberts and I introduced the Influenza Vaccine Security Act, legislation that contains many of the provisions that would be funded through the Harkin amendment. Complementing this amendment, the Influenza Vaccine Security Act would further give the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to track vaccine distribution in a manner that addresses concerns about the protection of proprietary information, allowing providers to vaccinate patients without the current uncertainties over supply. While there is no vaccine shortage expected this year, delays in production have resulted in diminished supplies for many providers, who are unable to carry out full vaccination of their high priority populations, let alone any other patients who are in the habit of seeking an annual flu shot. Because we have no tracking system, we can't tell the providers and patients who are looking for flu shots when vaccines might be available in their local area. So it is clear that we need not only increased funding, provided through this amendment, for our public health infrastructure, but increased authority for our public health officials to ensure that our system of vaccine outreach, delivery and distribution for both pandemics and seasonal flu can operate as smoothly as possible. There is a clear need to implement legislation like the Influenza Vaccine Security Act that will allow our Government to plan for flu outbreaks, instead of scrambling to address shortages and epidemics once they have already occurred. We have done too much of that already, in the three shortages we have faced since 2000. I would urge my colleagues to not only pass the Harkin amendment today, but to work to bring legislation on seasonal and pandemic flu to the floor as quickly as possible, so that we can make needed reforms before our next vaccine shortage.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my brief remarks my colleague, Senator Schumer, be recognized.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the time be allocated to Senator Schumer and myself.

Mrs. CLINTON. Is amendment 2313 at the desk?

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, as you can tell from both Senator Schumer and myself, we are very grateful for this understanding and pending action that will give us a chance to right this wrong. Again I think it is difficult to trace how it happened. I believe it is in the rush of trying to figure out how to maybe make things balance a little bit more that this was seized upon. I ask unanimous consent that letters from Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg be printed in the Record.

Mrs. CLINTON. I do desire, Mr. President, to make amendment 2313 the regular order.

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, this amendment addresses a problem that is quite unprecedented with respect to the funds that were appropriated originally from this body following the attacks of September 11. The funds were part of the original emergency appropriation passed by the Congress and signed by the President. The money addressed in this amendment is intended for use for medical services and related matters on behalf of first responders, construction workers, and others who worked at Ground Zero, who were in a variety of ways injured, whose health was impacted, often leading to employment-ending disabilities. The people who gave so much in the immediate aftermath of those attacks include, of course, those who lost their lives and also those who as part of the rescue and recovery operations suffered long-lasting physical and mental damage. A number of those people have not been able to return to work. They are suffering from ailments ranging from physical disability, loss of limbs, loss of the use of limbs. They have suffered an incredible range of lung-related and breathing diseases--asthma, respiratory dysfunction. Others have suffered greatly from the stresses they confronted, particularly working on what was called ``the pile'' day after day after day; some who worked out at Freshkills, the formerly very large landfill on Staten Island where the remains of so many who lost their lives, including the debris from the cleanup, were taken and deposited. Detectives worked there hour after hour after hour recovering evidence, and often that evidence included, tragically, body parts. Many of these people who were directly impacted continued to work as long as they could. They tried to return to some semblance of normalcy. Unfortunately, they often could not continue. The money that was directed to be used for their medical and employment-related needs was caught up in some of the efforts to deal with the budget currently, and an unprecedented rescission of these funds previously appropriated was called for. On both sides of the aisle, in the Senate as well as the House, we have a number of our colleagues who understand completely the need for these funds to be reinstated and available for the purposes they were intended. Certainly, the Governor of our State, the mayor of our city, along with representatives of many of the workers, the police officers, detectives, the firefighters, the construction workers, and others who were adversely impacted because they responded to the need for their services and their heroic efforts, are all united in our effort on both sides of the aisle at all levels of Government to make sure that what was promised is fulfilled. I greatly appreciate the chairman of the committee and the ranking member working with us over the last weeks to make sure we correct this unprecedented rescission. I believe the amendment has been agreed to by the chairman and ranking member. I hope we are able to move forward with that expeditiously today. This is a righting of an inadvertent wrong. I don't think the full intent and understanding of what these funds were for was perhaps appreciated, but there seems to be a great willingness, which I greatly appreciate, on behalf of the majority----

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, may we have unanimous consent to use the leader time?

Mrs. CLINTON. Then if we are on the bill at this time, I wish to speak briefly about amendment 2313 and ask that it be pending before the Senate.

Mrs. CLINTON. And so, Mr. President, let me, if I could----

Mrs. CLINTON. This money has been counted on to meet the needs of so many of these workers, through the workers comp system, through the health care system. We fought very hard to make sure there was a sufficient amount of money for the diagnosis of the various physical and mental ills that people suffered after 9/11. I was very grateful we were able to do that. People are being diagnosed. They are being given some help. Unfortunately, without this money, that help cannot continue. After 9/11, we learned that many of the people who were involved in the horrible bombing in Oklahoma City years before were finally coming to ask for help, that they had been suffering in silence. Often there had been terrible memories that interfered with their ability to continue working. This is something that we know from experts is, unfortunately, a very long-term, slow-moving problem, that not everybody suffers the same way immediately. There are those for whom it takes longer to come to grips with what has happened. We are seeing that. We are seeing still people who for the first time go to a physician, for the first time ask for help. I have worked closely with the fire department over the last 4 years and they have been absolutely superb in trying to make sure that help was available, people knew about it, but they are the first to tell you not every one of the firefighters was ready to ask for it. They had to be convinced it was OK to do. So having this money reinstated will fulfill the promise we have made to all of these men and women that we are not going to forget them, we are going to take care of them; that when they are ready to ask for help, they will get help, and that the resources will be available for them to get that help. It is very heartening, and I obviously understand we are going to have a challenge in the conference committee, but all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House, particularly those who serve on the Appropriations Committee, are part of this team and are working hard to make sure their leadership understands what our leadership does, which is that this is keeping faith with the people who kept faith with America, a lot of brave and heroic and very extraordinary human beings who ran toward danger instead of away from it. I am very grateful that this will be in the Senate bill and we will be able to go with a united front on behalf of the Senate joining with those in the majority and minority in the House to make sure we provide this funding as soon as possible. I appreciate all the hard work we have seen from the chairman and the chairman's staff, from the ranking member and the ranking member's staff. This was a challenge they undertook because they supported what we were trying to do and understood how significant it was to correct this situation. I also appreciate the chairman of the full committee and the ranking member of the full committee who have similarly been very supportive in helping us work out a solution to this issue. I can only hope that when we get to conference the House will understand and accept how we have worked this out and give us a chance to make our case. I believe it is a worthy case. It has bipartisan support. I think the House will see that and understand it. I am grateful to everyone who has helped us get to this point. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Will we be going to regular business before the cloture vote?

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I believe amendment 2313 is pending before the Senate; is that correct?

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of that act for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I come to the Chamber today to offer an amendment to provide much-needed resources to help educate the most needy of our students in New York and across America. At the outset, I would like to recognize some of my colleagues who have been extraordinary leaders on behalf of children with special needs, starting with my colleague from Connecticut who is still here on the floor, Senator Dodd. He has been a longtime leader in the fight to increase Federal funding for special education. In that fight for years have also been Senators Harkin, Kennedy, Jeffords, Hagel, and others who have come to this Chamber repeatedly championing the right of those with special needs and reminding us that the noble effort we undertook as a nation to require that children with disabilities and special needs be given the education they deserve, to have as a mandate that has been placed upon our local school districts. It is a noble and worthy undertaking to require that no child literally be left behind, but it is a burden that we should recognize that our local districts struggle with every school year. I began working on special education issues as a very young lawyer literally just out of law school many years ago working for the Children's Defense Fund. I worked on a project where I walked door to door in communities, knocking on doors and asking people if they had school-age children. We had realized when looking at census data compared to school enrollment data that we were missing hundreds and thousands and on a national basis millions of children. They were not in our schools. What I found as I went from home to home was alarming: Children with disabilities back in 1973 and 1974 were not being sent to school. They were being kept at home because the schools were unable to care for them, to meet their needs. Many of them were thought to be uneducable. I remember going into an apartment on the second floor of a wooden house in New Bedford, MA, to meet a lovely young girl of about 12 in a wheelchair, just as bright and smart and curious as you could imagine any child could be, who had never been to school. There were no accommodations in those days for children or adults in wheelchairs. She was at home day after day. I remember meeting another child who was blind, and her parents didn't want to send her over to the State school for blind children which was some distance away, so she was at home. We recorded all of these children with their needs, and we presented a report by the Children's Defense Fund which was used by leaders in this body to argue for and eventually pass the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act. That is today known as IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This watershed act--no country had ever tried to open the doors of its education system to children with special needs--was an extraordinary accomplishment for our Nation. It promised every child the right to a free, appropriate public education. Senator Jeffords and Senator Kennedy actually helped to author that bill, and Senators Dodd, Harkin, and others have been fighting to make sure it lives up to its promise ever since. Today, Senator Dodd and I are seeking to honor that original promise, the pledge to provide up to 40 percent of the per-pupil expenditure for students with disabilities. Today, the Federal Government provides less than 25 percent, which makes it very difficult for schools to provide a high-quality education to students with disabilities. In short, after 30 years, the Federal Government still fails to live up to the promise we made in 1975 to every child, to that child's family, and to the school districts of America. This amendment will provide close to $4 billion. That is the difference between the amount appropriated in the Senate bill and the amount promised in IDEA. For New York, that would mean $243 million extra. Lack of funding for this mandated program, as important as it is, has serious implications for local communities. School districts do not have a choice about whether they comply. They are legally required to do so, and they should be. They have to provide the necessary services that ensure every child with special needs receives that free, appropriate public education. Throughout New York, I have spoken with many educators, teachers, principals, and superintendents who work hard every single day to make IDEA a reality for the children in their care. But the other reality in today's difficult budget times is that it is increasingly difficult for our schools to meet the mandate of IDEA without cutting other educational services for all the other children in the school district. I am talking about essential services such as teachers' salaries, programs that enrich the curriculum, and afterschool programs. Oftentimes the cost of special education is the driving force as to why school districts seek increases in property taxes. I will give an example from my own home county. In Westchester County we just learned the Children's Rehabilitation Center, a wonderful program that serves children with disabilities such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, Down's syndrome, is closing. That leaves parents scrambling to find other arrangements. The parents are understandably concerned about the impact of this closure on their children. Our local newspaper, the Journal News, in a recent op-ed about the situation, said the following: Hearts of compassionate people, of course, go out to the [parents]. But there are public-policy implications also at play here that many, if not most, taxpayers may not realize. The paper went on: The reality is this. All children have a right to an education, one that is in the home district or as close as possible. Public education, and transportation to it, are paid for by a combination of local, state, and federal funding. When a desperately needed program like Children's Rehabilitation Center scales down, and even if accommodations are made for those affected, the impact is well beyond an individual family and employees--it affects the entire community and, quickly, local school districts. And, yes, that means higher property taxes. A similar situation is occurring in Bethlehem, NY, where property owners are facing a 7.9-percent increase in their tax rate for the coming school year, in part, to pay for increased special education costs. Under the new rate, a homeowner whose property is assessed at $100,000 will be charged $203 more this year than last year. According to a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania is considering a proposal for additional funding for special education that would enable property taxes to be cut in half. I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will come to the Senate and argue this amendment breaks the budget, raises the deficit, and could increase Federal expenditures. The truth is, quite simply, this amendment would lower taxes for New Yorkers and for all Americans who pay property taxes because it will relieve some of the pressure on local communities. The choice before the Senate today is not between this amendment and lower taxes for Americans. The choice, as it impacts many communities, is between this amendment and higher local property taxes. The total tax burden for American families will stay roughly the same. We will succeed only in shifting the responsibility for raising revenue to overburdened localities and homeowners, struggling to meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind and the 30-year-old mandate of IDEA. This amendment is particularly critical today because the cost of special education has increased substantially in both absolute and relative terms. Today, 15.3 structures in New York public schools have special needs. The National Center for Education Statistics reports New York's demand for IDEA has consistently increased over the last decade and a half. Since 1991, the percentage of children between ages 3 and 21 served by IDEA has increased by over 43 percent. We have, at the same time, increased by 61 percent the number of children receiving these services. Nationwide, the upward trajectory has been even more dramatic. Our country has experienced a 73-percent increase in the number of students in IDEA between 1976 and 2002. According to CRS, the Congressional Research Service, the cost of ``regular'' education has increased 4 percent in constant dollars since 1985, while the cost of special education has increased 10 percent. Part of the reason is because we have also witnessed dramatic increases in the rates of diagnoses of particular types of disabilities. Before 1985, for instance, only 4 to 6 of every 10,000 children were diagnosed with autism. Today, 1 in 1,000 is considered a conservative estimate. We should not be discouraged by this increasing need for services. Part of the reason more children are being identified is as a result of our paying more attention to children with disabilities. One of the programs we have turned to over the last several years, the Preschool Grants and Infants and Toddlers With Disabilities Program, helps identify children earlier, which in turn helps them get better educated and learn how to deal with their particular disability. It goes hand in hand. It is a good news and challenging news story. The good news is we are reaching out and finding out about what disabilities children suffer from. But the challenge is, how we are going to take care of their needs? We still have a lot of work to do on student assessments. We know from State assessments there is a large gap between the performance of students receiving special education services and their nondisabled peers. Wide gaps also exist in the performance of students with disabilities who attend high-need school districts compared to school districts with greater resources. And a great percentage of minority students are identified as having disabilities. Once identified, a greater percentage are placed in more restrictive special education settings. We must remain accountable for the promises we made these children. Under No Child Left Behind, we are testing these children. We are publishing the results. We are telling school districts, you cannot come to us and say you have to discard the scores of our children with Down's syndrome or cerebral palsy. We are saying, we expect you to educate all of your children. I am very supportive of that. However, in order to do that, we have to be fair to the school districts and give them the resources they need to fulfill this mandate. We are in the year 2005. We cannot blame the economy. We cannot blame the war in Iraq. We cannot blame Katrina and Rita in failing to make good on our promise for special education funding. This has been going on for 30 years, through good times and challenging times. Now more than ever we need to invest in the education of children with special needs. I hope we will do just that. It is time we step up and put the Federal Government on record to fulfill its promise and provide the resources, help districts keep down property taxes, help them meet the needs of these children. I hope if there is a budget point of order, which I fully expect there to be, that my colleagues will vote in favor of fulfilling the promise of IDEA and opposing the budget point of order. I yield the floor.

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I appreciate the chairman's kindness in arranging this. As I understand, we have by unanimous consent set aside the pending amendment. Is that correct?

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be temporarily set aside.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, this next vote is to add $4 billion to the IDEA account. This amendment moves us closer to that mandate imposed upon school districts in 1975, a worthy and noble undertaking to ensure that every child be given an appropriate public school education. This amendment moves us closer to fulfilling what Congress said it would do: provide 40 percent of the funding for special education. This will help school districts lower property taxes. It is the kind of commitment we owe to children and their parents and to relieve the burdens of taxpayers. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, who has been such a great leader on this issue, for his eloquent, passionate explanation as to why this amendment is so important. I also thank the chairman for his very eloquent and moving statement and appreciate his leadership on this and so many other issues over the years. Amendment No. 2313 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 2313.

Mrs. CLINTON. Thank you, Mr. President.