Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. About 5 minutes.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise to introduce, along with Senators Mikulski, Landrieu, Levin, Cantwell and Kerry, the Youth Service Scholarship Act. This Act would authorize the Secretary of Education to award college scholarships of up to $5,000 a year to high school students and undergraduates who perform community service. A recent study titled Community Service and Service Learning in U.S. Public Schools reveals that 66 percent of public schools involve students in community service. This means that approximately 54,000 public schools in America currently engage about 13.7 million students in community service each year. Other studies have shown that nearly 84 percent of high school students participate in volunteer activities either in or out of school and two-thirds of college students have recently participated in volunteer activities. The Youth Service Scholarship Act is designed to assist low-income students who dedicate a significant portion of their time to volunteer service with money for college. This Act would authorize the Secretary of Education to award college scholarships of up to $5,000 to high school students who perform over 300 hours of community service in both their junior and senior years. In order to be considered, high school applicants must maintain a 3.0 grade point average, submit character recommendations, and write an essay on the nature of their community service. Additional money will be available if the student continues to participate in a significant amount of community service once they are in college. Voluntarism not only brings support and services to communities in need, it provides significant benefits to the students who participate. Research has shown that students who volunteer are 50 percent less likely to use drugs and alcohol or engage in destructive behavior. Additionally, students who volunteer are more likely to receive good grades, be philanthropic, graduate, and be interested in going to college. In the 21st Century, higher education is not a luxury, it is a necessity. For many of our low-income youth, finding money to pay for college is an obstacle to enrollment. This scholarship program provides aid to motivated and inspired youth. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Youth Service Scholarship Act. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, today I am pleased to announce the reintroduction of the Information Technology for Health Care Quality Act. By encouraging health care providers to invest in information technology (IT), this legislation has the potential to bring skyrocketing health care costs under control and improve the overall quality of care in our nation. We are facing a health care crisis in our country. According to the Census Bureau, 45 million Americans were without health insurance in 2003--an increase of 1.4 million over 2002. In many respects, we have the greatest health system in the world, but far too many Americans are unable to take advantage of this system. The number of uninsured continues to rise because the cost of health care continues to soar. Year after year, health care costs increase by double-digit percentages. The cost of employer-sponsored coverage increased by 11 percent last year, after a 14-percent increase in 2003. Employers are dropping health care coverage because they can no longer afford to foot the bill. One of the ways to provide health care coverage to every American is to reign in health care costs. And expanding the use of IT in health care is the best tool we have to control costs. Studies have shown that as much as one-third of health care spending is for redundant or inappropriate care. Estimates suggest that up to 14 percent of laboratory tests and 11 percent of medication usage are unnecessary. Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, we know that it takes, on average, 17 years for evidence to be incorporated into clinical practice. Along these same lines, a recent study showed that patients receive the best evidence-based treatment only about half the time. Significant cost-savings will undoubtedly be realized simply by moving away from a paper-based system, where patient charts and test results are easily lost or misplaced, to an electronic system where data is easily stored, transferred from location to location, and retrieved at any time. With health IT, physicians will have their patients' medical information, at their fingertips. A physician will no longer have to take another set of X-Rays because the first set was misplaced, or order a test that the patient had six months ago in another hospital because she is unaware that the test ever took place. The potential for cost-savings from simply eliminating redundancies and unnecessary tests, and reducing administrative and transaction costs, is substantial. Of course, when we consider the improved quality of care and patient safety that will result from wider adoption of health IT, the impact on cost is even greater. For example, IT can provide decision support to ensure that physicians are aware of the most up-to-date, evidence-based best practices regarding a specific disease or condition, which will reduce expensive hospitalizations. Given all of these benefits, estimates suggest that Electrontc Health Records (EHRs) alone could save more than $100 billion each year. The full benefits of IT could be multiple hundreds of billions annually. Such a significant reduction in health care costs would allow us to provide coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. The benefits of IT go beyond economics. I am sure that all of my colleagues are familiar with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimate that up to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors. A RAND Corporation study from last year showed that, on average, patients receive the recommended care for certain widespread chronic conditions only half of the time. That is an astonishing figure. To put it in a slightly different way, for many of the health conditions with which physicians should be most familiar, half of all patients are essentially being treated incorrectly. Most experts in the field of patient safety and health care quality, incuding the IOM, agree that improving IT is one of the crucial steps towards safer and better health care. By providing physicians with access to patients' complete medical history, as well as electronic cues to help them make the correct treatment decisions, IT has the potential to significantly impact the care that Americans receive. It is impossible to put a value on the potential savings in human lives that would undoubtedly result from a nationwide investment in health care information technology. It might seem counterintuitive that we can realize tremendous cost savings while, at the same time, improving care for patients. But in fact, improving patient care is essential to reducing costs. IT is the key to unlocking the door--it has the potential to lead to improvements in care and efficiency that will save patients' lives, reduce costs, and reduce the number of uninsured. Unfortunately, despite the impact that IT can have on cost, efficiency, patient safety, and health care quality, most health care providers have not yet begun to invest in new technologies. The use of IT in most hospitals and doctors' offices lags far behind almost every other sphere of society. The vast majority of written work, such as patient charts and prescriptions, is still done using pen and paper. This leads to mistakes, higher costs, reduced quality of care, and in the most tragic cases, death. There is no question in my mind that the federal government has a significant role to play in expanding investment in health IT. The legislation that I am introducing today defines that role. First, this bill would establish federal leadership in defining a Nationai Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) and adopting health IT standards. While I am pleased that the administration has already appointed a National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, I believe that the authority given to the Coordinator and the resources at his disposal are not equal to the enormity of his task. That is why my legislation creates an office in the White House, the Office of Health Information Technology, to oversee all of the Federal Government's activities in the area of health IT, and to create and implement a national strategy to expand the adoption of IT in health care. This office would also be responsible for leading a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to develop technical standards for health IT. These standards will ensure that health care information can be shared between providers, so that a family moving from Connecticut to California will not have to leave their medical history behind. At the same time, this bill would ensure that the adopted standards protect the privacy of patient records. While the creation of portable electronic health records is an important goal, privacy and confidentiality must not be sacrificed. This legislation would also provide financial assistance to individual health care providers to stimulate investment in IT, and to communities to help them set up interoperable IT infrastructures at the local level, often referred to as Local Health Information Infrastructures--LHIIs. IT requires a huge capital investment. Many providers, especially small doctors offices, and safety-net and rural hospitals and health centers, simply cannot afford to make the type of investment that is needed. Finally, this legislation would provide for the development of a standard set of health care quality measures. The creation of these measures is critical to better understanding how our health care system is performing, and where we need to focus our efforts to improve the quality of care. IT has the potential to drastically improve our ability to capture these quality measures. All recipients of Federal funding under this bill would be required to regularly report on these measures, as well as the impact that IT is having on health care quality, efficency, and cost savings. The establishment of standard quality measures is also the first step in moving our nation towards a system where payment for health care is more appropriately aligned--a system in which health care providers are paid not simply for the volume of patients that they treat, but for the quality of care that they deliver. To this end, my legislation would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to report to Congress on possible changes to Federal reimbursement and payment structures that would encourage the adoption of IT to improve health care quality and patient safety. I know that many of my colleagues, including Senator Enzi, Senator Kennedy, Senator Clinton, Senator Frist and Senator Gregg, have an interest in this issue. I look forward to working with all of them to move legislation this year. It is time for our country to make a concerted effort to bring the health care sector into the 21st century. We must invest in health IT systems, and we must begin to do so immediately. The number uninsured, the skyrocketing cost of care, and the number of medical errors should all serve as a wake-up call. We have a tool at our disposal to address all of these problems, and there is no more time to waste. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, and my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, to introduce legislation today to protect America's children from the vicious criminals who prey on them. While we've made some progress in the last few years, anyone who picks up a newspaper today can see that far too many of our kids are still too vulnerable. The most recent annual data shows that about 58,000 children were abducted by nonfamily members, usually people who are strangers to the children. The most frequent victims were teenage girls. Almost one-half of these victims were sexually molested. Our bill, ``The Prevention and Recovery of Missing Children Act of 2005'', will take 3 common-sense steps to better protect the children of America. First, it will require that information on a missing child be disseminated throughout the country within 2 hours through the National Crime Information Center database. The reason for this requirement is that time is of the essence. In cases where a child is killed, the evidence shows that the child died within the first three hours of being kidnapped. The more quickly that police throughout the country can be alerted, the more likely it is that we can save a child before a child is harmed. Second, the bill will make it tougher for convicted sex offenders to escape the law and the watchful eye of the community in which they live. We know that far too many jurisdictions rely essentially on the voluntary actions of the convicted sex offender to register his residence, his car and license plate, and other pertinent information. Moreover, requirements vary from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Therefore the legislation we are introducing today will provide tough national standards that will require these criminals to register before they are released from prison. It will require, within 48 hours of moving to a new residence, that these individuals report to local law enforcement and provide information about their residence, a current photograph, DNA sample, as well as report the make, model, and license plate number of his or her vehicle and get a drivers license or ID. Every 90 days, they would have to verify their registry information and annually provide a new photograph. Failure to comply with these requirements would subject the criminal to a felony. These new requirements are tough, but our children's safety is far too important to be left to patchwork laws and the voluntary action of convicted criminals whose likelihood of repeating the crime is extremely high. Third, the legislation removes a current requirement that the names of missing children be deleted from the national database when those children turn 18. Just because a child turns 18 doesn't mean that our country should not try to find that child and certainly doesn't mean that the child should be forgotten. Nothing we do as a Nation is more important than building a better future for our children. And, nothing is more important to building that future than keeping our children safe today. Therefore, in my view, no legislation is more important to be enacted in this Congress than this legislation to protect our children from every parent's nightmare. I ask unanimous consent to have a brief summary of the bill printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, and my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, to introduce legislation today to protect America's children from the vicious criminals who prey on them. While we've made some progress in the last few years, anyone who picks up a newspaper today can see that far too many of our kids are still too vulnerable. The most recent annual data shows that about 58,000 children were abducted by nonfamily members, usually people who are strangers to the children. The most frequent victims were teenage girls. Almost one-half of these victims were sexually molested. Our bill, ``The Prevention and Recovery of Missing Children Act of 2005'', will take 3 common-sense steps to better protect the children of America. First, it will require that information on a missing child be disseminated throughout the country within 2 hours through the National Crime Information Center database. The reason for this requirement is that time is of the essence. In cases where a child is killed, the evidence shows that the child died within the first three hours of being kidnapped. The more quickly that police throughout the country can be alerted, the more likely it is that we can save a child before a child is harmed. Second, the bill will make it tougher for convicted sex offenders to escape the law and the watchful eye of the community in which they live. We know that far too many jurisdictions rely essentially on the voluntary actions of the convicted sex offender to register his residence, his car and license plate, and other pertinent information. Moreover, requirements vary from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Therefore the legislation we are introducing today will provide tough national standards that will require these criminals to register before they are released from prison. It will require, within 48 hours of moving to a new residence, that these individuals report to local law enforcement and provide information about their residence, a current photograph, DNA sample, as well as report the make, model, and license plate number of his or her vehicle and get a drivers license or ID. Every 90 days, they would have to verify their registry information and annually provide a new photograph. Failure to comply with these requirements would subject the criminal to a felony. These new requirements are tough, but our children's safety is far too important to be left to patchwork laws and the voluntary action of convicted criminals whose likelihood of repeating the crime is extremely high. Third, the legislation removes a current requirement that the names of missing children be deleted from the national database when those children turn 18. Just because a child turns 18 doesn't mean that our country should not try to find that child and certainly doesn't mean that the child should be forgotten. Nothing we do as a Nation is more important than building a better future for our children. And, nothing is more important to building that future than keeping our children safe today. Therefore, in my view, no legislation is more important to be enacted in this Congress than this legislation to protect our children from every parent's nightmare. I ask unanimous consent to have a brief summary of the bill printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, today I am pleased to announce the reintroduction of the Information Technology for Health Care Quality Act. By encouraging health care providers to invest in information technology (IT), this legislation has the potential to bring skyrocketing health care costs under control and improve the overall quality of care in our nation. We are facing a health care crisis in our country. According to the Census Bureau, 45 million Americans were without health insurance in 2003--an increase of 1.4 million over 2002. In many respects, we have the greatest health system in the world, but far too many Americans are unable to take advantage of this system. The number of uninsured continues to rise because the cost of health care continues to soar. Year after year, health care costs increase by double-digit percentages. The cost of employer-sponsored coverage increased by 11 percent last year, after a 14-percent increase in 2003. Employers are dropping health care coverage because they can no longer afford to foot the bill. One of the ways to provide health care coverage to every American is to reign in health care costs. And expanding the use of IT in health care is the best tool we have to control costs. Studies have shown that as much as one-third of health care spending is for redundant or inappropriate care. Estimates suggest that up to 14 percent of laboratory tests and 11 percent of medication usage are unnecessary. Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, we know that it takes, on average, 17 years for evidence to be incorporated into clinical practice. Along these same lines, a recent study showed that patients receive the best evidence-based treatment only about half the time. Significant cost-savings will undoubtedly be realized simply by moving away from a paper-based system, where patient charts and test results are easily lost or misplaced, to an electronic system where data is easily stored, transferred from location to location, and retrieved at any time. With health IT, physicians will have their patients' medical information, at their fingertips. A physician will no longer have to take another set of X-Rays because the first set was misplaced, or order a test that the patient had six months ago in another hospital because she is unaware that the test ever took place. The potential for cost-savings from simply eliminating redundancies and unnecessary tests, and reducing administrative and transaction costs, is substantial. Of course, when we consider the improved quality of care and patient safety that will result from wider adoption of health IT, the impact on cost is even greater. For example, IT can provide decision support to ensure that physicians are aware of the most up-to-date, evidence-based best practices regarding a specific disease or condition, which will reduce expensive hospitalizations. Given all of these benefits, estimates suggest that Electrontc Health Records (EHRs) alone could save more than $100 billion each year. The full benefits of IT could be multiple hundreds of billions annually. Such a significant reduction in health care costs would allow us to provide coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. The benefits of IT go beyond economics. I am sure that all of my colleagues are familiar with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimate that up to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors. A RAND Corporation study from last year showed that, on average, patients receive the recommended care for certain widespread chronic conditions only half of the time. That is an astonishing figure. To put it in a slightly different way, for many of the health conditions with which physicians should be most familiar, half of all patients are essentially being treated incorrectly. Most experts in the field of patient safety and health care quality, incuding the IOM, agree that improving IT is one of the crucial steps towards safer and better health care. By providing physicians with access to patients' complete medical history, as well as electronic cues to help them make the correct treatment decisions, IT has the potential to significantly impact the care that Americans receive. It is impossible to put a value on the potential savings in human lives that would undoubtedly result from a nationwide investment in health care information technology. It might seem counterintuitive that we can realize tremendous cost savings while, at the same time, improving care for patients. But in fact, improving patient care is essential to reducing costs. IT is the key to unlocking the door--it has the potential to lead to improvements in care and efficiency that will save patients' lives, reduce costs, and reduce the number of uninsured. Unfortunately, despite the impact that IT can have on cost, efficiency, patient safety, and health care quality, most health care providers have not yet begun to invest in new technologies. The use of IT in most hospitals and doctors' offices lags far behind almost every other sphere of society. The vast majority of written work, such as patient charts and prescriptions, is still done using pen and paper. This leads to mistakes, higher costs, reduced quality of care, and in the most tragic cases, death. There is no question in my mind that the federal government has a significant role to play in expanding investment in health IT. The legislation that I am introducing today defines that role. First, this bill would establish federal leadership in defining a Nationai Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) and adopting health IT standards. While I am pleased that the administration has already appointed a National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, I believe that the authority given to the Coordinator and the resources at his disposal are not equal to the enormity of his task. That is why my legislation creates an office in the White House, the Office of Health Information Technology, to oversee all of the Federal Government's activities in the area of health IT, and to create and implement a national strategy to expand the adoption of IT in health care. This office would also be responsible for leading a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to develop technical standards for health IT. These standards will ensure that health care information can be shared between providers, so that a family moving from Connecticut to California will not have to leave their medical history behind. At the same time, this bill would ensure that the adopted standards protect the privacy of patient records. While the creation of portable electronic health records is an important goal, privacy and confidentiality must not be sacrificed. This legislation would also provide financial assistance to individual health care providers to stimulate investment in IT, and to communities to help them set up interoperable IT infrastructures at the local level, often referred to as Local Health Information Infrastructures--LHIIs. IT requires a huge capital investment. Many providers, especially small doctors offices, and safety-net and rural hospitals and health centers, simply cannot afford to make the type of investment that is needed. Finally, this legislation would provide for the development of a standard set of health care quality measures. The creation of these measures is critical to better understanding how our health care system is performing, and where we need to focus our efforts to improve the quality of care. IT has the potential to drastically improve our ability to capture these quality measures. All recipients of Federal funding under this bill would be required to regularly report on these measures, as well as the impact that IT is having on health care quality, efficency, and cost savings. The establishment of standard quality measures is also the first step in moving our nation towards a system where payment for health care is more appropriately aligned--a system in which health care providers are paid not simply for the volume of patients that they treat, but for the quality of care that they deliver. To this end, my legislation would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to report to Congress on possible changes to Federal reimbursement and payment structures that would encourage the adoption of IT to improve health care quality and patient safety. I know that many of my colleagues, including Senator Enzi, Senator Kennedy, Senator Clinton, Senator Frist and Senator Gregg, have an interest in this issue. I look forward to working with all of them to move legislation this year. It is time for our country to make a concerted effort to bring the health care sector into the 21st century. We must invest in health IT systems, and we must begin to do so immediately. The number uninsured, the skyrocketing cost of care, and the number of medical errors should all serve as a wake-up call. We have a tool at our disposal to address all of these problems, and there is no more time to waste. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Durbin and Stabenow to introduce GRAD, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act. The purpose of this bill is to encourage students to pursue graduate education and to assist them in affording it. The percentage of individuals pursuing graduate education has increased dramatically in recent decades as individuals seek the education and skills needed to participate in a global economy. In the last 25 years alone, graduate enrollment in the United States has increased by 38 percent bringing the number of graduate students in this country to 1.85 million. The benefits of graduate education for our country are enormous. This year's graduate and professional students are the doctors, scientists, and inventors of tomorrow. Their ideas and innovations will be the basis of America's economic strength in the years to come. The benefits for individuals are significant as well. The median earnings of a worker with a master's degree are twice that of a high school graduate and $10,000 more than an individual with a bachelor's degree. The median earnings of a worker with a doctoral degree are 2\1/2\ times that of a high school graduate, $30,000 more than an individual with a bachelor's degree and $20,000 more than someone with a master's. An individual with a professional degree can expect to make three times the amount of a high school graduate, almost double the amount of an individual with a bachelor's, $35,000 more than individuals with a master's and $15,000 more than someone with a doctoral degree. Clearly, one's earning power increases, in some cases exponentially, with increasing education. Despite the immediate and long-term benefits of graduate education for individuals and our Nation as a whole, graduate education is, for many, financially out of reach. In 2002-03 the average graduate school tuition at public institutions was $4,855 and $15,279 at private institutions. The average debt reported by graduate students today is $45,900. For medical students it is $115,000, for dental students it is $122,000 and for law students it is $86,000. These are astounding figures. To increase access to graduate education, I have put together a series of proposals that will make graduate and professional school more accessible affordable for all qualified applicants, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act. First, the GRAD Act raises the authorization levels of GAANN, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Program and the Jacob Javits Fellowship Program so that there are more opportunities at more universities for students to pursue advanced degrees. GAANN supports graduate study in areas of national need such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, and physics, while the Jacob Javits Program helps support graduate study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. To encourage greater participation by minority students in advanced programs the GRAD Act creates the Patsy T. Mink Fellowship Program. Named for former Congresswoman Patsy Mink, the first woman of Asian descent and the first woman of color to serve in the U.S. Congress, this program would offer assistance to underrepresented minorities pursuing doctoral degrees. It is fitting that such a program be named after Congresswoman Mink, a long-time champion for immigrants, minorities, women and children. I can think of no better tribute to her lifetime achievements than this program. To help students afford the costs of graduation education, the GRAD Act expands the tax-exempt status of scholarships to treat reasonable room-and-board allowances as part of permitted higher education expenses. GRAD revises the cost of attendance calculations for financial aid for students with dependents to reflect the true cost-of- living expenses for themselves and the families that they support. GRAD also increases the unsubsidized Stafford loan limit for graduate and professional students from $10,000 to $12,000 so they are less likely to have to turn to more expensive private loans. Mr. President, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act will help students meet the financial challenges faced in pursuing graduate studies. The act strengthens programs that support graduate students in areas of vital importance to our nation and makes assistance available to underrepresented minority students pursuing a doctoral degree. By helping students to pursue and afford graduate education, the GRAD Act will help individuals, families and the nation as a whole recognize and achieve the important benefits of graduate education. I hope my colleagues will join me in support of graduate education by supporting this bill. By working together, I believe that the Senate can act to ensure that more individuals are able to pursue graduate education and assist our nation in meeting the challenges faced in a global economy. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Durbin and Stabenow to introduce GRAD, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act. The purpose of this bill is to encourage students to pursue graduate education and to assist them in affording it. The percentage of individuals pursuing graduate education has increased dramatically in recent decades as individuals seek the education and skills needed to participate in a global economy. In the last 25 years alone, graduate enrollment in the United States has increased by 38 percent bringing the number of graduate students in this country to 1.85 million. The benefits of graduate education for our country are enormous. This year's graduate and professional students are the doctors, scientists, and inventors of tomorrow. Their ideas and innovations will be the basis of America's economic strength in the years to come. The benefits for individuals are significant as well. The median earnings of a worker with a master's degree are twice that of a high school graduate and $10,000 more than an individual with a bachelor's degree. The median earnings of a worker with a doctoral degree are 2\1/2\ times that of a high school graduate, $30,000 more than an individual with a bachelor's degree and $20,000 more than someone with a master's. An individual with a professional degree can expect to make three times the amount of a high school graduate, almost double the amount of an individual with a bachelor's, $35,000 more than individuals with a master's and $15,000 more than someone with a doctoral degree. Clearly, one's earning power increases, in some cases exponentially, with increasing education. Despite the immediate and long-term benefits of graduate education for individuals and our Nation as a whole, graduate education is, for many, financially out of reach. In 2002-03 the average graduate school tuition at public institutions was $4,855 and $15,279 at private institutions. The average debt reported by graduate students today is $45,900. For medical students it is $115,000, for dental students it is $122,000 and for law students it is $86,000. These are astounding figures. To increase access to graduate education, I have put together a series of proposals that will make graduate and professional school more accessible affordable for all qualified applicants, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act. First, the GRAD Act raises the authorization levels of GAANN, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Program and the Jacob Javits Fellowship Program so that there are more opportunities at more universities for students to pursue advanced degrees. GAANN supports graduate study in areas of national need such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, and physics, while the Jacob Javits Program helps support graduate study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. To encourage greater participation by minority students in advanced programs the GRAD Act creates the Patsy T. Mink Fellowship Program. Named for former Congresswoman Patsy Mink, the first woman of Asian descent and the first woman of color to serve in the U.S. Congress, this program would offer assistance to underrepresented minorities pursuing doctoral degrees. It is fitting that such a program be named after Congresswoman Mink, a long-time champion for immigrants, minorities, women and children. I can think of no better tribute to her lifetime achievements than this program. To help students afford the costs of graduation education, the GRAD Act expands the tax-exempt status of scholarships to treat reasonable room-and-board allowances as part of permitted higher education expenses. GRAD revises the cost of attendance calculations for financial aid for students with dependents to reflect the true cost-of- living expenses for themselves and the families that they support. GRAD also increases the unsubsidized Stafford loan limit for graduate and professional students from $10,000 to $12,000 so they are less likely to have to turn to more expensive private loans. Mr. President, the Getting Results for Advanced Degrees Act will help students meet the financial challenges faced in pursuing graduate studies. The act strengthens programs that support graduate students in areas of vital importance to our nation and makes assistance available to underrepresented minority students pursuing a doctoral degree. By helping students to pursue and afford graduate education, the GRAD Act will help individuals, families and the nation as a whole recognize and achieve the important benefits of graduate education. I hope my colleagues will join me in support of graduate education by supporting this bill. By working together, I believe that the Senate can act to ensure that more individuals are able to pursue graduate education and assist our nation in meeting the challenges faced in a global economy. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. I ask unanimous consent that the remaining time I have be divided between the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Massachusetts. The Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Reed, also asked for time. I had 60 minutes, and want to give up some time.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, in response to my friend and colleague from Maryland, that is exactly the point.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the nomination of John Bolton to be the U.S. Representative to the United Nations. Let me begin, briefly, by stating what this nomination and debate is not about. It is not about reform at the United Nations. There is not a single Member of this body who I know of who does not agree with the notion that we ought to be doing everything we can to make the United Nations a stronger institution, a more meaningful one, in today's world, where more direct actions can be taken where problems exist around the world to make it more efficient, to function better. All of us agree with that, and all of us agree that whoever assumes this position as ambassador from the United States to the U.N. ought to play a critical role in that effort. That is not in question here. That is not a matter of debate. What is also not a matter of debate is the style of the particular nominee in question. I think all of us in this city certainly respect the fact that some people's style is a little more brusque than others, can be a little more blunt than others. I do not know of anyone, certainly on this side of the aisle--or that side, for that matter--who disagrees with a nominee because they do not particularly like their style, although they may have been particularly rough on some employees. We may not applaud it. We may not like it. We may think it is unwise and bad management style. But almost nobody in this Chamber on either side has objections to this nominee solely because of the question of reform at the United Nations or whether Mr. Bolton's style is objectionable or not. My objection to this nomination focuses on one single issue. Members will have to decide for themselves whether they think this issue is of such importance that it would disqualify Mr. Bolton from the position he has now been nominated to or allow him to go forward. The facts are no longer in debate. It is often said in this Chamber, you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. The facts are overwhelming in terms of the allegation that Mr. Bolton, whatever his motivations may have been--and I suspect I know what they were--decided that because he disagreed with some intelligence analysts, he wanted them removed from their jobs. I have never objected, nor would I--in fact, I agree with my colleague from Michigan who spoke so eloquently, that, in fact, there ought to be more debate between policy centers and intelligence analysts. What was missing during the debate on Iraq, as to the issue of weapons of mass destruction, was the absence of debate between policymakers and intelligence analysts. None of us, that I know of, disagree with the notion that there ought to be more debate. Where policy setters disagree with intelligence analysis, they ought to express that objection and tell people they think it is wrong. But if you go beyond just disagreeing, if you go beyond forceful debate, if you reach down and decide you are going to remove or try to remove an intelligence analyst from their position because you don't like what they are saying to you, that then crosses a line. I don't care whether it is a Democratic administration or a Republican one. If this body, by a vote of confirmation says to a person who seeks the position of ambassador to the United Nations, that even though you have tried to fire intelligence analysts because you disagreed with their analysis, then I think we send a dreadful signal at the very time in the world that our credibility on intelligence is in question. We all know that to be the case, regrettably. We have been through a dreadful period where intelligence was very wrong in assuming there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So the issue for this Senator is, did Mr. Bolton do this or not? And if he did, why are we even considering this nomination? Because anyone, regardless of the administration, their political persuasion or ideology, who tries to fire people, not debate, not disagree with them, not reprimand some higher official because he disagrees with what they are saying, but to reach down and fire an analyst at the CIA or the Department of State because you don't like what they were telling you, in my view, crosses a line. This body has an obligation to the American public to stand up and say: We will not tolerate that. This is far more important than Mr. Bolton. It is far more important even than this President or this Congress. The issue goes far beyond any individuals. It goes to the heart of whether we are going to have credible intelligence which we, as Members of Congress, can believe, and our allies around the world, and from those we seek to find support on various foreign policies who will understand the purposes for which we are seeking their support. That is what I worry about more than anything else. Yesterday I spoke on the floor about the availability of information. The reason I had requested, and that we have an expedited version of a cloture motion, doesn't have to do with whether or not Mr. Bolton should have an up or down vote. I want to have an up or down vote on Mr. Bolton. But I also believe this body has a right to information. When the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee are deprived the opportunity to read the names on the intelligence intercepts, the names Mr. Bolton could see, that his staff could see, but that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the ranking member, the chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee are deprived the opportunity to see, then we are not getting the information we ought to have in order to make an intelligent decision. The only vehicle I have available to me is to say, I am going to insist upon a 60-vote criteria unless you give us the information. It is 11:20. I am still waiting. There is no reason for us to have to have a cloture vote this afternoon. Instead, we can have a simple up-or-down vote on Mr. Bolton at 6 o'clock tonight, if in the next hour or two the administration would release those names to the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, and the chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and the information Senator Biden is seeking regarding the matter of the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Syria. There are not a lot of documents. It wouldn't take much time. But if we can't get those documents, if we are not being allowed to see the very things the nominee had a right to see, then I don't think we are being treated as a coequal branch of Government that has a right, through the appropriate means, with the appropriate members. I am not suggesting every member of the committees should see these names, but that the appropriate people we have designated historically have access to that kind of information for a nomination such as the one before us. I am still hopeful that will happen. I am not so naive as to be unaware of what we have just been through in the debate about filibusters on Federal judges. I would not have brought up this nomination right now in the wake of that. I thought we were going to deal with Federal judges, not the nominee to the United Nations. But the majority, as is its right, sets the agenda. They have asked this Congress, this Senate to debate the issue of Mr. Bolton. I am put in the position of saying: I guess after all of this you can do what you want and deny us that information. I would hope some of my Republican friends, despite the fact they are going to vote for Mr. Bolton, would vote with us on the cloture motion. I took some interest in the fact that even on the House Republican side, the difficulty that major committees of the Congress, both the House and the Senate, are having in getting information from this administration is growing. If we don't at some point stand up for our rights as a constitutionally designated coequal branch of Government, then this administration will receive the message that we don't care about this and that we can deny this Congress anything we want and they will do nothing about it. So aside from how you feel about Mr. Bolton, yes or no, it is important for this institution to stand up for its rights and to demand this information as we have a right to. I am hopeful we can still get the information and not have to go through a cloture vote at 6 o'clock this evening. Let me get back to the subject matter of Mr. Bolton himself. The reasons for my concern are primarily focused on one issue. That is, of course, whether Mr. Bolton tried to fire people within the CIA and the State Department because he did not like the analysis they were giving him. What is extraordinary about this nomination, first and foremost, is the number of people on whom we have relied, considering their status, who oppose this nomination. I would like to read the names. I am not suggesting all of these people are opposed to Mr. Bolton, but the basis upon which we have determined that Mr. Bolton tried to fire two intelligence analysts relied primarily on the names on this particular chart. I want to read the names and the positions they hold. It was these individuals, more than anything else, who made a significant difference in our conclusions that Mr. Bolton had, in fact, tried to fire these individuals. John McLaughlin was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. These individuals are either presently members of the Bush administration, this President, or were formerly members of the Bush administration. Larry Wilkerson was chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell; Robert Hutchings, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. The dates of their service are here. They are all dates that run roughly 2002, 2003, up to the present time, or just a month or so ago. Stuart Cohen, Acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; Alan Foley, head of the CIA's Office of Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control; Jamie Miscik, Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA; Thomas Hubbard, United States Ambassador to South Korea, a Bush appointee; John Wolf, Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation; Tom Fingar, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; Christian Westermann, analyst for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Neil Silver, Office Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research; INR supervisor, we don't use his name here, the immediate supervisor of Mr. Westermann; Fred Fleitz, acting chief of staff of John Bolton; Wil Taft, Department of State legal advisor; and a Department of State attorney whose name we are not using as well in the office of legal advisor. These are 15 individuals either presently serving in the Bush administration or having previously served. It is on them that we relied. It is their damning statements that confirm without any question that Mr. Bolton essentially tried to have these intelligence analysts fired. They also provided other damaging information. I have been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 24 years. Those who have served with me know it is rare, indeed, for this member to get up and object to a Presidential nomination, particularly one that is not a lifetime appointment. In fact, as my colleagues who have served with me for some time know, I have been one of only a handful who have supported nominees of Republican administrations. I was one of two Democrats who supported John Tower when he was nominated to be Secretary of Defense under President Bush's father. I supported John Ashcroft in the first administration of the current President Bush, one of only a handful of Democrats who did that. I tried to recall an instance when I have taken such a strong objection to another nominee in 24 years. I can't recall one that has gone this far. I have had my objections to others, but they usually didn't reach this particular point. So it is uncomfortable for me to come to the floor to engage, over almost the last 2 months, in this nomination. But when you add the names of 102 former ambassadors, 15 present or former members of the Bush administration, these are not Democrats, these are not some left-wing organizations that are out there objecting to John Bolton. These are serious people who do a serious job, many of them career officials who have served our country with great distinction over the years. These individuals are the ones on whom we relied to draw their conclusion. I am going to share with my colleagues their statements, not mine, not the names of some Democrats who might have some political motivation but, rather, people who care about our country, care about the United Nations, believe it needs reform, believe we need a strong person there to engage in that kind of reform, but believe John Bolton is not the person who ought to be receiving the nomination. The committee did an extensive review of all the allegations related to this nominee. Committee staff, on a bipartisan basis, conducted more than 30 interviews of individuals with knowledge of the nominee. There was excellent cooperation on the part of most of those staff we sought to interview. I believe the work of this Senate has been assisted by these individuals who courageously came forward to answer questions and provide information that in many cases they would rather not have done. These individuals did not want to speak ill of another Republican or a former colleague. But they acted as dutiful citizens, patriots, and cooperated with the committee's efforts to fully explore matters related to the nomination of John Bolton. Regardless of how this Senate disposes of this nomination, these individuals have done a service to our country. We should honor them for doing so, for having the courage to come forward and to be honest when asked questions about this nominee. Mr. Bolton's behavior clearly troubled a number of people who have worked directly with him over the last number of years. Former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, a self-proclaimed conservative Republican, described Mr. Bolton as ``the quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy.'' He also labeled Mr. Bolton a ``serial abuser.'' We did not hear from any people disabusing the committee of that view. That he has an abusive management style is problematic, but as I said at the outset, that would not be justification for voting against Mr. Bolton to be the ambassador to the United Nations. This is not about style. It is not about reform of the U.N. It is about whether this individual tried to fire intelligence analysts in his position as Under Secretary of State. However, when Mr. Bolton harnesses that management style of his, as he has over the last 4 years, to affect intelligence judgments or to stifle the consideration of alternative policy opinions, then I think he has crossed the line over what is acceptable behavior. Why? Because those actions go directly to the heart of the integrity of U.S. intelligence and the firewall that must exist between policy and intelligence to ensure the integrity of that intelligence. Again, I emphasize, this is not about a disagreement. It is not about a policymaker disagreeing with an intelligence analyst. Intelligence analysts do not speak ex cathedra. They are not sitting there coming to conclusions that we ought not to question. That is legitimate. In fact, we need more questioning. The issue is whether one ought to go beyond questioning and decide to remove someone because you disagree with their conclusions. When this committee convened last month to consider the matter, we had irrefutable evidence--this is not conjecture--and this body has to decide whether you are going to send this man forward in the face of irrefutable evidence that on 5 different occasions over the past 48 months, Mr. Bolton tried to have 2 intelligence analysts removed from their jobs--one at the State Department and one at the CIA--because these individuals would not clear the language Mr. Bolton wanted to use, which was not supported by available intelligence. I emphasize another point that needs to be made. When Mr. Bolton speaks as John Bolton, he can say whatever he wants. But when he gets up and says, ``I am speaking on behalf of the United States,'' then there is a different standard. When you speak on behalf of our country, you cannot just say anything you want. You have to rely on the best intelligence we have. You may disagree with that and you can fight over it, but in the final analysis you cannot offer your own opinions when you are expressing them as the U.S. views. You can say John Bolton believes this. If Mr. Bolton wants to speak to the Heritage Foundation and say, ``I believe the following,'' I may think he is profoundly wrong, but I would fight with my life for John Bolton to be able to say it. That is first amendment rights. It is when Mr. Bolton gets up and says, ``I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America and I want to say the following,'' and then he absolutely contradicts what is being concluded by the intelligence analysts here, at that point, it seems to me he has a higher responsibility than he has shown. Carl Ford's testimony was a watershed for me. Never in my 24 years as a Senator have I ever witnessed one high-ranking, former administration official testify as vociferously and as strongly as Mr. Ford did against a colleague. That is exactly what he did last month. Carl Ford made it clear why he did so. He believed Mr. Bolton's actions caused a chill among his intelligence analysts--so much so that the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had to buck up the employees to assure them that they should not succumb to political pressure. Because we have talked a lot about this, I used this chart in the Foreign Relations Committee. I realize from a distance it looks like a lot of spaghetti. What it amounts to is the chart of the positions of the State Department, beginning with the Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of State, Chief of State, Executive Secretary, and the various Under Secretary positions here. The third one is Mr. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. That is his responsibility, this group right here. He was in charge of the people who worked in this particular column. Where did that intelligence analyst work? He worked down here. You have to go way down to the Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Carl Ford, who was head of the INR. This intelligence analyst was down here; that is where Mr. Westermann worked. He was not directly in Mr. Bolton's line of command, but in a separate division. He is a GS-14 at this level. You need to understand what happened here. This was a case where Mr. Bolton doesn't get ahold of Mr. Ford and say: I have a problem with your intelligence analyst because I disagree with what he said. I think he is wrong and I want to argue about it. Mr. Bolton reaches down out of his line and drags this guy up to his office and begins to berate him for the job he has done. That is objectionable to me, and outrageous. If it ended there, that is dreadful behavior and nobody ought to do that without clearing what you want to say with the people who are responsible for that individual's work. If it ended there, maybe I would just vote against the nominee and I would not make the case on that basis alone. It is what happens afterward. It is not just berating. There is no doubt that there would be chill in the Department if an Under Secretary of State dragged an intelligence analyst to his office and word goes out. As we all know, in institutions the word flies around immediately. One of our fellow workers has been dragged up to the Under Secretary's office and screamed at because he didn't like his conclusions. That is why Colin Powell, the guy at the top, had to go down to these offices--down here on the chart--and explain to them that they did the right thing. You, Mr. Westermann, did the right thing. You are not supposed to succumb to political pressure. You tell people what they think they need to hear, and if they don't like it and disagree with you, that is one thing. But you did the right thing. It was wrong by implication, because why would the Secretary of State go down here and bring these analysts together and remind them that they had done their job if he felt Mr. Westermann being dragged up to Mr. Bolton's office was not wrong? That is why the Secretary of State did that. He went down there to tell those people not to worry about this, do your jobs. I think the Secretary was worried that the word would go out to these analysts that if you don't want to get in trouble, start to agree with Mr. Bolton when he disagrees with you; that is the easy thing to do. If he tells the analyst you ought to say the following, you better say that. If you do, you won't be brought up to his office and bellowed at. That is dangerous and that is one of the reasons we have such concern about this nomination. As I said, this was the conclusion of Secretary Powell, according to Mr. Wilkerson, his chief of staff. Mr. Wilkerson, who was the chief of staff of Secretary Powell, testified before the staff of the Foreign Relations Committee the following: Secretary Powell ``went down into the bowels of the building and talked to people about not being inhibited by, or in any way fearful of, people on the seventh floor, or leadership in general, questioning their analyses or their statements or whatever.'' Mr. Bolton had a very selective recollection about his interactions and intentions with respect to intelligence analysts at the State Department and the CIA during his appearance before the committee. Mr. Bolton told the committee: I didn't seek to have these people fired. I didn't seek to have discipline imposed on them. I said, ``I've lost trust in them.'' And are there other portfolios they could follow. It wasn't anything to me that I followed at great length. I made my point and moved on. Committee staff interviews and review of State and CIA documents paint a very different picture indeed. What is that picture? First, with respect to Mr. Westermann. Six months after this event I have described on the chart with--this run-in occurred, Mr. Bolton was still seeking to have Mr. Westermann removed from his job as the biological weapons expert analyst at the Intelligence and Research Division of the State Department. Mr. Bolton's recollection about what he did with respect to the CIA analyst was likewise clouded on April 11. As to the so-called ``Mr. Smith,'' as we called him to protect identity, Mr. Bolton said: I had one part of one conversation with one person one time on ``Mr. Smith,'' and that was it. I let it go. We now know that much more than that occurred. Let me lay it out for you. In addition to a meeting with the Acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, we now know from e-mails that Mr. Bolton considered raising the matter directly with the Director of the CIA, George Tenet. We know as well that he continued to conspire with former Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich and his office for a period of 4 months after he first ``lost confidence'' in ``Mr. Smith'' to have him removed from his job. Also under consideration by Mr. Reich and Bolton were other punitive measures--we know this now--such as denial of country clearance for Mr. Smith's official travel throughout Latin America, banning him from all meetings held in their bureaus. And the ultimate act of pettiness-- consider revoking his State Department building pass. I am not making this stuff up. He said he had ``one part of one conversation with one person one time, and I let it go.'' Hardly. The facts are overwhelming here regarding what he tried to do both at the State Department and the CIA. We have also learned that other intelligence analysts were having difficulties with Mr. Bolton's office. Jami Miscik, Deputy Director for Intelligence, 2002 to 2005, in the Bush administration, told the committee staff that Mr. Bolton had a reputation for being difficult to deal with. She noted that ``interaction between policymakers and the intelligence community usually goes more smoothly than it often did . . . in the cases with Mr. Bolton . . . It is rare that . . . a single policymaker is known for having . . . pretty regularly contentious kinds of issues in this regard.'' We know as well that expert intelligence officials disapproved of and resisted Mr. Bolton's efforts to ``cherry-pick'' intelligence for ideological purposes. Dean Hutchings, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, 2003 to 2005, described the ``cherry-picking'' problem in the context of what Mr. Bolton wanted the Intelligence Committee to bless with respect to Syria's weapons of mass destruction capabilities: Mr. Bolton took isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted. It was a sort of cherry picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest possible case. We also know that Deputy Secretary Armitage didn't trust Mr. Bolton's judgments when it came to making public speeches. We have heard this from others, such as George Voinovich, as well as Carl Levin, as well as Barbara Boxer and others, who have spoken on this matter. Mr. Wilkerson, Secretary Powell's chief of staff, told the committee: There were problems on a number of occasions with Under Secretary Bolton's proposed remarks. . . . The Deputy, Mr. Armitage, made a decision and communicated that decision to me, that John Bolton would not give any testimony, nor would he give any speech, that wasn't cleared first by Rich Armitage. With all of the other duties Deputy Secretary Armitage had in managing the Department in Secretary Powell's absence, he also felt he had to babysit Mr. Bolton because the normal clearance procedures established by the Department didn't work with Mr. Bolton. Yet, this body is now being asked to vote to send Mr. Bolton to New York, where he will be unsupervised on a daily basis. Lord only knows the kind of problems that can ensue with Mr. Bolton, given his past performance. Individuals under Bolton's direct line of authority also took issue with the rigidity of his views. John Wolf, former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation and a career diplomat, told committee staff that Mr. Bolton ``tended to hold onto his own views strongly and . . . he tended not to be enthusiastic about alternative views. And he did not encourage us to provide our views to the Secretary.'' Again, I am not arguing about someone's style here. But when you have 125 employees at the U.N. and the only things you want to hear are the things you agree with, that is a management style that is dangerous for a person who is going to work with all of the nations we have to build relationships with in the U.N. We all do this as Senators. We know when a staff member gets up and wants to tell us an alternative view, it is uncomfortable. We would like them to agree with us. We also know how vitally important it is as Senators that people in our offices who have the willingness to stand up and know when they do, they are not going to be threatened with their jobs, or considered for removal because they are telling us something we don't want to hear. We understand the value of that. Mr. Bolton doesn't. That is dangerous. Mr. Wolf said: Some of the officers within the nonproliferation bureau complained that they felt undue pressure to conform to the views of the Under Secretary, versus the views that they thought they could support. That is a dangerous statement, that we have somebody who is about to take on a position who would make others feel they were unfit or are being pressured to conform their views. All of these matters I have just mentioned cause me grave concern about this nomination. But what troubled me the most were the devastating comments made by Secretary Powell's chief of staff, Mr. Wilkerson, an individual who on a day-to-day basis was in a position to know what was going on in the Department and what foreign policy challenges the Secretary of State was attempting to manage. This is what he has to say about Mr. Bolton's single-minded preoccupation with sanctioning every Chinese entity he could find which might have violated nonproliferation standards: Are we actually stopping China's proliferation through sanctions that was dangerous to our interests? Or are we doing it, and ignoring problems that cry out for cures, diplomatic? The one time I had a conversation with John about this, I asked him, ``How do you go beyond sanctions, John? War?'' Mr. Bolton replied, ``It is not my business.'' Mr. Wilkerson also explained to our committee staff why he believes Mr. Bolton is ill suited for the U.N. position. I am quoting Mr. Wilkerson, Secretary Powell's chief of staff. This is not some liberal left-leaning Senator or Congressman or columnist talking about Mr. Bolton. This is the former chief of staff of a Republican Secretary of State under George Bush--this President's administration: One, I think he's a lousy leader. And there are 100 to 150 people up there at the United Nations that have to be led; they have to be led well, and they have to be led properly. And I think, in that capacity, if he goes up there-- Speaking about Mr. Bolton-- you'll see the proof of the pudding in a year. Second, I differ with a lot of people in Washington, as to his brilliance. I didn't see it. I saw a man who counted beans . . . had no willingness--and in many cases no capacity to understand other things that were happening around those beans. And that is just a recipe for problems at the United Nations. These are very serious conclusions from an individual who was a loyal and trusted member of Secretary Powell's team, and they go to the heart of whether Mr. Bolton has the capacity to carry out his duties at the United Nations. This is not about whether we like the nominee's views on the United Nations, arms control, or Cuba. He is entitled to his personal views about any of those matters, and he should not be disqualified from any office because he has them. But for the interests of the United States to be served at the United Nations, there has to be a balance between ideology and pragmatism. The individual on the spot in New York will be called upon, from time to time, to strike that balance. He also must have the credibility to make the best case for the United States before that international body. These things are at the heart of effective diplomacy. Ambassador Negroponte was able to strike that balance between ideology and pragmatism and have the credibility to make the case of the United States before the U. N. Security Council. Senator John Danforth, a former colleague, was able to do so as well. Based on what we have learned about Mr. Bolton in recent days, I seriously doubt he is willing or able to strike that balance, and I now know, given his penchant for stretching intelligence and pressuring analysts, that his credibility will be challenged by other U.N. members. Our colleagues brush aside this problem by saying Mr. Bolton will be getting his instructions from Secretary Rice. Mr. President, that is just not realistic at all. Much of the guidance that is developed for our U.N. ambassadors is developed cooperatively between Washington and New York. What gets said at the United Nations by a representative is, in large measure, shaped by our reporting from our mission in New York. I feel Mr. Bolton will be incapable of making the kind of judgments that move the diplomatic process forward. We all know these are difficult times. Our responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan are significant and costly. Other challenges to international peace and stability loom large on the horizon--Iran, North Korea, the Middle East. The humanitarian crises in Africa and Asia cry out for attention. The United States cannot solve these problems all by ourselves. We know that. We need tremendous international assistance and cooperation to address them, and the logical focal point for addressing that international support is the United Nations. It makes sense. But international support will not be automatically forthcoming and will require, as we all know, U.S. leadership at the U.N. to build the case for such cooperation. That U.S. leadership must necessarily be embodied in the individual who serves as our ambassador to the United Nations is obvious. Based on what I know today about Mr. Bolton, I believe he is incapable of demonstrating that kind of leadership. The ambassador to the United Nations is a very important position. The individual who assumes that position is necessarily the face of our country before the world. For all the reasons I have cited--Mr. Bolton's management style, his attack on the intelligence community, his tunnel vision, his lack of diplomatic temperament--I do not believe he is our man to be the face at the United Nations. But of all those reasons, I come back to the one I made at the outset. It is not about style, it is not about reform at the United Nations, it is not about Mr. Bolton's views on a variety of subject matters. Our colleagues have to make a decision. We now know, categorically, without any question whatsoever, that this nominee tried to fire intelligence analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of State. That evidence comes from his own colleagues, from people with whom he has served, not from outside groups or members of this body. The decision for our colleagues today is whether or not we promote someone who has done that and what message it sends to the analyst community, what message it sends to our allies, and what message it sends to our adversaries, for that matter, around the globe. That this individual who engaged in such reprehensible behavior, in my view, should be given the position of U.N. ambassador to represent the United States at this critical hour, I think is a massive mistake. Again, I am still hopeful that in the remaining hours of this debate, the administration will see fit to provide the additional information for which we have asked for almost 2 months. I regret deeply having to ask my colleagues to vote on a cloture motion. I have said, if cloture is invoked, we will vote immediately on Mr. Bolton. If it is not invoked, it will layover, and we will continue to try to get the information. I have no desire to filibuster this nomination. I do have a desire to see the Senate stand up for its rights when it seeks information-- information the nominee had access to but the chairmen and ranking members of the Intelligence Committee and Foreign Relations Committee were denied. That is a precedent we need not make with this decision. My hope is our colleagues will support the opposition on the cloture motion and, if we get a vote on Mr. Bolton today, we reject this nominee. There are many qualified, blunt, forceful people who can assume this job who embrace the President's view on foreign policy and who will do a very good job at the United Nations. John Bolton is not that individual. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if I may respond to my colleague from Maryland, I was going to recite to him--because I think some of my colleagues may think this Senator from Connecticut has raised this issue in the last 24 hours as a delaying tactic--I want to point out to my colleagues the chronology which begins actually on April 11-- approaching 2 months ago. Then there were subsequent requests on April 14, April 22, April 29, May 4, May 18, as well as even as late, as of course, we all know, yesterday. I want to make it clear that from very early on, we tried to get this information. I emphasize, again, these are names Mr. Bolton has seen, his staff has seen, and we are not asking every Member see, only the ranking members and the chairmen of the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, to let them know whether or not the names coincide with the names of people we have run across in our examination of Mr. Bolton to be a nominee to the U.N. The chairman of the Intelligence Committee will tell you they had an interview with General Hayden and he showed them some documents. But in his letter to our colleagues last evening, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee very honestly pointed out that the names of the 19 individuals in the 10 intercepts he sought are redacted. The only pertinent information is those names and the motivation Mr. Bolton had in seeking that information. The heart of the request--even the Intelligence Committee chairman cannot see it. Yet Mr. Bolton could see it, his staff could see it. But the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is not allowed to see it. Every Senator ought to be outraged about that. If we let them get away with it here, they will get away with it every single day hereafter. Either we stand up for our rights as a Senate, as a coequal branch of Government, or we do not.

Mr. DODD. Yes, I yield.

Mr. DODD. Again, the Senator from Maryland is absolutely correct. These issues come back and come around and the word spreads: You can get away with this. It is not just this administration. The Senator is correct. Future administrations will use this as an example of why they do not have to comply with the request because previous Congresses allowed this information to be kept secret when Senate committees were seeking it. Mr. President, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. DODD. And Senator Reed from Rhode Island also seeks some of that time. Just Senator Reed and Senator Kennedy. The Senator Maryland has time.

Mr. DODD. I have a little less than 20 minutes remaining. What I want to do is give the 20 minutes I have left to my colleagues to use. Mr. President, I make that request, that the time remaining be divided between the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I say to the distinguished Senator from California, I came over to hear my colleague's remarks. I appreciate her courtesy.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, before our friend from Arkansas leaves the floor, let me also say, if his children are watching, they should be very proud of their father. I have had the privilege of serving with the Senator's father. In fact, we sat next to each other as I arrived here as a freshman Senator. The Pryor and Dodd families go back for some time. I want you to know that what you and your 13 colleagues did last week--and nobody can say for certain where this is going to lead, but you have given this institution an opportunity to continue its tradition of providing the one place in Government where all voices can be heard. That is not true in anyplace in the executive branch, necessarily, or the judicial branch. And even in the legislative branch, in the other body, the majority rules. The Senate is the one place where all voices must be listened to. Because of what you and our 13 other colleagues--6 other Democrats and 7 Republicans--were willing to sit down and try to fashion, we have been given a chance to live up to the longstanding, historic traditions of this place in which we have been privileged to have been elected to serve. There have been 1,884 of us in 218 years who were chosen by our States to represent their interests and the Nation in the Senate. I can just say to my friend from Arkansas, you will be involved in a lot of issues during what I hope is a long career for you here in the years ahead. You will look back, and there will only be a handful of moments that will stand out, and I am willing to predict that what you, Senators McCain, Nelson, Lieberman, Collins, Byrd, Warner, Graham, Snowe, DeWine, Landrieu, Salazar, Chafee, and Inouye have done will remain one of the important memories. You will look back and think of the things you have been involved in and, hopefully, the list will be long. As one Senator who was not involved in the negotiations you went through but was watching them carefully--and again, we cannot say with certainty where it is going to lead--I commend you and history will commend you for what you are doing. I love the idea that you did it for your family and your children. They will look back with pride on the service of their father. Mr. President, we went through a little bit of a turmoil here. Obviously, coming in the wake of this negotiation, I suppose some people's eyebrows may be raised, wondering how can we do that compromise and then end up with an awkward situation on the Bolton nomination, which became contentious for a few minutes. I will add my voice to that. My fervent hope is that people will not misunderstand the intentions of 24 Senators, and others, when we raised the question going back to April 11 about certain information. All of my colleagues are not familiar with all of the details of the case, although the Presiding Officer was very much a part of the discussion we have had over the last couple of months. Whether we are for or against the nomination, the point I was trying to make is that an institution--the Senate--has a right to certain information when it involves a pertinent matter before it. It has been a historic struggle between the executive and legislative branches. There is always that tension between these two branches of Government over access to information. Regardless of one's political affiliation, whether you are in the majority or the minority, no matter what administration is in the White House, my experience over 2\1/2\ decades, serving under every imaginable configuration, is that it is always healthy to insist on information that the institution thinks is important for its consideration of a matter--be it substantive or the executive branch calendar. I want to say to my colleagues, those who have gone through this process of negotiations that avoided the constitutional crisis regarding extended debate, what happened here in the last few hours is not in any way disruptive of what occurred during those negotiations. It is my strong hope and desire that the information we seek will be forthcoming in the next few days, that the committees can analyze it all, and when we return to this body after the break, the matter of John Bolton can come before this body and we will have an up-or-down vote on the nomination, as it should be. It is my strong desire that that be the outcome. This was not intended, in any way, to engage in a filibuster but strictly to determine whether this institution would say to the executive branch, respectfully: This is information we believe we need. We are asking you to provide it in an orderly way to those Members who are entitled to this information--the chair of the Intelligence Committee, the ranking Democrat, the chair of the Foreign Relations and ranking Democrat--for them to determine whether there is relevancy to this information as it pertains to this nomination. Again, I thank the majority leader. It probably doesn't help his cause to hear this, but Bill Frist made a serious effort over the last couple of days, not that he necessarily even supported the request, but he certainly conveyed the request in a serious way to leaders within the executive branch. I thank him for that. He didn't have to do that, and he did. I regret that the administration didn't reply in an orderly way, which could have avoided all of this in the last 48 hours. I hope they will take this seriously. I say to my friends on the majority side, having been in your shoes in other administrations, it can happen. There is always this tension between these two branches of Government about information. We need to be clear about it. We have a constitutional responsibility, where appropriate, to seek information that is important for our consideration. So it is my fervent hope that we go away for a few days and recognize, as so eloquently Senator Salazar said, speaking about his father, a World War II veteran, insisting upon being buried in his uniform, that we recognize those who have given a lot more to provide the freedoms we enjoy as Americans, that we are very much living up to what they fought and died for over this Memorial Day break as we recognize their contributions. They fought and died for exactly what we are doing here. This doesn't happen miraculously. A democracy is won by each and every generation in this country. There is no guarantee that it exists in perpetuity. Each generation of Americans will confront, one way or another, a challenge to our democratic values and principles. Certainly, the generation that fought and died for this country over the years has proven that categorically. We are going to be challenged as well from time to time. So I fervently hope--and Members who have served with me know I am the least comfortable with getting involved in opposing a nominee. The only trouble I have gotten into in nominations is when I have been for nominees to the disappointment of colleagues on this side. I was told I had no business to be for John Ashcroft and John Tower. I am not comfortable not being for somebody. I took the position I did, and I hope we can resolve this matter over the next few days and get back to the business of voting up or down and move on to other business that is important to our constituents. I was heartened to hear that Democrats and Republicans were able to work out differences on an energy bill. That is going to be exciting to deal with; it is an issue in which our constituents are interested. I would be remiss in not recognizing the Presiding Officer in the tremendous work he has done, along with Senator Jeffords and Senator Reid and Senator Baucus. There is a lot of work in front of you. Those are the issues we need to work together on here. So while there may be some bruised feelings right away over a vote we just took, I hope we can put those behind us and resolve the matter and get about doing the business the people sent us here to do. To my colleagues, I wish them a healthy, happy, and safe Memorial Day, and I look forward to seeing them on our return here and moving forward with the business at hand. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, again, I commend my friend and colleague. I don't want to do this too frequently. I am afraid I may hurt his reputation in certain quarters. I want to tell him how much I admire what he has done over the last number of weeks and did so so that the people of Ohio and America understand this. This was not a decision that my colleague from Ohio reached quickly. In fact, I recall vividly the day in room 116 where we made our case. It was one of those rare moments that we don't see often enough around here these days, where the Senator from Ohio said: I am troubled by this. I want to know more. I was tempted a couple of times during the period between that hearing on April 18 or 19 and when we reconvened again in early May as part of the Foreign Relations Committee to consider this nomination. I decided the best thing I could do was to leave the Senator from Ohio alone and let him go through the process himself of deciding on the concerns that had been raised. As he so appropriately pointed out--I tried to make the point this morning myself--these allegations are not coming from some outside groups who have a vested political interest in the outcome. Many of these people were people who were presently there or have just left the present administration or they have had the experience of working with the nominee. They were the ones who raised the concerns. In fact, at lunch today, we were talking about North Korea with several former career diplomats who have worked with the nominee, including in this administration. I asked them for any observations. They confirmed what the Senator has said. They had complimentary things to say about Mr. Bolton, as well. I am not saying there are not qualities about this nominee that are good. He is certainly a well-educated individual, and he has an incredibly attractive life story of where he has come from. But they all made the same point the Senator from Ohio made, and it deserves being made again. I raised the issue about the intelligence analyst. But the Senator is absolutely correct. In this day and age, what we have been through over the last several years, having people who can help us take unwilling nations that may be cautious about joining us in certain things, for all the reasons we are familiar with, and to be able to build those coalitions around issues critical to us and to peace and stability in the world, is going to be absolutely essential. The U.N. is a forum particularly for smaller nations. Large nations have big delegations here in Washington, and we go back and forth to major European allies and the major countries in the Pacific rim. For an awful lot of countries, the best forum for them is the U.N. The person who interfaces with those people on a daily basis can do a tremendous amount of good for our country with that notion-- the face of public diplomacy that the Senator from Ohio talked about. I wanted to, once again, thank my colleague for his willingness to share his feelings with his colleagues about this, and we are going to have a vote this afternoon, only because I felt it was important for us to be able to have information that should be forthcoming. It is a matter of right here on a cloture motion and, if that succeeds, we will go right to a vote on Mr. Bolton. If not, it will lay over and when we get back, if we don't invoke cloture, we will deal with it fairly quickly when we return and we will move on. I hope Members will have listened, particularly on the majority side. I suspect that when you hear some of us, you may say that is a bunch of Democrats talking. I regret that that is the feeling, but if you are not impressed with what some of us who have worked on the issues for many years feel about it, listen to George Voinovich from Ohio. This is a good person who cares about the status of the United States and about this matter before us. I thank the Senator. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Well, I understand that. It is just that this Senator in this--

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes to engage my colleague from Michigan in a little colloquy. Will my friend from Minnesota object to that?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I thank my friend. I want to compliment my friend from Michigan on a very fine statement. He has focused, in my view, exactly on the central question here and that is not that there was disagreement over intelligence but, rather, whether someone went beyond a good, healthy fight over whether or not intelligence was accurate and took additional steps to dismiss or to change the jobs of the individuals involved. I appreciate my colleague calling into question the access of information because this is central. That is why this Senator has taken the extraordinary step of asking my colleagues to potentially oppose a motion to invoke cloture on this nomination if the information is not forthcoming. The reason I want to raise this is because our good friend from Kansas, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, read into the Record a letter he sent to Senator Lugar regarding this request for the intercept information. And the pertinent paragraph, to this Senator, I want to read quickly. It says: Finally, the Vice Chairman and I reviewed all ten documents containing the references to U.S. persons that generated Under Secretary Bolton's requests. The documents we reviewed did not contain the actual identities of the minimized U.S. persons. After reviewing the content of each report, however, it was apparent to us both that it was not necessary to know the actual names to determine whether [or not] the requests were proper. Now, the letter goes on, but that is the important paragraph because the very identity of the individual names was redacted. The chairman of the Committee on Intelligence and the ranking member on Intelligence were not allowed to see the names, the very names that Mr. Bolton was able to see and apparently his staff was able to see. That is the relevant information that we are seeking--the names of the individuals. Does my colleague have any comment on that particular point? Because that, to me, is the central admission in this letter.

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. DODD. I agree with my colleague.